A Place of Refuge

Pu’uhonua o Honaunau is the Hawaiian name for a small tongue of land encircling a turquoise cove a few clicks south of Kona Town. The English name for it is Place of Refuge.

See, the Hawaiians were fierce warriors and enjoyed their tropical paradise in spite of all the disasters they were regularly subjected to – from volcanic eruptions to earthquakes and hurricanes. These were actions of the gods. Or more, they were reactions, reactions to Hawaiians breaking kapu and as the rules were invented to keep peace with the gods, they were heavily enforced. The violations could be anything from stealing to walking on noble roads if you were a commoner or even letting your shadow fall across a royal. But such breaking of laws, an affront to the supreme deities who control the world, had to be punished swiftly and with full lethality, at times even extending to the family of the guilty. Thus the fierce part. But the thing is, there was a way out; there’s always a way out.

Down in the southwest of the island, at the place where the jungle meets the ocean and in the shadow of Mauna Loa lies place of refuge. If you escaped the soldiers chasing you on foot and by outrigger, strong islanders wielding spears and clubs and knives propelled by the gods to shed your blood, if you somehow made it past and beyond them to city of refuge you were safe. A priest there would bless you on the tightly packed lava rock plateau overlooking the water and all would be forgiven. Like a mortal game of capture the flag with game-ending  redemption in the form of absolution from a priest (that sounds familiar, the idea that you must endure some sorta test to appease the supreme and then with the blessing of a priest and this, say, penance, shall all be forgiven – where have I seen this before?).

Now it’s little more than a National Park with old wind and water beaten elaborate wooden tikis and black lava rock shores and lazy honu with their smooth shells and tourists from Kansas and Michigan and Los Angeles, like myself, and Japan, and Australia and NZ and so on from all over wandering around this beautiful little beach with its replica outriggers and visitors’ center and fake hut teaching something about these great natives who were yet another speed bump on America’s highway to superstardom. But such is life, conquest is as old as time and one can’t but appreciate the irony of British and then American forces subjugating the native Hawaiians just like a generation before Kamehameha had subjugated the other tribes of Big Island and then continued all the way up to Kauai. Though King Kam’s act was considered unification, even if it was accomplished with blood and fury about on par with that of the haoles. But that’s enough, read a book on the subject if you're interested but for the sake of this article let’s just look at what has happened, how today the Hawaiian islands, with their fierce native and fire and snow gods and great clouds and rich culture and mythology, is just 1 of 50 parts of America and a small part, to be sure, somewhat cut off from the rest, though all who go there have only great things to say about the magic, the energy, the spirits that inhabit and encircle and suffuse the islands. And so one has to realize that maybe that’s the real trick, that Pu’uhonua O Honaunau has spread, that the place of refuge that was once a single beach in the southernmost Hawaiian island has now come to spread its curative and redemptive magic all over the goddamn kingdom. Because for this writer in particular, Hawaii was just that – a spiritual rejuvenation in a true place of refuge.

It’s a lament that all too often in this modern world we confuse price with value. Not only that we think something is better if it costs more but also that we think if we make more money and achieve greater prestige, we’ll live a better life. As a person who lives in Hollywood and works in Beverly Hills, I have to strongly disagree with that assumption. My wife and I see some of the richest and hardest-working – in a word “successful” – people in America. And at least half of them, in spite of their money and success and souped-up Italian sportscars which can hit 185 but average about 15 in the L.A. gridlock, in spite of their access and entrée and so on they’re fucking miserable. Rotten. I can see through the face some put on, a mask of pride and self-assurance underneath which sits a certain sad emptiness they spend most of their time and power and money trying to hide from all those around them.

Don’t get me wrong, I see the other side too, people who are good at what they do, love what they do, make a lot of money, and enjoy the lives they’ve made for themselves. But I find that to be less the norm than we’d like to believe.

Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t some essay about austerity and asceticism, not some communist propaganda about the evils of money and commerce and Italian sports cars. I have no problem with those. It’s more about the people who go through life worshiping false idols, who never stop to think about who they really want to be, what they really want to do, and, on a lesser note (lesser because if one has attained a strong sense of personal identity and moves in that direction without fear they will achieve this automatically) happiness. It’s easy to get caught up in all the things going on around you, especially when everybody else has told you you should want them. Easy to put your nose down and crank it out, put up with the shit of building a career they told you you should be proud of and to the purpose of collecting money you've been told will make life easier, especially when the intoxicating perfume of said money and career is catching on the breeze, floating through the air, seeping into your nose and downright suffocating you. It’s a foul temptress, this sweet perfume, and it beckons you on without any thought to such trivialities as sleep, relationships (real interpersonal human soul to human soul relationships, not the ones that normally revolve around the words “Let’s get drinks”), diversity, rejuvenation, experience or inward exploration. That is to say you’re tired, you have lots of “colleagues” but it's questionable how many are true “if you gotta go down that dark alley I’m coming with you” friends, your days mostly run together in the endless cycle of wake to shower to work to lunch (laugh, quip, talk about whatever industry in which you work) to fight through afternoon dead zone to gym or drinks meeting or dinner to watch some Sportscenter to sleep, you hardly have enough time to shit properly much less relax your overworked brain and stress sensors, and you wake up someday and 5 years have gone by and you realize you have no fucking idea who that guy is who’s looking at you in the mirror but he has much less hair than he used to.

I see a lot of people who work in entertainment simply because it’s cool, who work their asses off and do all right, move up and along those lines I’ve seen some pass the moment when they realize they don’t want to do it anymore but more frightening than spending the rest of their life doing something they don’t want to do is the idea that all the time and work was a waste so they just push on and bury those fears down, constantly borderline discontent, like people who say they need noise because they’re most frightened of the sound of their own minds.  Living in L.A. I’ve come to accept a certain level of discontent and frustration and anger. Not that this city's all bad. Nor that everybody in the Biz is horrible. But the streets will always be clogged. And there are a lot of entitled douchebags. And you have to work harder than you’ve ever worked, sometimes at 2 or 3 jobs (especially creatives – every person I know who’s slowly making it as a writer or an actor or whatever is hustlin’ like Ray Rice, taking on countless gigs and relegating sleep to somewhere in the future, once we’ve gotten enough credits to take a long nap without worrying about losing momentum). Yes, Hollywood is a wild place where creativity and commerce meet at their highest level, and certainly many of the hustlers making our movies and TV shows happen, running around town in suits and whatnot deserve credit for all they do (and sacrifice) for the sake of the only new art form to have emerged in the last millenium (as photography is little more than an extension of painting, really). And for those of you who truly love what you do and are working towards something you know in your heart of hearts is what you want to do I salute you and emphasize this isn't directed at you. You've already done the requisite soul-searching so good for you. And as for L.A., yes, there ARE some genuinely good, compassionate, caring people here; but unfortunately I've come face to face with many more living their lives dedicated to their own means, who see those around them as materials to be evaluated and, if useful, to keep but only if it serves their own ends.

Such was the environment I left upon my arrival in Hawaii, when I was told by my buddy to meet him at some place called Pine Trees and found myself already irritated, like “shit, I’m gonna be doing what this fucker wants to do the whole damn time”. Me and the wife wanted to go to Hapuna but instead I pulled the 4WD Jeep off the highway onto a pitted lava rock and dirt trail towards good William. As people drove by me they waved and I looked around my vehicle, trying to see if maybe my lights were on, craning my neck to figure out if maybe that was Will on his way out. Who waves at a stranger? They do. Islanders.

I was worried maybe Will'd moved on since we were so fucking late, what after the stops at Costco and Kona Mountain Coffee. But we just pushed on, a drive to the beach over ruts and rocks and grooves, then another rough road slaloming trees, past trucks lining the waterfront dotted with surfers and beach bums and kids running around the tail gates and appraising the lineup and finally, at the end of that long road stood my buddy Will, tanned and long-haired and wearing nothing but trunks, the modern equivalent of the Hawaiian loin cloth.

Let me back up here. This is a kid I was great friends with one muggy summer about a decade ago selling knives in the Greater Baltimore area. We stayed in touch as we were too damned similar to ever lose touch. Wrote a blog together. Then I think I said something rude to him about his job selling acai berries (more about him trying to get me to sell them) and we didn’t talk for a few years. Last winter he was in town and he reached out to me so I took him to a few bars, got blacked out, and ran home, leaving him to fend for himself in this foreign, sprawling dirty city of demons.  And yet he still told me to come visit in Hawaii. Figured why not, let money and work be damned and let’s make this happen, booked the tickets for the wife and I and we spent the Spring looking forward to the islands. The whole time leading up to it we were a bit nervous, though, thinking surely this must be an imposition on him, we have friends we see almost daily we’d feel guilty burdening with our presence for a long weekend, much less a week with a kid I’ve seen for less than a few hours since 2000. Even more, we've come to accept that plans made casually and without extensive confirmations and/or Facebook invites have only a 50/50 chance of actually coming off. People are busy. People flake. So it is in this modern era. But not reassuring when we're depending on this kid to put us up and show us what's best in B.I.

So I find homeboy at the end of the dirt path, next to where he and a couple buds, including one surf chick, are sitting on beach chairs and on the tailgate of a pickup, looking at the surf rolling in, drinking cheap light beer and smoking spliffs or bats. One guy compliments my watch. Another asks about myself as a person, not what my job was (typical SoCal opener “Nice to meet you, what do you do?”) but where we’re from, what our story is, how we found ourselves on the island, welcome, that's awesome, compliments and encouragement and excited we're here. All smiles. All really open.

Gave me the fuckin’ creeps. What do you people really want from me? Seemingly they just wanted me to drink their beer. Smoke their herb. Eat the mangoes that grew in their backyard. Enjoy myself. Who cares that much, I mean really, about other people enjoying themselves?

L.A. is a tough city and you either grow a hard shell or you get crushed into the ground. After 4 years here I’m a bit more tightly wound than I’d care to be and full of distrust learned by working in an industry where yes can mean yes, no, or maybe and where people can smile while plotting a colleague’s demise. But maybe this isn’t just an L.A. thing; no, in fact by reading through the Wall Street Journal on the reg you’ll find the world in general, at least the corporate world, seems to be a bit more ruthless, a bit sleazier, a bit more soulless than anybody would want to believe. Folks who really seem not to give a fuck about anybody else. Maybe it’s because competition for jobs hasn’t been this high in decades. Maybe it's because we've preached social darwinism and the sacredness of laissez faire economics enough that we've come to believe that there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of the less knowledgeable or the weaker for our own greater glory. Maybe it’s because we’re all still recovering from the hangover that incapacitated us when the roaring 90’s came to a crash, lost and tired after a decade shepherded by a spoiled yokel  that started with Enron and 9/11 and ended with the worst recession since the great depression, a whole country disillusioned by the fact that we are not the God-Blessed civilization we’d been telling ourselves we were, that we might not even be #1 anymore.

Whatever the situation, my wife and I spent our week with a happy couple who had their own day-in day-out struggles of living, sure, such is life, but at the same time were truly and honestly some of the happiest I've ever met. They smiled. They looked healthy. They didn’t seem to mind showing us around their island, literally taking off the whole week we were there to share Aloha vibrations. And they weren’t the exception but, from what I could gather, the rule. I guess it’s because when a person lives in paradise, half an ocean from the teeming masses devouring the mainland, it’s hard to be angry. But it’s more than just living there, that’s the lesson I took away. It’s the life one lives there. They didn’t mind touring us around because they did with us what they do when we're not there. Explore. Enjoy the gifts of the ocean, of the jungle. Drive fast on long uncrowded highways, road sodas in hand and the sun shining and even if it’s not the air’s still warm enough to go around shirtless and the vog's not half as bad as smog regardless of what they say. Waking up to the sounds of birds chirping and falling asleep in dead silence (or, as in the case when we stayed in a hostel in Hilo Town, to the soft chirp of coqui frogs and patter of tropical rain).

There aren’t many bars there. Hell, I probably have more in walking distance from my pad in Hollywood than in all of Big Island. And I didn’t miss ‘em one bit. Bars are beautiful in a sordid way, filled with fleeting promises but often leaving me with a pain in the gulliver. And I’d be a liar to say I don’t love finding a corner booth in a dimly-lit drinking establishment and drinking with the dregs – and that, on occasion, I love to mingle with sweaty young sex fiends paying 20 bucks for mixologized drinks while the summer dance song blares across the club – but it’s amazing how little I missed my drinking establishments. I didn’t feel as great a need to blunt reality with the fierceness because every day felt good, felt fulfilling, left me good tired and without need to snub out the fires roaring through unfulfilled daily routine. It melted the shell, sucked the rot out of my pores, and reminded me of what’s really and truly important in the human experience. And I also learned to appreciate the steady beer and spliff to compliment experiences, not the fierce pipe and heavy liquor to blot it out completely.

I went surfing almost every day. As I paddled through crystalline water, sun beating on my back in water clear of tar balls and yellow foam and all the other grotesques I find surfing in dirty Venice, I was reminded of that Baudelaire poem, the one line “with the amorous sun caressing their loins they gloried the health of their noble bodies”.

A buddy of mine back in L.A. told me he’d go stir crazy if he moved to the islands as I told him I could see doing. And that’s an important thing to be noted because surely this bold statement of Hawaii as refuge and place to reconnect with my own inherent, natural humanity is not for everybody. Big Island is decidedly different from the others that attract the most visitors, more “roots” as Will would say. Maui from what I hear is built up pretty much from one side to another. And one local told me they call Waikiki "Little L.A." because of all its skyrises and luxury stores and commerce, droves of tourists and all the ladies in designer clothes and expensive sports cars.

But for me that was nowhere to be seen. Living in L.A. you begin to feel, even if you try and fight it, a bit of awe for nice cars, a consumerist desire to rate yourself depending on the vehicle you sit behind as you jockey for position from home to work to maybe bar or beach. You feel insecure to drive a piece of shit around town, never mind if it’s what you can afford and works. Yet in B.I. (Big Island, of course, folks), driving around a new 4-door Jeep wrangler I felt ashamed that I didn’t have a rad beater like all the locals, a little embarrassed that I was driving a shiny tourist car. It’s refreshing to see status comes not from flashy things but from not having one, status based on having lives so fulfilled you don't need a shiny luxury-cock-as-chariot but can do it just fine without having to prove shit.

We hiked down to the beach where Captain Cook was killed by the natives for not being Lono, thus getting in our history but it wasn’t some place where anybody could just ride a tour bus down a road. No, you had to either hike or kayak to it. A place that makes its visitors work for the privilege. Because they’ll appreciate it all that much more if they experience the journey not done with middle-east-fueled machines but with the sweat and labor of one's own body. And that cove, with its grand escarpments looming above and world-class snorkeling, is worth any work a person would put in and yet fewer people put in the work than you’d think. Or maybe not. Maybe you don’t assume anybody would put in the work while on vacation. But if vacation’s about recharging and refreshing, sleeping rarely does the trick. You can sleep at home and it’s much cheaper. In my opinion vacation is about re-connecting with your loved ones and with yourself, something so simple become so hard in this generation of distraction.

So often these days we go through our lives afraid to really and truly look into ourselves, to discover who we really are and what as a human being will fulfill our lives - thus the reason that most of our comedy today, from THE OFFICE to Zach Galiafanakis in THE HANGOVER, is based on being self-unaware. But it's tough because that’s such a fucking difficult question – I mean, shit, what do any of us know about what we really want? We want to be happy but what does that mean? We want money but why? We want to find love but do we even know what love is other than that thing you see in Rom Coms or read on V-Day cards? The ones who know what they want, truly and deeply are a lucky few and even they're probably a little deluded. It’s like the old story about a guy spending his whole life working towards some great lofty goal, financial or career or otherwise, and upon attaining it finding life just as empty as it had been before he started down this path, presenting him with the tragic realization that in fact this long, arduous journey was for naught.

That’s what refuge is all about though. About redemption from the horrors of the past and liberation from the savages hunting you. A new fresh day when and where you can re-appraise the way you live, free from the encroaching hordes pressing down on you.

This may sound like the ramblings of a jaded fool to people who take vacations to Los Angeles, see the glitz and the glam and the warm weather and the shoreline in my city as a paradise compared to wherever they live. And all I can say is perhaps that’s true but while people may vacation here, people who work here rarely get the time to appreciate it, versus the Island where everybody was working to survive but still and in spite of this they all just seemed so damn happy. In L.A. you feel like everybody is working towards something and in some cases working simply so they have something to do (people who say they're bored - if you're ever bored in this life you're doing something wrong, is all I can say). Always looking to the future at the expense of the present. The locals in the Island were living in the present.


Sure they were planning for the future but not at the expense of the joys and experiences that could be had now, driving from desert to rainforest to volcano to Pu'uhonua or hiking through the jungle to plunge into the endless blue and then there’s the simple sublime bliss to be derived from a sunset over the folded hills or the long crest of Mauna Loa, (the biggest mountain on the earth by mass, by the way, and taller than everest if measured from its base in the seafloor) or the watery horizon around them at all time. Friends stop by to talk story, play chess, discuss life, and liberty.

When the talk went to futures it wasn’t begging the gods for some promotion down the line, nor was it thinly-veiled hinting at the fact that the folks talking were currently discontent. More it was like a meditation on how to live a more varied, more fulfilling, more educated life – travels to Australia and Thailand, a trip around the world from their bud whose name was also Ryan (~ “I mean I’m not in a relationship, might as well take advantage of the freedom and see the world before it’s too late” ~), ideas of moving to a part of the island just being re-settled by locals and braddahs, more “roots” and much cheaper with an Eastern versus Western orientation (on the island that is, not talking Asian vs. Euro here).

When at KOA I found myself jealous of the airport workers because they lived there. The shuttle drivers were happy (I flashed back to my surly Lot C shuttle driver at LAX), the TSA bright and efficient, so on and so forth.

When I got back to Los Angeles. I tried to hold on to this island spirit as long as possible. But it’s been hard. I go to work surrounded by assistants bemoaning their subjugation at the hands of agents vibrating with some good stress and a lot of bad. The assistants work their fingers to the bone and take regular shittings-upon for the chance to someday become an agent or an executive. The agents and execs work their asses off while being chided by department heads and bloated execs, all along holding onto the hope that someday they’ll be able to call the shots, they’ll be the ones dictating what fills our airwaves and movie screens but with the Hollywood system the way it is there’s a certain unmentioned sentiment of futility amongst all but the most fervent of tastemakers. Everybody works 70+ hours a week, grunting and arguing and reading and writing rapid emails and launching out thousands of calls with closing percentage probably some of the lowest of almost any sales job, many along the way forgetting about their onetime love of film and TV to become salesmen who occasionally go to red carpet parties while good old Big Island Will is a salesman, living happily debt-free, has hit his solar sales numbers for the quarter and lives simply enough to maximize his quality of life. Days spent surfing, hiking, loving his woman, talking story with good people, looking to take a month to explore Asia and able to take a week off to make a long lost buddy's visit into one of the greatest "vacations" said buddy's ever taken.

The lesson I took away is that nobody has any fucking right to complain. That it is possible to live a wonderful happy life, that your life is yours and anything is possible. You CAN move to Hawaii. You CAN build a life around being happy and fulfilled versus building it around a career and wealth. And yes, you can build a life around your career and money but make sure you’ve actually stopped to consider the fact that it’s only one path of many and as such will not necessarily bring you happiness, or usefulness, or even peace, much less fulfillment. Thus the skyrocketing number of people numbing themselves with prescription meds as they try and accept a life they weren’t made to live.

So why am I not living there? Why do I put up with this bullshit that irritates me to no end, drives me to madness? It’s because I’m on the path towards being a writer, I want to leave a legacy of wordsmithing and storytelling that would maybe change the world but I'd settle for at least opening a few minds. And if I did find such peace and contentment in life right now I just wouldn’t get it done. Perhaps if I could write full-time, maybe then I could live in the islands but until it happens that I support myself with my arbitrary markings on paper or web and don't have to carve up my free time to pursue this goal – and then there's the fact that a writer needs to be a little disgruntled while writing, especially when he has to work on top of it, yes, can't forget that - let's just say I have a lot to say before I can maybe relax in paradise, in the place of refuge. And let me add that this future goal, (as you might say "hypocrite! you're putting up with discontent for a future plan!") it’s a passion I haven’t just fallen into – I’ve tried my hand at a lotta things, tried a lot of career paths (sales, marketing, retail, ski bum, extreme sports, restaurant, TV production, film production, lumberjackery, lifeguarding, Hollywood, finance, surf bum, camp counselor) and yet I keep coming back to writing. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, looking inward, doing the ascetic thing, travels and solitary moments and getting lost and found and so on and have come to realize that the world of the word is the most fulfilling for me and, since it’s such a damned frustrating world at times, I need to minimize other possible soul-fulfilling activities which don’t lead to getting books and scripts written. So I spend at least half my waking non-working (and a portion of my working) hours writing, reading, living in the world. And even with such a passion I need a break, certainly, most of the greatest writers have been driven to madness by their battle with the blank page. But such is my chosen lot in life after active exterior and interior exploration. And for me this place of refuge worked to recharge and refill my soul, strengthen me to continue on as my writing and working sucks the soul dry. And perhaps when I’m a man who can call himself a writer and nothing more (or I have a nervous breakdown and give it up) I’ll be able to return to this island for good and live amidst the happy smilers, living off the fat and the beauty of the land, eschewing expensive bars and restaurants and plays and movie premiers for waterfalls and jungles and days spent stretching the arms outside the breakers and the legs towards dark jungles fed by the volcanoes whose caldera are waiting for me. And of course that turquoise heavenly horizon.

But for everybody else, especially the ones just kinda going through the motions, going forward without thinking about where they’re going or, even more important, why they’re going there, for you I say you must seek refuge. Seek refuge from the frustrations of your life – the great lesson from this trip was that life doesn’t have to be a miserable trudge from home to shitty job and back again. That life can be however you choose to make it but only for those truly brave enough to confront the world of possibilities and tap into the great compass within their own bony flesh selves.

Seek refuge from a life where your only pleasures lie in watching other people’s stories. Seek refuge from a job to which you give everything but which does not give equally back. Seek refuge from chasing hollow consumerism (it’s okay to buy things that give your life increased value; and if driving fast in a high-powered automobile makes you happiest, so be it – but to worship false deities for the sake of themselves will lead to Charlie Sheen/Lindsay Lohan emptiness, as so well expressed in the Hedonistic Paradox ). Instead of chasing the golden calves, chase things that fulfill your being. If you have trouble figuring out what would fulfill your being, then that’s the first step on the quest towards finding it, admitting you're completely lost, an important beginning to an epic voyage from which you’ll emerge a better, stronger, and happier member of society. But beware, this is a quest that will take more commitment and sacrifice than the easy solution espoused by all of going through the motions and trying to fall in line with the rest of society. Still, if you're to live a happy, fulfilled, life you can look back on with pride when the great power above puts down his immortal thumb, there’s nothing more important.

My trip to Hawaii reminded me that I have one life to live and it’s mine to do with as I please. And it reminded me that I choose to live in a dirty city peopled by egos and auteurs and bums and douchebags and angels and artists and traders and inspiration and desperation and so on and so forth because it supports a goal that will take a hardness, a strength that only such adversity can foster. But I also feel better knowing that there is a refuge for me when the weasels begin to close in with their clubs and spears, looking to bash my skull for affronting the gods or whatever the fuck they may worship. A place to remind me how it feels to be happy and healthy, where birds chirp and people are kind and helpful and interested and welcoming and life flows at the pace of Kilauea lava. A place to bring my shattered mind back to its formerly whole shape.

Find your place of refuge. That’ll be part of finding out who you really are and what you truly want out of this life. And nobody can tell you what it is or should be and, even more, it’s most likely different for everybody. For Steve Jobs that refuge was found by getting out of Silicon Valley for India and studying under Ram Dass. For Hemingway that was Cuba. For the Buddha that place was buried deep inside himself, he just had to eschew the physical world to find it. Either way, everybody's got one and you need to find yours if you're ever to be the man you're to be. All of the men who went on to greatness at one time or another found their refuge to meditate, recharge, re-align, and discover the destiny written within them. And if you're confused how to look for your place - hell, I gotta say Hawaii’s a good place to start. The locals had a good idea with that Pu’uhonua O Honaunau. And inventing the whole "living on the Hawaiian islands" thing, for that matter. Yeah. That’s a good place to start.

Mahalo for sticking through this long essay. Hopefully it served you as well as my discovery of refuge served me.

Aloha.

- Ryan