Darkness.and.Dawn.

One of my two best friends from rehab killed herself a few weeks ago.  But for our alcoholism, our lives would have been parallel lines that never met.  Instead, the trajectory forms an X; life lines meeting briefly in the middle.  Such disparate beginnings, such opposite ends, stumbling into each other in our drunkenness, gliding away from each other with promises and high hopes.  I cannot decide if our paths were preordained, an effort of will, or simply random float.  I cannot comprehend how one of us ended there, and the other, here.  Why mine became sobriety and hope, while hers remained misery and darkness I continually ask.  It is easy to claim that the wings of some sort of spiritual grace have flown me here; it is easy to denounce the existence of that grace in the face of her continued wretchedness.

I lay aside the constant question, for I cannot find an answer.  Instead I ask for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  I cannot change her pain, her loneliness, her struggle, and I cannot change her death.  I can somehow find my own serenity in the middle of it all, though sleepless nights are more inclined to contemplation than serenity.  It is easy for me to recognize that we collided in pain, that the string of melancholy running through and underneath and slipping to the surface of both of our lives is what bonds us together.  But perhaps I can begin find our connection in joy.  I wrote the other day that I was so grateful for the darkness before the dawn, because the dawn is so beautiful right now.  I didn’t even realize as I wrote it that perhaps it was my answer – my friend’s name is Dawn.  So once again, I let go, I surrender into her darkness, knowing that it helped to bring about my dawn.

Sacred Valleys. Sacred Journeys.

Matty and I spent last Tuesday at Waipi'o Valley - also known as the Sacred Valley of the Kings. It was a soul-changing day of gorgeous scenery and incredible people.  

Waipi'o begins with a tiny, one car-width road carved into the cliff.  It travels straight down an incredibly steep path into the valley, dropping 1,500 feet in 1 mile.  The right edge of the road overlooks sheer cliff, the valley looming below.  The descent felt like dropping into some forgotten Eden, a midway point of sorts in the journey to the Underworld.  Surviving the rugged road, you must then maneuver through what should be puddles in the road.  In realty, they are more aptly described as ponds or pools of perhaps shoulder-deep water.  As you round the bend, the valley opens to the right.  You are hit with breathtaking expanse, a gorgeous black sand beach and the pounding ocean waves; back to the left is the valley itself, tucked inside 2,000 ft cliffs, rich with green green green vegetation.  We picnicked on the beach, frolicked in the surf, and began our hike. 

Access to the trailhead first requires a mile slog through the black sand beach.  The deep black sand is soft and light, an almost fluffy consistency.  You can feel the sand exfoliating your feet as you walk, slewing off layers of dirt and skin, years of pounding through life is released into the sand.  Its fluffiness also causes you to sink deep with each step, using muscles you didn't know you had to pull yourself out and into the next sinking step.  You hike along the beach heading straight toward the base of a cliff jutting into the ocean - an imposing and masterful sight.  When you arrive almost face to face with the cliff, you take a sharp left, and find the trailhead into the valley.  

After walking only two minutes, you forget that you were ever on a beach, for suddenly you are in the densest of rainforest vegetation.  It's barely a trail, surrounded by thousands of varieties of trees and plants and flowers and fruit.  It's dark, almost muggy but not quite.  And now you feel as though you are entering the mouth of a cave made of vegetation, a cave that leads you into the dark Underworld, the place of Gods and spirits and overwhelming power.  The trail winds along the base of the cliffs along the outside edge of the grassy valley.  Occasionally the leaves break, and you can see out into the spectacular expanse of green that constitutes the valley floor.

The valley has a long history - it was home to Hawaii's kings, and was once the center of civilization on the Big Island.  Within the valley still exist numerous temples and burial sites from its days of splendor, along with many shacks and small farms, the only remnants of a once thriving farming economy.  Taro (the main subsistence crop of Hawaii) farming flourished here until a massive tsunami hit in 1946.  Since then, the valley lies largely dormant, interspersed with the remaining farmers alongside communes of the hippy Rainbow People. They forsake the modern world and choose instead to live secluded and simply within the forest.  As you forge your way along the often barely existent trail, almost hidden gates and pathways emerge to provide glimpses to small shacks and farms.  The occasional rusted out truck sits on the hill, part of the forest now, with vines entwining its crevices and sucking it into the forest.  As you travel deeper and deeper into the darkness of the vegetation, the very existence of the outside world begins to fade, to seem impossible.  The valley pulls you in, coaxing you into relinquishing that ever-vanishing world of technology and fastness.  I considered renouncing - joining the Rainbow People, never to be heard of again in the trifling digital land of blogs and facebook and cellphones.

 It was as if I could feel the sheer cliff walls and the valley itself breathing. 

After about an hour, the trail dead-ends directly into a 1,400 ft waterfall that falls in about 7 sections.  Only the bottom three falls, cascading into gentle pools, are visible from the ground. The rest of our party decided to brave the cliff and climb up into the ascending (or I suppose descending) waterfalls and pools.  

While spectacular, the journey into the valley was also one of emotional heaviness for me.  I was in the peak of working through feeling ugly, small, inconsequential (see previous post).  On the trail in I both was and felt alone, trapped between the young men who were eagerly forging the trail far ahead of me, and the older adults huffingly bringing up the rear far behind me. I felt like a three year old again - wanting so badly to keep up with the big kids, but my little legs just couldn't carry me fast enough.  I was in no man's land, physically and emotionally.  On top of that, I was being eaten alive by mosquitos. I had to laugh: I've been battling with being The Sensitive One - often sickly, everything affecting me more than the normal person.  I spent four days in the hospital shortly before we left for Hawaii, and had determined that on this trip I would find my strength, power, adventure.  I cursed the irony that even in the middle of the Hawaiian jungle, soaking in spiritual power greater than I'd ever felt, I was still the sensitive one, the only one of our group to get any mosquito bites.  No matter, I trudged on.  When we reached the waterfalls, a little voice inside told me that instead of the forced aloneness of the trip in, I could choose aloneness for the trip out.  So while everyone else climbed up the waterfalls, I turned back, and braved the trip alone.

It became akin to a journey out of the underworld - I left behind any need for encouragement and validation, to instead forge my own path.  As I breathed with the valley, I breathed in peace.

It was an incredible experience to be alone in that expanse of sacred land.  I came upon a troupe of wild ponies (who have proliferated after being left behind from the tsunami).  Graceful white birds alighted on their backs while they chomped the thick grasses.  After emerging from the forest, I sat on the lava rocks along the shore of the ocean, and watched the sky change from piercing blues to soft rose and peach, all the while the surf pounding the shore with both spectacular force and soft grace.

It was a glorious experience.

 

White.Blue.Blonde

The white skin, the blue eyes, the blonde hair.  They have afforded me so much in this life.  By their birthright acquisition, my existence has been privileged in a way I may never understand.  There is a gulf between my white and blue and that of the dark and brown.  Simple colors, vast dichotomy. 

When I was very young, the world around me was a place to manipulate with my imagination.  I spent blissful years - remembered only in faded feeling - living connected, living wondrously free.  That moment came though, that moment in which we become aware of The Other.  Instantaneous in that first awareness comes a second, the awareness that The Other judges us – not for the quality of our imagination, our wonderment at the world, our kindness or joy, but for the externals, the visuals. The cruelty of visual judgment must have hit me hard.  Not because the judgments I received were cruel – my white, blue, blonde must have afforded me positive judgment, but because my sensitive soul felt deeply the unjustness of the existence of that judgment.

I would later spend years obsessed with that judgment.  I made every attempt to favorably control it, as if by (visual, behavioral) perfection I could insert my hand into your mind, and wiggle my fingers into the creation of a positive ruling of me, by you.  The privilege afforded me by my features was one so complete that I was oblivious to it, only able to see those features as not enough, as lacking.  The blonde wasn’t blonde enough, the skin, once creamy, was now pasty to my own cruel, judging eyes.  I began to manipulate my world again, not through imagination this time, but through hair dye, self-tanner, and behavioral masks.  I manipulated my visuals to look however The Other had deemed it best to look - tan, blonde, skinny.  I behaved how The Other had decided it is best to behave - quiet, nice, compliant.  Every ounce of my energy went into the creation of an appearance, through which I hoped, believed, convinced myself would result in positive judgment.

I received a lot of confirmation in my quest – initial confirmation at least.  I acquired superficial attention that left me feeling empty inside.  It created a greed, a constant need to fill myself up with the superficial, the external, but as it always left me emptier than before, I always needed more.  Finally, exhausted, drunk, and lonely to my core, I gave in.  I gradually let go of my need for You to judge me.  Over the past two years, I’ve let go, piece by piece.  The behavioral masks went first.  And now, the visuals.  Which are proving much harder than anticipated.  I stopped buying the self-tanner. I force myself to let my hair air-dry, wild, free and half curly.  I leave the makeup in the bag, the curler and straightener on the shelf.  Grudgingly, I apply sunscreen.  I have promised myself that my physical manipulations will cease, at least temporarily, and I force myself to sit with the discomfort, the pain. 

Even as I write, I am cruel to myself, a voice that I am just now beginning to realize I don't have to listen to, is telling me that I cannot write this, I sound superficial and silly, and will be judged as such by you, The Other.  But I know that it is more than superficiality, it is a journey towards letting go of my need to be judged by you in order to exist.  It is deciding that I will exist on my own terms.  I will decide that I am pretty, not because of the blue, the tanned white, or the white-blonde, but because of my imagination, my wonderment, my kindness and my joy.  I will decide that even those parts of myself that are unattractive are worthy of love.  I will sit through the pain of feeling small, ugly, and inconsequential, knowing that the only way out is through.