♋

If there’s anything I’ve learned,

It’s that you’ll always wish you had spent more time, more energy, more consideration, more of anything you had to offer, and then some more,

on the people who mean(t) everything to you

So love now. Don’t store your love on the shelf for a later date. Love is an energy, it can’t be wasted. Love is to be made, built, shared, experienced, and felt. Love is not to be kept in some deep, untouched place of the soul just accumulating the dust of your fears. And, I can promise you, whatever it is that you’re doing now will seem a hell of a lot less significant when the people you want to love are no longer there to receive it.

So love now.

This morning I find myself focused on the meaning of names…

My given Hawaiian name is Makalapuakealohiwela

Makalapua - to blossom forth

Ke ‘alohi - literally, the glitter of the sun on the surface of the ocean, or brilliance

Wela - passion, warmth, heat, fire

To blossom forth with brilliance & passion 

What does your name mean?

I have named you queen.

There are taller ones than you, taller.

There are purer ones than you, purer.

There are lovelier than you, lovelier.

But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets

no one recognizes you.

No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks

at the carpet of red gold

that you tread as you pass,

the nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear

all the rivers sound

in my body, bells

shake the sky,

and a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I,

only you and I, my love,

listen to it.  

—  Pablo Neruda

• I am covered in mud and manoa mountain wai (fresh water). It feels beautiful. 

I am almost disgusted by how happy I am these days. I feel refreshed. Like I spent the last few days on another planet or living in the depths of the ocean. My smile is constantly beaming like the moon in the sky. I think it’s infectious ‘cause I feel it in the air around me.

I want you all to feel this, even if its just while you’re reading this post.

“Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” — Warsan Shire

people can be such idiots (myself included)

we are reminded

every minute, of every day

how beautiful we are,

how much we mean,

and how important our presence is

not just by our social surroundings

but by the very connection

to the phenomenal earth we walk,

to the land we thrive on and with

yet, in foolishness,

we refuse to absorb this light

and let it shine through us

in forms of love

and in that,

we deny our own potential

to be a vessel

of perfect energy

I’m in the process of making a smoov summer slow jamz playlist….suggestions?

circular orbs — bounce
soft, (yet) firm, warm, grabbable
the heart beats beneath

You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing.  — E.E. Cummings

Sooo my uncle gave me a half of my aunt’s famously potent pot cookies before I treated my crazy Jewish family to my tutu’s (grandma in Hawaiian) favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner. I still can’t tell whether or not it was good idea or a bad one….hahaha, probably good.

The collective conversations between the generations were comical to say the least, and somehow, at the peak of my high, my (joke of a) love life became the main topic of conversation. My amazing lil’ punk of a cousin, Joe, sensed my suffering and shut my grandma right up by telling her I had a girlfriend. Bahahaha. Oh man, I gave him the biggest hug later, boy really had my back.

Aw man, and so many other ridiculous moments took place, all I could think the whole time was, “I gotta write more of this shit down.” It felt like somewhere in between a “wow, this is hilarious” and a “wow, I need a double whiskey on the rocks following a shot of tequila.”

Some day man, I’m gonna have to try and document this shit…. I just wish I could capture it better in words.

if you’re gonna be out and about in SF today

keep your eyes open

for a 5’3”, curvy brunette,

who has a really bouncy walk

and smiles, like a fool, in the sunshine

Woman is the first environment.
— Mohawk Midwife Kasti Cook

She kissed as though she, alone, could forge the signature of the sun. — Saul Williams

Mykonos Bottom & Martinique Top by Mikoh Swimwear

Dear Maurice Sendak,

I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about you, but I know that your need to create images of and with words has forever influenced the building philosophy through which I am learning to thrive.

I remember being in the front room of my old house, in my purple oversized t-shirt, and staring at the ceiling from our shiny new bunk bed. I asked Papa to read Where the Wild Things Are to us on my first night sleeping closer to the stars. I recall thinking that I wanted to dream a little bigger that night. I pulled my cream-colored crochet blanket up to my chest and I thought in my 5-year-old mind,

I want to be a wild thing.

I knew then that a wild thing could not be tamed, a wild thing cannot be kept inside, a wild thing will not be silenced or stopped, and that a wild thing can never be fully captured. I know now that a wild thing must simply be. 

So mahalo and aloha a hui hou to you Mr. Sendak.

To your raw and honest art, to your simple yet complex creativity.

I’ll honor your life by forever being a free and wild thing.

Sensuality does not wear a watch but she always gets to the essential places on time. She is adventurous and not particularly quiet. She was reprimanded in grade school because she couldn’t sit still all day long. She needs to move. She thinks with her body. Even when she goes to the library to read Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte, she starts reading out loud and swaying with the words, and before she can figure out what is happening, she is asked to leave. As you might expect, she is a disaster at office jobs. 

Sensuality has exquisite skin and she appreciates it in others as well. There are other people whose skin is soft and clear and healthy but something about Sensuality’s skin announces that she is alive. When the sun bursts forth in May, Sensuality likes to take off her shirt and feel the sweet warmth of the sun’s rays brush across her shoulder. This is not intended as a provocative gesture but other people are, as usual, upset. Sensuality does not understand why everyone else is so disturbed by her. As a young girl, she was often scolded for going barefoot. 

Sensuality likes to make love at the border where time and space change places. When she is considering a potential lover, she takes him to the ocean and watches. Does he dance with the waves? Does he tell her about the time he slept on the beach when he was seventeen and woke up in the middle of the night to look at the moon? Does he laugh and cry and notice how big the sky is? 

It is spring now, and Sensuality is very much in love these days. Her new friend is very sweet. Climbing into bed the first time, he confessed he was a little intimidated about making love with her. Sensuality just laughed and said,‘But we’ve been making love for days.’

— J. Ruth Gendler, The Book of Qualities