Intro (13 new posts)

After 7 months of cruising, Hasta Luego is safely holed up for the summer, and I'm heading north.  Before I get too far away I wanted to share some scattered writings from the last 7 months.   The perfectionist in me was holding off the post month after month because there were so many unwritten stories I wanted to write to fill in, so many more things I wanted to express.  But in the end, there will always be untold stories, so I may as well put up the few I do have.  I put them in reverse order so you should be able to read them from the top down.  Make sure to pace yourselves, no need to read it all in one sitting.

Limbo

It’s a different kind of light in the middle of the ocean

When you wake up to an unobstructed horizon day after day

Wondering if the world is still out there, 

Wondering if the world you’re going to was the same one you left.

And you know...

                            there’s not a chance

Welcome

I want to pull you into this moment. Above deck it’s just you and me, I’m behind the wheel, and we’re under full sail, welcome aboard. We’ve been sailing for three days now, and haven’t seen land for 24 hours. Half-an-hour ago the sun settled into the cloudless horizon, leaving in its wake layers of light yellow and peach. The colors climaxed and disappeared, making way for the first stars of the night, and as it turns out tonight is going to be a spectacular celestial display. After a full day of blazing sun, the night comes as a breath of fresh air, a rest for the body and the eyes.  A shooting star burns silently to the horizon to welcome you.

15 Knots South

It’s been a few weeks, we set south from San Diego with an old sailboat we bought a year ago for 3200 dollars with 3 other good friends. If you told me then I’d be sailing the same boat south in one year toward the turquoise waters of the equator, it would have been to much for me to handle. The days role by out here like these waves, they just go on their own, I can’t keep track, and there’s no need to keep track. Right now I’m sitting next to the cockpit, starboard side, facing the stern. The froth in “Flo’s” wake is floating steadily to the horizon, our speed is great, not top speed, but maybe 5 knots (almost 6 MPH.) With the wind at our back, we’re on a southbound “Manta-Ray” tack (our blood red spinnaker sail is full on the port and our white mainsail is full on the starboard.)

Behind us is Cedros Island, rising out of the ocean 4000 ft, slightly green with low growing chaparral. We left Cedros this morning at 6:30 AM. I was sleeping in the v-berth bed, when I heard, “hey Mark, the wind is great, and there’s no waves, wanna head south?” I jumped out of bed uncharacteristically awake, “let’s sail!” I shouted. While I took the sail cover off and cleared the deck Jordan paddled the yellow kayak to shore with our charcoal bag to collect the remains of last night’s beach fire for future BBQ’s on our boat, it was mostly ash. Twenty minutes from the time I woke up, our anchor was pulled, our mainsail hoisted, and without turning on our engine we drifted south, no jarring engine noise to pollute the perfect beach with 5 date palms clumped at a spring.  We could still hear the gentle gushing of the waves on the beach and the frogs croaking in the spring as we said hasta luego to the historical anchorage called Las Palmitas (the little palms.)

It’s now 3 PM and the island is 30 miles behind us, thanks to the 15 knot winds. Jordan is at the helm, La Sierra trucker hat, orange tinted blue blocker glasses, and a pastel pink, blue and green striped tank-top hanging around his nose, mouth and chin like a bandit, keeping the sun from his skin that has evolved for the northern woods, not the sun-soaked Mexican ocean. A week ago I wouldn’t have believed that I would be able to write in these 4 foot swells without getting sick, I guess I’m adjusting, and what a relief.

Ten miles to our east lies desolate Baja California, various shades of light-brown and dark-brown bony earth are illuminated by patchy sun. The sky is mostly covered by clouds, and to our east the sun is blasting through in a fan of silver rays, salmon colored horizon indicating the coming of night. After listening to the weather report we decided to shoot past a common anchorage for cruisers (Turtle Bay) tonight and just sail down the coast. We can’t resist a week of 15 knot wind coming from the north, and the south is calling. I don’t know what’s ahead, but I’ve got a good feeling as I take over the helm.

Hatching Light

A thin ribbon of morning light streaks into the cabin hitting me on my bare chest. I watch it illuminate previously invisible dust particles floating softly in the room.  They transform in front of me into a universe of stars and galaxies orbiting around each other, twinkling…and I’m the lucky giant looking in from outside the universe.  What civilizations are living on planets orbiting these specks of dust, and do they know about each other?  Do they know about me?  As the boat rocks and the water gently laps at the hull, this ribbon of light moves up and down rhythmically, changing which galaxies are in the spotlight, and the slight breeze swirls them into waves and whirlpools in the air. 

Added to this morning’s spectacle are two, ever-rising symphonies of steam from the bowl of oatmeal with honey, and the cup of jasmine green tea next to me on these blue sailboat-themed couch cushions.  I don’t see the steam until, 6 inches from my eyes, it reaches the ribbon of light coming through the main hatch, and at that point it lights up brilliantly, twisting and turning like smoke. As I look closer I can start to see the individual drops of water that make up the whole, bright little bubbles of water floating up, like a reverse water fall. Though there are millions they seem to have choreographed this moment perfectly to create a dance of order in the randomness, each following behind the other as the choreographer directs this wisp over there, and that wisp to flip inside-out and twist under, then through the middle, thicker one. 

I imagine these droplets get the same satisfaction that a dance group gets when they perfectly deliver a never-before-seen routine. How do they know how to stick together? What keeps them unified in their freedom? They remind me of a flock of a thousand birds, little black silhouettes, flowing in and out of each other between an urban skyline, or a school of glittery fish morphing their collective form to create a hole wherever a hungry shark tries to dart. This collective mind, it makes sense for the bird or fish, it serves a function of protection and maybe teamwork when it comes to finding food, but for the drops, for the steam, what is the purpose? What is the evolutionary advantage? These water droplets don’t have the responsibility of reproducing. Their longevity is inherent, they are immortal. Rising into the air, forming clouds, condensing, falling back to the earth where they flow through rivers either to end in my pot of tea or the ocean once again. They have no worries, no responsibilities and yet, they still spend their time creating the most elaborate works of art the eye has beheld. It makes me wonder…What is the choreographer? Is there one bird or drop that moved up the ranks like a first violinist and become the leader? How are decisions made? Especially when there are a thousand tiny decisions per second. It takes us humans ten uncertain minutes sometimes just to decide where we are going to eat tonight or which movie we are going to watch. And then, many times, once the decision is made, we still question it during and after the event is over, letting it form into a regret if we feel we have made the wrong choice. What makes these smaller, so-called less intelligent life forms so unified, and here we are glitching over small things which turns into frustration and regret? Does our complexity have some side-effect that pulls us from a deeper connective force? And do we have the ability to “dance” like the birds or the drops without a choreographer and months of practice?

I ponder all these things still laying on the couch of my sailboat in the early morning.

Cabo is starting to wake up, and I have a date with Blanca, the beautiful Mexican woman in the taco truck, who is going to teach me to make corn tortillas and roasted salsa this morning. Soon, I will paddle our kayak (the yellow submarine) to shore where the tourists are enjoying their one week of freedom, and walk to Jose’s Taco Truck.   

But for now I am grateful for these moment, I am grateful for this one ribbon of light, because without it, the dust galaxies still would have floated, and the steam still would have swirled elaborate masterpieces with one mind, and I would have been sipping tea, oblivious. It makes me wonder what else in life is right in front of my eyes that I don’t see and just needs a certain ribbon of light coming in from the front hatch to open my eyes.

Stomach Within a Stomach

Part I

The knife effortlessly cuts into the foot-long papaya, whose juicy flesh is glowing bright orange. I slice a generous ring and step out to the edge of the boat. I examine the little black seeds, which have to be one of the most intriguing visuals. Somewhere between a brain and a beautiful gem, there seems to be another dimension as I peer through the shimmering clear film into the embryonic sac with mazes of brown bark, and rainbow colored bubbles. I push the seeds from inside the ring and they fall into the light-blue water.  Almost instantaneously a school of inch-long flashy fish frenzy to peck at these nutritious drops. Then beneath them gathers a school of foot-long silver fish to peck at the delicious inch-long fish. So within seconds I have contributed to multiple layers of the food chain, and the food I held in my hands a minute ago has trickled into a stomach within a stomach. I find in myself no feelings of sympathy for the little fish, or feelings of congratulation towards the bigger, but instead I find gratitude that I live in a balanced world where organisms’ main function is to seek out floating energy and to absorb it, to continue its flow through progressively more complex forms, to be returned once again into the ground where the papaya grows, because I enjoy papayas in a way I can’t describe. And how lucky am I that I get to be apart of this flow for a fleeting moment, and to be aware of it!

I take the first bite, and my mouth is filled with juice and soft flesh, with aromas of flowers and smiles wafting into my nose, and flavors of the sun and honey melting into my tongue. As the golden ring transitions from existing outside my body to inside, I feel increasingly more alive. I can feel the exchange of energy, and here I am along side the fish, completing the circle of everything.

This morning for breakfast I hand-flattened corn flour and water to make tortillas. 

The flavors of the papaya and tortilla connect me even deeper to the land that is a quick paddle away from my boat…Mexico.

Part II

The last month has been a series of sailing adventures that have brought me to La Paz, Mexico, at the south end of the Sea of Cortez (which Jack Cousotou called the aquarium of the world.) La Paz is a peaceful town surrounded by cactus and red rock. (As we sailed in a few days ago, I felt like we were sailing into the Grand Canyon if it were filled with water except for the top 1000 feet.) La Paz has a high reputation among sailors, so much so that many put their ocean wanderings on hold to settle down here for years. Needless to say there is an amazing sailing community here, the mode of communication being radios and a net call every morning at 8 o’clock during which announcements are made, like coffee at 10, or jam session at 5, or line dancing at 3, weather is given, and items to be traded are shared. Jordan already bought an iPad, and we have a lead on an outboard motor for our dingy.

We came to La Paz to see some of our good friends from the docks at San Diego, Steve and Janny. They invited us over the first night we got here for dinner and to spend the night on their spacious catamaran. In the few following days we have met cruisers from at least ten boats, and have been invited over for dinner on another boat. The community of sailors is glued together like no community I’ve been apart of because we have all come from and we are going to that great unpredictable beast that covers 71% of our world, and because we have left a conventional life style to drift into new lands, to discover and to learn.

Bag of Limes

The setting sun turns the cloud filled sky into a colorful watercolor, a sandpiper walks the beach probing deep with his bill for food.   A photographer with a big lens is stalking him.  The bird will be silhouetted backed by peach water and dark ripples.  

All around me kids on wheels whirl and smile and fall, a dance on cement, skateboards, BMX bikes, low-riding tricycles, pink bikes with training wheels, each in their respective group, each interacting and pushing the limits.  A mix of gringo and local couples walk through the plaza and out the pier.   Flashing white Christmas lights spiral up palm trees.  All ages, all comfortable.  I notice a lone elderly Mexican man slowly hobbling through the plaza, through the commotion, unable to dodge anything.  In his hands is a bag of limes.  He wears old leather shoes, old brown slacks and an old flannel, tucked in, brown and green plaid.  His back is hunched and he strains to lift his eyes to see.  What does he see?  He sees a world that has changed in front of his eyes.  What does he think of what he sees?  Silently he hobbles on with his bag of limes and looks at the kids zipping on wheels.  He strains back to track the sound of a plane, he looses balance almost falling back, but he stables himself and looks around.

Here stands a flicker of fading light from yesterday, trying to comprehend the growing lights of tomorrow.  No one seems to see him, as he hobbles through with his bag of limes.  No one seems to realize that here walks the wisest man in La Paz, a man who has seen the world many times before the times that came before these times.  What would he tell us if we listed?  It’s all too beautiful…my eyes tear up.

Canvas

The sun is almost set.  The only trace it leaves is a light dusting of pink on the purple clouds over the ocean, and one intense beam, that has chosen to spotlight a red-rock cliff in the distance.  I’ve feasted my eyes on these miles of sheer red spires and cliffs many times but not until now has this particular one been a resting point.  Now it is the star of the show, the rest of the cliffs have faded to grey and this cliff shines the most brilliant warm red it can muster.  And the crowd goes wild!  The crowd of one.  Man, it’s a good thing I am where I am, or else no one would have seen the show, so it wouldn’t have even happened because light is only light when there are eyes, otherwise it’s just endlessly vibrating energy.  So when the cliff bows as the curtains close he leans forward and says, “Thanks for bringing an empty canvas.”

But thanks to the moon, the sun continues to put on a show.  The waves on the water refract the light of the full moon into a million dancing lights, which-if you let go of your mind enough-will morph into images imprinted into your mind like an open exposure photo of someone drawing with 15 flashlights.  And these curvy images are replaced with new ones every second like start-stop animation.  

 And this is how the one light of the sun is reflected off the moon, transformed into a masterpiece film and returned to one light once again in my eyes.  My mind tucks it away long enough to record then floats away with the wind, leaving room for the next phenomenon in this wild life to use my mind as its canvas.

Outside Time

You are sitting in a cave on a Mexican island with a yellow journal in your cross-legged lap, writing this.  I am at the computer reading this blog.  Before you write the words, I have already read them.  That’s how I know what you’re going to say, but I’m still interested because I’ve tricked myself into thinking this is the first time.  You are going to say that you hold light and dark in your hand, they are two mirror balls.  They balance each other, and when they touch, the universe is born.  

They hold everything that is in this moment.  And as you spin them in your hands the next moment arrives, and the next, and in this way the flycatcher on the cardon cactus in front of you starts whistling, and the plain moves down its contrail, and the vulture soars to the left, and the emerald water laps at the hull of the sailboat anchored in the bay bellow, and your sister moves her pen at her desk studying back in California, the steam from your mom’s pot of soup is rising, and congress continues to argue, and a girl gives a New York hobo a smile, and a twinkle appears in a Chinese monks eye, and the Voyager I drifts further from earth, searching for life.  Everything at once.  7 billion conciousnesses are receiving scenery input and acting or reacting, all in this one moment which you hold in your hands.  But it’s not just this moment that you hold.

These orbs reflect each other into infinity, holding every moment within themselves.   Like two mirrors facing each other in the bathroom; you look into one, and it shows you a thousand reflections down into infinity, you stand in the middle of a beginningless beginning and and endless end.  In them is your reflection also, because this is the particular form your consciousness is inhabiting at the moment.  A beard has grown around your mouth, your hair is combed back, curling around your ears, on your bear chest hangs a neckless with 108 rose-wood beads.

Grandpa

I'm sitting across from my grandpa's maroon easy-chair.  I've never seen another person sit in that leather chair.  And now it's empty.  

His struggled, heavy breaths wafting slowly into the room are the only sounds in this house, other than the quiet crackling of the fire next to me.  I sit, following the flow of air in and out of his lungs.  The flow stops.  Intent, I look at him, the whole world seems to freeze as I hang in limbo searching for the sound of another breath.  In the silence, images of my strong grandpa come back to me.  A handsome, young man singing in a quartet touring the nation in the 50s.  A wild grandpa who built the biggest rope swing you ever saw, just so 8-year-old me could get the thrill of my life.  More water comes to my eyes, then, I hear it, another breath, with a weak cough.  

I continue to watch his sleeping body, framed by 15 bouquets of flowers.  He looks like he's in a floral shop, but he's at home, in this hospital bed.  He has lived in this two-story house in the woods since he was not much older than me. Behind him, out the window is the vivacious spread of Oregon fauna.  In contrast, his skin is yellow and loose, the meat on his face gone, revealing the contours of his skull.  His mouth is hanging open, in an expression that looks halfway between shock and horror.  His hazy eyes are slightly open gazing at the popcorn ceiling, but he is deep in a hallucination.  

When he could still talk a few days ago he would allude to his hallucinations.  Intrigued, I would ask for more, but he could only say vague things, such as, "I think that was the right one."  

Once he woke up and managed to say, "I'm disoriented."  My grandma proceeded to tell him the time and date, and I added, "you're still on planet earth," thinking that would be more relevant.  

The next day when he woke up he said, "I wonder which of these I won't wake up from."

The process of watching a soul leave a body is fascinating, eerie, heavy, and holy.  I find myself dying to know what his experience is like.  He is more somewhere else than here, and I wonder where he is.  What has he learned? What does he think of this life he has lived?..(if he thinks of it.)  What would he tell me if he could talk?  

I've spent much time in the last week looking into his eyes, hoping to understand a bit, hoping to see him, and for him to see me seeing him.  But whenever his eyes would hit mine he would glance away.  I got the sense he didn't like being seen.  You see, this decrepit man in front of me used to be a superstar.  Wherever he went, whatever community he was apart of he was the star, he was the one that everyone looked up to, the one who brought the life.  He was the one who could play a trumpet and the piano at the same time, he was the one who could balance anything on his hand or nose.  He was the one who could tell a story with his eyes and everyone would be transported.  He was the one who could climb fastest and run the farthest.  He was the doctor that organized meetings that resulted in hundreds quitting smoking or changing to a healthy diet.  He was the one who led out in church services, and bible studies.  He was the one who grew a big enough garden to feed a small army.  He was an upper-middle-class, american legend.  The endless flow of flowers and letters indicate that fact.  And now he lays in his bed not even able to clear the saliva from his throat.  He chokes.  

The doorbell rings, and a nurse is now here to wash him.  My mom is back from a walk with a friend, so there is now some life joining the death.  I can feel the air lighten with their presence.  Turning him on his side was difficult for the nurse, so I helped her lift and hold his fragile body.   His skin was rubbery almost like plastic.  I put my hand on his shoulder and told him I loved him, in case he was here.

Now my grandma-his loving wife since he was younger than me-sits beside him and strokes him.  Kissing him.  Telling him how much she loves him and what an amazing man he's been.  You wouldn't know by looking but she doesn't know how to handle what's happening.  She told me that her identity has always been wrapped around her relation to him.  She was always "Jim's wife," she was never "Carolyn."  If she was at a gathering without him she would stand in the shadows, but with him, she would walk tall and straight into the limelight, as the Wife of Dr. McHan.  

Yesterday grandpa sat in his easy chair.  Not that he had the strength to get there, but in his stubbornness he didn't care.  I think it was the last time he'll sit in that chair, in fact I think that was the last time on his feet.  During the 10 foot walk back to his bed, he couldn't find the connection between his mind and his feet, they didn't move, I could see the struggle, he put all he had into it.  But in the end, I had to lift his feet and put one in front of the other.

This morning a varied thrush smacked into the window and died on impact next to the front door.  I moved it so visitors wouldn't see to a moss covered stump in the woods, covering it with a few golden leaves.  I found it hard to walk away.  I felt like something more needed to be done.  Later, as I photographed the Jacuzzi to sell, I saw a tiny shrew lying on a stepping stone.  It was curled up...lifeless...a dew drop glistened in its whiskers, it's little paw folded under it's long nose.

It's everywhere.  Forms dissolving.  Death.  And yet my vision is not darkened.  Let’s go somewhere. I do not feel that death is the enemy.  If death were eliminated, the only thing that would exist would be everything.  And in that case there would be nothing, it would all be light...infinite, formless light.  Or if just some things existed, without death it would be stagnant, there would be no flow, no movement.  Death is the gravity for the river of life.  It makes way for an ever twisting, turning cascade, creating time itself.  Otherwise the flow would cease, nothing coming in, nothing going out.  So death is the hand that reaches down to part the curtain of light and give birth to time.  But what is death really?  Is anything lost?  The thrush already gave birth to 5 more, and the shrew's body will become food for mushrooms, and my grandpa has instilled me with the desire to seek the next challenge.  Though we call them dead, from them has rippled the current state of the river, without them, there would be no us.  So we are a continuation of them.  And if you took us away, there would be no them, they had to go somewhere, and that somewhere is right here.  So between us and them lies an equal sign and the only difference on each side of the equation is the combination of symbols.  So maybe there is no difference between them and us. Maybe there is no death, maybe death is something we have created and focus on that distracts us from the truth, that we are not the pebble that gets picked up by the river for a time and is discarded under a log...we are the entire length of the river.  We are on one side of the equation, so we are on all sides of the equation, we just get to experience the parting of the curtains in different ways every go around.  And we enter the other side of the curtain, and realize there is no time, but the illusive death has reached down and shown us what cannot be seen: the form in the formless. We previously thought we were the form…but form comes from nothing and goes to nothing…the only thing that remains is the eternal essence of our soul.

Lions of the Sea

It’s cool enough to enjoy tea, and enjoy we are.  Kathryn and I spent the morning kayaking to the north of Isla Partida where hundreds of sea lions were raising their pups.  I was drawn to paddle into a cave, sided with flat black rocks, deep, narrow and tall.  Below the water was clear to the sandy bottom featuring liquid light beams ten feet below.  The swells pushed gurgled sounds into the air that was already occupied by sea lion wails.  Purple, pink and green plants covered the walls.  Suddenly, two big round eyes popped out of the water.  A baby sea lion.  He kissed my go pro with curiosity and twirled down to the sand where he picked up a rock and started playing with it in his mouth like a human baby with a chew toy.  I jumped in with snorkel and mask and was led toward the bigger lions.  The water teamed with colorful life, purple fans, bright green parrot fish, yellow finned angel fish.  The first lion I met was a hefty but hansom fellow gliding unperturbed by my lanky body.  I was completely at his mercy.  I swam toward the rocks where I motivated 10 adults to bark their consent then slide in.  Soon there were as many bodies in the water around me than a well-attended party.  I swam down into their midst so that they were under me, over me and on all sides.  They became a curtain so all that existed was right there, within their sphere. Suspended for that moment, no longer as Mark, but as the unattainable tide. I held my arms out open, but none reciprocated the hug.

Mango-breasted Pajaro

Last night I paddled among waves glowing green as they crashed, to a campfire on the beach of Tenacatita, under a full night sky of stars and silhouetted palm fronds.  Around the fire were three traveling friends, my current sailing partner, Kathryn (who I met last summer riding south from the Alaskan arctic on a bicycle,) and two guys who were hitch hiking from Quebec to Brazil (Ottar and Hogan,)  they were looking for a ride from baja to the mainland, which we provided and more.  I played the guitar against the stump of a palm, entranced by the fire.  

When I woke up, I had that feeling of not being present, I recognized my lack of recognition, lack of seeing.  So I went for a walk.  I was walking by a beautiful jungle creek, birds singing all around, abundant fish in the shallows, inchworm on my arm.  Yet I wasn’t fully there.  I continued to loosely ponder that, not grasping it.  

And as the others sat at a restaurant, I sat on a palm tree stump, playing my guitar.  I felt distant.  

Twenty feet in front of me a little bird landed, one of the most beautiful birds I had ever seen. Mango-yellow breast, brilliant green cap, and sparkling blue on the back.  It seemed specifically interested in me, hopping closer little by little, until it was at my feet.  My mind raced to label what was going on…I’ve never had a wild bird be this focused on me before.  But my mind racing prevented from my actual soaking in the presence of the bird, I felt like I was missing an amazing moment, but didn’t know how to enter it.  I’m not sure why, but the words “I love you” started repeating in my mind, as if spoken to the bird, and as those words repeated, the mind chatter stopped, and I began to see the bird in full color, right there in front of me.  I longed for it to be a message from a purer dimension, I longed for communication, for connection.  But it continued to hop and peck at the dirt, and glance at me, silently.

The MATCH Box

I came up from Mexico for a week for a friends wedding in Yosemite. Yesterday I was at Pieology with some friends, but I didn’t get a pizza to save money.  Soon pizza’s were out and being chewed.  A few pieces were given to me by selfless hands, which only increased my appetite, so when Cam asked if I wanted to split another one, I couldn’t resist.  We didn’t know what that decision would lead to.  

We went through line asking for one whole wheat crusted pizza.  The pizza girl started buttering a white one.  “Oh, we just wanted one whole wheat.”  She sighed and started to toss the pizza.  “Wait, are you going to throw it?”  “Could we have it?”  “Raw?”  She asked.  As we were trying to figure out how beneficial that would be to our diet, the manager came over and said quietly, “ah, I’ll make you guys some garlic strips.”  So when we returned to our table we had strips to share, on the tab of the manager’s generosity.  

It was Chelsea’s birthday, so we wanted candles to stick in the pizza.  I went to the counter to ask, but the search revealed a lack of candles in the pizza shop.  I went back to ask for matches as a substitute, but again, no luck, not even a lighter.  The manager picked up on what was happening, and said, “I’ll go grab some for you guys at the gas station.”  The group was starting to get blown away by all these things coming to us.  She came back with matches and we explained it was for a birthday.  “Oh! I’ll go get you guys some brownies from the special stash in the back!”  Jaws were dropped.  

So as a thank you we gathered 20 dollars, and stuck it in the match box with a note we all signed telling her to buy something special for her workers.  We left hearts warmed, but that wasn’t the end.  

As we stood by the car.  Clarissa came out gushing over.  “Thank you guys so much!”  She told us of her life passion to open a health-conscious restaurant, and how this job was the perfect stepping stone for her.   But this last week had been really difficult for her, causing her to doubt her path.  So this came at just the right time, it reminded her of her passion.  As I watched her through the window later, she was exploding with happiness.  Interacting with her employees as a whole new person.  My hearts smiled, reminded of the potential impact we can have on others lives.