The Day Muhammed Ali Stepped Out of a Pink-Carpeted Limo

Daily writing prompt

Who is the most famous or infamous person you have ever met?

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When I was sixteen,
I worked at a local radio station
that hosted some of the biggest names in the business—
deejays like Casey Kasem and Bob Eubanks,
both of whom would later rise to television fame.

They were true gentlemen,
stand-up guys who always acknowledged
even unpaid interns like me.

The station often invited musicians on the rise
to answer request lines, so I met quite a few—
Frank Zappa.
The Doors.
The Turtles (remember them?).
The Standells (ditto).
Brenton Wood—the Oogum Boogum man himself.

And then there were the surprises,
the back-door arrivals no one announced.

One afternoon I stepped outside
just as a stretch limo pulled up.
Out stepped Muhammad Ali,
larger than life,
resplendent in a suit that shimmered
under the California sun.

The limo’s carpet—pink chinchilla—
was what struck me most.
Maybe it was the audacity of it,
his sheer confidence.

He didn’t see us, of course—
we were just wide-eyed kids,
invisible to greatness.
But I didn’t mind.
It was enough to breathe
the same air as the man
who floated like a butterfly
and stung like a bee.

The city was burning then—
riots in Los Angeles,
smoke rising not far
from where we played records
and answered listener requests.

Yet even that big city
seemed small beside the horror
of the lynchings still happening in the South.

Such was America in the sixties—
brilliance and brutality,
side by side.

And how have things changed,
all these years later?
We seem to be circling the same fires—
racism, equal rights,
tolerance of differences.

Will it matter that we ever raised our voices?
Will this nation ever mature enough
to contain diversity of all sorts?

If I didn’t believe it was possible,
I can hardly think what else
would hold me fast—
to a life as broad and wide
as the blessings I can conceive
beneath the starry dome of heaven.

author with deejay Dave Hull, “The Hullabalooer” ~ c 1968

Pulse

Daily writing prompt

Do you need time?

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I’m not sure I need time —
at least not as it’s commonly considered.
It’s simply what we’re given, like it or not,
for as long as we draw breath:
a new sunrise, a fading sunset,
and the spaces in between,
where we live out an unknown number of days
on this breathing planet.

Time to ponder or to provide,
to nurture, to rest,
depending on the moment
and the hands we’re dealt.

There is time for mountains to rise,
for seas to tumble rhythmically on distant shores.
Time for ground creatures to burrow in before winter,
for hawks to circle rivers and fields, searching —
always searching — for what sustains them.
Time for trees to grow or go dormant,
for planets to whirl their patient orbits —
there is time.

How we humans engage time is another matter.
We guard it, chase it, curse it,
as though it had power over us.
But time simply is.
Rushing or hoarding has never bought us
one more minute in an hour
or one more day in a year.

Perhaps all that’s left
is to flow with it — scheduled or not —
to find our own rhythm
within its turning frame.
We can wrangle with it until the end,
but still, it will roll on.

And maybe that’s mercy:
that time needs nothing from us
but our willingness to live inside it —
fully, gratefully,
while we can.

Pololu sunrise ~ 2016, bj

If I Could Re-live a Year

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

At first, the question seems silly.
Why would anyone want to go back, when life has already pressed us forward through so much change, so much learning, so many quiet awakenings? Still, curiosity tugs at the edges of my mind.

If I could re-live a year, I think it would be when I was thirteen—
that threshold between innocence and awareness, when childhood was still close enough to touch but the future shimmered like a mirage, just visible, just out of reach.
I was goofy then, unguarded, untamed—
a girl who didn’t yet know the difference between foolishness and freedom.
Before she learned her family’s proclivity for teasing with a cruel edge,
and learned instead that humor could be pure expression, joy for its own sake.

If I could return with the wisdom I carry now, I would live that year differently.
I would still laugh too loudly, make up silly rhymes, skip when others walked.
Only this time, I would do it without the awkwardness born of shame.
I would understand that joy, too, is a sacred language.

I would learn boundaries early—not as walls, but as the gentle contours of self-respect.
I would know that saying no isn’t rejection; it’s direction.
I would feel the difference between my energy and another’s,
and recognize when their storm wasn’t mine to claim or calm.

How many times did I twist myself into knots, trying to make others comfortable—
to belong somewhere, anywhere?
I see now that much of what felt like rejection or disapproval
wasn’t really about me at all.
People often speak from their own pain,
projecting it onto whoever happens to be nearby.
If I could re-live thirteen, I’d carry compassion
but not the weight of other people’s weather.
I’d learn to stay steady in my own clear sky.
I’d step into my calling sooner,
sparing myself the long years of believing
I wasn’t enough, just as I was.

I would revel in my perfect body—not because it was perfect by anyone else’s measure,
but because it worked, it moved, it glowed with life.
I would run just to feel my heart pounding,
my breath caught on the wonder of knowing the possibilities ahead.

Thirteen was an age when the world, too, whispered, You can be anything.
And I believed it.
I would hold on to that belief with both hands this time,
not letting it be sanded down by the years of practicality and self-doubt that followed.
I would protect the part of me that knew magic was real,
because I had seen it—in a sunset, in a dog’s eyes,
in laughter so free it ached in my ribs.

To re-live thirteen, not with regret but with reverence—that would be enough.
Not to rewrite the past, but to honor it,
to bless that young girl for surviving what she didn’t understand,
and to thank her for keeping the spark alive
long enough for me to remember who I was meant to be.

Perhaps that’s what it means to re-live a year:
not to go backward at all,
but to let the child we once were finally feel seen
by the person who came home to herself.

Yosemite family vacay ~ 1960ish

Journey

In self-created confinement I dwell,
waves of consciousness crashing
onto undisclosed shorelines,
thundering hooves of phantom horses
approaching through the sands of time.

Some might shudder at these contemplative
spaces — interstices of time
before necessary activities seep in
to deplete inner resources —
yet how else to manage my own reserves?

It has ever been thus, on this shore
or that, in woods, blended into desert sage,
on this island paradise many yearn for.
And I wonder at life, at the marking of time,
random wandering through dreamscapes
of beauty, illusion teased into being.

Some call it journey — for how else to wrap
and ponder this packaged tour, fractal
in eternity — a never-ending celebration
of sense and sight and touch,
carnality and wits, the wonderment and awe.

And what is temptation if not diversion,
exorcising the terror of un-being,
a race to the finish — dip in the gold-leafed glory
of being alive, alight with threaded hues,
fabric of existence, cover for sorrow
at the temporality we share; and how
to eke out more, squeeze meaning
from the mundane — debts and obligations,
distractions and decisions, the weight
of knowing it will all be plowed asunder
and always too soon, too soon.

I sit with it daily, the quaking subsided,
ride it out in strong limbs while pedaling,
walk in companionship with creation,
eyes wide-open in wonder,
capturing with my lens
what might otherwise be missed.

South Kohala ~ bj 2025

The Land Still Listens

The land still listens, though we do not answer.
We have learned to speak to the wrong gods—
technology, televised evangelists, telecommunication—
forgetting the source to which we owe our lives.

Our flesh remembers dolphin and tree,
remembers the cliffs that yawn above the desert
and the salt expanse of ocean light.
We are of the Earth, and of the stars as well,
though most have forgotten those origins,
forging our brief tenure as if alone.

Dogs howl at night and we curse the noise,
not thinking to step into the cold
to see what the moon is saying.
Trees wail in wind, struck to their core,
but we hear only branches clattering—
never the message in their grief.

We’ve tuned our nervous systems
to the static of twenty-first-century life.
The subtler signals are not lost—
only unheard.
And this conversation should go both ways,
as every true conversation does.

Mother Earth still waits, an ample goddess
with room on her lap for all of us.
If we sit in wonder and listen,
her breath will steady ours again.

Clara in meditation ~ bj 2024