Life Power Now - for gay men

After twenty years in Washington D.C., Paul started 2006 by moving to the Big Island of Hawaii to pursue his long standing interest in body work. He chronicles his transition to paradise for Life Power Now.

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Blue Moon over Kalani

June 1st, 2007

A blue moon is the second full moon in the same month, and last night was the only blue moon for this year.

The full moon in Puna is always full of surprises. You can feel the energy start to build the week before: conversations are a bit louder, laughter is more frequent, people move faster and socialize more.

Some full moons seem to upset the applecart, and all kinds of crazy things happen (we stopped having community meetings on the full moon!).

This blue moon seems calm and sensual, luring folks out to wander in the meadows and along the shore, drinking in the beautiful light...

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A view from Mauna Kea

April 30th, 2007
Aloha,
A trip to Mauna Kea is always a revelation. Nine thousand feet up, you are in a far different place than the jungle of Puna or the white sands of Kona!

After passing through the pelting rain of the clouds between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, you rise up to see them nestled in between the two mountains. The setting sun lights up the red cinder cones and bathes the sparse and strangely shaped vegetation with indescribable clarity.

When dusks falls, the horizon becomes an aching light blue. On the night we were there, the moon was waxing, with a bright Venus below it. Through the telescopes of the visitor's center, we saw the craters of the moon, and the rings of Saturn, and the clouds of light in the Orion Nebula.

Astonishing beauty... with a grace that stays with you as you travel back down to the coast of jungle, sand, and people.

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Watching Pele Sculpt

April 25th, 2007

Aloha,

A trip out to the lava flow is always such a visual feast. One can't help but marvel at the solid lava, arranged in rings, whorls, spirals, ropes, protrusions and curves, colored in black, red, gray, and iridescent glassy colors. The volcano spirit Pele is, truly, the master sculptress of the Big Island.

By the time you reach the red, hot flowing lava, you feel like a kid again, with the irristable impulse to poke a stick into the lava and watch the flames erupt.

A few nights ago, pahoehoe seemed to flowing everywhere; softly it would creep over the old lava, and then suddenly spill out in a rush of heat and light and amazing pattern.

As a special treat, Pele showed us how she makes rope lava, folding and twisting the molten rock until it looked like a rucked-up, black and red velvet blanket.

We thanked Pele for her hospitality and offered her ti leaves and orchids, then turned and made our way back home.

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A feast of hula 'auana

April 17th, 2007

Aloha - here's some of the modern hula

In modern Hula 'Auana, the sky can be the limit, whether the song is about surfing, motorcycles, or lost love.

Although there were many wonderful traditional performances, one piece of choreography that stood out was Kumu Hula (teacher) Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu's wahine piece about fishing.

With five gallon plastic buckets and bamboo rods, his halau enchanted the crowd with humor and bamboo syncopation.

The men similarly let out the stops with aloha shirts, motorcycle songs, and dancing a reenactment of great canoe voyages. Shown here is a tribute by one halau to King David Kalakaua, who restored hula to a prominent place Hawaiian culture after it had been banned by missionary influence.

It was a shame that the judges had to pick a winner, but the dancers and audience had a great time in the sharing of hula and aloha.

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Hula blossom time

April 14th, 2007

Aloha,

It's that time again on the Big Island. Like seing the Cherry blossoms in DC, April on the Big Island is about the blossoming of lehua flowers to be used for the The Merrie Monarch Festival in Hilo. The competition in Kahiko, or ancient style of hula, was held last night. Kahiko uses only chants and ipu drumming, unlike the 'Auana (modern) style which uses songs and instruments.

The kahiko style is vigorous, especially for the men! The crowd erupted as each halau chanted in unison and stamped their feet and made the stage shake.

The precision was amazing as different hula halau danced and used sticks, ipus, rocks, and feathers in their storytelling. The costumes themselves, leis and other adornments, are deeply tied to ancient Hawaiian culture, crafts and life. Watching the hula kahiko at Merrie Monarch bears no resemblance to the stereotype most people have of hula. This kind of performance puts a knot in your throat and a vibration at the bottom of your spine. Simply enchanting.

As for me, I've been living at Kalani since January, and we hope the plans for the cottages will be approved and that construction will start this summer. I have become the default IT person (and also marketing person), taking care of the network and wireless and web site, though I have had so far little chance to do anything creative on the web site.

Here's a picture from last night's Kahiko performance.

love and aloha,
paul

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And now for the local news...

October 14th, 2006

Aloha,

The local newspaper here is pretty boring. We really, really like it that way. The front page is almost always local stories, while the national news, even the really big news that gets splashed across the media, seems pretty far way.

This email is my version of the local news. Nothing exciting, just an update on what I am doing, with some pics.

Hawaii will forever invoke images of vacation, but most of us who live here are very busy. Of course, some of the things we are busy with are kinda nice things to do. <grin> I swim in the ocean or pool almost every day, and now that I am more confident with larger waves, have been body surfing at the rocky local beach (Kehena Beach). I still get nicked up a little by the rocks, but the cuts are minor and I heal quickly.

After an tumultuous August meeting of the new local community group I was facilitating, I swore to never again schedule a meeting near the full moon! I've let the group go into a hiatus, but probably will start to rev it up again, but not quite yet. I'm also working on the (ready for this?) Puna Community Development Plan (CDP) Natural Reources Preservation/Protection Working Group (NWRG). I am the facilitator and contact person for the group, which is one of ten working groups that will prioritize the suggestions from 130 community meetings and make recommendations for the new development plan for the Puna district that will become law. Fortunately for me, there are several knowledgeable and enthusiastic (read: rapid rabid rabbit) people in the group, so I can sit back and just document stuff. I think that this is one of my life lessons that I came to Hawaii to work on: I don't have to drive! <grin>

At Kalani, we're still working on finishing up the plans for the Kalani Kai development, and have been trying to massage the people at the county Planning Department who seem suspicious of the "outside-the-box" development that we're doing. We're waiting to find out if they are going to require new amendments or further changes. Otherwise, the plans are finished and ready to be submitted. Very cool designs for a hexagonal cottage with roof deck and an octagonal bamboo cottage built in Vietnam.

Although construction is not really my long suit, I recently spent a few weeks routing (rounding the corners) and pickling (whitewashing w/ a design) beams and roofing plywood for the new Kalani entrance building. Yesterday, Richard and I bought the colors for the acid-etching of the cement floor, which is something I need to learn for my own cottage when we build it.

In the meantime, the house I am living in has been sold (I think, I'm pretty sure... but don't know if/when the closing is...) and I am planning on moving out of my current place sometime next month and into the second-floor bedroom at Richard's house at Kalani. I guess I could be there six months or more. Don't really know for sure..... (there seem to be few certainties on the Big Island! <grin>.)

Had a nice visit a couple days ago to the Pe'ePe'e waterfalls and a beautiful stretch of the Wailuku river known as the "boiling pots". You can see where the nickname comes from the attached picture!

Well, enough boring local news for now <grin>. I hope this finds you well. Much love and aloha,

Paul

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My first Hawai'i birthday suit

September 8th, 2006

Aloha friends,

When my dear friend Cid had her birthday we agreed that, since our lives had changed so dramatically since moving to the Big Island, we would henceforth re-number our birthdays in Hawai'i. She had her second birthday in Hawa'ii in July; my first birthday in Hawai'i is today.

I've written about lava and rainbows, waterfalls and tropical skies, aloha and people as varied as the wild orchids. Time runs both fast and slow. You can take two days off and people remark that they haven't seen you in a while. Friends leave for two months and return, and it is as if you saw them just yesterday. It's all part of the flow...

It's the same as anywhere else (well, maybe not the lava, of course! <grin>). What makes the Big Island special for me is how the very air seems to vigorously knock about my assumptions and preconceptions, and how the intentions of people, mine own and others, manifest themselves in uncanny and surprising ways.

So it seems entirely sensible to number birthdays differently, because life IS different when you change your patterns and assumptions. And, amazed to be here, I find myself in the Pe'epe'e waterfall, one side braced, and one side embracing, my first birthday in Hawai'i.

If I were to make a birthday wish, it would be for everyone I know to find their own kind of waterfall. But being the unsentimental Virgo that I am <grin>, I'll simply wish you all much love and aloha...

Paul

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Lava Fall!

August 21st, 2006

Aloha,

The lava flow from Kilauea has made the news world-wide, so we HAD to go see it. Not to mention the fact that the new flow was much closer than the old one and involved far less walking!

Thirteen of us set out, making a beeline for the plume of smoke in the western sky. After about 45 minutes, we could clearly see the glow just over the next ridge, but in each direction we turned we encountered recent flows whose warm crust might or might not break under our weight. Keeping to the higher, cooler ridges of lava, we threaded our way to the ocean cliffs. The group split into two: the adventuresome, and the plain crazies. The crazies went over the still-hot-underfoot flows to the west-facing cliff and were met with the sight of a triple lavafall. It sparked and fell down the cliff to rejoin in glowing streams flowing into the ocean.

There's no way to describe in words the light, the sound, the motion; or to express the awe we felt at witnessing primeval creation. We knew we were there at Pele's sufferance, and a loud cry from our friends alerted us that a new stream of lava had opened up between our two groups. We beat a hasty, and thankful, retreat.

On the way back, we stopped by the warm glow of a pahoehoe flow and watched its slow, oozing motion. We sat at the ultimate campfire, surrounded on three sides by glowing rock and lava, and shared our delight at being alive.

Paul

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Life on the Big Island

July 17, 2006

Aloha,

A friend emailed me and asked what my life was like on the Big Island. And that kicked me into gear to finally write something...anything!

Life on the Big Island is busy, stunning, beautiful, joyous, uncertain, ever-changing.... a lot like Washington, DC..... <grin>

The flowers and plant life are beautiful, the rocks are beautiful, the clouds are beautiful, the ocean is beautiful. There are dolphins in the bay....

the weather is strange for this time of year; it is raining 12 times a day with interludes of sunshine, people are actually putting on an extra shirt sometimes in the evening. You have to wrap yourself in a towel or put something on your naked body after swimming in the silky, delicious blue water...

The moon here is as full as you could possibly imagine, and lately there's been a red glow at night in the west from a strong surface lava flow...

the people are like orchids, no two the same, some wildly extravagant, some calm and purposeful; each playing out their own life... beautiful....

amazing place, amazing life I've gotten myself into. The house where I am living has just been put on the market by my housemate who wants to move back to California. There's probably time yet before I need to decide anything, but if it sells quickly, then I'll just have to do something! <grin>

And there's always Kalani, I could move there in the next half-hour if I wanted to. (I'm gonna hold out for my own cottage though, which is proceeding, but at a tropical pace). In six months I seem to have become established as a bona fide anomaly, which means I fit all categories and no categories of employee. I don't officially work here, but I attend the managers' meetings. I have no position, but the days are completely full with a myriad of interesting tasks. Right now I'm learning the wiring and management of the local area network and the website.

There are interesting people to take pictures of, and I hope to organize the art collection and create an art gallery, partly so that I can show my own work. I help with renovations and do creative paint treatments on walls. I help with designing the new cottages, and facilitate a new community group for the Puna Coast. If everybody in the group is complaining to me, I guess I must be doing something right. When they start complaining ABOUT me, I'll find a replacement!

Hanging out with a local painter has changed my whole sense of color. Arthur Johnsen is so good at capturing the intense, writhing energy of the Puna coast. We've become very good friends, and sometimes I have a lot of fun helping him re-arrange his art gallery in Hilo.

A couple nights ago, 29 of us from Kalani went on an eight hour lava trek and hoped the rain would hold off and give us the full moon to see by. On the way out we marveled at the complex patterns of the cooled lava: ropes, sculptures, fractures, fissures. When we arrived we made an offering to Pele, the goddess-spirit of the volcano, and watched the dance of the lava flowing into the sea and the waves creating fantastic sculptures of steam.

The trek back was a completely interminable four hours. The lava is so uneven that every step is difficult in the dark. We saw new lava flows break out of the ground and flow down the hillside, and saw a rare moonbow (actually, an even rarer double moonbow!) caused by the full moon, finally appearing from behind the clouds and refracting into a rainbow through the mist.

The last hour was both the hardest and easiest. We were all tired; with flagging energy the group divided and divided again in the dark, until there were people strung out all over the lavascape. But in the last hour the full moon finally gave us light to see by, and we waved our flashlights back to the folks behind us so that they could see what direction to follow. Each one of us, on seeing the red beacon that marked the end of the trip, breathed a sigh of relief. Actually, some of us shouted, others laughed out loud, and still others simply dropped to the ground.

But none of us would have missed it. To see Pele's lava dancing with the sea is a sight worth seeing.

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More Images

May 25, 2006

Aloha friends,

The last few months have been such a total immersion that I just haven't found the time to write. Or even answer some of the emails I've gotten from good friends! And I'm off to Oahu for the weekend... but rather than let any more time pass, I thought I'd send out a few pictures to share a taste of my life here. I hope to catch up with everyone soon!

I went hiking and camping on Kauai a couple weeks ago. This is your standard classic shot, but it really does look like this!

love,

Paul

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Images from a bulldozer

February 27, 2006

Aloha,

I'm taking a much needed break after nine days of accompanying a D-9 bulldozer clearing jungle for some cottages at Kalani Kai. The D-9 is impossible to ignore. The sound hits your bones, conjuring images of Jurassic Park as treetops wave wildly about and come crashing down under the impact of a sixty ton behemoth.

The smell of crushed leaves is potent enough to lift your head, and you have to keep your footing as you scramble over boulders and tree trunks jumbled in the bulldozer's wake. You make decisions on clearing as you go, because the dozer obliterates the trails you made last week, and the land looks different than it did before. As spaces open up, you discover beautiful trees you hadn't seen even yesterday when you had passed them in the jungle by only a few yards.

The intricacies of the job are surprising. The rise and fall of the ground, the hard blue lava rock and the crushable black lava rock, native trees and invasive, non-native trees, drainage and grading: they all play a part. The bulldozer operator won over Barkus and I the instant he declared he wouldn't cut down mango or ohia trees, and his skill in cutting around trees and rock formations was a fascinating thing to watch. We met his wife and son, and learned a bit about his very interesting life.

The irony of cutting down trees was ever-present, and when we cut down an ohia tree by mistake, we placed one branch with lehua flowers on a Hawaiian altar. A few times, an owl or hawk would fearlessly fly from branch to branch to see if the bulldozer turned up anything tasty for lunch. For our part, we collected wild papayas for the kitchen to make papaya salad, in between clearing out some of the underbrush with machetes.

It was easy to feel fleeting echoes of building the Panama Canal in humid jungle, and of Roman road-building, and the feeling of any settlers clearing new land. The bulldozer sheared through personal memories, too, of childhood play with toys, and childhood fascination with machinery and power. We took the job personally, and did not dismiss the mixed emotions of disturbing what was already there in order to create something new.

By the seventh day, the project began to seem like a boot camp that I had to see to closure, even though it is only a step in a larger project. (I am, after all, by trade a project manager! ). You keep at the task until it is done, and then rest. The resting part is nice, the scratches on my legs and arms are healing quickly, and so too will the scars of the bulldozer's passage. There's plenty of room for the jungle to reassert itself, even as we carve and trim with strokes both planned and born of serendipity.

a hui hou,
Paul

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Whims, trumpets and entropy

February 10, 2006

Aloha,

I've been here on the Big Island for a month, and what a month it has been...

Things are getting sorted out, slowly but surely... my motorcycle arrived yesterday, and seemed one more clincher that I really live here on the Big Island. The rest of my stuff should catch up with me in another two weeks. In between trying to figure out how I fit in here with different groups of people and what, exactly, I'm going to do here, are moments when the light and wind and color fill me up to overflowing and I can't believe I am finally now living on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific. Here and there I catch echoes of other islands I've loved: the long volcanic curve of Santorini, the moonlight of Caribbean Guadeloupe, the restless yet soothing sky of Polynesian Moorea.

As exciting as it all sounds, changes of this sort of magnitude are not glorious marches forward into the sun with trumpets blaring and all your whims fulfilled! My personal life, my living situation, my job situation, and day-to-day tasks have not all of a sudden taken on a glamour - they are just so different as to be almost unrecognizable.

Instead of the urban office routine, I am now spending 4 days a week literally hacking my way through jungle with a machete. After being tripped by vines for the umpteenth time this afternoon, and actually losing my balance and falling onto a pile of rocks and rotting trees, I had the good sense to call it a day. My clothes are now one-of-a-kind couture, embroidered with paint, dirt, stains and vine sap, not to mention eau de mosquito repellent.

Going to town to run an errand takes all day, or least a half a day. Solar panels and rain-catchment water mean a lot of tasks that never occurred to me in my Washington, DC apartment, such as taking the sudsy grey laundry water out to water the banana trees. Prices for daily commodities can make you do double-takes in the store, stopping you in your tracks as you try to absorb the fact that cheese slices can actually cost that much!

A lot of people struggle here on the Puna Coast. Most everyone rents rooms to help the cash flow, and many, if not most, houses are in some state of construction/ repair/ finishing, not unlike the houses of urban pioneers. The houses reflect the different styles of coping with island life. Some are walled and fenced and greatly disciplined, some relax and ride the flow of the landscape, others look like they can't quite keep up with entropy...

Being uprooted so recently, I am very concerned about entropy. New lives can be tricky things, requiring water, and mulching, and weeding and pruning. A time to sow and a time to be patient. After a month, I am still accumulating new impressions every day, seeing how people live, feeling out the rhythms here which are so different from my previous life, and trying to figure out how to braid new and old rhythms into a flow that feels right.

Of course, I'm hacking through the jungle with two really fine people, and we work together to clear the path and mark the beautiful monkey pod and lama trees to be saved from the bulldozer. And the clerks at all the stores are sweet, and smile at you, and seem to think that bagging your groceries is something that they really ought to do for you. And nobody cares how you are dressed, because they are looking at you and not at all at your clothes.

And so time passes. It seems as if there is so much I haven't gotten done, even though I know that a month is hardly any time at all, not even in the city. Things keep happening... like watching rare Hawaiian birds at dawn in a rain forest, or stopping on the way home this afternoon to sit and look at the ocean. The ocean is a deep blue ruffled with wind, with uncountable white wave caps and an energy beyond entropy.

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Steam vents and other eccentricities

January 31, 2006

Yesterday, on another rainy day in Puna, Chris took me to the steam vents. A natural feature of the area, you just pull off the side of the road near the Steam Vent Inn, lock your car, and start wandering back into the Ohia trees.

There are lots of trails winding through rocky outcroppings of lava and lush vegetation kept moist (and sometimes blackened) by the steam rising from the ground. Here and there are large holes, some with ladders, into which you can climb and get the full steam room experience.

We stop and climb down one, put our clothes into plastic bags, and sit hunched over into a small grotto in a side opening. Someone put down some boards and stools to sit on amidst the smooth, red, candle-drip rock walls covered in green algae. A hole in the grotto floor exhales hot steam, rests a moment, then exhales some more.

When we've had enough, we climb back out into the cooler rain and towel down. From the top of the outcropping, the overlook is eerie with black rock chimneys, slick, vibrantly green trees and ferns, sprays of wild purple orchids, and wafts of steam mist drifting across the raindrops.

Such an eccentric landscape grows and attracts eccentric humans, too, at least by grid-ruled city standards. People drift, fray, and bend with the moving tectonic plate far below them. It's a Galapagos of humans: turtle-humans, booby-humans, gecko-humans; all adapting into island niches. Not so different from grid-people, but certainly eccentric by grid norms.

Some are looking for more space to express themselves, extending pseudopods in irregular shapes. Some seem taken over by their eccentricities, reveling in their quirks with impish glee. Others have a slightly astonished look on their face, as if they're not quite sure how they became who they are now. Like the beautiful variegated bark of the tropical eucalyptus tree a few doors down the street, people show the red, yellow, green, grey layers of their core personalities and seasonal growth.

Ec-centric: not of the center. A useful word, usually... but on the Big Island, the meaning of words bend and sway like wild orchids in the rain. And you begin to think that maybe they bend and sway everywhere, but you usually just don't notice it.

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Finally a picture...

January 23, 2006

Here's a picture of Chris' house, where I am staying.... this is the entrance/back side. On the other side is the ocean in the distance... it's actually three separate pavilions divided by breezeways under one roof. The outside looks sorta Swiss chalet , and the inside is all unpainted wood...

in this picture you can see a lawn over the lava cinders, but on the right is the original black rock of the neighborhood, which covers the adjoining lot...

aloha,
paul

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Here comes the rain again...

January 20, 2006

...sometimes as a cooling whisper against the skin, sometimes as a hissing sound that gives you just enough time to get under a tree or roof overhang. Sun, clouds and rain follow each other and break up the day into episodes... in the morning I wait for a break before bicycling a couple miles to Kalani.

The road from the house winds down to the coast road - a steady decline that needs brakes and not pedaling. The coast road goes down and up, overlooking black crumbling cliffs and dramatic up-spashes of white water and foam. At the Kalani gate is a steady half mile climb in low gear to the open-air dining lanai and the cheerful clatter of breakfast.

My second week here has been more active - I've painted the interior of a cottage room, attacked (and was attacked by!) a mass of thorny bougainvillea vines, and traipsed the Kalani property with compass and measuring tape to find boundaries for some planned construction.

The jungle at Kalani is all vines and guava saplings with assorted palm, monkey pod and ohia trees. The footing on the dank ground is an unsteady mass of decaying logs and vegetation overlaying rocks. Rocks everywhere... under every plant is a rock, under every rock is another rock or two or three. Rock walls are made by bulldozers.... just scape the ground and the rocks all pile up!

In our neighborhood, a front or back lawn is likely to be crumbling ridges of black rocks. One beautiful house on the edge of the neighborhood is oriented to an open rock field. From inside the high glass walls of its rooms you look at a vista of black rocks with scraggly trees sweeping left up to a ridge, and down to the right to the sea. It feels like a terrarium, except that you're not quite sure which is the inside and which the outside.

Right now, I'm never quite sure if I have sufficient internet access, which means sporadic access and no pictures until I get it improved. Thanks for all the emails! I'll get back to everyone soon...

aloha,
paul

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First week in Hawaii

January 17, 2006

Aloha,

My last few weeks in DC were an absolute blur of activity: organizing, packing, housesitting, paperwork, finances, visiting with friends and family. By the end I was indeed, "running on fumes," as a close friend put it. That made the change all that much more apparent when I landed in Hawaii and was immersed in the decidedly different rhythms of island time.

With island time, sometimes the beat gets skipped, in the oddest places. Like standing in line at the store, and somehow ten minutes go by while some incomprehensible activity takes place at the register. Or at the internet cafe, where neither the connection, the bathroom, or the lettuce for my sandwich could be gotten for twenty minutes. You wait, patiently, because that's how things are done here....

Phones go on and off, even when you're sitting absolutely still with all the bars visible. It's pretty much like the rain, which is thoroughly unpredictable. I'm going to have to learn to ignore it, or revel in it, because every time I get up to go out, it starts raining... <grin>

But I'm getting settled, and the electric static of DC is fading under the constant breeze, sun and showers. Chris has welcomed me into his home (picture attached), I've met the neighbors (we had a bunch of them over for dinner last night), and I've started to work on projects for Kalani.

I just have to overrule my DC work instincts and make more time for the beach!

a hui hou (see you later)
paul

picture: picture used to be attached, but after 4 days, I still can't get it mailed out because of timeout issues. Internet access problems continue... pictures later.....