Our lives are meaningfully meaningless.

Yeah, I know where you want me to stick that sentence. Still, have you ever watched a newly planted field grow? Sometimes you can hear the plants stretching toward the sun, they are growing so fast. They don’t question their purpose — they live to the max.

I picked stocks for 30+ years; today I sift through words.

For months now, I’ve attended oodles of poetry workshops, classes and readings. I’ve also studied how to write online with @nicolascole77 and @dickiebush’s Write the Ship and Ship 30 for 30. Poetry and online writing have a lot more in common than you’d think.

One of my favorite places on earth is Naoshima island, one of 3,000 islands that dot the inland sea of Japan.

It’s an island rich in art, from late Monet waterlilies to site-specific installations of contemporary art. Many of the buildings are designed by legendary architect Tadao Ando.

In 7th grade we auditioned for band class by blowing on different instruments. Somehow all the girls ended up playing flute or clarinet and the boys trumpets and tubas.

For five years, I took the 6 a.m. Express Bus from Wahiawa to Honolulu to go to school.

Wahiawa is a plantation town surrounded by military bases. The soundtrack of my childhood? Machine guns and helicopters. Traveling from “Apocalypse Now” to “Punahou School” and back took 3 hours a day.

My mother had a theory about how much gasoline to keep in her tank.