The Eyes of the Land Upon Me

Leaving Eden and the Trials of Aphrodite

Preparing the Temple

Today is my last full day living at Paliuli, the farm that has been my home for two of the past four years. My first year here was during Covid. I know it was a difficult time for many, but it was wonderful here on the farm. I almost said I feel guilty for saying that, but then stopped myself. It’s okay for me to acknowledge what a wonderful time that was. That doesn’t take away from anyone else who suffered during the pandemic. My life brought me to this place, Paliuli, a legendary paradise in Hawaiian culture rather like the Biblical Garden of Eden after many years of trials and difficulties. I finally had a place to land, enough money, and the ocean five minutes away. I worked here as the caretaker for a year before deciding it was time go, moving out into the larger world with a newfound confidence from not being flat broke for the first time ever in my adult life, and a calmness that came from that year of settling that prepared me for the next set of earthquakes that would push me into the next level of soul embodiment.

This past weekend I told the story of Psyche and Eros for the first time at another nearby farm. I knew my collaborator, Elle Luna, was an artist, and that her house was really nice, but I had no idea I would be walking into Aphrodite’s Temple when I showed up last Friday with my drum and bells. Elle had truly devoted herself to creating a space that took everyone’s breath away.

I tell stories by impulse. I don’t think a lot about what I’m going to choose, but I knew when Elle first invited me to collaborate the story was going to by Psyche and Eros. Now I understood. My collaborator was truly a devotee of beauty!

When I first heard the story of Psyche and Eros, I related most to Psyche. I didn’t think much about Aphrodite, a main character in the story, or really even Eros, Psyche’s mate. I was surprised when one of my mentees told me she hated this story when we journeyed with it in The Coracle. When I asked her why, she expressed frustration and sadness that Aphrodite, who was supposed to the goddess of love, was so horrible to Psyche, making her go through brutal trials in order to be reunited with Eros.

I don’t tell people what to think about the images or characters that move when I tell a story because that would take away their opportunity to have their own relationship with the images, and hopefully grow and deepen through through the relationship, just the way we grow more intimate with humans we enounter in life, but this person’s reaction did get me thinking about Aphrodite.

We first hear of Psyche and Eros in a 2nd century Roman text called The Golden Ass, also known as the Metamorphoses, by Apuleius. In this version, Aphrodite is presented as vain, jealous, and vindictive. Some goddess of love, right? I understood why my mentee was so upset by her.

But after some consideration of this vain, vindictive goddess of love, I realized Psyche and Eros would not have been able to meet as true equals like they do by the end of Metamorphoses. By denying her son Eros his desire, and by setting the seemingly hopeless tasks for Psyche, she is much more like Baba Yaga, or even Kali. Meeting a goddess like this and being challenged by her is an initiatory encounter that can make you or break you. Many don’t survive.

She is also like Pele, the Hawaiian goddess whose island I now live on. Phoenix goddesses. They know that creation only happens through an equal measure of destruction. This is a cosmic law and is just and fair. It’s not personal. It’s just confusing to those of us raised on stories of romance who believe the goddess of love and beauty should be all sweet and no bitter. Blame this on centuries of indoctrination into what a beautiful woman should be. We get the chance to expand our definition of what is beautiful, and of what love is, every time we listen to this story.

After I finished telling the story, the first person who spoke acknowledged Aphrodite—the beauty of the setting, the golden light of the sunset, the lights in the mango tree, Elle’s flower arrangements, the pillows strewn on the floor where people lay much like Romans probably once did in ancient temples. Everyone heard the awe in her voice and felt it. We were in Aphrodite’s Temple. She was with us. Through the hard times. Love was with us. It was all beautiful. There was no denying it.

Aphrodite’s Temple Styled by Elle Luna

The next time I tell the story I will do greater justice to Aphrodite. I fear I did present her as a bit of a villain, falling in line with the received patriarchal version of her that had been passed down to me. Next time, I won’t water her down, but I will make it clear that time served in Aphrodite’s temple includes suffering, but that suffering comes from a place of wanting us all to be the best that we can be. If we don’t go through trials, we’ll never discover that.

My second year at Paliuli has been so different than my first. It hasn’t been easy. It’s actually been more difficult than the Covid year. I have been faced with many struggles, but they have all been directed to a purpose, or I have directed them to a purpose, instead of the first year’s blind floundering, always a more painful way to evolve in my opinion.

This year, I have been caught up in currents far greater than me, and I kept up with them. My body didn’t blow out. My colitis did flare up, but I calmed it down much faster than any time in the past 15 years I’ve been journeying with this teacher. I showed up day after day and wrote, designed The Coracle and began to guide people in mentorship through this beautiful and challenging process, worked at my massage job, told stories at several venues, and developed a little community of myth and story lovers here on the island. If I had a word for 2024 it would be purpose. I have never known such satisfaction.

This evening before sunset I headed up the hill to say goodbye to the ‘aina that has held me. First, I stopped at the jacaranda whose roots I anointed with my friend Jada’s ashes two year ago. The canopy was so dense it blocked out the sun and I stood in that deep shade and told the tree goodbye. I didn’t hear anything back, and I don’t know where Jada is, or if she wants to be remembered, but it felt good to remember her, this beautiful, gracious woman who came to Paliuli just a few days before she died. There was nothing sentimental about it. Just stillness. Appreciation. My sadness or hopes didn’t color the moment anything than what it was.

Heading up the hill past the avocado trees, heavy with fruit this time of year, the mac nuts where the pigs have been tearing up the ground, past the lychee tree that gave me pounds and pounds of fruit this summer I bestowed on everyone I encountered, to the top of the hill where there is a heiau (temple) to the female spirits. Again, nothing dramatic happened. It was just me walking up a hill standing behind a pile of stones hidden behind some overgrown jungle, but I knew the eyes of the land were watching me and they were pleased. I paid my respects and headed back down to the bottom of the hill where the male heiau presides over the entrance to the property, quietly approached, and laid three red hibiscus on each of the stone tiers.

Tomorrow I will wake up, go for a final swim before jetting to the continent to visit my family on the east coast, and drive down the driveway lined with angels’ trumpets for the last time. I’m only moving 5 minutes away, but I know it won’t be the same. My new abode is called the Little Grass Shack, not the Garden of Eden. I may have to do something about that, though I do like that song.

I want to go back to my little grass shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii
I want to be with all the kanes and wahines that I knew long ago
I can hear old guitars a playing, on the beach at Hoonaunau
I can hear the Hawaiians saying "Komomai no kaua ika hale welakahao"
It won't be long 'til my ship will be sailing back to Kona
A grand old place that's always fair to see
I'm just a little Hawaiian and a homeside Island boy
I want to go back to my fish and poi
I want to go back to my little grass shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii
Where the Humuhumu, Nukunuku a puaa goes swimming by

—Bill Cogswell, Tommy Harrison & Johnny Noble

I also know nothing will change my relationship with this land that has had its eyes upon me these years. I have been claimed by it. I have also cared for it, the way you do for someone you love. In old Hawai’i, the common people were called the maka’āinana, the “eyes of the land.” I feel honored to be the eye of this land. I am content to be a common person under these terms.

The trees and ferns have beheld me. The pigs rooting in the hedge waiting for dark so they can come tear up the yard. The mongoose who I sometimes glimpse frolicking in the side yard before he sees me and dashes away. The spiders who weave their webs over my writing desk on the lanai. Even the centipedes who I’ve seen a few times sidewind across my bedroom ceiling. I’m sure they are there every night and they have never farmed me.

All these beings know me, and that is something I will never doubt again.

My friend’s ashes have fed the roots of the jacaranda. My name may not have ever been on a deed, but I am a daughter of Paliuli, who can’t truly be owned, no matter how much money changes hands.

I wish the new owners well, truly. To live in a temple is a glorious thing. To have survived the trials and been reunited with one’s love. With purpose. I move forward toward dawn knowing I am not leaving home because it’s inside me.

Aloha mā

Kō aloha lā ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light

Paid subscribers receive access to almost three years’ worth of posts in the archives, a 96-page PDF download of my book Weaving a Basket of Words: How to Write a Poem to Carry Water, and access to my online writers’ circle coming in January 2025, Enchanters at the End of the World (As We Know It.)

Thank you to everyone who reads The Corpus Callosum Chronicles!

An online mythic rites of passage carried on fairytales, myths, and Mū Hawaiian wisdom. Group experience launches in March 2025. Send me an email or reply to this message if you want to be added to my list for updates with details and registration info.

If you want to learn more now, go to my website: www.jenniferlighty.com.