"imagine it as if"

a catalogue of events::::

afternoon: i sit on the porch. a lazy saturday afternoon.  new wwoofers are to arrive at some point during the day.  play guitar.  whittle bamboo.  then decide to take a walk across the road, down into the valley of mystic trees.  grab my poetry anthology from inside put it in my bag and set off.

after crossing the road:  realize the oversight of not bringing my notebook along with me.  just in case. 

3:30:  hop out of the grasses onto the little-used gravel road as a white subaru hatch-back approaches.  i wave and it slows down. 

3:32:  formally meet veronika (this isn't here real name but for some reason i could never remember it).  she had the ageless shine. her white hair is white.  she was looking for a friend who she thought lived on this street somewhere.  she had the squeaky, enchanted curiosity of a child or a gypsy or maybe just a crazy person.

after touring through the gardens:  we sit on the porch munching tat soi and speaking of manifesting reality through our expectations.  veronika is on a deliberately undeliberated,  step to step journey, with no thought to where shes going.  just meeting people and turning down roads on intuitional whims.  she'd read the celestine prophecy.  when she smiled, as she did easily and enthusiastically and often, her face stretched into radiant benevolence.  never have i met such explicit benevolence.

4:00: after speaking of energy, love and the wild kindness through which all wonder and beauty are interwoven, veronika says that she's never seen a deer on maui.  i say that where i was going, the deer run in herds.  slender and spotted.  she says she loves to hike.  we hop the fence and i say 

"welcome to wonderland"

and how i always feel like a hobbit when i'm on this side of the road.  the grass has grown higher since the last time i was here, which makes me feel even shorter.  all the grass is in flower and the dott patches of wild yellow blossoms are dotted here and there.  when we talk its of things cosmic and wonderful.  she says that the gnarly yellow trees are very spiritual trees.  they are endangered.  we walk through the meadow on two parallel lanes of grown over tire tracks.  we start speaking of deer and look to our right to find five of them looking curiously towards us from the next knoll over.  continuing down the path we find beautiful red beans lying in the dirt and start collecting them.  

after this:  we hop out of the grass back over the fence.  justin from the flower farm/meditation center down the street calls hello from the driveway.  veronika hugs him and instantly sucks him into her magnetic bliss.  we walk down the road to take a look at the place where he lives and works. 

4:45: a field of flower trees.  rolling manicured lawns.  fruit trees and a garden that are getting settled in.  a place that feels very much like what it is intended to feel like. 

then: invite veronika and justin to stay for dinner.  we walk back down the road and the new wwoofers have arrived and are touring through the gardens with john.  everyone hugs then fixes dinner together. 

sundown:  dinner is served.  a salad with a delightful avocado mousse dressing that lily cooked up and some rice and quinoa that veronika had in her car.  we eat easy and comfortable, as if we had all eaten together before.  veronika asks if she can keep her car parked in the driveway and sleep there.  i say that we have a couch that is much better and is used to having someone sleeping on it. 

when the dishes are done:  veronika and i talk of grand visions and new ages.  we have conversations we needed to have.  i am able to talk about the farthest out spiritual musings that have been festering in my soul during these weeks in paradise.  we speak without having to explain the background theory of it.  we speak as i speak with my closest friends and family.  the way i speak with phil about liminality.  and ben about the fifth.  and jim about the truth.  and my dad about depression.

9:30:  i say goodnight and thank everyone for being here.  

that night:  i sleep nearly dreamless except for one friendly dream just before waking.  

sunrise:  awake and out of my sleeping bag early wondering about how reality of the haze of the previous day's events.  wondering if this prophetic women was some charlatan who i would discover had robbed my boots and stolen the silverware while we slept.  but she was sleeping when i went into the living room and i as i was making my oatmeal she awoke with the same vibrance of the day before.

8:30-9:30:  veronika gives me some mantras that she has written in her little notebook.

abba abbadah hymanuta allaha

(let me be of service)

gate gate paragate parasumgate bodisvaha

(beyond, beyond, beyond the beyond)

nam mio ho renge kio

(awaken the buddha nature and fulfill divine purpose

we decide that mantras might help me with my trouble in just sitting still and quiet. 

10:00:  i feed the chickens and walk around the farm with billy, one of the new comers.  i leave the door to the chicken coop open, absent-mindedly.  the place that i had gotten so comfortable and settle in over the past six weeks had been transformed by the influx of new faces.  i see john talking with veronika and shortly thereafter she says that she is going to head on down the road.  she hugs everyone, hops into the subaru and is gone. 

10:15:  john and i have a talk about how i shouldn't just let people stay at the place without talking to him first.  what the hell was i thinking?  it makes me feel like a humble puppy but he says he knows my heart is in the right place.  

all day:  lazy sunday.

in the late afternoon:  butcher a chicken.  

5:30:  finally get the intestines out of the dead bird after much cutting and crying and ceremonies.  hang her from the porch and start plucking her feathers.  she's still warm and the fuzzy flesh below her feathers is startling.  

6:00: start preparing dinner.

7:30:  john comes down to hang out and partake of the sacrificed chicken.  the kitchen is madness.  complete pandemonium.  lily and bobby take a break to clean the bathroom while we're fixing dinner.  i couldn't really understand this but it gave me a chance to get things straight on the counter and settle my mind.  i start making tortillas and bobby and lilly take over the chicken soup.  we had decided that boiling the chicken would be the best method.

8:00:  sit down to a dinner of overcooked rubbery chicken in a delicious soup with cheesy garlic tortillas.  it is the manifestation of the most complicated dinner cooked here to date.  being vegetarian is so much easier.  i live in a wonderful corner of the world where it's easier to be a vegetarian than otherwise.  

10:48:  hard to know what else to say.   i am constantly delighted by spontaneous wonders of this quirky world.  

the more we open we become, the more openly the world receives us.  

the more we give, the more that is given.   

the more we seek, the more we find.

and we can have anything we want if we imagine it as if.  

that's what the gypsy prophetess told me.  

and she she seemed really content.

and so the world swirls on in funnels of fortuitous mystery.