a borrowed moment from the timeless
to sing a song the Earth once sang to us
a wave, a rhythm,
a loan from endless skies,
becomes an ocean,
flowing tides to beat the rugged shorelines
to sing a song the Earth once sang to us
a wave, a rhythm,
a loan from endless skies,
becomes an ocean,
flowing tides to beat the rugged shorelines
by Anna Sundberg
water condensing
in my beard like mist in trees
dripping on my chest
in my beard like mist in trees
dripping on my chest
by Teo Potts
To feel despair would require more energy than I posses.
I sit and watch the blade in the fan in the window.
Slowly, turning, slowly, turning.
I am unable to move, made of lead. Limbs so heavy. Bleakness.
The sky reflects what I feel like inside.
Slowly, turning, slowly, turning.
It is gray. Sullen. It is a sigh.
Slowly, stillness, slowly, stillness.
On days like today I find it hard to deny there's an illness inside of me. I can feel it dancing on the surface of my skin, jittering through my veins. On a day like today I cannot pretend. I give in to the lethargy.
Slowly, sinking, slowly, sinking.
Pain will grind you down. Pain will eat at you until you believe it is all you will ever feel again. Some days I can get on top, look down on it like a conqueror, jubilant in my victory. Some days it stares at me from across the room and I at it, warily, neither one of us moving. Nothing changes and the quiet throb resonating through my bones is little more than a presence, static from a television, like muffled sound from a house next door. Not screaming, not sleeping.
Today it is huge. It fills and envelopes me. It lifts me up over it's head and brandishes me, broken, whimpering. Every movement requires force. I must force myself just to place one foot in front of the other. My body has become my adversary. Strange things happen as I move about. Bones grind. Tendons snap against each other, caught and tangled in jutting joints. Pain, no longer sleeping, is like a banshee perched atop my head performing an ugly aria.
I lay, slowly breathing, slowly breathing, unable to even escape into sleep despite the exhaustion. I feel trapped like a fly in honey, grunting with any effort, dreading the need to feed myself or go to the bathroom. I slide into morbid imaginings. Would my cats eat me if I died here and they were starving? I stare at the blade as the wind picks up for a moment and sends it in several full revolutions.
Quickly spinning, quickly spinning.
Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe the day after. I'll wake up and be free again. I'll be able to walk upon waking after a fulfilling sleep. I'll feel that spring in my step. The pain will be lessening. I'll feel as it's power wanes and it begins to slumber. I'll have my life back. For a time. Maybe weeks. Maybe days. Maybe a glorious month.
Not today.
I stare as the blade begins to slow, then stops.
I sit and watch the blade in the fan in the window.
Slowly, turning, slowly, turning.
I am unable to move, made of lead. Limbs so heavy. Bleakness.
The sky reflects what I feel like inside.
Slowly, turning, slowly, turning.
It is gray. Sullen. It is a sigh.
Slowly, stillness, slowly, stillness.
On days like today I find it hard to deny there's an illness inside of me. I can feel it dancing on the surface of my skin, jittering through my veins. On a day like today I cannot pretend. I give in to the lethargy.
Slowly, sinking, slowly, sinking.
Pain will grind you down. Pain will eat at you until you believe it is all you will ever feel again. Some days I can get on top, look down on it like a conqueror, jubilant in my victory. Some days it stares at me from across the room and I at it, warily, neither one of us moving. Nothing changes and the quiet throb resonating through my bones is little more than a presence, static from a television, like muffled sound from a house next door. Not screaming, not sleeping.
Today it is huge. It fills and envelopes me. It lifts me up over it's head and brandishes me, broken, whimpering. Every movement requires force. I must force myself just to place one foot in front of the other. My body has become my adversary. Strange things happen as I move about. Bones grind. Tendons snap against each other, caught and tangled in jutting joints. Pain, no longer sleeping, is like a banshee perched atop my head performing an ugly aria.
I lay, slowly breathing, slowly breathing, unable to even escape into sleep despite the exhaustion. I feel trapped like a fly in honey, grunting with any effort, dreading the need to feed myself or go to the bathroom. I slide into morbid imaginings. Would my cats eat me if I died here and they were starving? I stare at the blade as the wind picks up for a moment and sends it in several full revolutions.
Quickly spinning, quickly spinning.
Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe the day after. I'll wake up and be free again. I'll be able to walk upon waking after a fulfilling sleep. I'll feel that spring in my step. The pain will be lessening. I'll feel as it's power wanes and it begins to slumber. I'll have my life back. For a time. Maybe weeks. Maybe days. Maybe a glorious month.
Not today.
I stare as the blade begins to slow, then stops.
by A.J. Gazaway
He was not really my brother and he was not Hawaiian. That is what the dog walking, pram-pushing neighbors asked about. Anyone could see we were no match. I had come from the world of television studios and icy floors that could turn you into a skating princess or make you fall very hard. He had remained still, like the rusty cars collected on his front lawn, a permanent installation under flapping palms in the ocean wind.
The neighbors used to talk about how nice life would be if he would clean up, or better yet, leave. Then this relic would be entirely replaced by them. No one in the Kalapawai district by the great Pacific would be reminded of soft eyes that look directly at you with calm integrity because you shared the same piece of Earth for a moment under the stars. No one would have to feel as if some part of them had been lost for generations to come. That is why this man who hardly would say anything except greet you with clear eyes and a real smile was one of those subjects that everyone talked about. In particular they talked about his girlfriends.
Not many girls had been able to stay with the array of stuff my brother would drag home. Most things in the house came from a contact at the local dump: broken plastic chairs, pieces of metal that might come in handy and an old boxing bag that he would bang on among parts of surfboards to keep his muscular appearance. He preferred to dress the way he was born, wrapped in a short pareo.
My brother would eat fruit from a friend's fruit van or from his own trees. That could be breakfast or it could be any meal. He would chew away undisturbed standing up among the remnants in a kitchen that a long line of girls had left behind. Even if there had been furniture I do not think he would have used it. He was always standing, usually repairing something.
I slept on the floor in a room of this Hawaiian house shared by tropical four legged crawlers geckos and lizards and a few shiny roaches. It was something other than homeless friends and the unusually large roaches that kept girlfriends storming out of this brothers life the same way they had stormed into it. They all shared certain features. They all had wanted to end their hippie days by jogging the neighborhood at some ungodly hour followed by using the vacuum as if it was a virtue. My bro remained untouched except for letting his hair grow after each one had exited.
Originally when I, a girl from the world of glossy floor polish, turned up I came with one European handbag. It nicely hid the fact that it contained no money and the intention was a visit of questionable length. None of us thought that it would become such an oddly pleasing coexistence that this visit would turn into happy years.
For me whose religion might be said to include a sense of organized cleanliness this house was the last place you could find me. It could have been the reason my brother broke the silence with a practical suggestion: he wanted to dig a hole in the sand and bury me with everything that made me run about without myself as a cleansing.
Most days I would write at night and sleep late but this morning my brother bounced onto my mattress on the floor. "Time to go Sista.” He was focused energy, happy and attentive like your best friend a dog ready for the first joyous walk.
We decided on which of the rusty shovels to use and walked off to the beach barefoot. He in his surf shorts and I in an old french bikini. We strolled the shoreline, ran in the surf, leaped in funny steps to humor each other looking for the correct place to dig a deep hole.
The morning sun had just risen. The air was full of foam from the pounding surf. It felt as if we were visiting heaven. Any spot would do for me. After most people had driven off to the big city, opened their village shop or were busy at the local school, life was one endless horizon, the long beach and clear days. No one would visit unless it was a weekend. This was one of those days, a wonderful day, a glorious time in life.
Like my brothers warm smile it gave me a glimpse of something so peaceful there was nothing I would rather do than simply be and remain happy.
"Now this is some good vortex spot," said my brother and stopped looking down at the sand. It looked to me like any spot of sand but my brother had spoken.
The sand got dirty and wet the deeper we dug, I with my hands, he with the rusty tool. He tested the pit first to see if it was as deep as he was tall. Then I jumped down into the cool wetness while he stood high above me carefully filling it with sand, making sure my eyes and nostrils were above the surface. It took a long time to fill this hole and pour all the sand back with me in it. Only my eyes and nostrils remained above the surface.
"Now all anyone thinks is your hair was some sandy ocean weed Sista'. I'll be back diggin you up,” he said, pleased with what he had completed.
I watched my bro's feet disappear with quick steps along the white beach until busy crabs were the only ones left in sight. The early sunrise turned to morning, the surf was increasing and the tide had moved in and out.
After the mid day hours I had been held so closely by the sand for so long that I was like a baby in a perfect womb. I didn't know what was meant by a vortex but thought it was like the energy of the earth itself connected to something larger. I imagined the sun catapulting through the universe like a shooting star pulling the planets in our solar system with it as they orbit around the gravitational center. That was the most alive vortex of energy I could dream up.
In this state I was on the level of earth and stars but also in close encounter with hermit crabs, these curious shells on legs running and stopping only to run some more. Big crabs walked over my weedy hair in the sand. Their stone faced black eyes glared straight into mine until my breath sent them hastily running sideways. After the sun had reached its zenith and hours had gone by it seemed as if my brother had forgotten me. Suddenly the entire village of crabs disappeared under ground. We were all in hiding together.
People were approaching from far. Their loud voices and a rattling noise like a pram were blowing in my direction. I couldn't turn my head to see what it was. The agitated voices had woken me out of the vortex. My meditation had been cut and doubts about everything set in. Maybe my brother had forgotten me. Why was I stuck in a pit in the sand and living on a beach on the other side of the world? What had become of political articles, elections and the analysis of the national budget? My brother was an idiot and so was I. This situation was unbelievable!
The approaching ladies were arguing. They sounded discontented. Loudly they talked on top of each other in nonstop voices saying things like why did someone do this or that? Mary didn't call back when they were in the kitchen because someone else had paid too much when that didn't work with school times when so and so was on trips.
I realized from listening that they actually were not enemies but rather did this sort of talking probably on a daily basis. That is when they spread a corner of a pale colored blanket over my head and sat down. It felt as if they were almost on top of me.
On mile after mile of sand this spot had had some unseen gravitational effect on them as it had on me. Was that why they had to sit exactly on top of my hair?
What could I say to them? They appeared to be in a sort of parallel world and I was at a loss for suitable words.
I started moving one finger back and forth in the sand and was soon forcefully struggling to get loose from the solidified grip of the wet earth. Could I get out? Should I scream or hide until they were gone? Where was my brother who should have come back hours ago?
The babbling went on covering subjects such as my weird brother and his unlikely lady who lived with bums and hippie girls and were they not recovering from this or that? I never knew anyone in our house had problems. We lived on fruit and water and spent most of the day meditating or doing bodywork and danced all night without ever needing much of anything. The voices appeared without much worthwhile to say unless you regard pity as being kind. It was the pity that gave me the superhuman energy to fight upwards and crawl out. I appeared in one splash as if coming out of a pool in a jolt and was standing between the picnic food, a pram with a sleeping baby, a large cooler and an inflatable yellow armchair.
For a second the pale looking ladies in matching full bodied dark green bathing suits stopped talking. They were looking straight up at me as I tried not to shake off the sand in their faces. I was standing tall, looking straight down at them sitting on the ground with their arms holding tightly around their legs. My face, body and hair were covered in wet sand. Without a word they looked back at each other and resumed their sentences were they had stopped. I felt invisible and softly walked my sandy self off in my polka dot bikini. I could hear their loud chatter about who said what for a long time due to the wind direction. Finally it went away like the horrific feeling of the media industry when you leave its deadly hold and escape until no one knows your face and life can start again. It was like the relief of escaping the tv industry with part of yourself still intact. To be successful it required finding a place on the opposite side of the world were no one knows you on a screen.
I wondered if I had meditated into an invisible state or if the baby too would have looked straight through me had she been awake.
There was no one else in any direction on this beautiful afternoon.
I started running in the shore break to wash off the sand. The sky was absolutely as blue as a sky can appear. The wide ocean was on one side of me and endless white sand on the other. There was no time, no return, nowhere to go and nothing to look for. I had escaped, invisible to the world. It could no longer touch me, see me or disturb me. I was free.
Back at the house my brother was chewing something juicy, standing in the kitchen with a big grin on his face. The juice ran down his tanned chest. When I walked in still with my hair full of sand in my wet polka dot bikini one of the house renters started to laugh.
“Was it good?” asked my brother.
I also broke out laughing while I tried to tell him that he was supposed to have come got me out of the pit after an hour. He continued smiling and letting mango juice run down his neck.
"I knew you'd find your way out. I just didn't know how long it would take,” he said.
Even the current girlfriend was laughing now.
This was my first taste of the blissful years to come in my brother's house on Hawaii.
The neighbors used to talk about how nice life would be if he would clean up, or better yet, leave. Then this relic would be entirely replaced by them. No one in the Kalapawai district by the great Pacific would be reminded of soft eyes that look directly at you with calm integrity because you shared the same piece of Earth for a moment under the stars. No one would have to feel as if some part of them had been lost for generations to come. That is why this man who hardly would say anything except greet you with clear eyes and a real smile was one of those subjects that everyone talked about. In particular they talked about his girlfriends.
Not many girls had been able to stay with the array of stuff my brother would drag home. Most things in the house came from a contact at the local dump: broken plastic chairs, pieces of metal that might come in handy and an old boxing bag that he would bang on among parts of surfboards to keep his muscular appearance. He preferred to dress the way he was born, wrapped in a short pareo.
My brother would eat fruit from a friend's fruit van or from his own trees. That could be breakfast or it could be any meal. He would chew away undisturbed standing up among the remnants in a kitchen that a long line of girls had left behind. Even if there had been furniture I do not think he would have used it. He was always standing, usually repairing something.
I slept on the floor in a room of this Hawaiian house shared by tropical four legged crawlers geckos and lizards and a few shiny roaches. It was something other than homeless friends and the unusually large roaches that kept girlfriends storming out of this brothers life the same way they had stormed into it. They all shared certain features. They all had wanted to end their hippie days by jogging the neighborhood at some ungodly hour followed by using the vacuum as if it was a virtue. My bro remained untouched except for letting his hair grow after each one had exited.
Originally when I, a girl from the world of glossy floor polish, turned up I came with one European handbag. It nicely hid the fact that it contained no money and the intention was a visit of questionable length. None of us thought that it would become such an oddly pleasing coexistence that this visit would turn into happy years.
For me whose religion might be said to include a sense of organized cleanliness this house was the last place you could find me. It could have been the reason my brother broke the silence with a practical suggestion: he wanted to dig a hole in the sand and bury me with everything that made me run about without myself as a cleansing.
Most days I would write at night and sleep late but this morning my brother bounced onto my mattress on the floor. "Time to go Sista.” He was focused energy, happy and attentive like your best friend a dog ready for the first joyous walk.
We decided on which of the rusty shovels to use and walked off to the beach barefoot. He in his surf shorts and I in an old french bikini. We strolled the shoreline, ran in the surf, leaped in funny steps to humor each other looking for the correct place to dig a deep hole.
The morning sun had just risen. The air was full of foam from the pounding surf. It felt as if we were visiting heaven. Any spot would do for me. After most people had driven off to the big city, opened their village shop or were busy at the local school, life was one endless horizon, the long beach and clear days. No one would visit unless it was a weekend. This was one of those days, a wonderful day, a glorious time in life.
Like my brothers warm smile it gave me a glimpse of something so peaceful there was nothing I would rather do than simply be and remain happy.
"Now this is some good vortex spot," said my brother and stopped looking down at the sand. It looked to me like any spot of sand but my brother had spoken.
The sand got dirty and wet the deeper we dug, I with my hands, he with the rusty tool. He tested the pit first to see if it was as deep as he was tall. Then I jumped down into the cool wetness while he stood high above me carefully filling it with sand, making sure my eyes and nostrils were above the surface. It took a long time to fill this hole and pour all the sand back with me in it. Only my eyes and nostrils remained above the surface.
"Now all anyone thinks is your hair was some sandy ocean weed Sista'. I'll be back diggin you up,” he said, pleased with what he had completed.
I watched my bro's feet disappear with quick steps along the white beach until busy crabs were the only ones left in sight. The early sunrise turned to morning, the surf was increasing and the tide had moved in and out.
After the mid day hours I had been held so closely by the sand for so long that I was like a baby in a perfect womb. I didn't know what was meant by a vortex but thought it was like the energy of the earth itself connected to something larger. I imagined the sun catapulting through the universe like a shooting star pulling the planets in our solar system with it as they orbit around the gravitational center. That was the most alive vortex of energy I could dream up.
In this state I was on the level of earth and stars but also in close encounter with hermit crabs, these curious shells on legs running and stopping only to run some more. Big crabs walked over my weedy hair in the sand. Their stone faced black eyes glared straight into mine until my breath sent them hastily running sideways. After the sun had reached its zenith and hours had gone by it seemed as if my brother had forgotten me. Suddenly the entire village of crabs disappeared under ground. We were all in hiding together.
People were approaching from far. Their loud voices and a rattling noise like a pram were blowing in my direction. I couldn't turn my head to see what it was. The agitated voices had woken me out of the vortex. My meditation had been cut and doubts about everything set in. Maybe my brother had forgotten me. Why was I stuck in a pit in the sand and living on a beach on the other side of the world? What had become of political articles, elections and the analysis of the national budget? My brother was an idiot and so was I. This situation was unbelievable!
The approaching ladies were arguing. They sounded discontented. Loudly they talked on top of each other in nonstop voices saying things like why did someone do this or that? Mary didn't call back when they were in the kitchen because someone else had paid too much when that didn't work with school times when so and so was on trips.
I realized from listening that they actually were not enemies but rather did this sort of talking probably on a daily basis. That is when they spread a corner of a pale colored blanket over my head and sat down. It felt as if they were almost on top of me.
On mile after mile of sand this spot had had some unseen gravitational effect on them as it had on me. Was that why they had to sit exactly on top of my hair?
What could I say to them? They appeared to be in a sort of parallel world and I was at a loss for suitable words.
I started moving one finger back and forth in the sand and was soon forcefully struggling to get loose from the solidified grip of the wet earth. Could I get out? Should I scream or hide until they were gone? Where was my brother who should have come back hours ago?
The babbling went on covering subjects such as my weird brother and his unlikely lady who lived with bums and hippie girls and were they not recovering from this or that? I never knew anyone in our house had problems. We lived on fruit and water and spent most of the day meditating or doing bodywork and danced all night without ever needing much of anything. The voices appeared without much worthwhile to say unless you regard pity as being kind. It was the pity that gave me the superhuman energy to fight upwards and crawl out. I appeared in one splash as if coming out of a pool in a jolt and was standing between the picnic food, a pram with a sleeping baby, a large cooler and an inflatable yellow armchair.
For a second the pale looking ladies in matching full bodied dark green bathing suits stopped talking. They were looking straight up at me as I tried not to shake off the sand in their faces. I was standing tall, looking straight down at them sitting on the ground with their arms holding tightly around their legs. My face, body and hair were covered in wet sand. Without a word they looked back at each other and resumed their sentences were they had stopped. I felt invisible and softly walked my sandy self off in my polka dot bikini. I could hear their loud chatter about who said what for a long time due to the wind direction. Finally it went away like the horrific feeling of the media industry when you leave its deadly hold and escape until no one knows your face and life can start again. It was like the relief of escaping the tv industry with part of yourself still intact. To be successful it required finding a place on the opposite side of the world were no one knows you on a screen.
I wondered if I had meditated into an invisible state or if the baby too would have looked straight through me had she been awake.
There was no one else in any direction on this beautiful afternoon.
I started running in the shore break to wash off the sand. The sky was absolutely as blue as a sky can appear. The wide ocean was on one side of me and endless white sand on the other. There was no time, no return, nowhere to go and nothing to look for. I had escaped, invisible to the world. It could no longer touch me, see me or disturb me. I was free.
Back at the house my brother was chewing something juicy, standing in the kitchen with a big grin on his face. The juice ran down his tanned chest. When I walked in still with my hair full of sand in my wet polka dot bikini one of the house renters started to laugh.
“Was it good?” asked my brother.
I also broke out laughing while I tried to tell him that he was supposed to have come got me out of the pit after an hour. He continued smiling and letting mango juice run down his neck.
"I knew you'd find your way out. I just didn't know how long it would take,” he said.
Even the current girlfriend was laughing now.
This was my first taste of the blissful years to come in my brother's house on Hawaii.
by Anna Sundberg