Hawaii: Where Intermission Happens
The islands beckon you to tell the truth and start ANEW
If all the world’s a stage, then there are multiple Acts, but also intermissions. Intermission is where you go to regroup, refresh, and relieve yourself before the next Act.
Hawaii is more than a dreamy location where Elvis made his movie, “Blue Hawaii.” It’s more than the land of luaus and Alohas, and it’s much more than the best place to get pineapple and Kona coffee.
She is the place that calls you for the Intermissions in life. No matter how difficult the truths, she relays - she will transform you.
It was 2002. Michaela, a vibrant German co-worker who had taken me under her wing, gave me a print of this gecko. I hung it in my bedroom for years, barely registering it or even expecting to be in Hawaii someday.
Little did I know, it was beckoning me quietly for twelve years. I doubt she meant the gecko gift as a vision board manifestation tool. Perhaps only as a wink, to go live. Stop worrying, overthinking, deliberating, second-guessing. Choose something. Preferably life.
Have you heard that the Hawaiian islands will call you like an invitation on a hibiscus breeze? This was certainly my case, as I didn’t choose Hawaii, She summoned me.
Rather, confronted me.
Fast forward twelve years to 2014: I sat in my therapist’s office of zen where I had been showing up for the past year, some weeks even twice.
Jacelyn, a red-headed angel had been listening to me try to sort out my most unresolvable of relationships to date. Although a more accurate term would be “situation-ship” but it still dysregulated my nervous system, all the same.
Simultaneously, I endured a seven-years long nightmare between my parents’ 42-year marriage, which was fracturing like the volcano cracks of Mauna Loa. Thank you Facebook for your help with that, by the way.
“This isn’t about you at all!” my father comforted - or was it scolded? - me. “It’s between me and your mother.” This is the very tone deaf, pathological lack of empathy had played a role in his marital disintegration, no doubt.
He didn’t used to be that way. Surely, by now, my estranged father has learned that the grass is only greener where you water it, but the damage was done nonetheless. A costly error in judgment, which he has only doubled down on, regardless of the estrangements.
When atonement is missing from the menu, the healing process for other family members is protracted, rivalling carbon-dating.
Between this and my future-tripping paramour, i.e., situation-ship, I wore two heavy burdens I didn’t care to hold anymore.
One day Dr. Jacelyn said, “I’m worried about you. I think you need to go on medical leave.” Before I could interject with my pragmatic concerns, she casually opened her notebook and said:
“I know someone who leads grief retreats. She’s on The Big Island of Hawaii and I think it would do you good to spend some time there. She has her own commune and you can rent one of her hales.”
A hale is a traditional Hawaiian house or building. In this case, it was an octagonal cottage she built herself with hardwood floors and an indoor hammock.
Like most of the monumental decisions of my life, I made the choice impulsively, like a flash of knowing: I booked my hale and flew from SFO to KOA.
Upon arrival, a territorial Australian shepherd “greeted” me in such a way, to ensure that I knew he was running the place. Great. I’m afraid of dogs.
If the menacing dog was the bad cop, a six-year-old boy named Lokahi, was the good cop spreading his angel dust between the hales.
Lokahi excitedly showed me around the garden: my hale, the noni trees, the peacocks, the geckos, and the cats. He loved crystals, runes, animals, and hammocks. His mother already knew he was a Rainbow or Indigo child who was wise beyond his years.
The Gecko Materialized
The gecko you see on the left, was the unintentional precognition of my friend, Michaela. I never imagined twelve years after receiving her gift, that I’d be having breakfast on my lanai, sharing my pear with a gecko.
Look around your room…what does your subconscious silently register every single day, which is waiting to made manifest? According to my current environment, I’ll be buying a ticket to either Venice or Holland soon. In fact, if you’re an artist, entrepreneur, or dreamer seeking simplicity, creation, and profundity, I’d love for you to join me on a productive adventure.
I’d like to believe it was the same gecko who visited me every day; after trust was built over a week (he was quite shy at first,) he finally came close enough to dine with me.
The cat who visited me in the late afternoons, always preferred hibiscus water. I know this, because I ran an experiment with two dishes of water. One, pure water, the other with a hibiscus flower picked fresh off the tree.
Hibiscus has Vitamin C, and she clearly knew that cats required sturdy immune systems. Especially from eating all those mice. Or was it rats?
Like any true Hero Journey’s story, there must always be some enemies, tests, and challenges. Those challenges for me were the rats.
There were roof rats who would squeak and scratch every single night on the roof of my hale, conveniently left out of the fine print. Thanks to Western contact in the late 1700s who brought the rats, I had to rely on Ambien to forget they might decide to come through a wall. The Polynesians brought some as well, but whoever brought them, I was not amused.
It’s funny, my therapist never mentioned the rats or the Australian shepherd, so I suddenly felt slightly conned. Thanks to my supply of Ambien, I had a near biblical guarantee that I would get eight hours of sleep like clockwork. Nocturnal candy provided the needed anesthesia.
After a while these challenges faded while I zoomed out. I began to drift into a dream state and slept-walked through a comforting routine. I could always count on the birds chirping at 5:30am, a bit before sunrise. I could always count on the bees at noon, the mosquitos at 5:30pm and, yes, my Sunset Ambien hour.
Even if my father and situation-ship were emotionally unavailable and erratic in their affections, at least I could count on these routines.
Did I mention there was no electricity or toilets? For the first time in my life, I found myself taking my clothes to my outdoor shower where I multitasked, washing away the sweat from the oppressive tropical sun, before washing my clothes by hand.
There were amethysts the size of basketballs, full moon ceremonies, and communal circles - but I never attended those because the socializing was far too draining on my frayed nervous system.
Once a week we went to the market in Na’alehu, where I got rice, pineapple, and a few other staples.
Magical Noni
While in the garden, I read a book about an airline stewardess who used noni juice to heal herself from the routine spraying of pesticides in aircraft cabins which she ingested for decades.
Lucky for me, there were noni trees on the property. Every day, I’d put a noni in a mason jar and set it out in the sun to ferment. And ferment, it did. It smelled like blue cheese, but I didn’t mind it since it was medicinal, and medicinal was my jam.
Noni activates immune systems, halts cancer tumors, and some even believe it talks to you as well. Divinely. Lest you think I’m a fruit loop, I actually experienced the fruit which felt almost like a hallucinogenic, and apparently I’m not the only one who has noticed. Shhh. Don’t tell anybody. Only a cure-all fruit could make you feel like you were on drugs and dining with the divine.
The day I left, the Australian shepherd seemed to intuit I was leaving. He came to my hale, lied down, and exposed his belly for me to rub. An olive branch. I had noticed the past couple weeks, as he slept at the foot of my stairs that he wanted to protect me. My fear had dissolved.
It would be three years until the islands called me again. This time, the island of Kauai, a more receptive feminine island, a bit more polite and subdued than The Big Island’s, Pele island of no-holds-barred-transformation.
Before I left for that trip, I found myself in an Apple store telling a Russian guy at the Genius Bar, where I was going. He described Hawaii better than I ever could.
”Hawaii will always tell you the truth. You won’t come back the same person as you went, because you’re surrounded by water. The truth serum is the water, so you can’t escape your truth when you’re there. And it seems like every time I go there, there is a major life change when I come back.”
Yes, the islands call you, they change you, and they will heal you, confront you, or help you to fall in love with life again.
Your Hawaiian lesson might be different, but mine was simply: To thine own self be true.
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