The Day the Earth Exploded into Color

 

Joe's Orchid

      "Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams."
—Haruki Murakami

"Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun."—Eckhart Tolle

Plants had already populated the earth. Ferns reproduce without flowers by producing "spores" on the underside of their leaves. Conifers, aka "evergreens," produce offspring from cones, and the Banyan tree "walks" by way of a limb touching the ground and sprouting, thus making a new tree. That tree does the same, and so on.

Plants that flower, however, were late bloomers.

The first flower probably did not last for long. And probably flowers were a rare and isolated phenomenon for a long time.

One day, however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly the world exploded into color.

Think of this, my dear friends; we could be like the flowers reaching that threshold. The monkeys did it through their 100-Monkey Phenomenon. One day, a single little lady monkey washed her sweet potato in a stream. It wasn't long until all the monkeys on the island were washing their sweet potatoes, and they had not seen her do it.

There could be, for human beings, a sudden, explosive awakening where we pull our noses out of the mud and look to the glories that could be ours. We could see that we are glorious, powerful beings connected to a divine presence. I want to be alive to see it, experience it, and be a part of it.

A handwritten sign about two feet long and eight inches high, with the letters' Alohilani spelled out, was on the right side of Hawaiian highway in route to our house. It was our marker to turn left onto the road. Many times, we would have missed our exit had it not been for that sign. The road to our house was virtually invisible from the highway, disappearing into cane grass as tall as the car.

But, we wondered, what if the heck is Alohilani? 

We had purchased ten beautiful acres at the end of the road—the end meaning as far as you could drive. The road once transported pineapples from Pahoa to Hilo. During our time there, it was impassable beyond our property.

Along our two miles of lumpy, bumpy lava-based road leading to our house, there was a gate and a park-like setting sitting behind it, barely visible from the road. what we saw the the largest water-tank we had seen to date. We must have lived there for two months before we found out what it was. It was Alohilani, an orchid farm.

As we were preparing to leave the Island about a year later, I called Alohilani. Joe, the owner, invited us to visit his beautiful spread.

The portion we saw after driving through his gate and away from the road was acres of green around his house, manicured into a park-like setting, populated by three dogs, three horses, a multitude of sheep, and pigs who played with the dogs and slept clean and sleek under the palms.

"Isn't this what a farm is about," asked Joe, "having animals?"

My kind of guy.

Joe told us that when he first moved onto this property, the land was raw, untamed, and wild. He bulldozed, planted, and built the highest tree house I have ever seen. It must have been 100 feet in the air, and not in a tree but on poles. He built a packing building and erected rows of shade-cloth-covered structures, and filled them with orchids.

Growing orchids is labor-intensive, we found out.

 

 

 
The day my daughter, grandson, and I arrived, Joe was breaking bottles.

The bottles were about a foot long, square on the long sides, and about 2 inches wide.

Holding a bottle over a trash can, Joe gently tapped the end of each bottle with a hammer, broke the glass, and then poured the tiny orchid plants into a bucket of water. Two young women then placed a single sprout into a one-inch peat-pot.

The bottles were filled with a gel substrate that nourished little green sprouts. Joe said the suppliers did not randomly throw in the seeds; they carefully placed each plant in rows on the gel using long tweezers. In two years, those tiny plants would become exquisite flowering orchids.

Joe, now a widower, told us that the climate on the Island was perfect for orchids. The plants grown there are much hardier and healthier than those raised in greenhouses or imported from the Orient.

We told him we were leaving the Island and moving back to the mainland. Here we were, neighbors, and we had only just met when we were about to leave. I looked over at the pigs sleeping contentedly under the palm trees. They were of the wild variety, black, sleek, exquisitely clean sleeping pigs, contentedly grunting pigs on clean grass, in the shade of palms, paying us no mind. They were free to come and go at will, and those sleeping under the palms, Joe told us, had been born on the farm. The wild pigs had found a haven, even if—we discovered later—once in a while one became Joe's food.

As I was preparing to leave, Joe said, "You eat pork, don't you?" He opened a refrigerator packed to the brim with packages of meat, took out an entire pork shoulder, and thrust it into my arms. A parting gift. How wonderful to have met him.

I was investigating the possibility of importing orchids when we got back to the mainland. At the time, Joe was willing to provide me with the opportunity to import orchids. However, when we returned to the mainland, I found orchids in shops and grocery stores less expensive than I could provide. Joe found a way, for he was constantly exporting them. As he said, his plants had been grown on native soil and were thus healthier--perhaps specific companies, florists, and others appreciated that.

As I said, we were preparing to leave the Island. First, we had decided that while we made great tourists, we made lousy Polynesians. Island living was not for us. Second, my husband had developed a heart condition, and the doctor asked me, "You know about the Big Island, don't you?"

"In what regard?" I asked.

"If your husband needs further treatment, he will have to go to Honolulu."

Holy moley, I thought, I'm not commuting to Honolulu.

We couldn't get off that Island fast enough.

Incidentally, we saw a gold orchid. Really! It was as gold as gold, and a living plant. This orchid was not at Joe's but at another tourist display farm. (Perhaps that was the reason for Joe's tiny sign, only to show delivery trucks where to turn--and us--not for tourists' directions.) The golden orchid had a price tag of $25,000.

However, the golden orchid was not for sale. I wondered at the time whether this was like the old ploy of listing a thousand-dollar bottle of wine on a menu so the others seemed like a bargain.

Joe was the real deal.

Alohilani in Hawaiian means "Full of compassion."

 

 

Alohilani, Carved out of the jungle when I say we lived in the jungle, we were about one-quarter mile from Joe's place, and this shows the jungle.

Read about living for one year off the grid in the jungle of Hawaiii where the Coqui frogs (that sound like birds) sang us to sleep at night. in The Frog's Song by Joyce Davis

The Dawning of The Age of Aquarius

 

I pressure-washed the porch a couple of days ago—this doesn't have anything to do with Aquarius--but wait, I'm getting to it. I was taking advantage of a hot day to live in the spray of cold water. The weather turned cold the next day.  Many things want to be obstinate these days—including a spider web covered with dirt that the dogs had stirred up.

I hit that spider web with a force of water that had stripped paint. I must have hit that web fifty times, while it held tight, spun, and laughed at me.

I finally got it down with the broom. That shows the strength of a spider’s glue and web. Its web is stronger than steel.

But while I was standing there spraying that web, with it dancing and laughing, I thought of my school teacher who told us that little bitty river you can see from the rim of the Grand Canyon, some 4,800 feet below (almost a mile), that slowly over the millennia, dug the canyon.  

Right. It must have been a bigger river than it is now. And I don’t have a millennium to force that spider web down with this sprayer.

When I heard Archaeologist Graham Hancock explain his theory that the melting of the ice age caused the great lakes to overflow and water to rush down the Colorado River channel, carving the canyon, I thought that made sense. However, the water didn’t jump from the other states to get there. Wikipedia says there was also seismic activity, as the plateau had shifted.

Water was certainly shaping Earth's topography. It dug the Grand Canyon through soft sandstone and forged its way in Oregon through basalt to form the Columbia River gorge. Geologists now believe that when the ice age melted, so much water broke free and rushed toward the ocean, that it left the Columbia River Gorge behind. There was once a land bridge across the river, the Bridge of the Gods, that had been there so long a forest was growing on its top. Probably a landslide had slid into the river. The river’s current eventually carved a channel through that earthen plug, forming a bridge. That allowed people living on either side of the river to cross. The bridge's collapse broke that free exchange. Perhaps it made canoes a valuable commodity.

 

This is a Segway, the way conversations go, bouncing here and there. After I told my daughter I was pressure washing the porch, she told me that the Age of Aquarius was here—it’s all about water, isn’t it?

“Well, that explains what is happening.” I texted her after I had thought about how the dawning of the age of Aquarius had finally arrived. 

I had been wondering ever since we sang that song about the dawning of an age, about when the sunlight would come bursting through.  I believed it would be the age of enlightenment. If it is here now, then we are in the turbulence of it, like the sea gently rolling out, while a rogue wave comes galloping in, and we are caught in the clash.

Each astrological age lasts an average of 2,160 years, taking 25,800 years to complete its cycle through the 12 Zodiac houses. The birth of Jesus heralded in the Age of Pisces, with its symbol of the fish, and with that came the rise of world religions and a focus on  a messiah, salvation and martyrdom.

With Aquarius, it will be less about what happens after we die and more about improving life on Earth.

A Gnostic philosopher said the Age of Aquarius began on February 4, 1962. Generally, however, most astrologers believe that there is no set date when, “Boom,” it’s here. It will come prancing in on its own sweet time.

Over the years, I thought that the Age of Aquarius would be an age of spiritual connection, a honing of one’s intuition, and an understanding of how we are all connected. It will be a time when we realize that we are responsible for the future of the planet and for each other.

You can see how that would enrage the people who want power, control, and wealth.

Now I find that the Age of Aquarius is ruled by Uranus—the planet of rebellion. While Aquarius is here to challenge, to disrupt, and to inspire, it is also met with a destructive spirit, which is represented by a malignant mentality and an angry, evil mind.

I feel that is happening now. And since Uranus is about rebellion, revolution, and all things unconventional, it is no surprise that the Age of Aquarius is all about shaking up the status quo.

With a shake-up comes a desire to move backward to a time that might not be good, but it is familiar. There is a need to hold on, to resist change, to lie and cheat with the determination of winning at all costs, and like lemmings rushing into the sea, many of us will frantically paddle upstream until we are exhausted.

And remember, power will hold on with deadly force, and a failing politician needs a war.

 

Here comes the good part:

For gentle hearts who embrace the future with hope and confidence: manifestations will happen more quickly. They will learn to trust their heart and hone their intuition. They will learn that they, like Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz, had the power all along, they just didn’t know they did, and that they can answer the question Aquarius asks of them: “Who are you, when no one tells you who to be?”

They will find that leaders are redundant and that their fellow inhabitants are really good people, ones they want to work with to preserve the earth and improve all of our lives.

Wikipedia tells us that technology will leap forward, social progress will advance, and there will be a growing focus on community and the greater good.

“Forget about rigid hierarchies and old-school institutions. Aquarius is here to decentralize power and to encourage collaboration and equality. “

“Expect to see a rise in grassroots movements, innovative solutions to global problems, and a push for more humanitarian approaches to everything from politics to business. Aquarius energy is all about breaking free from tradition, embracing the new, and thinking outside the box. This is the age where science fiction could start to look like reality, as advancements in technology and society come together to create a future that’s both exciting and unpredictable.”

 

And I thought I was going to move into the forest and live off the land.

Think again.

We can do it. It’s scary but doable.

We are tempered like the urns we have been using to carry water. They have been put through the fire a half dozen times, as have we who are carrying them.

 

 

Find More

The Columbia River Gorge: this is a tributary following through a little canyon before flowing into the  Columbia River. My friend and I hiked, through the water of this canyon one hot day, fully dressed. The water came almost to our waist, and my leather sandals, became stiff images of their former self.  It was wonderful. I still remember my friend's perfectly manicured pink fingernails clutching the mossy rocks and we guided ourselves along the rim of this canyon. She was game for just about anytime she could be in water. She's swimming in heaven now, but that day was a mighty close second to it.

 

Have you noticed that some speakers and writers write better than they speak, and some speak better than they write?

One writer I positively adore reading, but not listening to.

Another, a teacher, I love hearing, but fall asleep while trying to read her books.

I suppose it's a rare soul who can achieve both writing and speaking to the reader’s/ listener’s satisfaction. Yet, we expect them to. I know one agent who will not take on a manuscript unless the author is a speaker. Well, that’s a bummer.

There is a phenomenon where a blogger, especially a blogger or a columnist, someone who writes regularly, wears out. “Jumps the shark.” That expression came from the TV show “Happy Days,” when Fonzie, while water skiing, jumped over a shark. That phrase "Jumping the shark," became known as explaining that something has reached it's end, actually it means something has gone a little too far. 

That show should have ended slightly before that episode. Yet, no baseball batter hits a home run every time at bat. It could be that they stay in a rut, or the reader has moved on. Either person can change their interests, become bored, or fall into a cliché.

We either grow together or apart.

So, what is your interest today?

I read a commenter who said she was 70 years old and had weathered many storms, and was tired of people telling her she needed to change. Change this, change that. Another writer said she had it up the kazoo with spiritual truisms, although she was spiritual.  

Maybe stop reading it and live it.

It’s time to declare our greatness and get on with it.

Be selective with what you read. It is so easy to get into something depressing, doom-and-gloom. Hey, give us a break here with you trying to over shock the other writers.

I try to add value, not just listen to my head rattle. Some say you are writing to get attention. So?!! We are all little kids at heart, Mommy, look at me.”

But we grow up and say, “What do I want to share?”  “There is something stuck in me itching for a way out.” This comes after the basic needs are met, like breathing, eating, drinking, shelter, and some modicum of financial security.

We aren’t meant to go through life harvesting fruit only to have it turn to glop in our pocket. In the movie Yentl, “Where is it Written,” Barbra Streisand sang the song, Where is it Written? “Why have the taste if not to drink the wine?”

There comes a time in one’s life when there is a genuine desire to express, to be creative, to contribute, and to have a dialogue with one’s fellow inhabitants. And it doesn’t have to be in words. Have you ever viewed a painting that so inspired you that you wanted to run out and do something creative? That happened to me once with a lounge singer in Las Vegas. I don’t know who he was, or the name of the song, but somehow his song, or his voice, or his rendition of it got to me that evening, and I wanted to go out and write something.

Nature can do that.

Go out and take a forest bath— with awe, not water. (Water works too.) 

Have you ever felt the brush of a horse’s mane, soft and fresh smelling against your cheek, and felt his lips gently nibble-kiss you? Have you ever buried your face in your dog’s fur and felt that gentle curve of his neck as he acknowledges your embrace? 

These are the moments that take our breath away.

Find more.