Life in the Waves

The last time I made an entry to this blog, I was sure it would only be a month or so before I was to do it again. Alas, it has been many months. They have been rich months filled with many new experiences of familiar and fresh territory.

Along the way Kirsten and I spent 6 wonderful weeks with my sister, her husband, Carlos and my nephew Omar, in Santa Fe and took a breath taking tour in Colorado to visit friends and other known, formative spots that had been important along my path to adulthood.
The rains fell plenty before we arrived which laid a carpet of forest and pasture so green that the spring surge pulsed through our bodies with every new day.
And then, for 6 short weeks, we returned to Mexico…….

Leaving my home of the last really long while has been bittersweet. Walking away from the folks that love and care for you to find something else is a mixed bag. As I was thinking about it today, it like one of those relationships where there is so much that is good, but where is the passion? Do I stay because it feeds me for the most part, or do I go to find the passion that I am not feeling the way I want to.
The big difference, I suppose, is that if your relationship is with a town and community, it isn’t like the town and community are going to start a relationship exclusively with someone else, and I won’t be able to someday say…..”I was wrong…. please take me back…..”

It has been dificult for me to be away from my kids these last 19 months, so one day it came clear to me that the opportunity was awake and I would go spend the month of September with them in Port Townsend.

It was one of those times and spaces when you know what you are doing and why you need to do it but you don’t understand the full impact of the decision until it is over, and then still not completely.

What I experienced was the love and connection to Tomoki and Kiyota that will feed my soul and spirit better than any herb or medicine, better than any gift or song. It was through looking in their eyes that I felt this. It was through the sharing of food and mundane time washing dishes in their homes. It came through the time I spent talking “their” community of their dreams and desires.

Port Townsend, WOW, what a place of love and desire. This town has raised my kids and their friends and cohorts, Misha, Chen, Danny and all of their friends. It has taught them to care for one another with compassion and depth. It has taught them to adore one another for their differences and pains.
As I moved among my community, I was told the stories of peoples good wishes and support for these young men to fulfill whatever it was that pleased them. It was truly beautiful to witness.



On the night of Kiyota’s 25 birthday, as Sageland (the name given to our family land) tradition would have it, we made a small fire, a small feast and we enjoyed time together.
As the evening moved deeper into darkness, a light appeared through the words of my old friend Evan. As we watched the fire circle from a distance, he mentioned how all that we were witnessing was about to change forever in a few months when the boys and their performance troupe move to Portland.
Evan brought to light the story of the ending of dozens of fires we have had over the years, for ourselves and our kids and our friends. During not only birthdays but celebrations of rites of passage, solstices, eqinoxes and our weekly bathing in a water trough, when it was our only way to clean ourselves.
They were leaving where they had grown up for the last 20 years, where the words of love and appreciation had so easily flowed for so long. It is the place where we have come together with friends and family to enjoy the lives of our children and ourselves.

Over the millenia of the earths life, the magnetic pole has not always been to the north. It has oriented itself to different parts of the earth at different time and for a variety of reasons.

I see this time we are experiencing in this way. What has been magnetic north for so long is no longer. The poles of our family are shifting in the most drastic way that I have ever experienced them.
It is for us now, time to reorient ourselves as father and mother, as children, as uncles and aunts of the community. It is a new world ahead, fresh with opportunity to venture and discover what our old orientation taught us and it gives us new eyes to view what adventure lay ahead.
I am sure in my steps, for the foundation and base of love and commitment within our family and community, has given us all strong legs, heart and mind.

For the last many months, I have carried a sharp pain in my chest for the absence of my children in my life. This has recently passed. I feel excitement at what lay ahead for them and with the gift of this time we have had together, we are closer than ever. I feel them in the air around me. I can still feel our last embrace and the appreciation we all shared.

In closing, I want to thank any and all of you that have smiled upon my family. Perhaps you have no idea of the strength you have brought us.

And last of all, I wish to give my appreciation to Niels Holm, who passed away in late September. He was a mountain among men who left the places he moved through more beautiful than when he arrived.

with love,
Joshua