One time I was walking across a wide Hawaiian countryside field, grass freshly mowed, carrying a banana stalk that I had sliced from one tree in an orchard, transporting 40 pounds or so of sweet fruit to install precisely on a swinging porch rope, a way to keep rats from eating before we humans do. I had other landscaping work, so I was continually walking back and forth across the aina. Lots of physical exertion and I wore hiking shoes, sturdy yet thrift-store flimsy, as they go. Sometimes I am too impatient to tie my shoes and thus give shoelaces a chance to hang loose. This day my shoes fit my feet loosely and I didn’t stop to readjust. As I kept going, maybe 45 minutes passed.

Then on my right foot a sting like a cigarette butt touched the bottom of my tender sole flesh. Quickly I flung my shoe off and inside I saw a five inch long centipede had made a home in the comforting padding of my shoe. Gently I turned the shoe to the side, so her escape could be amiable. We had worked together for almost an hour and no hard feelings.

She slithered her way, and I hobbled my direction back to a tiny house in an adjacent field. Some lotion, some massaging, some cold water, some prayer, and I nursed the sting to moderately painful. (Over the next few days that foot would swell red and bruised making any shoe difficult to wear.) After an hour, and perhaps a few healthy tears, I went back to work.

When physical strife arrives, say the flu, I aim to work through as in keep my physical self in motion to message that gentle movement can surface what is not in balance, whatever ails. In this way I welcomed the centipede’s gift of pain as difficult can mean expressive change or watching how I react to excruciating hurt, a chance to newly perspective on the familiar.

Another time on a Hawaiian countryside field close to the centipede one, a ram runt (male sheep) started to lose power and I nurtured best I could even as my knowledge on how to was minimal. Hacking at cane grass, seven or eight feet tall, with rudimentary tools one afternoon, I discovered the ram tucked inside a grassy clearance, lying on healthy soil, this dirt patch in the shade so cooling against the blasting Hawaiian heat. Finding him was startling, and that is when I over talk, having relied on words, words, and more words as a way through to mitigate uncertainty. But now I try go quiet. Still. Listening and wondering.

I said to the ram, whose back was completely turned to me, that no need die alone. I was right there working, after all. True story that he scooted his debilitated self around to take a look. Who is talking? I whispered while staring into his eyes, “I love you.” We gazed at each other for five minutes, maybe longer. For sure, I blinked first. Intensity is not so often my thing. His effort let me know that he heard, though. Counts for so much. I found him again with his back turned to the world, facing directly into the barn wall, the morning he died a few days later his eyes still wide open simply now milky opaque, still, and again I blinked first, turning away. No such thing as a peaceful death yet you can feel quiet while preparing for the stampede of other emotional reactions.

This morning I walked steps (short logs placed where soil and rock are removed to make room) that descend to an ancient taro field where a streaming river flows through. Some amiable people gathered for random pitches, each an individual perspective, on living less addicted in this world. As I spoke on my meandering way, a cat sat upright from way across the other side of the long narrow rectangular table, maybe 80 feet away. She yawned and walked the stretch, arriving before me while I spoke. “I see you,” I said, interrupting my formal speaking to welcome an animal in need of a scratch and attention. After lifting her into my lap, she began audibly purring and the world realigned for a minute or two. I'm allergic to cats, so she stayed a while before I placed her back onto the earth. I don’t say why these moments occur, yet they make me pause and in that is the gratitude.

Also, today a three-month-old baby slumped gently in a neighboring tutu’s (grandmother’s) arms for we humans are so incapable for so long after physically arriving to earth, we are incapable of holding our heads up for several months. Imagine if like so much of the rest of the animal kingdom we had to forage and fret and fight our way only a few days after being birthed. Yet his eyes were clear and he knew himself already I could see. Perhaps his name was Quinten. In another three months he will be agile, fully able to hold his stare and head, for all to adore. Feels ordinary to register distance in such proximity as in assuming heartfelt mystery on how this creature fairs, for real.

One time while a woman stared at me from way across the Hawaiian farm field, I had physical momentum for I had placed an awkward hat on my head and gobbed sunscreen on and nearly sprinted to get started. If I am impatient enough to not tie my shoes, imagine how I am in a team with a work project. That day we were to work with soil and seed and potential food crops. As I turned to gait into action, I saw her standing so far away, gazing, and I stopped. In my tracks, I paused.

My impulse was to walk directly to her, stepping through the small crowd of people, local families, and over the organized growing food rows of soil and say hello. Instead, we stared through the divide. She had the luxury to watch me without my knowing and but when I felt her stare across the distant distance and knew her proximity and returned the energy, she got shy. She looked down at the ground and then I got shy, and we imagined neither one of us had been looking. We had been though. That was several years ago and if one day the field appeared again, I could saunter over. After saying hello, we simply do not know what is next. The initial pause counts for so much then.

The centipede said hello while in my shoe searching for more space. The ram realigned his death for a few minutes to say hello on his departing way. That cat walking on the table heard my hello voice, soothing, and so she approached. Babies tend to coo back when I hold them and offer greetings. As for the woman, I never did see her in proximity again and my muscled lesbian heart has that thing we call heartache and that can happen in ordinary distancing. At least we say hello closeup, a humble prayer for more, even as the one fleeting finite moment is full enough.