Menehune Magic

I love collecting local stories as I travel and my favorites so far are the Hawaiian legends about magical creatures and happenings. Since I've gotten to Kauai it seems like there's a whole lot of talk about the menehune, magical little people who live in the forest and perform great acts of construction under the cover of night. They're kind of like Hawaiian leprechauns, but instead of chasing after pots of gold, they build shit. The standard description is that they are short (between six inches and two feet), hairy, pot-bellied and dark skinned. Personally, I imagine them as a cross between an Australian pygmy and a Fraggle.

The part I love the best is that the legend of the menehune is thought to be based on an actual group of real people who once lived on the islands. Before those crazy Tahitians showed up in their out-rigger canoes about 1000 years ago, there was an earlier migration of people who hailed from the Marquesas Islands. (For those of you who have no idea where that is, it is also in French Polynesian in the South Pacific Ocean, about 1000 miles northeast of Tahiti). So those Marquesans came over a few hundred years before the Tahitians, spread out all over the Hawaiian Islands and were a magical, peaceful group of folks. Then the bigger, pugilistic Tahitians took over, driving the Marquesans to the furthest island north, Kauai, where they survived by living in the forests and practicing magic to keep the Tahitians away. The word menehune has its roots in a Tahitian word meaning "commoner." Makes sense for an oppressed people. Further proof for the origins of the legend is the fact that in a 1820 census of the island of Kauai 65 people reported themselves as menehune, which totally explains the fact that I thought I saw one at the 7-11 last week buying a case of Budweiser.

So everywhere on the island you see menehune stuff: Menehune Convenience Mart, the Menehune Water Company...but there is an actual place on the island that still has some non-commercial magic to offer. On the south end of the island in Puhi is the Menehune Pond, lying all quiet and peaceful in a valley right next to a river. Supposedly the menehune built it in one night by forming a long chain from the rock quarry to the river and passing stones all night long to build up the sides of the giant fish pond. Then they diverted the river a bit into the new pond and had their own permanent fish section of the grocery store where they could incubate and catch all the seafood goodness they could ever want. According to one version of the tale, the menehune built the pond for the king at the time. (They had some kind of deal where they were the king's own personal building crew and in exchange they were allowed to live their peaceful menehune forest lives). Their only condition is that no one watch while they were building since they wanted to keep their magical ways a secret. But of course a mischievous young prince and princess snuck out to watch them at work. Unfortunately, it was far past their bedtime and the lil' tikes got all tuckered out and fell asleep. The menehune discovered them and turned them into two giant rock pillars that you can see in the mountains surrounding the pond. That's what you get for messing with magical little building elves.

Peaks & Valleys

"A frown is just a smile turned upside-down," right? How about, "you can't appreciate the good without the bad"? All just cliches and ways to rationalize sadness, or so I used to think. Now I wonder about all that. Surely no one wants to feel sadness, grief, loss, but really and truly are we not just horrible, infantile sissies if we insist on only ever being grateful for perfect happy moments? Isn't there something gorgeous about feeling something so deeply and fully, even if it is a "bad" feeling like sadness?

I admit there is more than one kind of sad. There is the dulling, numbing, foggy sadness that feels more like nothingness. There is also the deep, sharp sadness that feels like a knife in the chest. And there's the total mind-fucking kind of sadness that is so hard and painful that everything goes white for moment, like an emotional black-out from the intensity. And there's the classic achy, mopey, drippy-eyed kind of sadness we all feel when we hear a sad song or flush a goldfish down the toilet. But there's more than one kind of happiness too. Calm, serene, warm spring sunshine happiness that glows and surrounds your whole self. Ecstatic, drunken happiness that is heady and dizzying. Quiet, secret happiness that feels small and special and private. Big, loud, belly-laugh happiness that makes you want to slap your neighbor on the back and buy the whole room a round of drinks. Too-much happiness that aches in your throat and makes your eyes sting and feels like too, too big to contain in one little body.

Little peaks, big valleys, sky-scraper-tall moments and dips in the road. I'm learning to be grateful for anything that makes me feel alive. I'm trying to expand my emotional repertoire as I expand my collection of travel-photo landscapes. I just saw the breathtaking Waimea Valley. It was huge and ballsy and red and deep and gorgeous. And I saw the pretty, calm stretches of the white sand next to the black, smooth lava rocks. I saw the inside of a huge cave with a pool of calm, topaz-blue water and the tiny little poor-man's-orchid with its pink perfection. Expanding my repertoire. That's what I'm doing right now. Becoming better versed at being alive.

The hardest thing in the world to do is to find somebody who believes in you

Love fails us. And we fail in loving. And both of those hurt like hell.

Recently I lost my faith in unconditional loving. In several relationships I had an ending of the naive believe that love would endure through all things. Most poignant was my relationship with my mother. She was the one person who I thought I could count on for constant and selfless loving. I know it's a high pedestal to have put her on, but I'm still a young woman and haven't had all those silly notions knocked out of my head yet. I've been angry with her for over a year now and continued to justify that anger in all sorts of ways to avoid letting it go. But finally I just got tired of carrying it around and tired of feeling so bitter and angry. This hurt combined with other similar hurts and conspired to make me feel pretty disillusioned.

Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.

HAFIZ

Really I felt like it's so hard to find someone to carry the faith in your best self, to choose to see your goodness when faced with your ugliness. Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls this the "not beautiful". She tells a story in Women Who Runs with the Wolves called "Skeleton Woman" where a fisherman catches a skeleton while he's out on his boat and runs all the way back home with the skeleton lady on his tail since she's tangled up in his line. The faster he runs, the faster she follows, all the way into his hut. Eventually he gets over his horror, untangles her and brings her back to life as a beautiful young lady with his kind attention. Kind of poignant metaphor: we see a glimpse of the "not beautiful" in one we love and take off for the hills, but can't outrun it. Love fails and we must face that failure, choose to love that ugly side of our loved one, choose not to not let go in the steep terrain and make a decision to not fail love even though love has failed us. You gotta kiss the hag, maybe even make sweet love to that ugly bitch and there's no guarantee shes gonna turn back into a smoking hot princess. Love is the god of all of us, flawed since it shows up only through each other. Carrying that faith in another's best self despite their failings is a choice, but really it's the only good choice.

Daily Prayer

From the Sufis: "Shatter my heart so a new room can be created for a Limitless Love."

Daily Hafiz

All your images of winter
I see against your sky.

I understand the wounds
That have not healed in you.

They exist
Because God and love
Have not yet become real enough

To allow you to forgive
The dream.

You listen to an old alley song
That brings your body pain;

Now chain your ears
To his pacing drum and flute.

Fix your eyes upon
The magnificent arch of his brow

That supports
And allows this universe to expand.

Your hands, feet, and heart are wise
And want to know the warmth
Of a Perfect One's circle.

A true saint
Is an eternal spring.

Inside the veins of a petal
On a blooming redbud tree

Are hidden worlds
Where Hafiz sometimes
Resides.

I will spread
A Persian carpet there
Woven with light.

We can drink wine
From a gourd I hollowed out
And dried on the roof of my house.

I will bring bread I have kneaded
That contains my own
Divine genes

And cheese from a calf I raised.

My love for your Master is such
You can lean back
And I will feed you this truth:

Your wounds of love can only heal
When you can forgive yourself
This dream.

Pick Two

So things here in paradise are looking cloudy again, at least as far as the WWOOFing situation is concerned. Let just say that some people really ought to live alone and leave it at that. I now know first hand the all-too-common experience of WWOOFing as a type of indentured servitude or second-class citizenship.

Really what the situation reminds me of is a great story that my friend Erin told me about a trip to her local photo shop to get some prints for a school project. She walked in and told the nice Chinese man behind the counter what she needed: 1) super high quality prints; 2) she needed them tommorrow; and 3) she didn't have very much money to spend so she wanted a killer discount. The man looked her right in the eye and said, "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two."

How brilliantly this illustrates the core of so many frustrating situations. You can't have everything and must resign yourself to compromise. If only someone would tell that to all the WWOOF hosts out there who seem to think that providing sub-par living conditions and three meals a day entitles them to experienced and motivated workers who are invested in their visions of utopia and willing to break their backs for it. To you WWOOF hosts out there, here's my advice: pick two!

A Gallon of Ice Cream & a Jug of Carlo Rossi

Some people are content to let depression take its natural course: a slow downward slide into black, sad oblivion and then turn around for the long, slow way back out to the light. But there are those of us who are just a little too type A and can't wait that long. I'm in the second camp--the impatient camp. When I know I'm in a slump, I have this tendency to hurl myself over the edge and force myself to hit rock bottom. I suppose the theory is that if I force myself to hit rock bottom, then I'll just be on the mend that much quicker. Sort of like giving my black mood steroids.

This can and has taken many different forms. Most famously was the time that I was heartbroken and, in an effort to snap out of it, watched "When Harry Met Sally" 5 times in a row and polished off a gallon of ice cream, a jug of Carlo Rossi, plus a quart of whiskey in one sitting. Let me tell you, the next day I felt so horrible that I vowed to perk myself up and get out of my rut. And I did, pretty quickly. Not that I'm recommending the horrendous physical betrayal that I forced upon myself to anyone. It is a cruel, cruel way to abuse yourself, and its probably not anything that a sane person would do. Nonetheless, this type of regiment works for me without fail. When I find that I am so tired of my own misery that I cannot stand it any longer, I betray myself in the worst way that I can think of, indulging my most sadistic whims and it invariably cures me of my depression. All that "be kind to yourself" self-help crap really never worked. Its kind of like homeopathy: like cures like. Horrendous self-loathing is cured by treating yourself in the worst way imaginable, or something like that.

So this past little while I've been really just tired of feeling so bad and decided that I couldn't wait for nature or the grieving process or whatever to take its course. So I went on a huge bender and let it all hang out for a good couple of weeks. I shamelessly made out with a one-toothed, forty-year old alcoholic. I ingested substances that I did not know the names of. Then I got on a plane to Kauai and, like magic, the clouds parted, my mood lifted and I felt like my world was all brand new again. What can I say, I found my own little magical cure and it works like a charm. But, hey kids, don't try this at home. I think I have an unusual capacity for either self-forgiveness or lobotomizing my bad memories. Maybe both. Don't judge me, just laugh, please. I know I'm ridiculous.

Daily Prayer

I want
I want
I want
To stop wanting

My Daily Prayer

Please, dear God, save me from a normal life.

Weird Things I've Heard Myself Say on this Trip

1. How do you wash suspenders? I think I got some manure on mine.
2. I can't wear nail polish cause the chickens will peck at my toes.
3. Don't worry...driving and drinking a beer is only nominally illegal in Hawaii.
4. You remember he guy with one tooth who lives in the yurt with his cat? Yeah, I just made out with him.
5. I have to wear pants cause I'm getting knee wrinkles from the sun.
6. Where is my oompa loompa wig?
7. I'm tired of rainbows.
8. The three legged goat ran away again?
9. When do I get to go drunken pig hunting with you and your brothers?
10. You're like the sixth person I've met who stayed with the Hari Krishnas because they have good food.
11. How exactly do you mail a coconut?
12. TiVo that shit, cause when I get back we all need to learn the hustle for the disco party.
13. Wii Tennis is not a form of aerobic exercise.
14. How much do you think I can take and still make it to work at 6am to milk the goats?
15. So let me get this straight: you don't really bathe, you dance topless at drum circles, you write mantras on your water bottles, you're in an open relationship, you haven't had a job in two years and you don't consider yourself a hippie?