It's been a winter of challenges, yes even in so-called paradise (AKA Maui). Unusually inclement weather - wind, rain, cool days and nights, and water choppy and too cold for comfortable swimming. Recurrent cold/flu virus attacks, mutating weekly, for months on end. Bouts with parasites persisting from last year's travels in India. Wrestling with future alternatives in the quest for a home with budget balance...
In mid-April, our evening entertainment turned to watching video replays of presentations at the conference held in LA by Project Camelot, entitled, "Awake and Aware 2013: Time Travel & Other Worlds." Meanwhile I was reading 11/22/63, the Stephen King novel about travel back in time to undo the Kennedy assassination. In that quest many obstacles intruded along the way; the hero discovering, "The past is obdurate." The book is reminiscent of Groundhog Day and Rendezvous, both dealing with multiple replays of the past until "you get it right."
My phone log began to reveal a few repetions of the following:
Jack
Ruby
(Jack Ruby, for those two young to remember, was the assassin of Kennedy's assassin, insuring the past would remain silent on that plot.)
Ruby was a young woman wanting to buy our ruby-red car (a 2001 Acura Integra). When she showed up to have a look at it, I said to her, "Ruby, meet Ruby." The week before, the first person we showed the car to said it should have a name... like "Ruby."
This sequence also recalls the movie trailer Ruby Sparks, where a novelist's character creation (Ruby) comes to life as part of his life.
In the midst of all the above, the past - or in this case, the future scenario of selling the car - proved obdurate more than once. After feedback from the first two buyers, we decided to get some basic bodywork done to hammer out the worst of the dents on both front fenders: relics of past accidents in California by Osnat's twenty-something son and daughter. The very next day after the work was done, she drove to an evening event - a channeling session by an interdimensional comic named Karton - and came out to the parking lot to find a fresh dent in the rear bumper; so we had to return the next day to the body shop to deal with that.
The next day, she drove to a healer in the afternoon, up a rough dirt driveway. The healer announced that the stubborn parasites (persistent since India) plaguing Osnat's system all winter had survived her attempted purge and were beginning a new life cycle. On the way out she drove over a rock and suffered a flat tire, which meant another trip to town and another costly repair, dragging down our morale and making us wonder what forces were arrayed against us in preparing to leave this enchanted/haunted island. Following the tire repair, a talisman appeared in the tire well of the trunk: a large button from an ancient sweater of Osnat's from years past.
Coming out the other side of this gauntlet of clues and omens, to our final week before we had to fly away, the King book was finished, the parasites back in remission. But Craigslist fell silent, and the car remained unsold.
"Time is an illusion," Bashar reminds us. "All points in space and time are linked together. When you find that inner excitement in one experience, and then another, it will turn out that those experiences must be connected." Awake and aware, in the pause between anxiety and excitement, we await the next signpost on the way back home.
Postscript, next day: Osnat passes her driver's test. At the DMV while awaiting her license I see my former yoga teacher on Maui, Ruby Amarshan. In the evening we go together to the Karton session, and in the same parking lot where the previous week someone dinged the rear bumper, I bonk my head on the hatchback and realize it's not staying open: the hydraulic struts are shot. Yet another obstacle to selling the car...
I go stressing into paranoia mode, while Osnat remains optimistic down to the wire: "Something will show itself." On Wednesday we plead our case at the used car lots, put notices on bulletin boards, relist online, and formulate backup plans for car storage on Maui.
After meeting with my friend Rick to play chess, drum, and discuss car options - in the chess game of life - I'm too burnt out even to go drumming for dance class. Instead, on the way down the highway towards home, my phone rings and a guy says he wants to see the car. I detour to Kahalui to meet him there. On seeing the red Integra his eyes light up. A classic sporty car, he owned a '95 model, wanted one again. Dents, struts, no problem. This is the car he wants. Cash in his pocket. Let's do this, tonight.
And it is done. We enter the home stretch clear and free. Rick channels pithy wisdom by way of congratulations, worthy of a bumper sticker:
"Patience is often required when surfing life in the now."
[previous trials and tribulations of Buying a Car on Maui]
In mid-April, our evening entertainment turned to watching video replays of presentations at the conference held in LA by Project Camelot, entitled, "Awake and Aware 2013: Time Travel & Other Worlds." Meanwhile I was reading 11/22/63, the Stephen King novel about travel back in time to undo the Kennedy assassination. In that quest many obstacles intruded along the way; the hero discovering, "The past is obdurate." The book is reminiscent of Groundhog Day and Rendezvous, both dealing with multiple replays of the past until "you get it right."
My phone log began to reveal a few repetions of the following:Jack
Ruby
(Jack Ruby, for those two young to remember, was the assassin of Kennedy's assassin, insuring the past would remain silent on that plot.)
Ruby was a young woman wanting to buy our ruby-red car (a 2001 Acura Integra). When she showed up to have a look at it, I said to her, "Ruby, meet Ruby." The week before, the first person we showed the car to said it should have a name... like "Ruby."
This sequence also recalls the movie trailer Ruby Sparks, where a novelist's character creation (Ruby) comes to life as part of his life.
In the midst of all the above, the past - or in this case, the future scenario of selling the car - proved obdurate more than once. After feedback from the first two buyers, we decided to get some basic bodywork done to hammer out the worst of the dents on both front fenders: relics of past accidents in California by Osnat's twenty-something son and daughter. The very next day after the work was done, she drove to an evening event - a channeling session by an interdimensional comic named Karton - and came out to the parking lot to find a fresh dent in the rear bumper; so we had to return the next day to the body shop to deal with that. The next day, she drove to a healer in the afternoon, up a rough dirt driveway. The healer announced that the stubborn parasites (persistent since India) plaguing Osnat's system all winter had survived her attempted purge and were beginning a new life cycle. On the way out she drove over a rock and suffered a flat tire, which meant another trip to town and another costly repair, dragging down our morale and making us wonder what forces were arrayed against us in preparing to leave this enchanted/haunted island. Following the tire repair, a talisman appeared in the tire well of the trunk: a large button from an ancient sweater of Osnat's from years past.
Coming out the other side of this gauntlet of clues and omens, to our final week before we had to fly away, the King book was finished, the parasites back in remission. But Craigslist fell silent, and the car remained unsold.
"Time is an illusion," Bashar reminds us. "All points in space and time are linked together. When you find that inner excitement in one experience, and then another, it will turn out that those experiences must be connected." Awake and aware, in the pause between anxiety and excitement, we await the next signpost on the way back home.
Postscript, next day: Osnat passes her driver's test. At the DMV while awaiting her license I see my former yoga teacher on Maui, Ruby Amarshan. In the evening we go together to the Karton session, and in the same parking lot where the previous week someone dinged the rear bumper, I bonk my head on the hatchback and realize it's not staying open: the hydraulic struts are shot. Yet another obstacle to selling the car...
I go stressing into paranoia mode, while Osnat remains optimistic down to the wire: "Something will show itself." On Wednesday we plead our case at the used car lots, put notices on bulletin boards, relist online, and formulate backup plans for car storage on Maui. After meeting with my friend Rick to play chess, drum, and discuss car options - in the chess game of life - I'm too burnt out even to go drumming for dance class. Instead, on the way down the highway towards home, my phone rings and a guy says he wants to see the car. I detour to Kahalui to meet him there. On seeing the red Integra his eyes light up. A classic sporty car, he owned a '95 model, wanted one again. Dents, struts, no problem. This is the car he wants. Cash in his pocket. Let's do this, tonight.
And it is done. We enter the home stretch clear and free. Rick channels pithy wisdom by way of congratulations, worthy of a bumper sticker:
"Patience is often required when surfing life in the now."
[previous trials and tribulations of Buying a Car on Maui]
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