“worrying is like paying a debt you do not owe”

 – mark twain—

had another day where it seemed not much was going to happen. like most days that i spend in hawaii, my life is quite slow and mundane. a long swim in the morning, bum around the house during the day, some shopping, reading, then go pick the son up from school and prepare dinner. perhaps another swim.

my silence was broken up today when my wife walked stormed out of the office with a disturbing look upon her face, she was trying to understand what the school nurse was telling her about our 15-year old son. she handed the phone to me, the nurse was direct and said we should come as soon as possible and take our son to an emergency room, she said that an object had been thrown at him and japped his eye, she saw a scratch on this eye and could not elaborate more. i fumbled in my pocket for my car key and rushed to go pick him up.

he got in our car with an eye patch and nervous laughter that quickly turned into some faint tears as he told of the incident. how the pain, like the object, came out of nowhere and caused him much agony.

three hours later, it turns out that everything was going to be fine, the fork (plastic) had scratched his cornea but not too deep, some antibiotics and a follow up was scheduled but it seemed that we had evaded what could have been a personal tragedy.

life is fragile. the calm of our day can be broken up at any time.

it is happening all over the world right now. families leaving their homes in countries like venezuela and syria, having to become refugees in neighbouring countries, having to sell their hair or beg for food when just the past year or two all was normal.

i once read a  passage about a monk who was standing on a bridge looking at a group of fish in the pond below. his master came up and asked him what he saw. the monk replied, fish, at peace with the world and happy in their surrounding. the master corrected him, look how they sit in the middle depth of the water, for if they come to the top to look for food the heron will sweep in and eat them, and if they go to the bottom, the crabs will attack, so they sit petrified in the middle. still they are, but still in fear not in content.

tomorrow i will go back to my routine. keeping up the facade that all is ok. treading in the middle of my life, not trying to go too high or low and from the outside. appearing content.

—–
great article by a phenomenal writer about an area of hawaii that has seen some interesting moments in paradise. enjoy.


The Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.
—J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
The first person I meet in the Kalalau Valley is a shoeless veteran from the Iraq War with a sun-faded REI backpack slung over his tattooed shoulders like a trophy. Barca, as he calls himself, heard that a kayaker had abandoned the pack in a beach cave and made a beeline out to the bluffs to claim it.
Visitors are always just throwing stuff away in this place. Over here, a folding chair with a broken arm rest. Over there, a half-empty fuel canister. Now, the backpack—that’s a rare find. “Do you know how much these are worth?” Barca asks me.