Suspended in Blue

MŌHALA I KA WAI KA MAKA O KA PUA

Aug 22, 2022

Dear Readers,

I begin this week with your words, responses to my inquiry about the poem I shared two weeks ago, “Unfolded by the Waters are the Faces of the Flowers.”

Charles wrote,

“Sometimes, it is frightening to be a member of the audience, to be asked to explain our private experience of some work of art, such as this one. It isn't merely a matter of stage-fright. There is the fear of being wrong, or of revealing something intimate about oneself, or of having an identity-crisis if everyone says, "Nope!" ... What I imagine is that this is about climate change, and something else -the dead lands are where industrial smog has become the sky, which doesn't rain. The something else: fear rose from our bodies as the sky pressed down on us, internal bleeding, suffocating, waves breaking, and a body becomes broken. That is ... about ... rape. It's an extended, and mixed metaphor. The oceans, due to The Greenhouse Effect, shall "sink" islands, and, metaphorically, flowers will "drown."

Elspeth wrote,

“We are gatecrashers. We, all of us, knowingly and unknowingly, have crashed through the limits of the world that held us. I imagine some of us just join the party we did not know we were coming to, start dancing, say Hi, but some of us don't get the chance: some are thrown out to wilderness, some tossed to the black hole. Some will search endlessly for the flowers, following trails of scent, some drown, some will let their tears fill the waters. May you be a dancer, and write always.”

Lola wrote,

“After the amazing image of the last star begging not to be alone, the willows' longing for the missing tangibles gives shape to the invisible. Air becomes breath. We become real.”

Anonymous wrote,

“Just read your poem, Jen. Not sure why but it brought me to tears. Some kind of hidden magic there. The way you weave the existence of it all together…ourselves…the natural world…the unseen. I just go back and read it again. Like it pulls me in and takes me on a magic ride through it all and somehow bears my soul. Sounds crazy…but that’s what it’s brought forth for me.”

Thank you for your responses. Some common themes I noticed are:

Crossing/destroying boundaries (rape, climate change, ecological disaster, drowning); the ability of longing to shape form, and the word’s ability to bear the soul and to weave together the seen and unseen.

These are all things I see, hear, but mostly sense in the poem, although I didn’t intend any of them when I wrote it. In fact, I had no intentions at all when I wrote this poem other than writing it. Here is its origin story:

Thirteen years ago, I was living in a treehouse aerie on Napo’opo’o Road in Captain Cook on Moku o Keawe, Hawai’i Island, although back then I just called it The Big Island like every other colonizer. My benefactress was a German woman of means named Renate who rescued me from a work trade after she got into a disagreement with the property owner. “I can’t leave you here,” she announced. “Come live with me in Captain Cook.”

“But Renate, I don’t have any money to pay rent.”

“I don’t care. I’ll pay the rent. You can cook. I hate cooking. And help me with my English. And none of that codependent shit! If you don’t like something tell me.”

And so began one of the great friendships of my life. I cooked, helped Renate refine her already excellent English, and every morning coaxed her down the rocky slope into the splendiferous blue of Kealakekua Bay where we were lucky enough to swim with the dolphins before it became illegal.

In the afternoon, basking in the dolphin glow as our bodies rewired themselves, we would concoct plans for future projects we could collaborate on. Renate was a successful software engineer back in Germany. Her company was contracted by Siemens and the German government and she seemed to have no financial worries. I had been raised not to ask about money, but I think at 49 she was basically successful enough to retire. Fortunately, she had whatever means she needed to follow a strong inner call. Her dream, to be an American of all things, something I was often ashamed of. She couldn’t believe that at age 41 I had no professional success or money, especially because she considered me highly intelligent. I was American, but not a very good one.

At that time I was still making a living working seasonally on Block Island making sandwiches at Three Sisters, foraging seaweed I sold at the farmers’ market, cleaning rental homes-whatever it took so I could have the winter off to write. My self-esteem was low and though I thought I was pretty awake compared to most of humanity, I was still sound asleep.

Some of the fog had lifted when I got the message the fall of my 39th year that it was time to propel myself out of the Block Island fairy realm cocoon to Peru. I had stewed in the acid of my own dissolution long enough. It was the usual story-ayahuasca, sacred sites, code activations (though nobody was using that word yet in 2009).

Peru go things moving, and the next winter I found myself those afternoons on the lanai with Renate, where woozy with dolphin love, we brainstormed ideas of a business we could start together. Having a business would be one path to Renate getting a green card, so though I didn’t think we’d actually do it, I played along. I mention this only to show how I’ve shut myself off from dreaming just because I didn’t believe it could ever happen. I would have loved to have run a business with Renate, especially the one we created, which was a type of camp working with young people to connect them to the land and Hawaiian culture.

Maybe we would have done it-back then wasn’t the right time-but our creation was not in the cards. Little did we know those lazy afternoons on the lanai that Renate only had eight years left this time around on Earth. Eight years later I would pick up the phone and hear from her girlfriend I’d never met that she had died from ovarian cancer a month ago. She had been going through Renate’s address book calling her friends to let them know.

I made contact with Renate’s sister, too. I was the only one who knew about the Hawai’i stage of her life and I was able to flesh out Renate’s transformation for her through sharing our experiences. Her sister listened to my stories of the dolphins, the laughter, our intense conversations to free ourselves from codependence that often made our other friends uncomfortable. She thanked me for helping her understand her sister’s abrupt transition from Germany to the US. “I’m not surprised Renate died young,” she told me. “She was always ahead of everyone.”

Renate did go on to get a green card and fall in love, creating an American life for herself with her fiancé in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One thing I shared with her sister was how Renate bravely went out of her comfort zone into deeper shades of blue. On her 49th birthday, she really wanted a picture of herself with a dolphin. I had read that the dolphins communicated telepathically, so when they were swimming around us I sent a picture out from my mind of one swimming with Renate. I was dumbstruck when my vision played out in front of me. One dolphin separated from the pod and swam to Renate, coming to stillness just a new inches from her floating form. I dove under them and took the photo, the dolphin swam away, and after that we drove in pure exultation to the summit of Mauna Kea where I almost passed out from the altitude in the Mustang convertible we rented and Renate hiked to the summit.

I’m not sure why I’m telling you all this about Renate, but my hands are just doing it, and my self-appointed task at the moment is to trust them. I feel like if I do, my worlds will come together, my internal reality will match my exterior-my great longing.

One way I can unify my worlds is to speak directly of my experiences without the filter of poetry. People from one of the worlds I inhabit-the new age spiritual community, will I believe connect to what I’m saying through this mode. This community accepts concepts like channeling and telepathy as fact, something not considered true by my other communities like academia and poetry.

In the spiritual community channeling is usually considered to be the reception of a message beyond the self. Artists, especially poets, may also think of their creations this way, they just aren’t as literal about it, at least not the artists I admire the most, although I do remember reading that Robert Graves advised a young W.S. Merwin, a poet I adore who reached the apotheosis of literary academic fame, to literally get down on his knees and pray to the muse. That sounds like someone who believes in the Muse as an external force. I’m sure there are new age artists that claim to channel entities as the source of their creations, I just don’t usually like their art.

My point is that as a member of these two communities (and some others) channeling and telepathy are real in my world-just not in a way that rings true for the new age spiritual community. I’m not claiming an outside source with a name like many contemporary channelers that can be identified and commodified. My channeling is more subtle-more integrated really-which means in my head it sounds like my own voice. In truth, it makes me feel isolated from both populations.

All of this to say I wish I wasn’t so lonely.

How to unburden myself of this feeling? By revealing myself. “No more of this codependent shit!”

Renate guaranteed me that and she did not fail. I never felt less than her because she was paying for everything. I felt seen and appreciated by her from the inside out.

This essay is a meander, a flowering river of words. For those who prefer the direct current out past the reef to the ocean I’ll say it: the poem “Unfolded by the Waters are the Faces of the Flowers” is a channeled recollection of a previous ecological catastrophe on Earth, most likely a deluge, that wiped out most of human civilization, most likely the civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis.

Your interpretations support this. Recollect the common themes from reader comments:

It doesn’t matter to me if you believe it or not. All that matters is that I conveyed the emotions of that great loss that still affects us. We are a traumatized species, and like many traumatized individuals, collectively we are trying to destroy what we perceive as dangerous before it can hurt us again.

But who wants to destroy us? Mother Earth? How could this be?

Maybe she’s asking the same thing of us.

By the way, I don’t know if I believe any of this, but it helps me get through the day, and that’s the way to live life on its own best terms. One day at a time as they say in AA, which I’m not a member of, though I do see the 12 Steps as a legitimate spiritual path that could help us all be better humans.

I digress…Recovery. That’s the point of AA. It’s also what could save us from repeating the same mistakes of our ancestors who faced previous catastrophes due to ecological collapse due to climate change.

Recover. Recollect. Remember.

We are here for a reason. I hear people say the Earth will be better off without humans, but I don’t believe it. What if Earth loves us as much as I love her?

We have to believe we are good. This could be a pathway of redemption for humanity, a correction to the distortions we are currently living out in a dream where apocalypse seems inevitable.

What else could we remember if we believed in ourselves? Remember the true meaning of apocalypse from Ancient Greek is to unveil.

Renate never got to see me become a little successful in the world’s eyes. She never got to read “Breaking Up With The Moon,” my poetry chapbook published by Finishing Line Press or get an aguahara session with me in Laguna Bacalar, where I really stepped into my power in a physical way through channeling the water. I never got to take her out to dinner with money I earned. Not that she cared. (No more codependent shit!)

We did get to ride bikes together on Block Island, careening down Rodman’s Hollow to Black Rock where we clambered down the bluff and threw ourselves into the crisp Atlantic Ocean, bridging Hawaii’s Lemuria with Block Island’s Atlantis. Most important, with her I was “MŌHALA I KA WAI KA MAKA O KA PUA."

Unfolded by the water are the faces of the flowers

It’s a Hawaiian proverb, one Renate and I discovered when we were looking for a name for our business. It’s not the one we chose, but I loved it so much I jotted it down in a notebook and a couple of years later used it as the title of this poem. But it’s not just a title, it’s the genesis. More than that-it’s a genesis. Etymologically, genesis is not a noun first. Before the solid hard-bound Bible, there was the mother’s flowing birth blood. Genesis is a verb meaning to give birth or beget. The beginning was never an actual moment. It’s happening all the time and it’s still happening and Renate and that dolphin who floated next to her on her 49th birthday are still smiling at each other.

Unfolded by the water are the faces of the flowers

“Flowers thrive where there is water, as thriving people are found where living conditions are good.” -’Ōlolo No’eau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings, by Mary Kawena Pukui.

Yes, we lived in Hawai’i where it was never cold enough for a coat except on Mauna Kea, where we fell asleep to the scent of angel’s trumpets and awoke to the aroma of plumeria, where we slid into the water that was almost body temperature to be greeted with the dolphins’ unconditional love, but I didn’t thrive because of that. The proverb came true for me because of my friend’s love. She saw me beyond social and economic status, and yes, I think we were together in Kealakekua in a past life, most likely in many going back to Atlantis and Lemuria, and maybe even before that to the stars. Maybe we sailed to Earth together on a canoe down the star trails as remembered in the Hawaiian mele.

None of this matters and all of this matters because every ending is a beginning. Although it may seem easier to thrive in a tropical setting, all that’s really needed is love. And love doesn’t need to come from others. You can look in the mirror. Or a still pond. Or even a bowl of water. But oh-when it does…

When it does it looks like Renate close to death in Santa Fe, on a spring day knowing she has just survived her worst fear of dying in the cold. She confided that to me once. It was one of her excuses for not wanting to get in the ocean at 7am. “This water is not cold!” I yelled at her from the other side of the surf. It worked every time. She got in and the rest was history and then we were suspended in blue until we forgot we ever needed a horizon to know ourselves.

In the photographs her partner sent me I saw this. She is curled into herself like a freshly sprouted fern under a blanket in bed with her Italian greyhounds tucked in the blanket’s folds, spooned by her beloved whose arms lightly envelop her still form. There are others in the room, witnesses to the beauty of surrender. And though I wasn’t there in the physical, through the photos I was.

Images echoing down timelines branching out like capillaries to the stars.

What’s beyond?

Genesis.