A Hui Hou, Farewell Manhattan - #36

I let go of Saint Lukes Place and my old attachments

It is kind of crazy to me that each of the installments of my memoir is getting read over 200 times. I am so grateful to all of you for showing up and taking an interest in these stories of my wilder younger years.

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I flew from Honolulu back to New York City that November. My tan - the little bit of tan that was visible once I donned my New York winter wardrobe of black wool pants, turtleneck sweater, and a colorful scarf - turned heads and elicited comments as I hustled about reconnecting with friends and organizing my temporary absence.

It was not a simple thing to pack up my beautiful, historic floor-through apartment on St Lukes Place. Though only a one bedroom with a tiny office, it was filled with eclectic, carefully chosen pieces of furniture. A cream-colored Italian leather sofa bed, a modern coffee table in front of it with its sleekly curved glass top resting on an unbelievably heavy marble ball, the Biedermeier dining table and chairs, the American pine desk in the office - all of them were imbued with the memories and energies of these remarkable years of transformation and the remarkable people I had welcomed into my home. Even after donating shelves of books to the library across the street, my essential pared down collection included volumes that had been mine since childhood, some my motherʻs in her childhood, plus many treasured gift volumes. I would hold on to these. And all that art, from friends who were artists. This required a substantial, climate-controlled storage room. And a moving company to get it down two flights of steep 19th century stairs.

Meanwhile, what to do with the small subset of items that I could not take on the road with me, but did not want to put in storage? When my pilgrimage ended (or on the remote chance that the world as we knew actually it turned on its axis and I would be catapulted into a new critical role), I would need a place to land and be functional. My dear friend Lise, companion on many of my early spiritual adventures, had been working part time for a gifted healer named Nancy Johnson. Nancyʻs office was actually a studio apartment in the East Village, a split level arrangement with her treatment room upstairs and a storage/office space downstairs. Lise had the idea that maybe I could leave my capsule wardrobe there.

Lise had told me much about Nancy and vice versa, but with all my traveling somehow we had not yet met. Nancy tuned up my chakras, and my skepticism evaporated along with the negative stuff stuck in my energy field. She was the real deal. We spent hours talking about my journey out of corporate life, and hers out of a career as a graphic designer. Lise was correct, we both felt this was an arrangement that made sense, although perhaps for reasons beyond the apparent practicality of it. Closing the door for the last time on 16 Saint Lukes Place, I parked my desktop computer and essential items in Nancyʻs downstairs space for a nominal monthly rent and crawled into the cave for few nights, sleeping on an extra massage table. Then it was time to leave New York and meet up with Marlies, Prageet and the girls.

The RV had traveled to the East Coast and I found the family in Maryland. They were there to reconnect with another of the key people in their network and felt he was someone I should meet as well. Douglas Zaruba was and is a talented artist and master goldsmith, but what drew them to him was his backstory. Long a serious student of spiritual teachings, he had a transformative personal story of physical healing after a motorcycle accident that should have been fatal. Doug did not just create art and jewelry - the gemstones he cut, the installations he created and still creates, were and are portals or gateways of energy.

We toured Dougʻs studio and shared a long lunch with him. I was going to travel with the family in the RV as they made their way back out to Colorado to drop off Malu and Nani with their father for the winter. Prageet had just started up the RV when finally I realized why I had to meet Doug. “Wait!” I instructed. I reached into my small suitcase and found a purple velvet pouch containing the uncut amethyst that had been a birthday gift from Nelsinho. On all my travels during these years I took it with me as an amulet of sorts, along with handful of quartz crystals. I ran back into the shop. “What would you do with this?” I asked Doug. He examined the stone, then looked carefully at me, reading our energies. Finally he began to sketch. He showed me a spiral gemstone cut he had invented, which he proposed using for the amethyst. But there would also be rubies and yellow sapphires and even a hidden diamond, all set in a necklace he described as a power piece based on sacred geometry. I left the amethyst with Doug, giving him a deposit and free rein with the design.

There were a few loose ends for me to tie up in Colorado as well. Reassuring my parents that I was still sane, but that I needed to spend more time on my personal learning journey in Hawaiʻi. Checking in with my expatriate Brazilian ex-boyfriend Chico for one last evening of the sensual music that had been the soundtrack to my script for the previous four years. Sitting in coffee shops in Boulder journaling about how my time there during college set themes that had played out in mysterious ways in recent years, as I was drawn to spiritual pathways with indigenous and feminine sources of wisdom. Where was it all leading?

With 20/20 hindsight, not a single human connection I made in 1996 was accidental nor incidental. Eighteen months later, Nancy would serve as matron of honor at my wedding. Doug would make the wedding rings. Marlies and Prageet would introduce me to the groom. But even that meeting was still a year into the future. For now, all I knew was my immediate tasks were complete. In just six weeks I had left behind yet another layer of my old life in Manhattan and was free to return to Hawaiʻi. There, as I had two years before, I would leave 1996 behind and greet the first minutes of 1997 in an adapted version of the Brazilian New Yearʻs Eve ritual, dressed all in white and skipping seven waves as they came ashore on Kailua Beach. Iemanja, Goddess of the Sea, may my wishes come true!