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Intro

 

By Cira Riedel

 

 

 

A few days in California brought us closer to the circle of friends of the filmmaker and photographer David Pu’u, who was hospitable enough to invite us into his home. When we asked him the million-dollar question: who would be worth considering to create an emotional, well-written text, he gave us the address of Michael Kew. The San Francisco-resident Californian author, a specialist in travel and surf stories, started to get involved in the production of texts for surf magazines aged just 12. Over the last 20 years Kew has been published in numerous international surf and travel magazines, newspapers, websites and books.
We regard as extremely sensuous his story of a girl who becomes a woman on a surf trip in paradise and through the beauty of the surroundings is delivered from the suffering of her old life – it permits the reader to escape for half an hour, to experience a long journey into the Garden of Eden.

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Bridge to Eden

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By Michael Kew

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Photography by David Pu’u

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Kate’s feet throbbed. The outskirts of Torrance were still several blocks away. Her black-and-white saddle shoes, a size too narrow, cramped further by sweaty white cotton socks, had made walking painful. Kate was sixteen years old.
Like her walk, life limped. She hated the shoes, the school, the town, her mother’s dereliction and their grubby home, the rowdy neighbors, her lack of friends. Other people looked spirited, so healthy and alive. Contrarily, Kate felt neglected and effete, dazed and lethargic. She was bulimic and rarely felt energized.
Despite her lifelong proximity to Redondo and Hermosa, Kate befriended no other surfers. None of her classmates knew the beach. A Navy mechanic, her estranged father lived and surfed on Guam; he gave Kate her first surfboard—a battered 6’2” Nectar—when she was twelve. But he was in Micronesia, not California.
Nothing was here for Kate, particularly her alcoholic, fiercely Catholic mother. Reticent and sternly unapproachable even on the sunniest of days, Mother was the one who paid the mortgage, bought the food, went to church, drove the car, and went to work as a telemarketer six days a week. Hers was a dismal template of how Kate did not want to live her adult life—she ached for a more loving path, an auspicious path.
Now…only a few more blocks to school. The town’s edge evaporated behind her as she passed the last building, an Italian deli with dirty windows and an immense aura of failure.
Behind the deli, she approached the vast bridge spanning Clark Street, where she was hit with wind—a penetrating, stirring gust. But this autumn cold snap was so ineffectual, Kate thought, appropriate to her inviolate mood, exempt from catharsis. Lost in discomfort, she hugged herself for warmth and walked, eyes to the ground. Must be a better way, she told herself. I need to get out of this place…got to get out of myself.
The pain in her feet was severe, each step indeed one closer to confined torture, heeding priests and nuns, faced with a doleful crucifix in each classroom. It was a loveless place, and she felt like a convict of a defeated, loveless life. Eventually, her small fists clenched and the tears fell.
Her nose was runny, her eyes puffy and wet. Her face, pink with cold, was a picture of incongruity—natural classic beauty scarred by aimlessness and immutable malaise. She shivered and sobbed. The bridge, longer than she’d ever known it, became a path to academic prison. School was near.
She paused and glanced over the railing: cars below sped to other places—to better places. She wanted to leap from the bridge and land in a truck, sitting next to a smiling surfer boy on his way to the beach. If mistimed, she would splatter on the pavement and be done with everything. Death didn’t seem like such a bad thing, after all. She knew God, and even Heaven awaited. Hell may be somewhat like Torrance. How could she escape?
Suddenly the wind seemed to shift. It went strangely warm and a sweet aroma wafted through it…the scent oddly familiar. A phantasmic sound pulsed, a voice: calm, soft, seeming to be at one with the fragrance—a perfect match.
“You are my child now. Your place is with me.”
She stopped and looked around but saw no one. Was the wind, now strangely dry and heated, playing an aural trick on her? Was it the noise of the traffic below?
The voice spoke again, soft and confidential:
You are my child now. Your place is with me.
Again she surveyed the surroundings—besides the passing cars, she was solo on the sidewalk. Nobody else could have heard this statement. Then the wind cooled; the scent evaporated with it in the change. She resumed walking, listening. Nothing but traffic and the chilly breeze. Was she delusional? Perhaps her Torrance-bound life was far too much to sanely bear.

A hand came to rest on her left shoulder. It was Mother Francis’s.
“No volleyball with your friends?”
Kate looked up at her. “My feet hurt, Mother Francis. My shoes are too small, and I walked to school today. God spoke to me this morning,” Kate whispered.
This drew the nun’s eyes back down to hers. “And what did He say?”
“’You are my child now. Your place is with me.’”
“Repeat, please.”
You are my child now. Your place is with me.
Mother Francis was nonplussed then relaxed, assessing…filtering…Finally and authoritatively, she spoke.
“Kate, there’s a verse in chapter four of the gospel according to Mark. It says: ‘If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. Then He said to them, Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given.’”
Kate closed her eyes. Take heed what you hear. The words touched something deep within.
“God is telling you something important. Listen to Him and write it all down. Actually, what He said to you reminds me of something I read last month—it’s from a book I had borrowed from our rectory.”
“What’s it about?” Kate was allured. “Can I read it, too?”
“It’s about the Garden of Eden, and, yes, I suggest you do. It’s in Narratives on Mankind—quite a deep and controversial book. I’m surprised we even have it here, and it’s certainly nothing to advertise, Kate. You’ll find it next to The Story of Civilization, a set of volumes by Will Durant. You can go to the rectory now. Tell Father James I sent you.”

She settled into a hard, creaky chair. The book’s pages smelled faintly of mold, and its words were barely legible, as if each page had been exposed to the sun to obtain this degree of fade. She flipped through the book and stopped randomly on a chapter titled “Eden,” sandwiched between a dissertation on Greek religious philosophy and a long verse about gnomes by Tolkien. Here, she thought, this seems harmless enough—the first sentence was only three words.
This chapter unfolded from the mind of a deceased man named Adam, who wrote of Eve and the Garden of Eden. The story was short and sad, almost pathetic, but Kate connected with it. The author wrote as a child of God in His habitat of forested, tropical bliss: The serpent, the temptation, the sin, the sex, the exile, the everlasting sorrow, the regret.
A warm breath of air washed over Kate’s face; she shuddered and dismissed it as a hot flash in this stuffy corner of the rectory.
Eden…where was it? She went to the room’s opposite wall, where the atlases and maps were. She looked at everywhere equatorial—Southeast Asia, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, Central America, Africa. There was Aden in Yemen, Edéa in Cameroon, Ed-Dueim in Sudan, but no mention of Eden.
Why? Surely it must be a real place. Adam wrote of it. Perhaps it was an obscure village too small to warrant a dot on the map, or an island that both time and cartography forgot.
* * *

Vernal 2004. Some years passed by but the proverbial search for Nirvana beckoned. Curiosity and unease suffocated nubile Kate in her Arcata apartment, so she fled it one gray morning, hauling her surfboard and travel/camping gear to San Francisco’s international airport. This was a metaphysical quest driven by her crepuscular mantra—happiness and peaceful understanding eluded her. The St. Mary’s era had segued into an anti-Catholic college stint rife with solitary dereliction, terminating with a degree in computer science from northern California’s Humboldt State University. There she drank wine alone and excelled in academia, plotting her future not in religion or surfing, but in the burgeoning field of technology.
Still, Kate’s early twenties lumbered with a strained soul, seeking something but manifesting nothing. Formal education was done and her future was unknown. Restless, she craved a sojourn of purity. Dreaming hopelessly and soothed by the promise of simplicity, tropical idyll also seduced her for a utopian pursuit.

Kate and the old white man next to her were the plane’s only tourists—everyone else was black, looked local and spoke no English.
She pressed her nose to the window. From above, the destination sparkled like a storybook isle. In fact, it was one. In reality, this place was beyond dreams. Uninhabited until two hundred years ago, it lay rooted silently in an equatorial sea which isolated all else. History’s first recorded exploratory voyage to the island revealed a bounty of fresh fruit, water, fruit, tortoises, coconuts, and birds—a shipmate said the island was “some earthly Paradise.”
Indeed, it was a paradisiacal refuge from Kate’s hellish California world. Mother was forgotten, friends were nonexistent, all school and society lost to the wind. She sipped from a bottle of water. The mental visuals could not taint her surreal first glance at this place, on the edge of nowhere in a brilliantly blue tropical sea.
Kate’s seatmate was John, who would not say where he was from, though he did say he was born on the island they were flying to. His relatives were all dead, and he had no friends. He said he was seventy-three, “but I feel much older.” Kate was twenty-three.

He said he was an ex-religious philosophy professor and had saved his retirement fund to see the world “before I’m worm food.” This island was his last stop.
“What’s a lovely little girl like yourself doing traveling around the world all alone?” he grinned, radiant with rum.
“I’m not traveling around the world. I’m coming here because a voice told me to.”
She fell silent, looking out the window.
Kate confessed about resenting her pious mother, who forced her into Catholic school for twelve miserable years. It stifled her social and sexual development, Kate said, and caused her to despise her hometown, her teachers, and herself. She remained a virgin and had never been intimate with a boy or man. It was a bleak existence that could have easily ended in tragedy. And here she was, traveling halfway around the world with no itinerary or ties to anywhere.

Close to landing, the island’s features became distinct through Kate’s window. Coconut palms bristled from granite boulders at the water’s edge; lushness filled the voids—cinnamon, casuarinas, takamakas, banyans, hibiscus, orchids, vanilla, breadfruit, mango, bananas, pineapples, passion fruit, papaya, Nepenthe pitcher plants, bougainvillea. The sea was another world, undermined with colorful corals and millions of fish. She saw it wholly as a supernatural creation habitat of epic grandeur, conducive to abundant beauty, organic wealth, and God’s love.

* * *

Mid-afternoon. Eric sucked on a cigarette, eyes darting uneasily at nothing, fingering his thick black dreadlocks while slouching on the cement curb outside of the airport’s arrival terminal. His truck was parked in the small lot ahead. It was as if he was there waiting to meet someone yet nervous of their looming appearance.
As she walked outside through the terminal doors, the shock of Kate’s white skin and long blonde hair made Eric stand suddenly, smashing the cigarette with his foot, as if he were greeting the presence of royalty or a distinguished military officer.
He looked like the dusky, serious Rastafarians Kate saw onstage at a famous reggae music festival she’d camped at on the banks of the Eel River in southern Humboldt County. Late on the third night of that three-day event, a well-known Jamaican singer took a keen interest in Kate, and although their mutual attraction soared, she abstained and withdrew with the zip of her tent flap.
Eric resembled that man, which is why Kate noticed him immediately.
“You need ride?” he asked eagerly.
Kate had lost John in the immigration line. She stopped and looked at Eric blankly, lowering her luggage onto the cement.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes,” he nodded with a toothy grin. “To where you go?”
“I want to camp. In a forest, near a beach.”
Baffled by this, Eric said, “Why you sleep in trees when you come my house?”
“Because I want to. Do you know where I can camp?”
“Yes. There a place not far. We go.” He motioned her toward his truck, then pointed at her surfboard bag on the ground.
“What that?”
“My surfboard.”
“Surfboard?”
“You know, for surfing—for riding waves on the sea….”
She slid her belongings into the bed of the tattered pickup. Its tailgate was missing.
“Will my bags be safe while we drive?”
“Yes. No fall out.”
Eric’s local language was called Creole, widely thought to be an inferior dialect since it was essentially a slave-era adaptation of French. But it was his true voice as he was born and raised here, not France, spending his life outdoors fishing and farming with his family, who lived on the island’s opposite shore. He had a wife named Tinaz (“she very fat”), a daughter named Sharen, and a son named Mohammed Ali.
“Are you Islamic?” Kate asked.
“No.”
“Why did you name him Mohammed if you’re not a Muslim?”
“Me very much like boxing.”

Kate saw the clear warm water of the lagoon and a broken line of whitewater out along the barrier reef. Further along, they passed a series of small, pretty coves fringed with coconut palms and granite boulders. The scenery dominated; during the drive, she did not see another car or human.
The road deteriorated into dirt. Forty minutes elapsed. Finally, Kate asked, “Where are we going?”
Suddenly he veered and stopped the truck in a turnout at a curve on the road’s right-hand side.
“Here I take you. You camp.”
It was a slim patch of dirt backed by a peculiar forested hollow of massive palms and exotic plants. Unseen birds sang from within. It was an oddly familiar fairyland, a place Kate knew she’d dreamed of or read about. Déjà vu.
Eric pointed to the left. “Sea is there. After the trees.”
She looked around and was pleased—the spot was secluded and serene. The valley was enchanting. The beach was footsteps away. Here, she thought, being alone and idle will be easy.
“How much do I pay you for the ride?” she asked, despite having none of the local currency.
“No pay. You my friend.” He smiled, gums the hue of tar. “Maybe I see you again.”
He shook her hand and she stepped out of the truck, quickly gathering her gear from the truck bed and placing it on the ground. Then she leaned into the passenger window and smiled a relieved sort of smile.
“Thank you, Eric. I do hope to see you again.”
“How long you camp?”
“I don’t know.”
“You not scared alone?”
“I’ll be fine.”
He rattled away, leaving a cloud of dust and ultimate stillness, with birdsong and the muffled roar of waves. Lethargic, Kate stood on the dirt and gazed at the turquoise lagoon scintillating between the trees in front of her. I’ve made it at last, she thought.
She peered into the valley, then up at the surrounding mountains and sky. Dusk was near, and she needed to find a campsite before darkness prevented her. The valley was already dim except for a strange vertical column of light in the middle of it, like someone shining a spotlight from the treetops. It was bright enough there to make camp and eat a supper of trail mix and dehydrated fruit.
Fruit bats circled above. Kate hesitated, then shouldered the luggage and trudged toward a transformation of spirit. The grove was primeval and alive—yes, she had been here before. The valley instantly evoked an atmosphere of visceral divinity, as if she had penetrated a time warp to an earlier period on the planet preceding the genesis of man.
She walked into the wide shaft of light and looked up, but was blinded as if looking directly at the sun. She rubbed her eyes and instead admired the forest around her, a place of superlative magic: the understory was blanketed in ferns and philodendrons, jackfruit and vanilla; granite boulders were everywhere, splotched with blue-green algae, moss, and lichens; a hidden stream gurgled gently nearby; a whistling black parrot, with dark gray feathers and hooked beak, loitered somberly in the palm above her head; geckos and tree frogs clung to its huge boles and fan-shaped fronds—what type of palm is this? she wondered.
They were tall, ancient trees, the biggest ones nearly a hundred feet high, some with large, bilobed nuts. A few lay scattered on the ground; Kate picked one up and it was heavy, perhaps fifty pounds. Another had a large crack in its side, from which oozed a white, gelatinous substance. Malnourished, she tasted it timidly with the tip of her tongue—it was sweet and mild—then she devoured the jelly, sucking it vigorously out of the nut until there was no more.
She dropped the nut and looked up at the sumptuous palms around her. There appeared to be male and female trees, both of which featured suggestive reproductive shapes. The male trees had large catkins, resembling penises, while huge nuts on the female trees, clustered beneath ten-foot-wide fronds, resembled a woman’s pelvis.
Her eyes lowered to the forest floor. The thick carpet of dead leaves was ideal padding to place her blanket and inflatable pillow—the air was so hot and steamy that she would definitely sleep nude and uncovered. She stripped and stood in the warm light, feeling euphoric and liberated and intensely sexual. In her shadow she could see the outline of her large breasts and their erect nipples, the curve of her hips and buttocks, shoulders and back.
The wind whipped loudly through the treetops. She touched her breasts and her pubic area, realizing that she had never before so desired the company of a man. Her heart beat furiously and she began to sweat as a tingling sensation shot through her entire body. Her panting grew heavy, accentuated with soft moaning.
The desire to be penetrated ensued as a visceral ache, like an unfulfilled promise, a deep wanting, a deep torment. Heat and energy flooded the insides of her hips. She sensed an opening of her sacrum, a yearning to be complete and whole. It was an urge to create, to connect, a coil wrenching tighter and tighter inside her pelvis.
She breathed deeply and slowly, feeling her heart relax, inhaling the tranquility of night beneath this cathedral of palms, a celestial canopy. The bliss was erotic and palpable; the valley was an incredibly seductive place. Kate felt comfortable and impervious here. Its palms were prescient, the starscape hallucinatory.
It was early April. Time was telescoped in the middle of nowhere—an elusive, lost world, indeed a place from a fairy tale. She lay on the blanket, attempting and failing to sleep beneath the valley’s strange, late twilight. Here, moonlit nature afforded clarity to the sounds of the earth—a sacred solace, murmuring to her softly.

* * *

Kate woke midday from a post-orgasmic sleep. The atmosphere was windless and dank, misty and pungent with tropical forest decay and ocean air. Naked and rested with newfound strength, she strolled out to the water and saw that the beach was virtually unphotographable. Film could never do it justice, and it did not deserve a name: it was too perfect. She squinted at the white sand, glary in the dazzling sun, and the lagoon shimmered hotly, like a plate of glass.
Surfing came to mind as Kate noticed waves crashing onto the lagoon’s barrier reef. But the waves had no form, breaking simultaneously over shallow coral. Seeing this, Kate decided to walk further and find a wave worth surfing. She returned to the campsite for her surfboard and sandals, but nothing else—she would walk nude. It was appropriate for the environs. Energized by its light, she walked steadily and confidently along the dirt lane she had driven in on with Eric, and within an hour she approached a rift—a narrow tunnel—through the tangle of trees and vines.
Emerging from the jungle, she surveyed another flawless arc of white-sand beach, hot and tranquil, its only sound that of the waves peeling around both sides of a narrow reef pass about a half-mile from shore.
This beach was heavenly. Its lagoon was clear and warm, lapping up onto soft, powdery white sand between spectacular granite rocks. Palms and takamaka trees bordered the beach, providing shade from the fierce afternoon heat. And the waves were good.

* * *

She straddled her surfboard atop an incandescent mirror, her back and shoulders warmed by sun dropping into mountain silhouettes. Meditating, waiting for waves, her legs dangled in an exotic aquarium: snapper, angelfish, butterfly fish, chromis, fusiliers, wrasse, trumpet fish, pipefish, needlefish. Flying fish dashed across the surface, chased by barracudas unseen.
During one rhapsodic ride, a large turquoise parrotfish surfed alongside Kate, as dolphins do elsewhere. With every turn, the fish mimicked her, drawing the same lines underwater. Like surfing with a mermaid, she thought.
Fairy terns flitted, green turtles floated. The palmy beach awaited. Between waves, all was Edenic.
Vivid light evaporated and morphed from distinct saturation to a flood of pastels…sea and sky glowed violet and ochre as the play of light distracted her from an approaching swell.
Like the rest, this wave was perfect. The tube’s almond eye reflected all to be seen. Facing the sun, it was a resplendent funnel of liquid gold spinning around her, not a drop of water misplaced. The verdant mountains, the sinking sun, the sublime beach fronted by a motionless lagoon—it was all a dream. If she fell, a flat coral reef softened by seaweed would allow only a minor bruise, if anything. This act of surfing was a junket: she couldn’t get hurt, the sea was warm and windless and playful, there were waves aplenty, and there was no chance of another human to spoil the ambience.
Hence, nobody saw any of this. The beach was a fantasy of clairvoyance, a nirvanic déjà vu. And her first surf session, after her first night on her second day, was a hallucination of ecstasy. It was all unblurred and ethereal, her years of suffering and privation being purged by the sea. Surfing brought her closer to herself. Each moment was a month regained from her wayward life, and, back in California, she believed it was here—only here—where this could occur.

* * *

Twilight was mute, psychedelic. On her surfboard, waiting for a final wave, Kate’s face and breasts gleamed in wet reflection of the afterglow. In an aqueous crimson baptism, her skin softened, her brow relaxed. All tension and mental knots fell away, pressure replaced with pleasure. Yet the onset of darkness startled her. Thoughts turned to shore.
Like a mirage after dusk, the wave came and she stalled into another tube, this one inky and narrow like a teardrop. The ride was brief. She turned shoreward and began paddling the half-mile there. Large fish blurped out of the water all around her, snatching baitfish, and her hands dipped into pods of them, the whole lagoon alive under the early, starry night reflecting coolly into Kate’s sunburned eyes.
The sand was silk to Kate’s shriveled feet. Her paddling muscles ached. Her nipples and belly were chafed from the surfboard’s wax. Wafts of hibiscus floated through the air, bolstered by intense humidity.
Approaching the tunnel leading back to the road, she looked back at the faint whitewater lines winding around the pass—to her, the scene was a canvas of hope. It was pristine and deserted, quiet and balmy, as she imagined many of the world’s beaches to be. But surely none of them could compare to this.
The tunnel was pitch-dark, so she walked slowly, patiently, afraid of nothing, feeling the cool, soft sand underfoot. The darkness was warm, richly redolent with fruit and flowers—a comforting aroma. Here she was immune: the tunnel was womblike, a passage alluding to a place above all others, and she made her way toward its source.
Kate felt protected, her spirit harbored in the perfumed night. She walked serenely, reflecting on Adam’s allegorical writings, which seemed to reappear for her upon the tunnel’s breeze. Adam was created as God’s companion in His garden. This garden was warm. The serpent ultimately ruined Adam and Eve’s fellowship with God; they relinquished their idyllic nest and fell from grace after succumbing to the dark tempter rather than the light of truth. They were banished from His garden, the place that had encompassed everything perfect and beautiful on earth, and were never allowed to re-enter it.
Yet Kate was here: a woman somehow alone in God’s land. He had made it that way. All the implications illuminated in her consciousness in distinct order. It struck her as simultaneously odd, yet perfect, how the light of reason always shone in the blackest phases of her life, rescuing her time after time.
Feeling reborn, she reached the tunnel’s opposite end, which connected to the dirt lane. The ocean was restorative, but the tunnel itself was like a time warp back to her birth, and she emerged from it anew of body and spirit.
The valley, however, was her own private Garden of Eden. The lane was silver with moonlight, stretching out like an ethereal ribbon to eternal bliss.
Moonlight bathed the massive palms, their fronds splitting the soft light, spilling it across the forest floor. Guided by stars, she walked to a nearby freshwater stream she found the previous day. The stream’s sloshing and gurgling sounded like laughter and happiness to Kate; she kneeled down, splashing the cold water all over her body in a baptismal cleansing. She put her lips to the stream and gulped vigorously—her first drink of the day, tasting like honey.
This is the nectar of the gods, she thought. Nothing else could possibly taste so pure.
Kate strolled back to her bags and lay down. The leaves and sleeping pad felt like a feather bed. She closed her eyes and listened to the forest—primordial nature suspended in a silent time warp. She had never felt such serenity. The very presence of the place was a tangible thing, enveloping her. “My child now”—the voice seemed to come from within.
Eden, God’s garden. He led me here to be reborn, just as I am.

* * *

Time passed—months. It was summer. Kate was in Torrance again, living with her mother. Her days were sunny and warm, the nights full of stars and pleasant dreams.
Her crapulous mother was rarely home, occupied with work and a tall, husky boyfriend from Hermosa Beach. Kate rejected the non-attention as being perfidy—she was an adult, on her own. Not that it was ever any different, but now she understood.
Mother, if she came home at all, would stumble incoherently through the door at 3 a.m., only to wake at 7 a.m. fully clothed with a cracking headache, due for the 8 a.m. bus into town to her telemarketing job, six days a week.
Kate had extricated herself from this existence. Natural light fueled her like caffeine—an emission of constant solar energy. Each dawn was a blank slate, a daily twenty-four-hour chapter of ripening growth and upliftment. Her previous life had never known such truth and love. She welcomed everything and everybody. She was confident. It all made sense to her.
Her nourishing diet was organic and appealing; she was no longer bulimic or paranoid of her body’s appearance, concealing it with boyish rags from the thrift shop. Gone were the pale-skinned days of pants and long-sleeved shirts on the sands of Manhattan and Redondo—a bikini was now her beach garb of choice, and she was a bronzed, blonde goddess to the boys, who pursued her regularly. Her love life had at last blossomed, particularly with a thirty-year-old painter named Paul who lived alone in San Pedro. He understood Kate and had heard her rite of passage, vicariously reliving it with her, from here to there and back again.
They surfed together, explored together, slept together, laughed together, ate together. But Kate mentally did not need Paul for internal content. She required no one. Her redemption was her two healthy feet on solid ground today. One bright, surfless morning, Kate took a stroll into town, passing familiar storefronts with faces both fresh and faded. She wore her favorite leather sandals, tight white shorts, and a logoless white tank top with no bra beneath.
She stepped out of her front door and looked up: the Los Angeles sky was enormous, full of fortune and opportunity—it was infinite and anew, as it had been since her return. Soundness of mind paced her routine, adrift in the space between self-understanding and inner peace. Kate was an independent soul. Torrance became a place of refuge and tradition, something it never was, eliciting reflections for her from which to flourish.
Each smell was similar but different: after all, this was the same soil and cement she had traversed countless times before, in every season and every weather.
It was the bridge over Clark Street. Here she was, and here she had been so many times, so many years ago. She stopped at its mid-point and squinted down at the six standstill lanes of every vehicle imaginable, shimmering in the midday glare. It looked like a parking lot.
The sun was searing. Cars overheated, drivers cursed and honked their horns. The road’s center divider was littered with weeds and trash and shredded tires—it was a terrible, stressful scene, loaded with pain and torture and bad timing for everybody.
But up there, on the bridge, stood a young woman with a flower in her hair, dressed in white, smiling at all of this.
She turned and walked away, down the sidewalk, across the bridge, to a place in her mind she never knew existed, but was well aware of today.
A place of hope.

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Autumn

By Corinne Tâche-Berther
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The first time I heard her sing was around 4 years ago, when she gave me a demonstration of a voice which seemed to come not just from her mouth but her whole body. Our Cira. For four and a half years 7sky, she has many other strings to her bow apart from writing. She paints, snowboards better than almost any other girl, surfs and has an answer for everything. And we were the ones who encouraged her to sing! So far only a few people had the privilege to enjoy her voice … at private gatherings, in the car, or once on a mountainside with friends. Yet we all wanted to involve her in this project. And the involvement of so many professionals meant she was under real pressure to deliver. Yet she managed to write a song for the Paradise Story with the guitarist Ian MacDonald which really gets under your skin, which stops you in your tracks and stays in your head for a long time.
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Lyrics:

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„Bridge To Eden“ by Cira Riedel/ Guitar by Ian MacDonald

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On throbbing feet on the plain outskirts of LA
With her dad away and the mum a painful catholic drunk
Life limped like her in painful shoes
There must be a better way
There must be a better way
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You are now my child
Follow the bridge to Eden now
And take heed what you hear
Walking the bridge to Eden
Bible talks of paradise
Walking the bridge to Eden
Now
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On the edge of turquoise water lay the isle of paradise…
Conductive to abundant beauty, organic wealth, god’s love
Conductive to abundant beauty, organic wealth, god’s love
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Camping in a lazy lagoon- she discovered paradise
The bliss was erotic-
Nude under the hallucinating stars
Elusive lost world
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Twilight was psychedelic
Walking the bridge to Eden now
Take heed in what you hear
Bridge to Eden now
It was a scene was a canvas of hope
Walking the bridge to Eden now.
.

It was like surfing with mermaids as the fish followed her around
And the tubes almonds eye reflected all to be seen – Edenic
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A splendid tunnel of liquid gold
And no one saw any of this.
A fantasy of clairvoyance- a nirvanic déjà vu.
Hallucination of-ecstasy - He was here as she was.
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On a bridge stood a young woman-
Smiling at the world
Kate on the bridge to Eden-
On the bridge
On the bridge
On the bridge
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From the tunnel she emerged reborn
Afraid of nothing
Afraid of nothing
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