I think about the last time I knew.
I was told by precise sky shades of pink and purple to remember.
“This is what’s real.
This feeling.
This enough.
This forever, ”
they stated calmly.
“You can’t lose anything or anyone. No matter what happens, don’t forget,” their pulse went on.
I have lost so much since then.
But I haven’t forgotten.
It was a year and half ago on my 41st birthday.
Through a long series of seemingly unrelated events, I ended up in Kauai. With my mom and sister. With COVID.
I’d just spoken at a photo conference in Berlin. It ended with an extraordinary dance party where my fav DJ played. The sweaty, crowded dance floor is no doubt where the virus found its way into my system. I fell into a fever dream on the plane ride to Hawaii. Tested immediately upon landing. Quarantined for the next two weeks instead of tagging along with my mom’s adventures all over the island.
I was lucky enough to have back door access to a beach front where there was very little, if any foot traffic. Puffy faced and light footed, I made my way there for a solo sunrise each morning.
I need you to know I experienced COVID a little, maybe even a lot, differently. Was I incredibly sick? Yes. But I invited the sickness in as a teacher. And I believe this allowed my body to host the virus that has been harrowing to myself and so many in an unusual way. Both times I got it, at the bottom of my physical symptoms I felt an •almost• pleasant kind of psychedelic state. I felt a deepened sense of peace and presence in my body. I felt physically weak but spiritually empowered. I felt far from fear and close to my truth. Close to my purpose. Close to beauty herself and whatever might be at the center of her mystery.
Maybe I was just really, REALLY elated to have a non-negotiable excuse to STOP. To REST.
It’s hard to explain the same way it’s hard to explain strange dreams and psychedelic trips where the ordinary starts dripping with symbolism and rich, hidden meaning. When you try to talk about it you end up saying something completely simple with over emphasis like, “You KNOW, man? It was PINK. It was PURPLE. You KNOOOOOOWWWWW???”
But that’s kinda my style anyway. And kinda, EXACTLY what it was like.
Those sunrises breathed me. They opened my weak and weary lungs with great delicacy and care. Everything was at full essence. Beyond itself and the most itself – an iridescently glimmering web of wholeness.
The world was loud with its problems. Newer, scarier and noisier issues every minute. There I was – a visitor on a shore that had been colonized, stolen, stripped and abused by people just like me. I knew that just sitting there, I was part of the problem. I knew equally that didn’t mean I could not be part of the much-needed reverence and restitution. I knew that the constant guilt I felt both there and in most facets of my life — the fear of being judged or misunderstood was of no benefit to anyone, and that my desire to be viewed as one of the good guys, to put it elegantly – didn’t count for shit.
I felt so clearly that it was not my job to be perfect or save the world, but to witness it. It was not my job to fix, but to be in relationship with. It was not my call to consume, perhaps not even to create as we traditionally think of it, but to respectfully and nakedly perceive. To understand the constructive power of my earnest and awe-filled perception.
This, the ocean told me.
This too, the sky said.
Don’t be afraid, nothing and no one can harm you, they sang as my whole body and every inhale hurt.
It may not make sense to you, but I understood.
I laughed.
I trusted.
I felt delightfully extinguishable.
Heartbreakingly invincible.
That was the last time I knew (thank you),
Yan
*I recognize that in 1893, her majesty Queen Liliʻuokalani yielded the Hawaiian Kingdom and these territories under duress in protest to the United States to avoid the bloodshed of her people, and that Hawai‘i remains an illegally occupied state of America.
I further recognize that generations of Indigenous Hawaiians and their knowledge systems shaped Hawai‘i in sustainable ways that allow me to enjoy these gifts today. For this I am grateful and as a guest, I seek to support the varied strategies that the Indigenous peoples of Hawai‘i are using to protect their land and their communities.