He was the sun.
And she was the moon.
The distance took a toll,
the timing hindered their potential,
and their differences collided.
You see, their paths rarely crossed.
But when they do,
they could not get enough of each other

Take me away to San Francisco,
where everything and anything that happens in my dreams exist,
where my dreams can roam free like the tendril of the ocean,
and secret smiles are shared.
When only the mist from a warm cup of hot chocolate
will disturb my thoughts,
when I can be free again.

The bay and the mountains met and clasped hands,
stirring around the quaint houses
and trolley cars streaming up and down like kites in the sky.
Where cerulean met emerald,
they looked into each others eyes,
and promised life and love for each other.

Together they have survived the worst of it all,
standing strong even now,
their bodies humming and alive,
beating and there.
Where music moves like a silent poison everywhere,
people like pieces of art walking down the street,
and shops like little treasure chests.

Please carry me away,
back to San Francisco-
the place of my dreams.

don't follow me
if you see me running
down the street
into the subway
into the train
into the seat

i'll plug music into my ears so
the words won't spill out

i'll watch people think over their day;
did you get promoted?
is your best friend a mess?
do you wish you could be free?

the train's wheels screech against the rails
like a fat metal monster calling out in pain
a sound so stringent it plucks my heart's cords
stifled only by the loud murmur of collective Life
my city, my city, don't follow me now
i'm headed northward, eastward 'til i'm out of earshot

you're too much of a perfect storm, my city,
my city, you're too much of a muffled chaos

you're on my heels despite my warnings
i would run faster but the train is deaf as the people who wear headphones and complain when they hear nothing

i'm on your train, dear city, going further than i should

in this way,

i flee conflict.

You say the sound is beautiful,
of rain
against your roof,
and God knows I would die for e’en
a little bit of proof.

And God knows I would die to be there, cradled in your arms;
you tell me of the weather,
how it sets off your alarms.

You’d tell me of the
morning birds
and sing to me a song;
oh Ocean! How I crave your kiss!
My heart wants to be wrong.

Because I picture you at dawn,
your body holding mine,
my heart wants to be wrong.
I say:
my heart wants to be ‘fine.’

Despite my cravings, Ocean,
‘spite my dreams of us entwined,
I tell you that my current state
Is far,
so far
from ‘fine.’

Terry Pratchett died Thursday. He was a critically acclaimed British Fantasy Author, as well as an advocate for assisted suicide and Alzheimer's Disease. He himself was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2007, yet still continued to write, even after he was incapable of using a computer to write (he used a dictation machine afterwards). Before his death at the age of 66, he wrote the popular "Discworld" series consisting of four books, as well as one of my personal favorites, "The Wee Free Men." He was inspirational for me as a writer and he changed my view of writing. With his books, I found my writing style. There are no words to express my awe at his life and works, nor are there words to express my deep sadness in which I tell you that he has passed. May he rest in peace and reach a world even better than that of Discworld.

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32)
Well Mr. Pratchett, you've changed the story.

Written by Serge Kahili King

There is a famous *Zen koan (philosophical riddle) which asks,

"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

The student of Zen is supposed to meditate on this riddle until some degree of insight or enlightenment occurs. *The tricky part is that there is no right answer. What you are, or what you know, or what you believe, is what you get.

Although no longer an active student of Zen, I was recently meditating of the riddle of one hand clapping when I got an answer that might be useful to share:

The sound of one hand clapping is the same as the sound of two hands clapping.

How could that be, you ask (for the sake of this article
I am assuming that you do ask)? It's simple, I reply.
The concept of clapping implies that a sound is being produced by two surfaces coming into contact, even if only one of them is actually moving.
No sound, no clapping; no second surface, no sound. Yet, the riddle definitely states that there is a sound and that there is clapping.

Therefore, my answer follows logically.

Yes, I know, the answer to a koan is supposed to be beyond logic, but rest assured that the answer came intuitively. The logic came after.

Before you dismiss this as simply a bit of cleverness or a waste of time, let me tell you about the rest of the meditation. After the revelation that the sound of one hand clapping must be the same as the sound of two hands clapping, it struck me that this was a nice metaphor for two of the corollaries of the Second Principle of Huna.

The basic principle states that there are no limits, which implies that everything is in a relationship to everything else. And that implies that if you change one side of a relationship you change both sides.Even if only one hand changes its position relative to another, unmoving hand , a clapping sound will be produced.

We don't have to wait for both sides of a relationship to participate before bringing about beneficial change.
Change one side of that relationship and the other side has to change because the relationship has changed.

We use this idea a lot in teaching Huna.
For instance, in third-level healing work where we assume that

everything is a dream and everything is dreaming, we say that
~ if you change one dream you automatically change all related dreams.

So you can go to an imaginary garden and make changes to symbols of your life experience, and your life experience will change.

In second-level healing work where we assume that
everything is telepathically linked, we say that
~ if you begin to silently bless and forgive people with whom you are having difficulties, they will know it and they will begin to change their behavior toward you without a word being spoken.

And in first level healing, where
we assume that everything is separate but potentially interactive,
we teach that
~ if you smile and hug a lot you will tend to get a lot more smiles and hugs back, even from people who don't normally smile or hug.

Now what do you think would happen if you applied this idea to the whole of your life?

In a strained personal relationship, for example, instead of waiting for the other person to make the first move toward reconciliation you could start the process in your own mind, either by purposely creating a better opinion of the other person, or by imagining the two of you getting along with all of your differences.  Sorry, you can't control with your imagination what the other person thinks or does (it simply doesn't work), but you can use imagined persuasion just as you might in a face to face meeting. As in any form of persuasion, however, the more your persuasion is based on a benefit to the other person, the more successful it is likely to be.

In a strained global relationship, assuming our theory is valid
(which means workable). We might be able to get together even in a smallish group and and rethink ((or redream)) our relationship with one or both countries involved. Theoretically, of course, it ought to take only one person to make a change. On the other hand, the change of one person's relationship to a country might only produce a very small change, so the more people the better. The thing to remember, in this context, is that you are trying to change how you think or feel about the country, not trying to change the country. It's a subtle but important difference, and it applies to people as well as countries.

If this idea catches on we can introduce  "a Huna koan" ((the actual Hawaiian phrase is "nane huna," a hidden riddle or conundrum))

*"What is the sound of one person loving?"

Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.  ~ Rumi

Like fish
That tickle my toes
Like a wish
That no one else knows

I'm the girl who spent her last token
On a game that was broken

The bugs
That **** my blood
The shower without a plug
That bears the unbearable flood

I'm the girl who hid in her heart
Until he broke it apart