Rebekah’s Studio

Let me suggest travel. Travel away from home for a change of scenery. To view another culture. To make new friends. Alone, with a buddy, 5 miles or 5,000 miles, it doesn’t matter. Just go.

For me, traveling forces me to focus and experience the present. It often makes me uncover inner resources I didn’t know I had. It’s great for clearing the fog in my mind, allowing more space there to observe and consider life’s options. Travel to the new, different, or unfamiliar presents other perspectives to weave into our future.

I’m giving this some thought this Sunday morning while getting ready for an art show I’m installing on Friday. I thought of some examples:

• My second to the eldest cousin K.Y., in his 80s, and his wife traveled every year since they were married, always taking the kids. Their philosophy was, why wait until we’re retired. Now their adult children and their children are of the same mind, happy and well-balanced. The whole family also has a love of hiking into the mountains or to the seashore, an activity also begun when the children were young. I paint with K.Y. almost every week. He’s a fascinating conversationalist and very kind.

• My teacher, colleague and friend Lori is coming back the day I install the art show from a month of driving, alone I think, across the continental US where she had some space (as contrasted to living on an island), called on former college buddies and sampled the regional cuisine. They’re foodies. Aren’t we all? She reports on Facebook every day, but I can’t wait to hear her stories in person.

• My other teacher Alice Anne, a professional psychic (both Lori and Alice Anne attuned me to Reiki), advised me that the periods of growth in my marriage would be during times of travel. We’ve found that to be so, away from the routine of daily living. She helped me interpret a recurring childhood dream of mine. Aunty Ethel who I was afraid of–she was my mother’s eldest sister, single, a missionary, and stern–was in the dream. Anyway, the message was that I should climb walls, cross barriers and venture out across the ocean to see “the big wide world, no be scared.” Aunty Ethel was my ally.

• My latest trip abroad was a month in Italy, you may have read. I wrote about it, including the recipes, on my travel blog. You don’t actually have to make the food. Just reading about it might make you hungry. This was my second trip in a year to Italy. DH came along and so did a villa-ful of my painting students. A short, spur-of-the-moment jaunt traveling solo to Oregon to sing and learn about choral music conducting from Rod preceded this. And along with that, closer to home in Hauula down the road, a writing/performance workshop taught by Mark who was on his way around-the-world for his 70th birthday. I’m so grateful for the remarkable experiences I’ve had this past summer. Traveling!

Which brings me to a call to action for you. Yes, you are encouraged to travel this Saturday to Ho‘omaluhia Botanical Garden in Kaneohe, Oahu. I am surprised at how many people I know who have not visited there. It is a beautiful cultivated garden at the foot of the Ko‘olau Mountains. You can take in the spectacular scenery, read the plant labels, take your kids to feed the ducks or try their luck at catch-and-release fishing. The entrance is at the end of Luluku Road.

AND, I invite you to attend the opening reception of “Hana Hou: Then & Now,” a new art exhibit of oil paintings at Ho‘omaluhia park by Yours Truly and gourd artist Tamsen Fox. Saturday, November 2, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Visitor Center Lecture Room. The collection features two versions each of eight Hawaiian landscapes, painted once, and then a second time when I revisited years later. The show will be up until Nov. 29 from 9 to 4 daily. On Tuesdays we will be there and you can watch us make art. When you see the landscapes you can imagine yourself traveling even farther to a different time and place. So it will be with the 3D pieces that will reflect both contemporary and ancient cultures.

We’ll take you there. It’s fun.

Copyright 2013 Rebekah Luke