A Tribute to My City

I would like to use this post to extend my heartfelt sympathy and thoughts to the victims of the Boston marathon bombing, and to the city that I hold so dear. It is in Hawaii that I met the love of my life and have become a triathlete, but it was in Boston that I became an adult.

I arrived at 19, a clueless small-town girl optimistically unprepared for the big time. After driving across the country in my 1989 Honda Civic, complete with no air conditioning or power steering, still nursing the heartbreak of a failed first love, I was ready to start fresh in a place where no one knew my name. I craved anonymity and the opportunity to leave my mistakes behind me and become the stronger, better person I knew was in there somewhere. I was scared and excited and sad and thrilled, and as I turned off of the pike onto Mass Ave I knew it was the first day of my new life. 

Blindly following my new roommates, who I had found on Craigslist and never met before, across town and to my new home, I marveled at the colorful wooden houses lining the streets, painted light blue and yellow and trimmed in cheery white, obviously brimming with history reaching far beyond what I was accustomed to on the west coast. Delighted, we drove into a neighborhood of stately, elegant old houses divided into apartments by floor, surrounded by young trees and mossy sidewalks and faded white fences covered in climbing grape vines and although the house we pulled up at was the most dilapidated on the block, I already new I was in love. As I lay in a pile of blankets on the floor of my new room that night surrounding my all of my earthly possessions gazing out the window across the Cambridge skyline to Boston across the river, I knew that although I was all alone and scared to death, I had done the right thing.

My year in Boston gave me many things. It gave me the anonymity I craved. I immediately erased the parts of my personality that had caused my past to end up a crumbled mess, replacing my emotional reactions and vulnerability with confidence and level-headeness. It gave me complete financial independence, adventures, and thousands of memories with wonderful people. I worked in bars next to Fenway where I made more money than I ever had before, met crazy fans, crazy managers, and amazing friends. I explored the history of the East Coast, ate cannolis at Mike's Pastry and strolled the North End listening to accordion music and savoring delicious pasta.

Every day for months, I took the train from home to Back Bay to go to ballet class at Boston Ballet, and although my experience there was ultimately frustrating, I loved my morning commute, Boston Metro in hand (poached from someone else, of course!) and my walk past the gorgeous brownstones from the subway station to the studio. Sometimes I got up early just so that I could sit in Copley Square, watching people pass me by and knowing that at that exact moment, I was the only one who knew where I was. I knew that I was 100% independent, 100% alone, and that I was no longer afraid of being that way. When I learned to embrace these solitary moments, I found peace and the ultimate source of strength:

I knew that I could handle anything, all by myself, and I loved it.

This morning I heard that Copley was the site of the bombings, and the peace and strength I have held sacred for all of these years was shaken. The thought of my sanctuary in chaos, pierced by grief and fear, made my heart ache and my stomach turn. My subway line to work, shut down. My friends injured, scared, and violated. Although I am not among those most closely affected, my sense of calm was thoroughly rattled.

In light of these events, I cannot help but reflect on the impact this city has had on my life. In Montana my life began, in Seattle I dealt with the loss of my father, and in Hawaii I found my true love, but it was in the historic, vibrant, and wonderfully welcoming city of Boston that I truly grew up and found the ability to be happy independent of anyone else -- the strength to be alone. And so while my home is here, in the land of aloha, my city will always be Boston.

My heart is with those who are suffering. May you find peace and may the city I love find healing.

A Reawakening

Deep, dense, and almost eerily quiet, the road to Kapa'au winds and dip, making it impossible to see beyond a few hundred yards. Surrounded on either side by tapestries of heavy green, the forest walls seem to close in further and further as I venture away from Hawi. The wind that is so pervasive everywhere else in North Kohala is choked in the vines and leaves of the rainforest; the air is unusually still. When I inhale I can smell Earth. Dampened soil, decaying leaves, and wafts of tropical flowers that I can't quite identify envelop me and wrap me in the cloak of the jungle.

This area is steeped in the kind of living, breathing ambience that thrills a writer -- everywhere you look there is something that piques your imagination, something quiet and provocative on which entire chapters could be written, waiting unassumingly to be explored. Forest glens with carpets of emerald velvet and arbored ceilings draped with vines, hidden streams running off the dormant volcano and down to the sea, protected by trees and out of sight from prying eyes. A house tucked into the tiny valley well below the road and insulated by plants with leaves bigger than my outstretched arms and flowers of vibrant colors, seemingly cut off from everything but the forest around it... a cemetery whose quiet, lush surroundings make it seem like the most apt place on earth for one to find eternal peace. An abandoned chapel near the end of the road, framed by gentle mosses and soft foliage, a house, left empty long ago with a sloping unkempt yard and a view of the massive valley of Pololu, rolling hills of farmland so green that the color is indescribable. Mossy stone steps leading nowhere but up into dense rainforest of trees and vines, suggesting an entrance to something beautiful but long ago forgotten.

Descending from the mountains the rolling green seems never-ending, rolling down and down toward the deep cerulean ocean below. The wind runs and dances through the grass like a frolicking spirit, visible in the patterns it creates across the fields. The entire expanse seems to be moving like waves on the sea, and like the sea it seems that one could float across it, being rocked by the wind like you are by the tides. The grass is dusted with tiny yellow blossoms giving the illusion that the gentle hills, spread out like a sheet settling to the ground after being shaken, are sun-kissed even when the clouds hang on the mountain tops and refuse to disperse. These plains, these moors, are both lush and desolate, aching for long walks, picnics, and intimate moments. Rounding a bend in the road, the clouds come pouring over the top of the mountain and spill down its side like a waterfall. The wind moves them so quickly that it feels like you must be watching in time-lapse -- the scale is too grand to believe that it is in real time. There is a black horse perched majestically on a rocky outcropping overlooking the valley and vast land below. His mane is whipped in the wind as he surveys what can only be his, pure, raw power emanating from his presence.

Near Waimea, the countryside opens up into expansive fields and stands of tall trees, curiously growing in perfect rows. The landscape is drier but still vibrant and full of life. There are cows and horses and long grass and it feels familiar, like some long lost memory from my childhood is trying to resurface.

These landscapes speak to me. The long grass calls for me to walk through it with my arms outstretched, feeling the blades brush past my fingertips. The rolling green moors on top of the mountains beg me to pack a picnic in a wicker basket, put on a white linen dress and frolic like the wind when it dances through their midst. The silent, hidden forest glens saturated with thick emerald mosses urge me to explore their depths -- to find what it is that gives them their mystery. Something in these places reawakens my imagination in ways that I haven't felt since I was a little girl. They bring up memories long since forgotten and urges lost in the importance of adulthood, a sensuous desire to soak up every smell and color and feeling they hold. There are never enough words, never a deep enough breath to take it all in.

With my imagination reawakened, I can never be sated.

A Voice

A ballerina doesn't speak. In fact, she spends thousands of hours learning to train her body from the way she breathes to how she extends her finger tips, making it so expressive that no words are necessary. A ballerina feels and thinks like everyone else, but instead of talking, every last drop of those thoughts and feelings is internalized and brought to life through movement. 

I have spent my life in studios. Standing at the barre, the feel of its wood, polished from the grips of hundreds of dancers before me, in my hand ... these are the places I feel most at home. I can dance my way through any emotion, and in many ways I have. I danced through heartbreak, through uncertainty, through happiness, and through my father's death. But now, something inside of me is telling me to write. 

I want to use the words like steps in a ballet -- carefully strung together and perfected until they flow gracefully, effortlessly conveying what is in my mind and heart. This blog will be just that: whatever strikes my fancy, whatever is on my mind, choreographed into a what I hope to be an eloquent string of words. For my eyes only or any others that happen by -- ballerina speaks.