Memories of Okinawa

The whole world laid out bare before us....waiting for us to touch and taste and smell and drink in all that it had to offer....walking through the streets without fear....reclaiming childhood as we plagued the playgrounds until the wee hours....silently watching the sun sink into the sea and then marveling at the beauty of the moonlight on the water....becoming one with the depths of the sea....looking up at the sun, the moon, from beneath the rippling surface of the ocean and thinking I'd never seen anything so beautiful....laying in bed with the window open, listening to the sound of racing engines in the distance and smelling carbon in the air, the tropical breeze gently kissing my skin....the thrill of winding narrow roads in a fast car....wandering into the nearest bakery and tasting something sweet and new and different every time, sharing them with someone sweet and new and different, someone special....the red & green of the traffic lights repeated in each leftover raindrop on the windshield, like a million tiny Christmas lights strung out just for me....breath-taking views of intriguing places....hiking in the lush green jungles where the ground fell away so suddenly sometimes, it would catch me by surprise and take my breath away....and cutting through all the green, the rocky riverbed with it's ice-cold water rushing over smooth stones and the contrast of the jagged boulders that jutted from it's banks....money that could be strung onto a chain or a keyring....clown fish eating sea urchin right out of my hand....suddenly finding myself in the midst of a school of tiny fish, the sun glinting off their silvery bodies, the whisper of thousands of tiny fins on my skin, and then gone....the controlled fear of coming face to face with my first sea snake....looking up from eighty feet underwater at a massive wall of coral teeming with life and feeling like everything is in slow motion - like time itself has slowed to all but a standstill....secluded little beaches....suicide cliffs and her ghostly legends....reckless abandon and new-found freedom - freedom for the mind, for the body, for the soul....strolling along the seawall being crazy americans and admiring the artwork left behind by the creative and the Creator....fast car by tracy chapman....soba, yakitori, and canned hot coffee from a vending machine....looking out at the endless ocean stretching beyond the horizon and seeing the big picture....finding my soulmate....and myself.