THE GOD OF OAHU

Unlike Adam and Eve, we left the paradise. Not a Biblical eviction, but because we couldn’t make a living. Wife Sherrie and I moved to Kauai to open a school of metaphysical instruction: classes in meditation, healing and clairvoyant development. And we were a big hit: Lots of students, always busy, plenty of cash. But after two years, we’d pretty much healed and deep-breathed our way through the entire population of 30,000 and things cooled off. We decided to leave, though weren’t quite ready to jump fully back into the Mainland deep-fryer, so we island-hopped to Oahu, the paradise-adjacent rock due east in the Hawaiian chain.

We find an apartment in Honolulu’s Waikiki district and run an ad in the local paper advertising our services. The response is encouraging. We begin to consider opening another school. About a month later, our spiritual teacher Gabriel arrives for a visit.

“Looks like this place is ripe for a school,” he observes. “But before you open, you have to ask permission.”

Huh? He’d never mentioned ‘asking permission’ on Kaua’i. He must mean to ask permission from within, from the God of our heart. Or directly, like, in prayer? Always wanting to appear the perfect student with the perfect answer, I cover both bases.

“You mean, ask permission from God, right?”

“Well, yes - and no, not exactly. Let’s take a ride.”

After we drop Carrie off at her luxury hotel job in Kapolei, a rubber-necking Gabriel asks, “Where’s this island’s highest mountain?” My pre-internet guess is Waimea Bay. So, north over Koolau Mountain, down her back side and now we’re traveling along Oahu’s north shore to Waimea.  A few miles back, we were on a freeway in an American city. Now it’s a narrow two-lane road as rural as Bora Bora, with miles of untouched white beaches massaged by curls of sparkling blue on to our right. Small farms, fruit stands and coconut palms to the left. Wild orchids grow along the roadside. Brown dogs chase brown children past brown one-pump gas stations. Rural mid-Pacific living. 

A half hour later, in Waimea Bay, Gabriel points to the highest peak in our sightline and says, “Park over there.” 

I allow my innate sarcasm a rare moment:

“What’re we gonna do, climb it?”

A sly smile. “Yep.”

As always, Gabriel’s whim is my directive. I lock up the car near a peak completely covered in green. No visible rocks or gravel, just a sharp peak jutting out of the earth for about 200 feet spackled entirely green - a giant Chia Pet. But separating us from the mountain’s base is what I initially misidentify as a ‘wooded area’. Now, I’ve climbed plenty of mountains in California. How different can this be? Probably easier, since most of California’s mountains are studded with big jagged rocks and nasty ravine. This one looks like a verdant stuffed animal.

As we enter the ‘woods’, I’m intrigued by the fact that various palms and trees grow together so closely, I can’t see but a few yards ahead – comically dense. I’m wearing the usual Hawaiian ensemble: Shorts, a tee-shirt and sneaks. Gabriel’s still in California-wear: jeans, a tee-shirt and sneaks. Once inside the ‘woods’, twists of exposed root and low branches claw my bare legs. The vegetation so tenacious, I can’t see in far enough to stay a course to our mountain’s base. And through the focus of getting us to the mountain, a single, mesmerizing concept slowly sneaks into the business-class section of my brain:

Jungle. I’m in a fucking jungle! 

Images pinch out from under my memory cap like greased sewer rats: Quicksand. Big sexy cats. Loin-clothed cannibals. Rare disease. Screaming heads impaled on bamboo. Sn… No, no snakes in Hawaii, thank gawd – but are they sure? It’s dark and wet in here, turning Hawaii’s red dirt to black mud mixed into the simmering root systems, low bush and dead animals. I push through lubricated slits between trunks and branches, palm fronds, dead wood. More than once I’m forced to turn back, the density of this humid womb impossible to squeeze through. Gabriel is sometimes behind me, sometime off to the side, looking for his own secret passage. Finally, I climb upward through a bright gash in the green ceiling to see we’re less than half way to the mountain’s base. Gabriel joins me on the tree tops. We’re bleeding, sweat-soaked I think: Staphylococcus. Arms and legs spread wide, we crawl over the tops of trees like giant albino spider monkeys. Occasionally I’m able to actually walk erect, evolution’s poster boy! Fuck! I am walking on the top of a jungle! Sweat mixed with blood, runs down my arms. Bleeding! Sweating! Straining! Triumphant! My very own Man Against Nature Tropical drama!  Gabriel, on the other hand, isn’t tuned into my macho dopamine fantasy. He’s had enough, his jeans soaked, his tee see-through with moisture. His glasses skewed and he’s picked up something on his dark beard that looks like a banana slug.

“Wanna keep going?” I ask.

“Naw, let’s try somewhere else.”

On the mountain top back into Honolulu, there, left of the Don Ho Theater permanently featuring everyone’s favorite Cuchi Cuchi Girl, Charo – and less than a mile from where we started - we see it and telepathically agree upon our next destination: the perfect sky-high peak shaped like an 800-foot-tall Brazil nut: 

Diamond Head.

A now-dormant volcano that, 3 million years ago, pushed itself out from under the Pacific to create this island, Diamond Head is - sorry, Charo - Hawaii’s most famous landmark. The modern-day entrance to her crown is a man-made arch cut into its base. Inside is a wide cement staircase ascending into blackness. A sign at the foot of the steps suggests flashlights. Ha. Mud-streaked, blood-stained Men of the Jungle don’t use little girl flashlights. The fact that we look like shit is reflected back to us on the faces of the Eddie Bauer-clad mothers and their Baby Gap’d kids cutting wide paths around us on their way back down to tour buses. Fuck ‘em. We’re climbing into the heart of the volcano.

It's an hour walk, mostly straight up - sometimes so perfectly void of light, we’re forced to operate on a system based on a trust that each new man-made step continues to be symmetrical to the last. Heat, thirst and fatigue criticize me freely, try to wear me down. Occasionally, a portion of the crater’s wall is missing, offering light and a momentary view of Waikiki far below.   

Finally, 3/4 of a mile above the waves, the mountain’s stairway leads outdoors - the summit! We’re standing on a large concrete landing corralled in waist-high steel railing, refreshing trade winds welcoming us into the sun. The view is nothing short of orgasmic! It’s a stratospheric VIP lounge reserved for angels. I face the ocean and think I actually see the earth’s curvature. Turning inland, the city twinkles as it climbs up the face of Koolau. I look to Gabriel for our next cue. No! He’s climbed over the hand rail, standing too close to the edge, looking out over the city. Something grabs hold of my heart and lungs and starts twisting, seizing my breath. I can’t… 

“Randy, c’mere a second” Gabriel’s casual suggestion mocks my precognitive terror.  

“Ah, huh? What the hell's that over there, Gabriel?” Panicked, I’m grasping to seize control, redirect what I know he’s got planned for me. I’m terrified. “Check this out – I think I can see Maui – and a pod of whales

He ignores my attempted diversion, so I give up. Fear-stiff, I Frankenstein over to his part of the lookout but keep to the ‘right’ side of the railing. 

“No, come over here… I want to show you something”

I lift my leg to step over. Instantly a wind kicks up that’s so violent, I’m pushed back and have to do a little dance to keep from falling on my ass, as if the wind sense my resistance. Can it smell my weakness like some nervous Doberman cranked up on a snout-full of fear? Gabriel sees the whole thing and laughs. He knows I took an unplanned dive off a high cliff a dozen years ago. Is this a lesson? I want to know, to learn, to be his number one, head-of-the-class best student, but I want to get the fuck off the top of this nightmare. The wind pushes harder, battering the volcano’s tip. Bile burns up my throat as I grab hard on the rail and step over.

I can’t stand up to walk. This is either the express-train winds beating hard on my body or some cellular sense-memory installed after free-falling 200 feet onto a California beach at 19. The mind is willing, but the body snarls, “Oh no you don’t.” To reach Gabriel, I’ll, for the second time today, have to monkey-walk. Only this time it’s not on tree-tops, but rough lava. I dig in, hands and feet searching out pockets of stone to slide into. In the distance, Gabriel’s face is a mosaic of clinical curiosity, spiritual serenity and smart-assed amusement. But no fear. And that keeps me sane somehow. Because if even 1% of him thought I was going to die, I’d know. But Gabriel’s unspoken certainty that all is well in the universe is powerful enough to bend me to his will. I sit down beside him, cackle like an idiot.

“You made it”, he shouts over the wind, chuckling. “You ready to do some work?”

“Always. What’re we doing?”

Gabriel begins. “You already know, every living thing is, at its core, spirit. That’s nothing new.”

I nod in agreement, trying to tune into where he’s going.

“Every living thing has a consciousness… and while this essence is all part of the same Light, you know, of course, that some life forms are more evolved than others.”

Nodding, nodding.

“And sometimes, a consciousness can be created by beliefs or ideas held by a group.”

Now we’re entering unfamiliar territory. The wind seems to have calmed a bit. I steal a peek back over toward the landing to see a few tourists discreetly wondering what a couple of filthy, bleeding men are doing hanging off the edge of the world.

“Like a city, for instance. Its population - through their ideas, their loves, their fears, addictions, goals, expectations, whatever – co-creates a sort of aggregate intelligent energy that embodies all of their unified hopes, fears and beliefs. With me so far?”

“Completely.” I know how potent just one individual’s emotionally charged thoughts can be, how our fears and desires manifest into the material, the tangible, to create what we want or, too often, what they don’t. So, if a single person is that powerful, a city-full should be able to create most anything. Yep, all making sense.

“So, these individual collective ideas, fears, desires and plans come together to create a composite entity whose personality and appearance is a composite of a city’s citizen’s highly charged ideas. Still with me?”

For some reason, this strikes me as weird, but all I say – of course - is, “Uh huh, totally.”

“Take a look at the entity of this city.”

Hmmm. We’re moving pretty quick. Okay, I’ve seen beings, entities, spirits of all kinds for years – it’s what I learned to do at Gabriel’s school years ago. Seeing spirit - angelic or demonic, strange or beautiful - is part of what I trained to do and teaching it is part of what I do for a living. 

The wind’s relaxed a bit. I take some deep breaths, then ask, silently, internally, like the clairvoyant host of “Family Feud”: “Show me the entity that is Honolulu”, then psychically recline. I learned long ago: never ‘chase’ the picture, let it come to you. I wait, breathe, dig into the moon-like lava… and there she is! Actually, what first appears is a 600-foot-high purple velvet teepee decorated in gold crescent moons, sun-bursts and stars, the sort of pattern on a sorcerer’s hat in children’s books. I follow this image up to the top point of this construct and see her hair, frizzy, light brown, falling down to shoulders. This colossal beauty has her back to me, and I realize the teepee is actually a long cape, the hem of which is draped from one end of the Waikiki strip to the other. “Hello”, I say silently and she turns her head just enough to reveal about a third of her profile, reluctant to reveal herself full-face, her one visible eye cast downward, a knowing half-smile, the full feminine mystery treatment. My heart pounds hard on my breastbone, forcing too much blood into my brain - I’m floating! No matter how many times I see entities, spirits, what have you, each and every time: astounding.

“Do you see her?” I ask Gabriel.

“What do you see?” always the teacher testing my certainty.

“She’s hovering over the Waikiki strip, maybe three-quarters as tall as Diamond Head,” I begin. Suddenly I am being pried off our ledge, the wind’s force tripled, pushing me toward the edge. My breath freezes as ten thousand emergency vehicles race through my circulatory system. I lean back with the grace of a rusted robot to spread my center of gravity.

“Ta___ ____owk towar___ __ah mountain.” Gabriel’s shouting something but the wind blows his words out to sea. Eyes still closed, I move my ear into the vicinity of where his mouth should be, and see a complete smile has formed on our Hawaiian hostess. “Whhhaaaatttt?” I shout back to Gabriel from the bottom of my gut. “Take a look toward the mountain,” he instructs, a point-blank shout that makes my inner ear itch. I pan my psychic camera toward Koolau and realize I’m in trouble: Two bare brown feet, each the size of an entire neighborhood, straddle the width of the Honolulu sprawl east to west. Around each ankle, a ti leaf lei, tribal adornments from a time before whitey served the syphilitic adoption papers. I move my focus up brown shins and bulging calves. He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot, stomping, pissed. Above over-developed thighs is a sort of burlap diaper wrapped around his ass and genitalia, tied at the hip. Another ring of dark green ti encircles his waist below the navel. He’s at least three times larger than his coy new-age mistress working the Waikiki strip.

Ah, so the honky-tonk tourista district is her domain – this guy’s the headliner here, the big boss of the entire island.

His bare chest is hairless, muscled. The arms, up and bent at the elbows like he’s under arrest, pump up and down. More ti leis surround the wrists. His hands are meaty hammer-fists, fat fingers clenched tight. Yet, I relax a bit as I realize the most powerful lesson I'll learn today: He’s trying to scare me. All an act. I think: “He knows what we’ve come here to ask and this is his emphatic NO.” I wonder why? His face is the most puzzling because, unlike the rest of the package, it’s not traditional Polynesian. He looks more like Shemp of “The Three Stooges”, Curly’s alcoholic replacement stooge: Small dark eyes wincing on either side of a flat, mushy nose that was either crushed by a steel plate the size of Delaware or booze-melted slowly over a three-thousand-year bender. The mouth is thin-lipped, mean. Coarse black hair hangs ragged down to the clenched jaw and crowned in a final ti wreath. All this pasted on a head roughly the shape of a toaster oven.

“I see him. He’s pretty pissed off.” Yelling toward Gabriel’s face.

“Tell him to ease off on the wind – and ask permission to teach here.”

Is he serious? If the wind is his work, I don’t think I’m in any position to tell Shempzilla anything. Beg, maybe, but tell? And this is definitively not the time to request a favor. I try another tack. “Hello,” I telepath in my friendliest inner voice. But he ain’t buyin’ any. His head shakes as if under wasp attack, arms swinging in great arches, and the wind! It’s lifting the left side of my body off the rock, nearly rolls me over. Might be time to get the hell out of here. But how? Any attempt to move into even a low crawling stance would be suicide. I lay down flat on the rocks and hold third-eye contact, as it’s not polite to address anyone without looking at them square in their angry alcoholic face.

“I am a spiritual teacher,” I begin. As soon as I think-say these words, my entire over-loaded sensory experience stops, like after a hurricane or multi-car accident, a sudden stillness nearly more disorienting than the catastrophe. The wind is once more the gentle breeze of glossy Hawaiian brochures. And the big guy has not only stopped his war-dance, he’s smiling like a little boy who sees the beauty in something that he can't yet understand: Tentative wonder. His face has morphed, now completely Hawaiian in every detail. Masculine and even-eyed curious.

“Tell him thanks for me.” A bit sardonically, Gabriel’s normal low voice sounds strange, canned and echoy in the new quiet. We both sit up

“I would like your permission to teach here.” Formal and straight to the point is my best shot, I figure.

The giant smiles wide, big black eyes catch the Pacific sunset. I feel love. Or maybe just relief for not being tossed off this pinnacle of doom. He nods once deeply.

“Thank you.” I open my eyes, all end-of-the-movie weepy to see Gabriel has already climbed back over the railing, brushing dust off his arms. “C’mon, I’m hungry.” I accustom my vision to the ‘real’ world a second, look back over toward Koolau Mountain where my new pal stands, but all I see is a city getting ready for night.