Gallery, North Hilo. I liked this place. First of all, the neon sign says it all. Second: it's low key and funky. Additional points for being pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

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She was one hot lady, if you overlook the fact that she didn't have any arms. She had that "look" of being inviting without actually looking at you. Instead, she looks off into the distance, over your right shoulder. The prices here all seem to end in .99, as if the saving the penny would make a lot of difference. Street People don't even bother to stoop down to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. The one cent savings was not a big draw for me. I just wished that she could find her arms. He legs, too, for that matter.

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Two lanes that never meet. Three, if you count the dirt road on the right. If all time happens at the same time, how is it that we can remember the past, but not the future?

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This is the way Maui looks from the window of a 6-seater plane. Looks kinda like "country", don't it? Looks a little barren, too. Not as many trees as the Big Island. At least this side of Maui. I'd bet that Maui has a wet side, too. But this isn't it.

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Another dangerous place to swim, but lovely to look at.

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The persistence of life: Here on Earth it will try to exist anywhere it can. It's hard to find a place where nothing at all can live on Earth. It seems miraculous to me that anything can exist, let alone thrive, in the lava deserts of Hawai'i. But things do. Not only exist, but thrive. And this life begins almost as soon as the rock has cooled. Green things begin to happen, peep out of the blackness, and begin to take root and live. As if by will. To begin to make the blackness green again.

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The saddle road from Hilo to Waimea.

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He wondered about the nature of reality. Was reality something that came in through his eyes or something that came in through his heart. So that he could know the answer, he closed his eyes and did not see anymore. The world for him changed. He heard sounds that he never had heard before. He felt things that were completely new to him. He detected scents more readily and was aroused by entirely new emotions. Although he could no longer see the sky, now he could feel it. This new world was not a new version of a reality, but a completely new experience in itself. He next thought: maybe if I block up my ears.......

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Pahoa, Puna District, East Side, Hawai'i (The Big Island)

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Pahoa is a place that time forgot. For many who live there or just pass through it is still 1969. Hair on men and women is long. Life is mellow. Gender is blended and many have a "stash" of whatever. The sidewalks in Pahoa are raised wooden planking, just like in Dodge city when the cowboys were there. There are a lot of restaurants and bars, but not a lot of much else. It's funky. It's fun, in a kind of outlaw way. "Pahoa?" one young girl remarked when we told her where we were staying on the East Side. "It's nice", she remarked. "It's Ghetto, but it's nice". (Just as an aside: it did have the BEST sorbet that we tasted.)

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A good road to nowhere. The saddle road, which runs across the mountains separating West from East.

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At the edge, where land meets the sea, there is both a sudden transition and a grand variety of form and color. The mosses, the stones worn smooth by the action of the waves, the white foam of churn and the spray of water exploding into the air. All of things coming together in a few short feet. It's astonishing and refreshing for both the spirit and the eye.

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We were exploring around Captain Cook, on the West side of the Big Island. It's a ways away from the bustle of Kona and higher up, so somewhat cooler. It's where Captain Cook met his end by confusing the folks who lived there. When you show up one time in a sailing ship, you're a God; the second time, apparently, you're a Demon. Anyway, we were looking in a gallery that sold local artwork and I admired some small "Shrines" made out of plastic Madonna's and plastic chickens, and plastic Goofy figures from Disney and various other odd inclusions and the gallery's owner suggested that, if I like shrines, that I venture down the road where a local woman had created a Peace Garden that incorporated various shrines from religions around the world. We went. It was a fantastic place, filled with Buddhist, American Indian, Pagan, and Christian shrines and places of contemplation. It was also filled with beautiful landscaping, parrots and parakeets, a "house cat", a library, and a meditation room. All overlooking the blue, blue Pacific Ocean. In one afternoon I felt that I'd experienced both the Yin and the Yang of shrines. Not bad for a day's work.

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Sunrise and Sunset are two important parts of my day. I enjoy seeing them when I can. It's like bookends that hold up the rest of my day. It's the start of something, and the end of that same something. I like to recognize these two common daily events. Often, of course, it's just not a possibility. Buildings block and sky and I forget to look up to see the sky. A wide, open vista is better anyway. It's better to see the whole picture: the sky, the trees, the water, the land. The particular sunset was in Hilo, Hawai'i.

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Puna district power lines. Or are they phone lines? I can't tell, but there sure are a lot of 'em. Looked good against the clouds, too.

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Downtown Hilo. $75.00 for 3 months! Gosh, it sounds good to me. That, and the American flag, too. What more do you need?

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Downtown Hilo has all the chaos that anyplace where people live has. It's old, it's new, some of it is falling apart in the graceless way that old things do. I liked it. It felt about right as a city. And, 20 minutes away, was wilderness and sublime silences.

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If you've ever wanted to, like me, place The Palace Theatre, there's an opportunity waiting in Hilo. Call now for details

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At some point on the Saddle Road between Hilo and Kona, the landscape gives way from lava desert to savanah grassland. This is the Parker Ranch. At 250,000 plus acres, it is the largest cattle ranch in the US; privately owned, it is remarkable in many ways. The topography changes in the blink of an eye and was a welcome change from the sameness of lava fields.

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It could be Iceland. But it's not. The same barren, craggy wildness, but on the other side of the globe. This is Mauna Kea and some of the finest telescopes in the world are up here at the top. We drove to the visitor's center, up above the cloud cover, at 9 thousand feet. It was cool when the sun went down into the clouds, which were below us. The wind picked up. And the sky was ablaze with more stars than I thought could fit into the vacuum of the heavens. Why is it that the places that are least able to support life here on Earth are often the most astonishingly beautiful?

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There are the trees, of course, the amazing trees that are not at all like the trees I live with in Maryland; there are the clouds as well. The amazing clouds that look nothing like the grey smears that coat the hazy sky in Washington, DC. And, then there are the churches which more or less look like the churches everywhere. The same icons. The same set up. The same liturgy and the same schedules of activities. But, the settings are so much more inviting. I would not at all be surprised to find that someone's God lives here. In fact, it would more or less appear to be self evident.

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Pahoa Library, Puna district, Hawai'i

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August and Deborah have joined us. They were held up in Maui for 24 hours because of bad weather in Houston. Go figga! Two events, seemingly having nothing to do with each other, that come together in unexpected ways to cause a change in plans. But, they made it here yesterday evening and now we are doing Hawaii Time. They were both toasted by the sun while in Maui, so we are trying to stay out of the sun. A shaded, salt water pool at the edge of the Pacific where there is OK snorkling and an easy afternoon. Mo' Flava. Mo' Layta.

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So, there's the Pacific Ocean which is huge, right? Then there is the lava rock that pretty much surrounds this island. And at the edges, they meet up and the meeting is usually dramatic. Blue blue water turns into white foam that is then thrown into the air by the force of this collision. It is organic beyond belief. I love it each time it happens because, although it seems like it would be more of the same, it is different each time. Different each time.

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This is how we were feeling last Sunday after landing from Maui. We had to wait for luggage to be burped out so we could wheel ourselves over to the Rent-A-Car place and hit the road for Hawaiian Paridise Park where our lovely round house awaited our jet lagged butts. I laid down in the parking lot and looked up to see two of my favorite things: coconut trees and a street light against a steel grey sky. Did I mention that it rains a lot in Hilo? It rains a lot in Hilo, but it's OK. Really. It's a tropical rain thing that happens here and people who don't like that channel, don't stay here. They go to Kona and tune into another experience. Me, I like the rain. Even as many as 9 or 10 times a day.

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Okay, so it's been a week since we touched down in Maui and hung out for a flight to the Big Island. I was completely toasted from the 14 hour (?) (!) flight and amazed that it was still daylight. Doesn't it ever get dark here? So, we waited for the flight and struggled a mighty struggle to stay awake. And, today, a week later, we are waiting for our friends August and Deborah to arrive from this same airport. Except their flight had to wait in Houston for two hours and they may not make it to Maui in time for the last flight out to Hawaii. So it goes. Life is a crapshoot, don't you think? On the plus side of this equation, I have figured out how to make my camera recognized as a drive and can now, oh glory days, post photos from the digital camera itself. How cool is that? How did it take over a year for me to figure this out? It's because I don't have an avitar, that's why. Bring me an Avitar! Aloha!

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Into each life a little rain must fall. If you come very very close to one of the drops and look very hard, you will be able to see your face reflected back to you, maybe upside down, maybe not. If you look deeper, you will be able to see the room behind you. And beyond that I can not say.

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Black and White in Color all over again: There's something strange about the time warp that allows me to be on the Big Island while selecting images to post here that are from another part of my life all together. It's like the weather here: it rains, the sun comes out, it rains, the sun comes out, it rains, the sun comes out. It's like that. We saw a DVD last night called something like "What the Bleep Do we Know". It was a combination of Quantum Physics, New Age teachings, and stuff that I have always felt in my heart of hearts must be true. In 30 words or less: We make our own reality, from the outside in and from the inside out. Go figga. So, here we are, and there we go.

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Image from ArtDC exhibition in Silver Spring last month. This was not art from the show, but, rather, an image left by the workpersons finishing the inside walls.

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I did some gallery sitting at the ArtDC exhibition last month. I had a painting, "Rose", in the show, not a photo. The whole experience was a lot of fun. The artwork was varied and interesting, all of it. The space was a roughed out, soon to be office space, space. Funky, but interesting. And made much better by the artwork that was hung there. Anyway, "sitting" is not that unlike sitting za zen. It's quiet. There's not a lot going on. It's an opportunity to be very much in the present moment. Somewhere a water tap is dripping. A car or truck drives by and the sound slowly builds, then slowly fades away. Sunlight comes through a dirty window and dust moats quietly float across the beam of warm light. There were a few visitors to look at the art, but mostly it was just the quiet and me. So I took a few pictures.

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Nicki, Miles, and I are logging in from Beach Dog Computer Center in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii, one of the wettest places on Earth. If, into every life, a little rain must fall, this is a pretty darn good place to have that happen. The airplance ride was like having your brain extracted through your nose, but once we landed, after 16 or so hours, we were in Hawaii. So, we went for a swim in a thermal heated pool, just like in Iceland, but in Hawaii instead, and our brains came back to us, little by little. So, for the next weeks or so, I guess I'll be posting pictures of Washington DC from here. I don't how it ended up that way, but in some strange way, it makes sense.

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