Musings: Vibrations

Venus, about an arm's length from the Moon, was the first thing I saw this morning. What a splendid sight to start the day.

Both were still visible, although faintly, when I reached the beach about 10 minutes later. Three iwa flew overhead, and a fisherman, throw net over his shoulder, poked the reef for tako. A guy was sleeping on the sand, curled up tight in a black blanket, looking much like a sea cumcumber stranded by the tide.

I wanted to be there at sunrise to swim in the shimmer. If you're into the string theory of physics, or one of the many other beliefs that science hasn't yet been able to categorize and label, you know it's all about vibrations. And I've found that swimming in the path of the rising sun, in that exquisite shimmer, raises my own personal vibration.

I experienced a vibration of a different sort yesterday, when I used a weed-eater for the first time. Usually, I trim the tall grass around my backyard dryland taro patch by hand, but when I saw my neighbor using a weedeater, I asked if I could borrow it.

As I whipped through the tall grass, enveloped in a stinky cloud of burning gas and oil, arms and hands vibrating, I thought of all the guys who spend the better part of their waking hours immersed in the vibration of weedeaters and lawn mowers as they manicure yards around sprawling houses used by vacationers or rarely inhabited at all.

Sure, they're glad for the money, but it's the kind of work that tends to breed resentment, rather than satisfaction. As my friend Kaimi stated so bluntly, "wiping the asses of rich people" doesn't do much to raise a worker's vibrations.