The Legend of Pilau
At the waning of the summer equinox the restive spirit is compelled to revisit migratory desires and the longing for new planes of reality and ponderance capture our kiskas. It is then we launch ourselves, barely tempted yet not unbidden, into this vortex of unfulfilled passion and symmetry, testing, as we dip our foot gingerly in these waters at once new and unfamiliar, yet natal in their womb like and quieting solace. Juggernauts certainly, yet with porpoiseful tenure we investigate the path already chosen and swim to that destiny archived in distant aeons when the new stars shone naively on the prepubescent and coltish earth. It is in times such as these I travel. 
   As fate would have it, I had been engaged in the tropical islands of Hawaii to speak on the sublime mystery of solubility at the Ever Smiling Peoples Temple of Peace and Uninterrupted Tantric Sex, Inc. on the the Garden Isle, Kaua'i. After three wearying days of hands-on and personal ministry, I felt the need of solitude, and packing my few belongings, and the profoundly beautiful and splendid gift the Temple had awarded me, headed to the sacred and magical valley of Kalalau to rejuvenate and revitalize my flagging scorpion. Here I met a man known as The Terrence of Hanalei, who, neath the starry night, regaled my spleen with tales of a great sage, seer and mystic, called Pilau, residing on the Orchid Isle, the Big Island, Hawaii, where he held forth in the ancient and arcane traditions of Huna. I knew deep within my very marrow that our sainted and profitable paths must cross and so set forth at once to meet this brother of mystic and highly commercial enlightenment.
   I found the great Pilau with little difficulty in the Book of Numbers and forthwith we sat face to face. I was surprised to encounter not a sun-bronzed, weather-worn native of these verdant islands, but a mild and fey white man in a garishly colored print shirt and knee pants. My doubts as to his credibility and shamanship immediately subsided, however, when he began to speak in the same abstruse and feculent manner as myself. Here was a brother of the spirit indeed. I sat spellbound as he spoke of the true meaning of the Hawaiian culture, its long forgotten and misunderstood metaphysical implications, unrealized by even the benighted Hawaiians themselves. I sat erect in moist attention as he intoned an oli, an ancient Hawaiian chant, the meaning, the kauna of which he had twisted into a new and cunning shape. He related in metaphors redolent with strawberry incense and mung beans how on his arrival in these isles, he had psychically mastered all aspects of Hawaiian culture and was endued with an abstract understanding of the language (though speak it he could not), its subtleties and vagaries notwithstanding, something even the poor, intellectually challenged peoples of this land were unable to accomplish. Now he had a thriving business and traveled the world far and wide in the role of kahuna, informing the unsuspecting and gudgeonable on the true nature of Hawaiian culture and mana, as well as UFOs, reincarnation, past lives, psychic surgery, Inca roads, neuro linguistic programming, and the Face on Mars.
   "This then, my friend, rightfully belongs to you," I said with fetid and bilious humilty, and reaching in my well worn sack extracted the precious bundle containing the splendid gift given me for my previous speaking engagement. Unwrapping it with great care, I laid before my new friend an 'ahu 'ula, an exact duplicate of the feathered capes worn by the ancient ali'i and kahuna of Hawaii. "Countless thousands of small, harmless and colorful birds died to make this, my friend. I think it only fitting that it be draped upon your sloping shoulders. Their forever silenced songs will now resound in your psychically memorized oli. Wear it unto greatness, increased book sales and a taurian seminar market," I said, my eyes brimming with tears.  
   At this the gifted grifter stood and donned the bright yellow cape, and with majestic serenity lisped, "I shall scale Mauna Kea and show Madame Pele, goddess of this island, creator of this land, the glory now revealed in me!" whereupon he swished out the door in all his gaily feathered dignity and grandeur.
  Yet fortune was not to accompany the clairvoyant teacher and Pilau's glory proved short-lived. He had made his way up the arduous slopes of the sleeping white giant, Mauna Kea, bedecked in the bright yellow cape, and nearing its summit began to chant his carefully memorized oli with the skill only a white man from Oklahoma could display. As fate would have it, however, a large and vicious pack of feral dogs resident to the mountain spied the fluttering cape and waving arms of the psychic god-link and mistakenly assumed him to be a very large, and probably delicious, chicken. In an instant they were upon him, their gleaming, ravenous fangs sinking deep into his terrified, psychically-attuned flesh. "Whoa, deja vu!" he winced, as the largest of the pack trotted off with his left leg. 
  Nothing more was heard of Pilau of The Big Island. The beautiful cape was never seen again, nor was its most recent wearer, though a profusion of small yellow birds appeared suddenly on the west slope of the mountain. Of Pele's involvement or reaction to all this there is no record and the Hawaiians tell no tale. But on moonlit nights, hunters and travelers ascending the slopes of Mauna Kea have heard in the swirling winds the keening, eerie sound of someone wailing an oli with a nasal Oklahoman accent. Still others have reported seeing silhouetted against the rising moon what appears to be a large, and probably delicious, chicken.
  On the island life has resumed its normalcy, the Hawaiians remaining blissfully ignorant of the deep hidden cosmic messages in their culture, language and traditions. But to honor the memory of Pilau, the children still face the western slope of Mauna Kea whenever they eat a bologna sandwich.

Dolphins, reincarnation, New Age, philosophy, humor, poetry, teaching, ascended masters, fish, Baba, crystals, spirituality, karma, India, idiots, Akiryon Baba Yat, The Dolphin Sky Foundation, zen, transcendental meditation, past lives, fish, satire, religion, religious satire, sufism, cetaceans, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Eastern religions