Before I came to Kauai, I had come up with a short list of some things I wanted to do as soon as I got here. There were three, a tattoo, a kayak and a motorcycle. The idea of a bike kind of made sense, because I had one twice before, once in NYC and in Santa Fe, NM. The tattoo was a bit of a wild card, my way of marking this crazy choice of mine, to come to a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The kayak came from an imagined, new life, with the ocean as my nautical highway to nowhere, the ever distancing horizon, an impossible destination.

Of the three, the tattoo is the only one without any place marker in my past. I can’t recall exactly when I fell in love with the idea of having a pendant, any kind of pendant, hanging around my neck. I know I definitely got into it when I moved to Santa Fe, just because it felt right to have something of spiritual significance resting over my heart. I’ll be damned, I just went to take a picture down of me finishing the NYC Marathon in Sept. ’82 and there is a chain around my neck, but when I blow it up, I can’t see what the hell is hanging on it. Memory is so unreliable!

One of my favorite pendants was given to me by a dear friend in Santa Fe, responsible for introducing me to Zen Buddhism. She told me I was already half way there and I might as well step into it, which I did. Etched into the small, silver bar was the outline of the Tibetan knot of eternity and I fell in love with it. It was this image I wanted to have branded on my right shoulder, a quiet statement of this old/new way of being. It was my badge, my indelible passport to this magical island.

In the mid 70’s, I was living in Glen Cove, Long Island, in a home I couldn’t afford, leading a life that felt like it was chosen for me. My marriage had outgrown the naive dream of possibility, ruptured by the actuality of its disenchantment. There was a nearby, quaint town called Sea Cliff, nestled just about the Long Island Sound. I befriended an old salt, who sold me a little AMF, manufactured sailboat called a Sunfish. On weekends, I would break the cuffs of conformity and take this little boat out on the Sound. I couldn’t sail to save my ass and continually flipped it over.  

I owned a 250cc Honda back in the late 60’s, when I was living in the East Village in a cavernous, seven room apartment, with a bunch of guys a good deal older than myself. Riding engenders a feeling of freedom that’s impossible to explain, part of the forever mystique of the motorcycle for all bikers. It stayed with me, until I moved to Santa Fe in the mid 80’s, leading a life I never imagined possible. I bought another bike, but for some reason, I never felt comfortable, almost like a dream deferred for another time.

Within the first few months of arriving on Kauai in ’03, I got that tattoo. There is a permanence about ink being drawn on your skin, my way of announcing to myself that I had made a choice about who I was and how I wanted to live. Now, most of the time, I forget it’s there, like the earring I got before I left NYC for Santa Fe over 35 years ago.

I got a kayak, too, one with pedals, keeping my hands free to hold a beer.  I started going out by myself, waiting for the whales to find me. Let me tell you, for a kid who grew up in NYC, there is no amount of imagination that would have put me out in the Pacific Ocean, all alone, listening for the blow hole sounds, then turning to see these gentle behemoths glide by, undulating in a nautical ballet choreographed by Neptune. Recklessly sailing on the Sound was nothing like this.

I bought a 750cc Honda Shadow Classic, painted a kind of orange and called her Tangerine Dream. One Sunday, after a month or so of riding on my own, I was flagged down at Nawiliwili Harbor by a wild looking, Hawaiian guy. He spoke a language that was definitely English, but it seemed like words were missing and it also seemed like every other word sounded like “dakine”. He told me about some “bruddahs”, but I wasn’t sure what the hell he was talking about. 

Later that day, I saw him again, over at a grassy field, near a pavilion, which has since been paved over, subsequently birthing a Costco. He was with around a half dozen bikers, sitting at a picnic table, their big machines parked near by. I reluctantly dismounted from Tangerine Dream and timidly walked over to these dangerous looking guys. On that Sunday, I got my first exposure to the heart searing power of Aloha. I unblinkingly went from stranger to family. I’ve been riding with the Sons of Kauai for nearly 18 years now.

I wished for a home for my heart and Kauai embraced it.