Sea Hunt, or learning to swim

Of course, I did not do the writing assignment. I was too much of a flibbertigibbet to settle into it. The problem always was that I never admired the celebrities. Somewhere along the way, I had learned avoidance. And so I avoided the writing assignment.

See, we had so many celebrities, mostly musicians, living the San Geronimo Valley with us that I became quickly soured, inured to fame, feeling invaded as they bought up houses, moved in and turned everything upside down with their newfound wealth. As Joan Baez said, a savior’s a nuisance to live with at home.

At an early age, I fell in love with the sea. Lloyd Bridges playing Mike Nelson was my hero, taking us down to the underwater realm in black-and-white, on a neighbor’s old television—when we could get reception, which was iffy. Usually it was electronic snow emanating from the Andromeda galaxy decorating our screens, and the hiss of deep space singing.

NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREUS

A busy moth led me to a night-blooming cereus 

lit by moonlight behind a low lava wall.

My cousin said the fragrant pānini-o-ka-punahou

blooms but once a year, and dies at dawn.

I leaned in to taste the intoxicating odor,

but it let go of its mooring and fell to the ground,

a fallen star or perhaps an angel. So I saved it,

and wore it in my hair the next morning, 

to witness the full eclipse of the sun, 
at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau, the place of refuge.

We watched the black sun become a vast flower 

surrounded by stars and solar winds as the birds 

and fishes slept in during that second false dawn.

Seeking asylum, I let the blossom go in the coral sea 

to dream among the honu turtles and seastars.

11/11/22

KILAUEA BLEEDING INTO THE SEA

One of the most sublime moments of my life, 

was hiking out to where the lava met the sea 

on the big island of Hawai’i. Kīlauea was weeping 

blood but the goddess Pele was asleep. 

I stood at the center of creation on newly minted land, 

listened to the roaring song of the red-hot lava 

hissing in the lava tunnel, making its way to the surf, 

and the soles of my hiking boots melted,

was a small price to pay.

4/30/22

ODE TO A SCRUNCHIE

           —after Neruda

You were painted with exotic flowers
from the Garden Isle
where the fog drooped 

on the back of the volcano
like an old gray cat 

while the sun struggled to shine
through the thick drizzle at Kalalau Point 

where fogbows ringed the rainforest 

and the ocean whispered secret stories
of the people who once lived on that beach below.
Scrunchie, you tamed my hair
during a time when nothing else would do.
But you’ve slipped back into the wilderness 

on your own, lost in a strange concrete jungle, 

a weary traveler so far from home,

to find something else to tame.

3/11/20

Hammer Montessori School

Napali Coast

After traveling nearly 80 miles in a Zodiac, this is the half-way point. The sea is calm so I’m still smiling. The next leg home will be brutal with afternoon waves whipped by an oncoming storm stacking up on the diagonal. Trough and crest. Rise and fall. Slide into the trough at an angle, but hit the next crest head-on. We nearly ran over a startled sea turtle basking in the waves. Dip and sway. Like riding an unsteady horse side-saddle, over very rough terrain. At least no petticoats were involved.

California time, island time

Sitting in the dark, in a stranger’s house, on California time, not island time. Drinking tea and trying to convince my body that it’s OK to be up at 4 AM. The tropical air is balmy and the stars on this end of the island are much brighter than at home, where frost rimes my windshield. But then, I have no home, other than what I carry inside me. That was taken from me. What is home, other than a collection of memories, of things both ordinary and plain, that fill our waking thoughts. The stars, my constant guide.

Flying to Hawaii

Outside my window, an untrammeled wilderness of clouds rear their heads over a sterling sea, and one can almost hear the rustling taffeta gown of the Pacific, laced with positive imprints of the air currents. Clouds commute toward the land, and out to sea again in Peregrinó colors—capturing fleeting glimpses of the spectrum, and the burnished gold of the morning sun is a deep ache of copper, or perhaps it’s Homer’s wine-dark sea, beneath us. An odyssey of thought escapes its earthly confines, as we wing west to the land of the ever-young. Or at least a hunkering back to the beginning of time. Perhaps we are all pilgrims here. Some are arriving for the first time, others returning home. One way or another, it is all a journey. A cluster of fishing boats, huddle like whitecaps on the outer banks. The wind singing arias. Strong headwinds leave us in suspended animation. Cirrus and stratocumulus clouds, odd lone whips of fog, perhaps a squall, I think of how useless the rain is on the ocean. Then a scurry of mare’s tails, scud clouds surfing on the surface of the sea, all following the currents, seemingly alive, a sentient slipstream or a dance cotillion. Clouds give way to the illusion of continental shapes, or ice sheets. Then, for a moment, I forget my worries, and think I am among the Gods. I am mesmerized by the separation of sea and sky, the horizon is both obscured and melded by the clouds. And that dark beyond, the great unknown, is both the nursery of stars and the crèche of death. The curvature of the earth is a subtle plain. Below us, the Marianas Trench, the deepest place on earth, and beneath us, the Farallón Islands, slip by unannounced, they are the last landfall and handholds of the Pacific Plate migrating north to return home to Pangeac depths, but the poles are shifting, north is changing its mind once again and the ice is melting, all that archaic sweet water, slipping into the bosom of the sea from whence we came.

NIGHT BLOOMING CEREUS

During the total eclipse on the Big Island, 

I found a night-blooming cereus blossom, 

but because morning was an extended night, 

it stayed open all throughout the day, 

it didn't wilt, so I wore it in my hair, 

the fragile blossom was the size of a saucer, 

and the narcotic scent was heavenly. 

I let it drift in the sea with the maninni,

small fish that circled me like a swirl of fall leaves.

Then I let it go on the tide.

FISSURE

It all began with the tremors,
the earth shaking beneath their feet,
then the massive dancing 'quakes.
She tossed a feathered boa of pink smoke
into the sky, she was stepping out.
The fissures opened like zippers
to reveal her molten skin and her hunger
devoured the cat scratches of civilization.
Pele's stepping out for a leisurely stroll
and she wants all her treasures back,
every single rock the tourists stole.
Will they never learn, she wonders,
throws a fiery shawl over her shoulder
and tends to her garden of fire.

5/6/18

HOUSE OF THE SUN

While scanning old photos, I found one of me
sitting on top of the world, at the Kalahaku Overlook,
Puʻu ʻUlaʻula on Haleakalā, the House of the Sun.

The crater at the summit was Māui's grandmother's home.
Māui's mother Hina, complained that her kapa bark cloth
wouldn't dry because the days were too short. All that work ruined.
So his blind grandmother helped him snare the sun with a net
made of his sister's hair to slow its journey across the sky.
The sun pleaded for its life, they came to an arrangement
that the days would be long in summer and shorter in winter.
It 's a good story, no matter that we're close to the equator,
where the days and nights are nearly equal.

Going down the Sliding Sands Trail into the volcanic desert
was the easy part, like schussing in snow,
only it was made of red pumice.... We took giant strides
where each step took us one body height downward.
It was like walking on the moon as we descended 2000 ft
to the crater floor in minutes. Our ears strained like divers.

Will Staple and Gary Snyder opted to take the trail
down the mountain out the bottom of the crater.
I had to hike back up to the observatory by myself.
I felt abandoned. I was alone on the steep slope,
with only my restless thoughts to accompany me.
The sun scorched my arms, until I was on fire.
The thin air at 10,000 feet whistled,
my tongue was like a dry stone.

I had opportunity to study the rare 'ahinahina,
or Haleakalā silverswords, looking like porcupines
or a bouquet of swords tipped in the purple blood of flowers.
They may live a century, but only bloom once,
one chance to make seeds, no multiple families.

I slid back down the trail backwards a half-step
for every step forward. Pumice singing beneath my feet.
Then I had to face the long drive back down the mountain,
jelly-thighed, I just wanted to sleep by the side of the road,
become part of the mountain, and wait for Māui to push up the sky.

4/8/18
rev. 4/21/18

Facebook conversation on Lagunitas with Pete Sutton while in the Rockies (oral history) (photo)

Outside my window...YMCA of the Rockies. Petrichor!

Mo: YMCA of the Rockies is pretty amazing. Like summer camp. We landed in Denver, went thru Aurora—yes, that Aurora. Got supplies before heading into the Rockies.

Pete Sutton: Mo, do you ever stay still? Very nice photo.

LOL! Wanderlust at an early age—look at it this way, when I was four and a half and had to walk a mile from Barranca Road to Sir Francis Drake Blvd., I rarely made it in time to catch the bus. Had an equally hard time making it back home on my own steam but your mom Chuck was pretty cool about the little gatecrasher. PB&J sandwiches, and sometimes even a ride home. Still wandering. Er, hobbling...icing the knee now.

Rockies are socked in the AM. Rain last night. Divine petrichor! We're here for the Long's Peak Highland Games—Neil wants to get on the menu for next year. Never been to Colorado before. Wyoming, Idaho & Montana, yes. Saw elk the size of horses down by the Fall River last night. Had bacon for brekkie and thought of you and The Kev. Lots of folks fishing. You'd love that. Thinking a lot of Thano Johnson right now. I ran into his ex-wife, and he wrote me a nice, long, lovely letter about living in Colorado...I was in a horrific car accident and never wrote back. Still feeling guilty. Wonder if he's even still alive?  (Musician Kevin McConnell)

Pete: Thanks for the kind story of my mother.  I of course, do not remember such antics but am very glad you do. I hope that I played with you. Thano was a tough old son of a bitch - he's probably still dodgering around although i doubt it. Colorado s a favorite state of mine. My dad left us in '64 and we started visiting him in Aspen in '65 - nice place , this was before the fucking rich people found it. Why do they always fuck places up by moving there?

Note Bene: Pete’s das was the famous stride pianist Ralph Sutton. Chuck, or Charlene, was friends with Grover Sales, and probably poet Lew Welch (as was my mom).

Mo: Yeah, it's hard not to get pissed off...lots of bullshit estates and luxury homes here—juist like what happened to Marin. Yeah you played with me...sort of...sometimes you ditched me and Nick when Jeff was around... I absolutely adored Chuck. Is she still alive? When did you move to Lagunitas? I remember visiting you a few times there but that was a long way from home—until I got the horses.

Pete: We moved to Lagunitas to the Hawaiian Princess's house on Corona Ave across the SFD blvd divide from Weaver's mountain top enclave during 3rd-4th grade- between Miss Lenz and Mrs Raddick's class. We used to yell  over to the Weaver's from time to time.. "Hey Weaver!"  and one of them would yell back, "Hey Sutton!" and so forth.  I scandalized Mrs R because I read 'The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich' brought to yours truly by Arrow Scholastic Books. Any way I met the Woodacre crew in her class. Mom died in 2012, May 24th I believe. Then some sonofabitch invents a beer and names it after my home town. Pretty good beer I must say. Not really my home town but what the hell...

Mo: Great story, Pete. So sorry to hear about your mom. I don't even know the names of the roads we played on—I rode them all... Tell me more about the Hawaiian' princess? I remember going inside that house. Like the Argentina House that was TR's old hunting lodge.

Pete never answered my last question. And then, weirdly, deleted all his comments on my Facebook thread. I am glad I saved them here. Research is required. But the Hawaiians came to Marin and Sonoma counties. There was a cane chair factory in Lagunitas, at the old cafe,, and another in Forestville, I think. We had three cane chairs from Lagunitas. Each one had a different patterned bottom of stamped wood. The Hawaiians were called Kanakas.

I Remember the Stars

I remember the stars. As a kid growing up in West Marin (before there was light pollution), and later in West Sonoma County, I spent many nights just gazing up at the stars. By the time I grew up, it was almost impossible to escape the pollution from city lights. Who among us has really seen the stars in all their glory with no light pollution at all? It's truly amazing. Rare times at Sonora Pass, the Galapagos, or high in the Andes during the early 1980s, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa—unfathomable myriad stars that took my breath away. Who among us ?

2/11/14

FIRE DANCE

      Total eclipse of the sun at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau,
      the City of Refuge, Hawaii, 1991.

I was snorkeling with the manini,

the striped reef fish, who gathered
around me like a gown of yellow leaves

as the sun disappeared behind the moon.

The birds no sooner sang the sun up, 

when they prepared for sleep again.

The wild wind stilled, the stars shone.
The sun was a black Van Gogh sunflower. 

Bailey's beads rippled, a spritzer of light,
then, a diamond ring nearly blinded us.
Ghost visions danced as a Hawaiian couple
dressed in tapa cloth and feather cloaks,
exchanged vows at the Hale O Keawe heiau.

Though we broke kapu, we avoided certain death,
we were not ha ole, without breath, without honi.

Their kahuna sang the sun back into the sky.

The ali'i answered. Solar winds rose. The sea

was garlanded in leis of pikake & maile leaves.

The manini drifted off, fire danced on the water.

The collective aha! as we breathed in the mana 

and sang alo ha! to the returning sun.

11/1/2103

Palmetto bugs

I was both pleased and appalled to learn from Trane deVore that the large palmetto bug I once encountered in the dark is merely a large cockroach. I was remembering how they frantically scuttled & flipped over like VW bugs, and then noisily spun on their backs, buzzing like chainsaws when I turned on the kitchen light in the middle of the night at Roshi Aikin's zendo in Haiku, Maui, one summer evening a long, long time ago. 

Someone asks if I belonged to the Diamond zendo. It was a long time ago. And tequila of the first water was involved...verily, it was the holy water of choice—I sat zazen with Gary Snyder & Will Staple, yes. Diamonds on the souls of our shoes. I met poet-translator Roshi Aikin years later at a WS Merwin reading in Pasadena—and was floored when he remembered me! What else did he remember? Apparently my ¡Aha! moment of enlightenment took on bug form. How very Kafkaesque! Just leave some crumbs in the sink or the floor for me, please.

DIAMONDHEAD

Diamondhead, sharp as a knife
against an impossible cerulean sky
nearly took my breath away
with a wild beauty I thought
I had long since forgotten.
For a moment, I even forgave Waikiki
for being what it is....

11/29/2009
added/slightly rev 11/17

ON ACHIEVING TOTALITY

The last total eclipse I witnessed

was July 11, 1991, on the Big Island,

in the City of Refuge, from the heiau

of Pu`uhonua o Honaunau.

It was devastatingly awesome

that morning, a total eclipse of the sun.

People cheered, wept, hugged strangers,

got married on the beach in feather cloaks,

took another toke, and passed it on.

It was either a day of bad omens

or for unbelievably good luck. Twice blessed.

Who could choose? Totality had been achieved.

The sun turned into a diamond ring

in a double dawn dressed in adamantine skies.

In Keoneʻele Cove, where Hawai'ian royalty bathed—

to swim there was a crime, punishable by death—

I drifted with green sea turtles the size of boogieboards.

In a restless sea rising to the gravitational pull

of both sun and moon harnessed in unison,

a second darkness descended like an obsidian knife,

the dawn birds and fish all fell back to sleep.

Like clouds of bright fallen leaves at my feet,

schools of manini—striped convict tang—

caught red-handed in suspended animation,

were imprisoned by tide out of time.

The day before, I saw molten lava plunge into the sea,

and I stepped on newly minted earth.

My hiking boots melted, the surf belched acid rain,

but red-hot lava exploding in the waves

& the sun turn into a dark eye in a morning sky

were both equally an experience of a lifetime.

Between both days, I could not choose one,

I was Solomon’s child divided between two mothers.
My eyes had been twice burned by the birth of beauty.
And that vision had made me sandblind to the ordinary.

The apogee of my understanding of beauty, obsolete.

Basking in the sea

Vito says you can’t bask in the sea. Shiva says But you can bask in the sun, but I am thinking of floating in a warm sea, basking, floating, with no destination in mind. Surely the creatures of the sea can bask? What about the basking shark? I have seen turtles basking on the surface of the sea, with no destination. They were more than just floating, they were basking. Once, during the total eclipse, I sea turtle startled me and I nearly drowned with excitement as he swim beneath me. He was huge, like a sled or a boogie board and all morning I followed him around that bay as the sun in the moon wrestled in the sky between light and dark. It was a free time where all bets were off even in the natural world. We were out of time as tide and wind were in stasis. I followed that turtle ballet until I was so far out to sea, all alone. But when the sun returned as Maui the sun god pulled the moon's face from the sun's…. But not before I saw the diamond ring and the penumbra. Meanwhile a couple exchanged wedding vows and let their leis loose in the sea. Puuonuaohonaunau, the place of refuge. That turtle pulled me far out to see like a siren. That day I had no fear of drowning though drowning was at hand.

2/24//2006 Writers' Group

Journal entry, 7/21/91, on the last flight home

7/21/91 on the flight home, I watched Robin Williams in Awakenings. The L dopamine story weaving of  catatonic events. When I opened the airplane windowshade I discovered that it was nightfall. I fell asleep, it was as if… Robert De Niro was fantastic as Leonard Low, the first encephalitis patient to awaken. I remember reading about the cases in the early 70s. And I was sobbing throughout the movie. It’s based upon real cases. Oliver Sacks was the technical consultant. I’m a big fan of anything by Oliver Sacks.

We are banking over San Francisco and I have lost nearly 5 hours on this flight home, leaving at 2 PM only to arrive 4 1/2 hours later, at 10 PM, San Francisco time. I opened my window to see the half moon in the sky, crepuscular, no distinction between sky and earth. Clouds becoming one, the transition of two elements.

On the other side of the plane it is deep sunset. Jupiter is visible on the edge of night. Above the declination line between light and darkness where the stars shine, the Big Dipper points the way north. North by northeast, where the darkness decisions upon us all. The bell curve of the edge of the earth throws its shadow against the universe, having harmonized with a moonshadow during the eclipse. We are all part of the universe. Periodic table is an absolute order, even within the chaos.

I thought I saw part of the Southern Cross, but I think it’s only visible in Hawaii during the winter months. But I have seen the Southern Cross shining over the Pacific as we descended the Nazca planes in Cusco on a similar summer eve.

We have not quite reach the apex of summer, and transitions, and many awakenings are about to unfold. Never have I felt so much at a crossroads, as now. Only this time there is a little anxiety or fear. I‘m cognizant of the events of change unfolding. Usually we go through cataclysmic change with only hindsight as our guide—unaware of the apex, or the agent of change until long after the fact. Recollection reflected in tranquility. Call it 20/20 hindsight vision if you must. I can see clearly now.

Journal entry, 7/21/91, our last day in Hawaii, Imelda Marcos

7/21/91, our last day in Hawaii, we ascend to the Valley of the Temples. To our left a small refrigerated tune is nestled among the pines at the top of the graveyard. Kathy points out the Philippine flag next to ours, saying, when Imelda comes to visit her husband, the place is filled with cars.

My friend can see her arrival entourage from her kitchen window. Imelda refuses to bury her husband in American soil. I asked who was paying for his above ground internment, air-conditioned at that. She said the people of the Philippines. Creepy to think of Imelda Marcos visiting her husband who is yet to be buried. In a refrigerated vault, he waits for the political climate to thaw so that he can be buried on native soil. And all I can think of is, does she have all her shoes stored in the vault too?

10,000 carp amass in the ponds of the Byodoin temple, the water is thick with their bodies. They make excited sucking noises as they anticipate food. The Japanese family is gathered in the temple, a replica of the Uji temple, built 900 years ago, to intern two loved ones on the altar in small brass boxes. I marvel how a human being can be reduced to such a small mass. The Abbitts prayer beads and two brass boxes at the foot of Buddha. I want to take a photo of his face in this house light, but it would be disrespectful.

We ring the bell, I love how the final notes resound through my body until my bones resonate too. 3 tons of brass homes a sound of deep calmness and peace. It is said to clean the mind of evil temptation. I believe it. I cannot think of anything else as I enter the temple.

On the roof, the phoenix waits to take the departed’s ashes. There is always spiritual hope. The carp align themselves until the shape of of water begins to swell, domelike. They symbolize order and perseverance. The Buddha of the western paradise watches over all of this. He is a 9‘2“ representation of Amida, a Buddha unique in all the world, the largest wooden Buddha carved in 900 years— 900 years is a long time.

Rabbit Island, Oahu, Hawaii Journal, 7/21/91

I spent yesterday snorkeling off Waimanalo across from Rabbit Island and the fictional Robin  Masters estate from Magnum PI. Superb coral garden to the west, few fish though. I especially liked the strange islands of coral that rose up circular like barrels in blue and green and yellow and white. The Big Island still has the best snorkeling.

Kathie and I went to a beer tasting party in Kailua. Mostly military types. Kailua is that kind of town. People probably didn’t have a whole lot in common with us, I can’t remember their names but Kathie and I got to talk and hang out without her husband David or my friend Marilyn around. Marilyn went for a drive and had dinner again at Koko Head. She wouldn’t have had a good time at this party, guaranteed. Kathie and I sucked back a few beers and ate great pupus, even pipipupus which is beef. To peepee is to go shishi. Tres chic. So you have to be careful.

We took off our swim pareaus, Hawaiian pronounce every letter, soaked in the jacuzzi. Most everybody was from the mainland at one time or another. There were a few Hawaiian boys in this haole madness. The hostess Joanne is small and dark. Joanne’s husband Buzz is in the National Guard, he’s a beefy blond tough guy with speech patterns to match. He seems sweet. A dollar on the billiard table builds the excitement inside.

Kathie and I sit under the eaves, fresh rain has fallen and cleared the afternoon mugginess  from the sky. Someone asks for a Moosehead. Buzz looks in the fridge saying, no moose heads in here, but plenty of beer.

Kathie explains Greek and Sicilian to someone and everybody think she is from the islands. I am tan enough that people aren’t sure if I live here or not. I went to the party in in order to see urban Hawaiian life. Most of the women were racially mixed, while we were white. Military is one of the biggest employers here. And it is colorblind. Kathy says local businesses were hurting when the military was involved in the war—especially the bars.

David works for the military, as do most of the people in this room. Not necessarily enlisted, but as civilians. David does carpentry maintenance and said he had to sign an agreement of non-disclosure—any information he saw or learned on the bases stayed on the base. Clearance codes are like badges, he says, he doesn’t want to know what’s going on. Whenever something comes out into the paper, then he can discuss what is already public knowledge.

He had to sign an agreement that he wouldn’t disclose anything he learned for the next 50 years. The military is worried that the Russians might get those secrets. Ironic in that I just returned from Russia and I say to him, I’m probably on some list, you know. David says during the Iraq war, dolphins were used to retrieve torpedoes. He said contrary to what people think, the Navy isn’t into killer dolphins. They’re too valuable an animal to use on a kamikaze style mission.

Glancing over the library shelves is always a good indicator of character. Both David and Kathie are avid readers. I find William Least Heat Moon. and Blue Highways is next to Larry McMurtry and the Adventures of Marco Polo. I’m too lazy to bend down and see the author. I figure the book is a classic, it’s been around for ages. Several of Isabel Allende’s books, Tolkien is de rígeur. And the Stephen J Gould trilogy. Coffee table books on The Beatles, Baez, the movie industry, Hawaiiana, London, and a fair amount of pulp fiction along with collector’s editions of Shakespeare, Little Men, and Call of the Wild, etc. 

I can’t write a portrait of a woman in a white room, my current passion, because this room is of paneled wood stained gray. I wonder if she’s happy here, or merely surviving life’s trials. They’ve both gotten plump from too much beer. No kids ever came along. She has a friend who started a Romanian child adoption agency. I wonder if she will pursue that avenue. I try to bring the subject up referring to myself saying that I have given up on having kids at this point because at 38 years old, I still haven’t found Mr. Right. but she doesn’t bite. The cats have become their children.