A number of funny things happened on the way to this entry. Some are well known, such as the World Trade Center bombing. This has been covered so completely that I have little to say, except that I remember watching the twin towers being built when I lived in the N.Y. area. It was very painful watching the coverage. The anger, the pity that any human being can be blown so far off their spiritual path.
Some of the things that happened were less public. I just got back from my semi-annual pilgrimage to Hawaii to study Huna. It just gets better and better, and a more wonderful group of people to experience a global tragedy with could not be found. But there were some very strange experiences...
The original plans were for Sam to get a Condo, and Diana and I to share it. Splitting the cost, we would pay a bit less than the hotel, but be able to make our own meals and do laundry and otherwise live better than being in a hotel room for 12 days. And the condo was very convenient--about 5 minutes walk from the hotel where the conference was being held.
About three days before we left, Sam decided she couldn't make the trip for a variety of personal reasons (she's changing jobs). Not an hour after she made this decision, she got a call from another student, a Canadian operating room nurse who I'll call Dee. Dee said that she usually had hotel reservations months in advance, but left her reservations until the last minute, and asked whether Sam had a condo and had room to spare. Shortly afterwards, I got a call from her, and we ended up sharing the condo.
She was a very interesting person who I knew by sight, but hadn't really talked to much at previous classes. Turns out she had studied Feng Shui for five years, and knows a lot about alternative medicine. Diana really took to her, and we had some wonderful times hanging out and talking, and joining friends for dinner. She and Diana rented snorkel gear, and went swimming with the giant sea turtles that populate the area (Diana has loved the giant turtles since she first came to Hawaii). The class did it's usual hike across the volcano, which was quite active--as we drove up to the crater where we walk, we could see the large plume of smoke where the lava was going into the sea. And we performed our usual hula program--for the first time, I was a drummer this year, which is harder than it looks. All in all a wonderful experience.
The third day we were in our condo, we returned home to pick up a couple of things before a 6PM class, and discovered that the hall carpet was quite wet. We called the rental agency, and when we returned home after class, we found someone from the agency there--the water pipe feeding the washing machine had split, there was water everywhere, and they ended by turning off the water. We couldn't stay there. The agency had found another condo for us, which she assured us we would like. She said we could move there, and spend the remainder of our rental there. So at 10PM (1AM California time) we were packing the car with our baggage and the contents of the refrigerator, and soon found the other condo--it was a 10-minute walk away, but a truly awesome location. There was a nice porch with a view up the coast, and just behind the unit there was a golf course. Neither of the units was air conditioned, which was a problem for me (I don't do heat that well...), but we considered that the location made up for it. Here are the front and back pictures.
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In the early morning of Sept. 11, Dee woke up sometime around 4 AM. She had had a nightmare--she was on a plane and the plane dove into the ground and everything went black. I also woke up several times in the night. Twice in the night, I dreamt that I was making a 911 call from a subway station in New York to report a dead baby. Needless to say, we all got up early, and were very bleary. Diana went to the pool to swim some laps, but returned because it wasn't open yet. When she returned, Dee clearly heard her say "The United States is at war!" Diana has no memory of saying that, and we were all unaware of the events transpiring in New York. Diana does clearly remember the look of astonishment Dee gave her, however. An hour later, Diana went out to swim, and came back soon saying that we needed to turn on the TV, and we learned about the situation. Later in the day, we heard other tales of people who had had bad and/or prophetic dreams about the time that the events were taking place (Hawaii is six hours behind New York). Strange responses to a strange experience.
Some of the other things that have entangled my brain on the way to writing are my new job, working with companies that are trying to get started. I've ended up doing some web site building for some of these companies, and so the journal felt a lot like work. I came close several times, but never quite got over the hump to make an entry.
And today, when I was contemplating my TODO list, with "make a journal entry" somewhere in the middle of it, what should happen but an Airborne Express truck drives up and delivers my old computer. This is the one that broke on July 2nd. If I hadn't replaced it six weeks ago, I would have been without anything other than my laptop for two and a half months. I still haven't unpacked the thing--I think I should at least determine whether it works before I tuck it away somewhere or give it to some charity... Actually, I may run Linux on it--I'm coming to miss programming...
When I left my job in May, I sold some stock to take me through the summer. I planned a summer of workshops and trainings, writing my book, and ending up with the trip to Huna. It has all come to pass as I desired it to, and it was a wonderful summer, one of the best of my life. However, the retirement I had anticipated has evaporated--the stock I was planning to live on is worth about 4% of what it was worth nine months ago. So I'm a working stiff again... I should be more or less around for the rest of the year, and I expect to be able to make entries more frequently. Thank you for your patience.
And thank you for reading.
Copyright © 2001 Pete Stevens. All rights reserved.
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