This photograph looks through a puka — a Hawaiian word for hole or opening — worn into the sandstone cliffs above Hanauma Bay. The rock frames the view like a window, revealing Koko Head.

The sandstone itself tells a stranger story. Scattered through it are small white fragments of coral, locked in place, not at the shoreline, but far above it — in some places close to a hundred feet higher than today’s ocean. Coral grows in the sea, not on cliffs. But yet here it is.

How it arrived here isn’t something you can explain casually. Massive wave events. Ancient sea levels. Forces large enough to lift, carry, and press reef material into stone. The science offers theories, but standing here, looking at it, the scale of time and energy involved is hard to fully hold.

A personal reflection on noticing the difference between performance and purpose in everyday interactions — how people speak, pause, and show up when they’re truly present.

Hawaiʻi and rural Nevada don’t belong in the same sentence.

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A nature-inspired poem comparing emotional resistance to hardpan soil and the unstoppable persistence of flowing water.

A short story about letting go, leaving the past behind, and starting again on the open road.

Union Pacific 7323 leading a long westbound freight through Reno, Nevada, after crossing the Sierra Nevada from the Port of San Francisco.

“From here to up there, and from up there back down here — stairs carry us in the rise and run of life. A simple invention, yet timeless inspiration.”

Old iron dock cleat —
weathered, reliable, resilient.
A maritime symbol of strength and emotional support,
anchored in time,
holding fast, the weight of ships and sorrow alike.

Located at 2050 Main Street, muralist Eric Okdeh’s mural, “Where Work is, There is Life,” features an elderly woman teaching a younger girl to sew a kimono.

“Math majors may grade this work. Poets, just enjoy the curve.” A modern rephrasing of a quote by Leo Tolstoy.