Ho'oulu ... sit, listen -- for years

"It is critical at this time to dig deeper into the well-spring of our own subjectivity. We are not 'dumbing down' methodology when we wish to sit and listen -- for years." - Ho'oulu: Our Time of Becoming by Manu Meyer

A'ohe pau e 'ike

There is no end to knowledge.

Once again na 'Ole Po have wrestled me down, and sorted through the many thoughts that have either clung tenaciously out of habit or found a place again and again because at every level it suits my culture. That grown knowing that is ancient/modern show up in my dreams, and redefine the drama that walks across my everyday. Last night as Mahina's rounding light hu (penetrated) through the small vardo window Pete and I retold our mo'oku'auhau our genealogy as a couple.

"We always tell it, and then it gets to this point. We tell it different." Pete lay beside me roused from near sleep by my voice. It takes him to that luminous place. The storyteller's voice. What happens when the 'ole moons, and in particular, the 'ole pau phase cycles around us is the story as much if not more than the teller wants to hear itself. With time, knowledge changes. What we have lived (our history) is faceted, seen from another angle. We tell the story as it has changed. Pete tells of out and back, and back and forth journey from the Mid-west.

"It's huaka'i," I said into the night. "A migration, leaving, getting 'out of Dodge' sort of thing." Looking at our history there is opportunity to learn how we/he/me evolve. Are we? As we talked into the night my reading and research which now includes Manulani Aluli Meyer's Ho'oulu folds, looking for places to seep into my gut, preparing me for the conversations I will have when our gathering place (Ho'omoku) welcomes makers of island.

Manu writes, "Relationship with place allows for gross knowing of all aspects of environment and allows for a stretching towards the rational and transcendental."  

'Ole kukahi and Jupiter

Re-telling our journey together as a couple, the facets that have added to our  huaka'i, both together and independently, is the conscious and daily noticing and recording of data -- real life observations, of wind, sky, bird activity, growing and blossoming. Key to the data is the shape and position of Mahina in relationship to our place on Earth. For eight years we have made note of time by things other than a refrigerator calendar. Like our ancestors in my backbones, we are descendants of seafarers and landlocked pagans. The process of softening the ground of our preconceptions -- the ground of our being, is a slow one. We resist change, even if we know it is. Summer comes. The Solstice is less than three anahulu away (3 Hawaiian weeks of 10 po).

We sit, and listen for years. Aging in place. We learn our place. History becomes a little less a mystery. We hu.(1. to rise or swell, as yeast or souring poi; to ferment, overlow, percolate, effervesce, boil over; to surge or rise to the surface, as emotion; rising, swelling; outburst, overflow. - Hawaiian Dictionary, Pukui and Elbert)

Amana ua noa.

I luna la i luna
Na manu o ka lewa
Upwards the birds of the heavens

I lalo la i lalo
Na pua o ka honua
Downwards the flowers of the earth

I uka la i uka
Na ulu la'au
Uplands the trees of the forest

I kai la i kai
Na i'a o ka moana
Seaward the fish of the ocean

Ha'ina mai ka puana
Ahe nai ke ao nei
Thus ends my song of the beauties of this world

-Mary Kawena Pukui