Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes!

Last Monday we closed on the lovely property pictured here. We are now in a position of having secured the ground for our future whilst awaiting the selling of the home we have lovingly restored from old Plantation times to its present incarnation. It’s been so much fun, and yes, a lot of work! We never planned on leaving it, so we made it our own, tropical gardens and all. You can view it here.

Still, we might have known better. Living wide open necessitates a willingness to shift and grow, both inwardly but also occasionally outwardly, at least for us. So back we go to where we lived many years ago. The high desert of New Mexico is singularly unique. And we look forward to the variety of topography and wildlife we remember from that time, as well as different opportunities for us both. Aloha for now!

photo credit for all images: Laurie Hilton; last image: Alexander Berlonghi

Darkness Before the Dawn

Humbled by an ending
which is only the beginning,
I slowly row my boat toward shore,
but find there is no safe harbor,
no spit of earth on which to land,
so I gather up oars again; not time,
not yet;

I know but don’t know this ephemeral
relationship with the calendar, conflating
ever with the now, and now, and now,
pulsing possibilities inherent
in the fullness of living;

There is a wider vision, copious
in its offering, and it stills me,
remaining silent as all possibilities
converge and congeal, darkness
always preceeding the breaking
blue grace of dawn.

all photos of Pololu Valley at daybreak
©2020 Bela Johnson

Embracing the Magic

Aloha, dear people:

Sorry for my scattered check-ins and the cessation of my own WP posts, I do value this WP community. A few months ago, the Universe tapped me on the shoulder and it precipitated some major life changes that we are in the  midst of just now.

If you’re wondering what your own future holds in 2020 and beyond, despite Eckhart Tolle’s caveat to remain in the moment (and many of us practice this on a daily basis),  I will pass on a keyword that may or may not resonate with you. That word is alignment. To my inner knowing, more and more we are being called into aligment, and many of us are discovering this requires a physical, geographical relocation. Such is the case with us.

Thus for the past three months, give or take, we have diligently placed our noses to the grindstone and finished a long-awaited addition to our house in preparation to sell it and move on. (The link just highlighted will take you to the listing. Please share if you are so moved, and mahalo!)

We have greatly enjoyed 15 years on this island, and have been blessed with a fabulous community. Still, Chris has been working far too hard and we look forward to balance and a more sustainable lifestyle. I hope to get back into radio and professional writing, as well. And not to be minimized, the move will take us nearer to our girls. Fifteen years is a long time to rarely see adult children. So here we are.

Stay tuned for more news, once we finalize things on the other end. And here’s wishing you all a peaceful New Year. Remember the “A” word, and you can’t venture far from life with heart and soul. Blessings, Bela

Contemporary

The Amazon burns, things are far of hand,
too many world leaders well beyond their command,
our planet, this paradise, abundant with life is far
out of balance and cringing with strife; the elephants,
tigers and rhinos are game for the fat wealthy hunter
to target and maim, and the hands of the greedy
with grease in their palms are dictating the lives
of the simple and calm;

As we sit and observe, there is nothing but dread,
the visions explode in the heart and the head,
yet daydreams can change in the blink of an eye,
our minds are our own to redeem or deny;
a focus, when held, on the future we see,
can follow our hands as we nurture the tree
whose branches can hold all our dreams and our hopes,
yet we must take the actions our conscience invokes.

Oncoming, Ongoing

I don’t know how I swallowed the myth
that life would ease with age, itself,
the oncoming traffic of debts
and obligations never slows; in fact
it seems sped up as we work at carving
out time away to regain sanity lost
in forgetting that all is illusion;
still, the gift of distance allows us
to recapture tender moments that now seem
luxurious in the face of ongoing fatigue;

Meanwhile the lens of memory narrows
until I can view naught but the carefree,
the careworn falling away into mist,
an idyllic life in the woods on a lake
and the ability to shut the world out
once I turned down that dirt road;
the young mother I was then, growing up
alongside my girls as I watched
them pull away into worlds and circles
of their own, bit by bit, until college
conveyed them to a distant shore
for the remainder, running headlong
into partners and jobs and college debt
as their own pirouettes began turning
in the dance of independent creation;

Now I find my own rhythms in gardens
or creating art, meditation in motion,
an outlet for emotion; still I ponder
escape, a prisoner in Paradise, even
as the fount of gratitude fills
back to overflowing and imagining
a better life anywhere else dissolves,
the image shattering, the tinkling glass
falling in shards around my feet
as I pick up the fragments of my future
to compose them into a mosaic
for visions yet to be apprehended.

Hold Fast

Hold onto the preciousness of this day, squeeze it
until dawn breaks, fanning out like silvery wings
of a hawk circling overhead, spreading a watercolor
morning across misty skies, eggs cracked into creamy
melted butter in a hot silvery pan;

Hold fast, wind sweeping across undulating fields,
cracking dead limbs from ancient trees, ruffling
whitecaps in this ever-changing oceanic landscape;

Drop anchor, stay awhile with the presence,
the in-draw of breath, the outflowing currents
of busy-ness, postulations, abstractions, suspicions
cast away now, before they clinch and claw
at the treasured peace of bliss held in the moment,
for this, as we make it, this intentional pause
stretches into constellations of ticking time;
We can choose. This is our life.

The Frequency of Home

Perfect timing is universally ordained,
though once I did not believe it so;
perfection was something I could attain
with enough effort, enough input,
by simply and assiduously being Enough
for everyone and for all time;

Then the learning began.

Years of silence, accustoming myself
to feeling the rhythms inside that synced
with the beat of Mother Earth’s pulse;
the drumbeat rolls coming not from others,
who could never fully be satiated anyway,
but welling up from within, unbidden;
swelling and coursing through my vascular
system, cleansed upon every intentional
breath by the ever-vigilant center
of being, my trustworthy heart;

Then it was discernment, and this only years
later after the chaos and struggle had died
down with those umbilical separations, mother
from child, and then, mother from child
again and anon, the multilayered garments
cast off, shell by shell of the crusty cricket
chirping in my head, humming, droning,
dropping steady pools of grievous tears until,
beyond comprehension, my eyes glistened
with clarity, no longer the weeping, wailing guilt
of my own lost youth revisited, as it seemed
in these fragile partings;

I wonder at the endless capacity of women
to mother others, long after progeny
have vanished from our everyday view;
perhaps it was this closeness, this bond
I wished somehow to recreate with those
let into my private sanctuary; and it sounds
as though I knew at the time the quantity
and quality of those who breached the gates,
but I did not; and time and again, life shook me
down and down, human fallibility rearing
its maned visage, facing off, facing down
until I had no choice but to retreat, once again,
into solitary until, with yet more experience,
I began to harvest grain from the chaff,
carefully weeding out if not disavowing myself
entirely of the very species I had come
into this life to embrace;

Nobody said it would be easy.
No one said it would be this hard, or take
this long, or try my sanity so arduously.
What price, maturity? At what cost comes peace
of mind? And yet it arrives in proper measure,
day by day, moment by moment, in the silent
interstices between thoughts, words,
and the inevitable vicissitudes of existence.