Touched By Magic

 

An ineffable feeling greeted me upon returning home to Santa Fe. Yes, my work responsibilities are coming at me again and the weather is freezing. Yet I have often felt charmed, as though touched by protective magic. 

The three weeks with Amy on the Big Island of Hawaii relaxed me and stimulated my imagination. Reflecting on the excursion, Amy and I agree it was governed by SOUL. On a cellular basis I felt in relationship with the vast Pacific Ocean, swimming and playing in it, seeing its awesome expanses and feeling its power. The island is quite complex. Volcanoes rose from our feet, dry coastal areas contrasted with tropical seasides, black lava fields stretched for miles and lush coffee plantations offered some of the worlds best coffee. Indigenous original people kept ancient traditions intact and transplants mixed in to Island life, creating unique flavors. 

I told Amy in advance that we needed three weeks to get “the feeling.” I know from experience that the first week is spent decompressing and adjusting. 

After Hawaii we turned up in Los Angeles and then Santa Barbara (see A Heartbeat). 

Arriving home in Santa Fe late at night, snow crunched underfoot and the first thing we did was turn the heat up. It felt good to be in our house amid our familiar and cozy surroundings. And then the feeling of being blessed came, and it has come often since.

A Heartbeat

Hawaii is about 2,300 miles at a distance now but just a heartbeat away in our mind and heart. This is what experiences do when they enter our psyche. They abolish time and space and become immortal, i.e. they live forever in the vault of memory. Now I am very happy to have the last three weeks immortalized within. 

As Seals & Crofts sang in their song, “We may never pass this way again.”

My earthly existence has not been all roses. But I know that when I fully experience life unfiltered, even when it feels unbearable, it is better.

We are writing the book of our lives as we go along.

When we landed in Los Angeles friends took us in. We toured around together and visited the famous Laurel Canyon—of movie, artist and musician fame. Then lunch on Sunset Blvd, and an afternoon at the Getty Museum.

Now we are in Santa Barbara. My two brothers live here. The town has many memories for me. I lived here at one time, and my parents had a home in Santa Barbara for thirty years. My daughter spent some of the last months of her life here—with me beside her.

Today after a family breakfast we went lawn bowling, then I took Amy to see the home my parents lived in. It is close to the Old Mission, so we visited, then walked to the rose garden across the way. Remarkable that roses are blooming. The most fragrant we decided upon was called Peace. 

Meanwhile back in Santa Fe it is snowing. We will be there tomorrow. 

I have to learn to live with shoes on my feet again. 

Ineffable And Awesome

Each morning, when Heidi Of The Mountains and I go to our car that is parked outside our bungalow in a tropical forest, a fresh flower has arrived on the hood or windshield. It is as if a wind fairy has thought to pluck it from a tree to delight us. Outside our back door is a fresh water stream that laughs as it runs over the rock and earth amid trees that drop flowers into it on its way to the nearby ocean. Ah, the ocean! What a marvelous, ineffable, and awesome presence. It informs all of life here on Kauai, Hawaii. As the ocean goes, so goes the island.

It is easy to be transported into fairyland here. The temperature does not fluctuate out of the comfort zone, gentle breezes play continually, the rain comes and goes and the sun arrives bringing rainbows, the volcanic earth is fertile and provides abundance, delicious fresh fish are always ready for the dinner plate, and the ocean is near enough to jump into.
If there is a downside to all of this, it is that it feels like being a kid at summer camp. You have tons of fun, but eventually you will get bored with the limited opportunities and want to go outside the boundaries. Meanwhile, the surrounding ocean is a formidable restraint and says, “My kingdom is vast, ferocious and uninhabitable, so do not venture here.”













It is remarkable, and one of the great mysteries of the greatness of human spirit that many years before modern times, people on crude rafts or by canoe ever arrived here at all.

Unusual And Entrancing Episodes

Sarah and I. We are at a dinner party in Chicago, at the home of her aunt. In the background is a large abstract painting I did in 2007.

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." Edgar Allan Poe,  Eleonora

Paris Street; Rainy Day, by Gustave Caillebotte
French, 1848–1894   Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

Land meets the sea, Kauai, Hawaii

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”
 William Shakespeare

The past thirty days, THE DREAM delivered unusual and entrancing episodes into the chapters of my life. I am a whirling dervish, with little care for possessions, so it was not hard to move out of the house I had been living in for the past year. After all, I have a studio, and recently started a gallery to show my art. My fiancé took some of my things for safekeeping into her home, and just as the days began to chill and leaves began falling, I went to Santa Barbara, California, where my parents live.

At the beach, Santa Barbara

Rose, growing in my mother's backyard

From there, I arrived in Kauai, Hawaii, an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. After ten days, Heidi Of The Mountains arrived and we married, entwined in love, flowers, and billowing elements where the sea meets the shore.

The newlyweds, Kauai, Hawaii

The endless sea, wild and free.

Monk seals

Halo around the sun, with Palm trees in front.

Chicago!

Ten days later we arrived in Chicago, the “windy city” on Lake Michigan, where sturdy buildings of steel and glass reach high into the air, disappearing into clouds overhead. Everything is available—museums, institutions of higher learning, vast commerce, science and industry, fine dining, entertainment, taxis, trains, busses.

Sarah, on her 25th birthday, 11-11-2011

My daughter, Sarah, lives in Chicago, and on November 11, (11-11-2011) celebrated her birthday with a grand dinner and then a dance party with live band at a local nightclub.

Dancing in a club . . . 

One month of whirlwind sites and sounds, and here I have made a photomontage. As it is said, a picture is worth one thousand words.

Seen at the Shedd Aquatrium

Baha'i Temple, Wilmette, outside Chicago

Part Of A Twosome

Wow. In one day I went from a single man to married. Well, maybe not in one day, since Lori and I had been dating for two years and a “couple” for one year.

I liked my five years of being single, especially the year of 2008, when I went solo around the world for twelve months, living in THE DREAM.

Now, I am in a conjugal relationship—part of a twosome. Fortunately, we give each other happiness, and can bounce down the path of life joyfully. I met Lori when she modeled for a life-drawing group and I spent three hours studying her figure. I have drawn her many times since then and we have become so enmeshed that she quit her long time job as a probation officer so that she is now my gallery manager and sells my artwork full time.

This week we married here on the island of Kauai. We wanted the ceremony to be very private, so essentially, it was just the two of us filling out Hawaiian legal papers and finding Baha’i’s to witness and sign. We had some nervous moments in preparation, but Spirit took over and accomplished our highest good.

Today, we leave lovely Kauai and arrive in Chicago. My daughter is celebrating her birthday with a big party on an auspicious day—11-11-2011.

Please enjoy the website I made: A SOJOURN ON KAUAI, HAWAII.

Nature Is king

Why do I love to return to Kauai, Hawaii? After all, it is like standing on one of the highest mountains in the world in the middle of nowhere. The mountain begins underwater and rises 18,000 feet (5,486 meters) to sea level. Emptiness of the Pacific Ocean surrounds this tiny island in every direction for at least 2400 miles. The wettest spot on earth is here, on Mount Waiʻaleʻale, 5,148 feet (1,569 m), with an annual average rainfall of 460 inches (1,200 cm). Yet nearby, on the west coast of the island, it is quite dry.

A year after my oldest daughter Naomi died at the age of nineteen, I lived on Kauai for six weeks while I finished writing my book, A Heart Traced In Sand, about her life and struggle against cancer. I have done many paintings here, made friends with a surfer who paints, found favorite places to swim in the ocean and walk on beaches, learned where the best fish market is, and where the weekly farmer’s market happens. I have hiked the Waimea Canyon and along the Napali coastline. And now, I am getting married on Kauai, to Heidi Of The Mountains, on November 4. She has arrived to join me, and every day we take long walks on the beach at dawn and sunset.

Hawaii is one of the last places on earth to be inhabited by humans and only in 1778 “modern” contact became established when it was discovered by Captain James Cook, (British, 1728-1779). Even now, there are only 63,000 citizens—less than the small city of Santa Fe, New Mexico where I am from. Nature is king, and on the North Shore, I have not seen a movie theater, disco, or McDonald’s.

Because of their isolation the Hawaiian Islands are biologically unique. Hawaii has no native land reptiles or amphibians and only two native mammals, the horay bat and monk seal. Over 4300 species of plants and animals exist only in the eight Hawaiian high islands. The 1000 native plants evolved from as few as 280 original plant colonists and 100 endemic bird species developed from as few as 15 original aviators.

Verdant Kauai, oil on board, 11 x 14 inches

Here for more paintings by Steven Boone
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Billowing, Fathomless Seas

Whenever I visit Hawaii, the most remote area of land on the planet earth, I always ponder how people arrived in the first place. It is believed Polynesian people settled onto the islands at least 1200 years ago from land over 2500 miles away. The only way to get here was on crude boats made of wood, across billowing, fathomless seas ready to swallow them at any moment. It seems miraculous and gives me a deep respect for the adventurers who started on their improbable journey.

What prompted the Polynesians to set sail into the unknown? They drifted with sea currents for days, weeks, months—seeing nothing but water, the flat horizon, and the sky above. Certainly, sharks were about, and storms, hefty waves, and rain. To discover the tiny volcanic islands of Hawaii would be a miracle. And then, how would they ever return and establish trade routes? Maybe people back then were guided with stronger intuition and instinct, which modern man has lost.

The other day, I arose before dawn to hike in Waimea Canyon, on Kauai. When I arrived at the trailhead, the sun was at the horizon. I noticed a perfumed scent of blossoms in the air and set to walking through wet woods. I expected to walk 3 miles total, with a lookout offering a view of the NaPali coast and Pacific Ocean at the end of the trail. I discovered mid-way that the hike is 3 miles to the lookout, so 6 miles roundtrip. The air warmed up and the tropical environment held more humidity than I am accustomed too at home in the dry mountains of Santa Fe. I sweated profusely and on the walk back was panting on the strenuous, rugged trail. At one time, I felt so tired I talked to my angels . . . especially Naomi, and asked for inspiration to continue. The response was a sort of laughter—and the playful admonishment to take stock of my strength. I was focused on my weakness, but really, there was plenty of strength to get me through. Then I found new vigor to continue on unabated.

And I think this is how Hawaii was discovered. The primitive people relied on spirit to gain their strength and accomplish their impossible goals.

"Misty Mountains Of Kauai, Hawaii" oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches

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Kauai

THE DREAM has brought me once again to Kauai, Hawaii. I will be here for three weeks, writing, painting, photographing, adventuring, observing, relaxing, simplifying, transforming, and oh yes, marrying Heidi Of The Mountains on November 4.

My flight from Los Angeles began at 6:10 PM yesterday, and I arrived in Hawaii at 9:00 PM. We flew against the rotation of the earth so although the trip took over five hours we only lost two.

I awoke this morning and while in bed, savored the quiet, lulling environment, listening to doves, gentle breezes stirring palm leaves, and a rooster crowing. As I engage the day, everything speaks to me, saying, slow down, loosen your cares, and give in to the primal mother, the great SEA, from whence all life emerged. I feel my former life is far away—on the other side of a rainbow.

Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian Isles. The Hawaiian Islands are the most remote land masses in the world—over two thousand miles from any other land.

At first, I am exploring the west coast region for a few days, including Waimea Canyon, one of the world's most scenic canyons, before traveling to the North Shore, an area I know intimately and where Heidi Of The Mountains and I will marry.

Our marriage will be informal and free. We do not have a plan, just the will and a happy expectation. All we need is each other and the love between us, then speak our commitment in front of a witness and get Hawaiian civil papers signed.