There's a moment
When you face
The pointlessness of it
And you just 
Stop
You run out of
Gas
You just don't give a fuck
Anymore
So you 
Close the computer
Turn off the light switch
Stand at
The window
Watching 
The fog 
Breathe in to obscure 
The darkness
You imagine your alternate lives
Lives in which you aren't so 
Comfortable
With your 
Comfortable home 
And your
Loving wife
Lives in which you 
Struggle with 
Depression and
Loneliness and
Failure
Lives in which you 
Drive reckless and
Drink remorseless and
Dance with abandon
Closing down 
The bars 
Drunk, driving, 
Home
To your shared 
Apartment with
Furniture picked up off 
The street
Hoping your friends won't 
Get married
Have kids
Pay taxes
Leave you
Here
Lives in which you 
Wander aimless through
The streets and
The bars 
Of La Serena
Not knowing a lick of 
Spanish
Not knowing that
The woman
Calling you muy lindo is
A prostitute
Who follows you into
The street
Telling a sad story about
Her son 
In Coquimbo
It's late can I come home with you
So you pay her 20,000 pesos 
So she won't follow you 
Home
Avoiding the wary packs of 
Dogs
Who shit and sleep on 
The street
With the 
Dirty men in 
The darkness
You eat only 
Toast and 
Yogurt
Kept in the communal kitchen
Because you are 
Too poor or 
Too cheap 
To pay for 
A meal
Instead she pays for 
A meal 
And introduces you to 
Her daughter
Who already has a teenage 
Son 
Even though she isn't 30 years old yet
Hoping you will do
The right thing and
The gringo thing and
Marry her away from this 
Dirty town
Maybe that was the way it was supposed to go
But instead
As it turns out 
You are
Comfortable
With your
Comfortable home 
And your
Loving wife
Staring out 
The window
Watching 
The fog 
Breathe in to obscure 
The darkness

So, all week long, I feel feisty or horny, or depressed. I’m a tired huntress, or an indignant virgin, or a resentful mother. In my snappy underwear, my huntress is alert, the virgin fights for her causes, and the mother is kind and nurturing. But I cant even find the cape for my panties today.
So, yeah. I have moods. I’m moody. Bruisy purple-green moods and electric, scarlet moods. The clock ticks. The pen skips. The cockroach that plays BIG piano in my oven control panel bipps.
It’s not that I can’t string words together. It’s that I have nothing to say. I’m mute. Empty.
Having something to say doesn’t depend on words. I could say it with colors, or my body. Or pickles on foam core board. The muse has left me, for another woman. Left me high and dry, mocking my good intentions. I curse her and the flamingo she flew in on. I gave at the silent auction.
Bip. Bip. Bip.
Carcass. That’s my word of the day. Haul this big-bellied carcass around, for what? I hate a muffin top. A squidgy belly is good for babies to lie on but shit for looking good in new jeans. Or out of them. I sit in an abundance. My legs work. My mind works, except when I forget what I walked in for. I don’t know what muse this is, but she’s mean. Wants to bite heads off and draw blood. Here, have some rum cake. That’ll do it. Long, slow, death-by-diabetes, the sugar legacy.
This is nonsense. I’m just scribbling. No story. No method. This isn’t writing.
I pick up the little rubber penis (complete with ball sack) that fits over a light switch. Up, excited. Down, lights out. It would be fun if it stayed on, and up. But it falls off. It has dust on it.  Needs a rinse.
I fiddle with the hardwood bracelet from Costa Rica. Ten different-colored woods never get boring. And the glow-in-the-dark piggy paperweight. But writing about this stuff isn’t writing, either. The wind blows in the trees outside. I think the class is infecting me. Gloomy and rancid thoughts swirl like the leaves in my carport.
This day would be different if I had put on my Wonder Woman Underwear this morning.
Tomorrow, I’ll do that.

It is pitch black in here, sunless, and I am looking for something I can use as a light, 
enabling my blurred vision to gain clarity, or at least dare the next step.

My arms stretch out to feel the inner surface. 
Carefully, I explore the bumps and cuts and incisions around me, 
my hands sensing scars and fresh gashes. Not caused by a single attack; 
but built by a series of strikes and assaults 
and condemnations in a lifetime and may even before.

I am inside my wound, my three-dimensional painting, unique and individual, 
bearing the overripe fruits of generational hardship, creative additions just crafted today.

I feel the stings in my fingertips as they slightly light up by me touching the surface. 
I define different colors: Ruby red for betrayal, emerald green for despair, 
ivory for the death of a loved one. 
I am performing magic as I design rainbows on the inner walls 
while my fingers play on the obstacles like musical hands play on a piano.

This is the moment when sound pays a visit. Uninvited. 
Distant screams, howling, piercing cries, people barking, ear-splitting shrills, 
which make me rush my hands up to close up my ears. Silence. Almost. 
I still can hear my tears dropping off my cheeks sounding like little, 
pretty bells hitting the ground. I look down. Wherever they touch, 
​the surface changes as rain would caress soil. Soothing, somewhat nourishing.
​

Last night I flew to Tibet. On breathy wind-swept tendrils of longing, each soul among us floated up the jagged mountain, recalling the gentle tinkle of tinny bells punctuating the dry air I haven’t breathed for more lifetimes than I can name. I heard the steady plod of yak hoofs over broken stones, while tears of bittersweet memory and heartfelt empathy slid slowly down my face.
And still I was transported. Immediately, surely, like the smoke of long lost fires, I floated into each butter-lit home to see the turquoise and coral colors of my beguiling, beloved, sacred Lhasa. Soul seed that sent down roots uncountable eons before this meager moment.
Before the unspeakable horror of great, red dragons daring to eat the sacred phoenix, and with the vile and violent arrogance of ignorance and greed, crunched our brittle, butter-built bones while the blood dripped off their incisors. The oxygen-rich, deep red elixir squeezed, crushed and shot from veins seeping, exploded, or torn as armored tanks ground up our precious, fragile, and tentative soil. The people scattered like gentle ants, some surviving. Always, a tenacious few who survive, looking to His Holiness, who now holds the woe of Tutsi and Hutu and beloved, twinkling Tutu, expanded beyond reckoning by the deadly diaspora. Such painful irony that deep pain deepens and expands the heart.
And still, that beautiful, smiling man, with so much love and gentleness in his generous and kindred heart, blew his lifebreath into each fragrant flutesong. And with each sinuous note, stilled our hearts to one, conjoined rhythm, as he painted sound pictures of gratitude and love for the tropical emeralds, vibrant crimsons, and watery azures now woven into his eager reckoning.
Who can tell what should not be? The world breeds violence and hate with the same blind commitment that it breeds beauty and splendor.  As always the choice lies within.

bored bored bored
as fuck fuck fuck
bored bored bored
as fuck
fuck that
insanity from isolation
isolation stems from my mind
I’m not alone
I can talk to Carl or Chris or Peyton or my mom
I get touched
hand held
tight crushing arms that smell like my man
but as soon as he lets go
I’m isolated
my thoughts turn to blank dull walls
no art or fresh paint
not purple like my kitchen
but grey like a city pigeon
I’m spinning a lot as of late
like I just got off a merry go round
it scares me like smiling horses do
my belly aches
like I’ve done all the sit ups I’ve been avoiding
or I’m about to get my period
and we know that’s not happening
my dogs breath goes into labor
as she drags herself across the room
too thirsty to wait for me to fill her water bowl
so she takes a nap
arms writing I’m bored
my fingers dance death across an empty page
it’s always about my last breath
the rooster begs for food with finding his voice
I’m begging for a couch to lay my boredom on
I’m a spoiled brat
entertained by overpriced dinners
museums I rush through to get to the drinks
we sit quiet
perhaps that’s what happens
it’s what I always feared
quiet
not the good quiet
where a soft smile hides inside my cheeks
quiet quiet
the kind that makes me want to run out
into the wet morning grass
screaming at the orange rising sun kind of quiet
the kind of quiet where date night is too hard to organize
when dogs need to be feed
sheets need to be changed
the quiet where there are answers to unheard questions
​short answers or just a nod
the kind of quiet that makes me want to hurt someone
not with words but with bristles
with throwing knives from the back closet
with needle pointy martini skewers
it hasn’t always been this quiet
just last night we laughed
held hands until dreams took us away
awoke to our crowing hungry rooster
that might happen again
perhaps later
when the sun sets
the wind comes up
then quiet could fall apart
forget to keep quiet
a question will rise like bread about to burst from the oven
what should we have for dinner
my humble has been pulled to the surface
drawn there by scars and my fathers echos
it’s a comforting thought
that dad is waiting for me
those promises are broken before they’re made
things I know about myself
never change
past the enlightening retreats and European adventures
he’s a mystery to me
it’s his profile that keeps me close
in the quiet
the bored as fuck quiet

So I’m ripping off my hospital gown with my teeth when this nurse walks in and looks at me like I’m a feral animal. To be honest, she’s not that far off as I growl at her to help me or get the fuck out. Most of the time these doctors and nurses walk in and out of my room with hazmat suits, poking and prodding me into oblivion, but this time, I’m crazed and wild.

Anyway, this nurse looked surprised because I’m usually blank when she walks in. I went numb almost as soon as I was admitted into the hospital. So numb that as they told me I was quarantined, I floated outside of my body and had the conscious thought, “hey look at that, my nervous system just shut down!” It wasn’t hard to go almost full catatonic as they filled me back up with 2 pints of blood and an obscene amount of pharmaceuticals. But anyway, that wasn’t why my nervous system shut down. It was because I was told I couldn’t see my baby anymore as they wheeled me into isolation. Silver lining? I had a room to myself with a harbor view, and the fleeting thought that I might get a full night’s rest for the first time in almost a year. The rest of it though? Fucking miserable.
Anyway, much to the shock of just about every nurse, doctor and specialist that came my way, I was still nursing my almost 9 month old. They looked at me like I was fucking crazy when I begged them to find me a breast pump considering I was half conscious due to the fact that I had half the amount of blood a human needs to survive in my body. And here I was nursing on demand all hours of the day and night, only to be separated from my child without even saying goodbye. But my mama bear was strong as ever inside of me, much stronger than my physical body that’s for sure, and they fucking knew it too.

Anyway like I said, most of the time, they came in, I was catatonic staring out the window at a cruise ship parked in the harbor. But God forbid they’d make the mistake of mentioning my baby or my family, I’d just started screaming like a lunatic. I could see the whites of their eyes behind the plastic hazmat masks before they turned a heel and got the hell out of my room.

So yeah, I’m ripping off my hospital gown with my teeth because I have this IV in the crook of my left elbow rendering that entire arm useless, and I have to get my breast pump on. Hot tears are streaming down my face because I know if I don’t pump soon, my baby won’t have any milk for the night, and since it’s been almost a week since I’ve seen him, I don’t want him to forget about me. To be honest, I feel pretty forgotten in isolation. My husband only came to see me once for 10 minutes before leaving to get the baby from the sitter. I know he’s terrible in stressful situations and I could see him shrinking in this one, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it. Anyway, my family was thousands of miles and time zones away, so they were nowhere to be found. And friends? Well, let’s just say getting sick the same day you give birth to your first child puts you in a whole different type of isolation. So you’d think that should’ve prepared me for this. Nah, no dice. I’m just fucking lonely, and my milk is drying up which makes me feel like an even more worthless mother than I thought I was before I got admitted. I mean, I couldn’t even pick up my baby for the last month. I’d put him in a chair at the edge of the shower and lay on the floor of the tub while the water veiled my tears.

Anyway, I thought that was rock bottom. But it turns out, ripping off your hospital gown with your teeth and screaming at a nurse is the new bottom. I must have scared her enough, or sparked whatever compassion compelled her to pursue a career in nursing in the first place, because she walked over to me, helped me attach the pump, and looked at me with love. She said I was an amazing mother. I cried as I thanked her for being so kind, and asked her to forgive me for being such a bitch. She smiled, and for a moment, I felt less alone.

Times, there are times
When the bough breaks and the cradle falls.
And the body comes a-tumbling doen
Who wrote such a line as a lullabye?
Countless little kids terrorized about kids being left in a cradle at the top of a tree. 
Parents not paying attention to the words…Would you sing that lullabye to your kids? 
Did you?
What Can You Do But Laugh?    

Times, there are times
When the sad condom breaks
And if luck is with you, nothing further issues.
Ah, but sometimes you aren’t so lucky.
Both of my kids came about through busted condoms.
A little earlier than my mind scheduled them, but we adjusted.
What Can You Do But Laugh?    
Kids come when they come.

Times, there are times
When your car breaks, or your buttocks fall.
And time grinds your body to an ashy pile of creaking joints and aching bones; 
the words an indistinct mumble, if you can hear them at all.
Or you forget why you come in here
A tired and constant confusion, like a watercolor wash on your graying days.
What Can You Do But Laugh? 
Your only alternative a final goodbye to it all.

Times, there are times
When you feel your god deserts you.
But do you desert her?
That glorious source in your heart’s eye – 
Do you blink and shudder to cast her from your reckoning?
You do not!
You have faith!
You reach deep!
You find humor, make a joke.
At the guy who cuts you off in traffic.
At the spots that populate your once-flawless skin.
You reach for grace – as the Great Sociopath takes the oath of office, 
knowing this too, shall pass.
What Can You Do But Laugh?    
Keep the faith!

Times, there are times
When nothing goes the way you want.
Your heart sinks low
Your lover leaves with nary a nod
You ask what it all means and come up blank.
Don’t take yourself so seriously.
You think you are the only one?
To be dumped? To get cancer? To loose a child?
These are the things of the human condition.
Our expectations out of line with the facts.
We’re born with boundless hope, 
soon dashed by the inevitable falls,
and Disney.
But there’s beauty, and humor, if you look for it.
The sugar that sweetens the bitter
Train yourself to look for it.
Husband leaves you for another man?
What Can You Do But Laugh?    ​

Love is not the answer. I have never heard anything more ridiculous in my life.
The other day I joined in on a conversation with some festival-garbed dudes who were bolstering each other with puffy yoga chests, draped with healing crystals and flashing shiny, entheogen-cleansed eyes, rapping about fully embodying the divine masculine. They were going on and on about totally showing up, about embracing life with their inner warrior king in total authentic next-level presence.
Sounds like my trip. But then I interject with questions like, “so what do you do when you realize your mind has tricked you into pain?” Or, “how do you deal with the incessant primordial baseline violence that is wired into the male body-mind?”
One of them just walks away with a wide-eyed smile and a dramatic, hand-raised gesture of joining in, his totally-showing-up powerful spiritual presence called away to the jungle of jiggly butts in hippy skirts dancing at the center of attention where he is sure his salvation awaits.
The other looks at me bemused, and with Shakespearian grace bows low and spins away to join his brother-in-knowledge, incanting loudly, “love is the answer bro!…”
Holy shit. But still, I love them. Someone has too.
Yet now I am bemused. What the fuck just happened? I entered the circle of power, ready to forge some truth with some waking dreamers, and the moment I draw my blade, these would-be warriors reveal themselves as phantom travelers and turn to mist. The moment I ask myself for more, they show me how little they can handle.
It is funny to me to describe myself as bemused because I think that that may be my default setting these days. Bemused by all of those who hold the mighty ideals of community aloft yet really want nothing more than a way to enforce hierarchy, avoid chores, and flirt with roommates. Bemused by the champions of activism who are so obviously playing out the roles of ego-maniacal petty-tyrants trying to dodge the suffering of their own psyches by directing theirs and other’s eyes to the do-gooding grift-work of modern martyr-hood. Bemused that any hand would strike another, or take from another, or chain another or fool another into thinking it wasn’t good enough. Bemused by the invalidation and avoidance that is this statement, “love is the answer.”
Love is not the answer. It is not a destination, it is never final. Love is the question. Love is an inquiry. Love is a process. Love is alive. Love should never be the way out of a conversation, especially one about love.

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Welcome to Maui, this is your paradise!

Hawaiians and other residents alike have been in some state of lockdown for the last 6+ months to offer you an (almost) COVID free paradise. We worked really hard on this to ensure you a pleasant and safe experience. So take off your masks, crowd the beaches, and get rid of all respect you thought you might have left. Bargain in our stores because we really need your business.
Welcome to Maui, this is your paradise!

We live on an island. Proud of its beauty and its Aloha spirit. HOSPITALITY in capital letters. So please take advantage of our already short supplies, the voluntarily COVID test, free for you for sure, topped with a convenient Mahalo shopping card, and everything else you can rip us off with. Certainly, we are hoping to have this hospital bed ready and available for you when in need. And Mahalo for helping our economy.
Welcome to Maui, this is your paradise!

We apologize for the wait you had to endure at the airport. We had to come up with some bullshit to make it look safe. And because we were not able to handle this well, we promise to leave you alone and free from here on out, quarantine restrictions or not. Plus, everyone is happy to loan you an ear for your endless complaints of what you had to go through to finally get here.
Welcome to Maui, this is your paradise!

Sailing trips, snorkel tours, bike down a volcano, whale watching, helicopter adventures, hiking trips, tropical farms, fine dining, and a daily exotic cocktail for sunset, you name it and we will deliver. Learn to surf, to dive, or just relax! 2020 has not been without challenges and you deserve the perfect get away. Don’t look any further.
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