Balanced between this, and that… between here, and there.

On certain days I am that rock—upon which are anchored two teenagers, a grandmother, a schizophrenic aunty, and all the other multifarious members of an indigenous Hawaiian clan I have come to call my own.

Other days, I am the water, seeking my own level in a people’s and family’s topsy-turvy history, recombining into a form acceptable to the others—unthreatening, useful, giving.

Along yet other moments I am that sky, textured by occasional clouds, the ephemera of white and gray defining it somehow—everywhere and nowhere at once, harbinger of oxygen and breath.

Once upon a time I lived on an archipelago, on the eastern fringe of Asia. Then upon another time along the fractured fault of California, on the western edge of the North American continent. Now, I live right in the middle of those modalities… on these young, frangible islands still subject to lava, waves, tides | wind, rain, sun.

Entropy is alive here, as is equanimity. Mine. Ours. Yours.