Sometimes tendrils or rootlets of thought, like the bright colors that magnetize a bee with a promise of nectar, pull me this way then that way. Ironic that those same tiny brilliant blue flowers with dots of yellow at their centers are so powerfully fragrant with pollen I clog up with allergic reactions to them.
So many things are sprouting in my interior landscape, matched only by what is happening all around me as spring settles herself into the 'aina that is where we are in the Pacific Northwest. My six to eight weeks of woods-bound isolation overlays itself over the retrograde of planets happening as I find the letters to make sentences. Just as I cannot do anything to move the planets in their journey, there is little I can do (alone) to affect the Scotch broom growth on the highways of Whidbey Island.
This is the morning after Mother's Day, 2016. I have been awake for hours appreciating the wonderful gifts of being mother to a gloriously evolving son. We skype-gathered and chatted, simply hanging out with each other. He sang, and strummed on his ukulele and a borrowed guitar from a friend of a friend. We shared bits of happenings from this side of the Pacific, Pete checked on his work habits and tossed a few cautionary tales into the mix of conversation. My son told us about life on his side of the Pacific. One dose of an hour's worth of aloha, and a little gossip. Thanks Internet goddesses. I napped after that dose of son, circling under the covers to relish the company and could easily have slept the night through.
But, I woke listening to Pete walking back and forth along the simple track between our Quonset, and the outside oven. He was making his meal; I had already eaten my chicken pot pie, pre-baked and still hot from our town market. So ... even as I was drowsy, I threw back the warm quilt, climbed down the three steps, under our Dragon Mama and her Red Umbrella, and crossed to the Quonset to join him.
Opening the Quonset door the smell of onions filled the room. I sat here in front of the keys and the screen, and just sat and Pete came in with his onion-rich turkey loaf. We chatted. He ate. "I'm ready to go horizontal," I said. The full day of sending and receiving greetings to and for mothers had filled me up.
The computer started RINGING. The skype camera lit up. It was my son with a second, and unexpected, dose of aloha. He was calling from the graves. He was there at the CALIZAR place at the foot of the Ko'olaus with a can of Bud for his grampa, and a slice of custard pie for his gramma. That roofed portable chair was set up, I saw the rusty orange rectangle of a roof first. For one more dose of aloha my son brought me and Pete to be with my Ma for our day. We, my son and I, sang E KOLU MEA NUI together, telling my folks that love is still the most important thing.
"There's a black chicken wondering around." He pointed the camera so we could see her.
"She'll probably come for the custard pie after you leave."
"Yeah." Wild chickens and families of feral cats make the cemetery home. When my sister-in-laws comes for her walks there are dozens of both keeping her company as she climbs the hills, stopping to visit my brother.
There's a legacy that persists. You can't predict which ones will be the legacy that strings consistently forward. My son was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest where the practices of grave visits is not baked-in. It's different in Hawaii. While Pete and I lived on O'ahu we had a chance to restore that legacy of sitting with my folks, and included my son in those visits.
Singing at the graves of family with the help of the technology that they could not have imagined is one of the layers of unexpected legacies that lie just under the surface. In the chants of my Kanaka ancestors, the rootlets of legacy lie in wait. In Ka Honua Ola I read about the little-known male entity Moemoea'ali'i who represents the offspring that lie waiting to be exposed once again. "Moemoe," in this instance, means to lie in wait; "a'a li'i" are the small rootlets from which new growth spouts. Many of the 'ohi'a trees that intially take root on a new eruption do so because of rootlets left in the ground. 1
The 2012 video and interview of Robin Wall Kimmerer (I'm not sure where this takes place but guess that it is near the site of Mount St. Helen's in Washington state), one of my most loved Earth Teacher/Mother speaks of biological legacy. Her message watered me with the voice, plumping my heart with hope and direction. Though I am not there at the site of my parents' graves, my son is. He knows what to do there. He knows how to respect and care for those who care and cared for him. He does remember them, even though his grampa passed in 1983 when he was not yet eleven years old. He knew. Tutu Man liked his beer. For better or for worse, the beer is just part of the legacy. He also knew his Tutu Lady could play a mean piano. I have a memory of my son turning the pages of sheet music as Ma played.
Legacy from rootlet or seed, the message is clear: Just plant them.
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1 Ka Honus Ola "Mo'oku'auhau", Pua Kanaka'ole Kanahele. Rootlets lie in wait gives me a vivid image to water my nearly refreshed poet-mothering genes.
Traditions are ways and means of being with your relatives over time. The things we do, the way we do those things; the way we relate to the others (humans, elements, creatures) in our environment; the way we reciprocate become traditions. Sometimes, especially in a contemporary community these ways and means are unconscious. Habit replaces tradition, and without 'being conscious of the embodied experiences that define[...]' tradition, there is no differentiation. So wrote Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele in the opening lines to Ka Honua Ola, The Living Earth. Dr. Kanahele primes us, challenges us Kanaka Maoli to be awake to the ways and means of relating to this living earth and for that I am very grateful.
The Moon, Mahina rounds in her cycle toward full. And me too, thickening in my maturity, rounding in ways that both test and affirm my journey. Too many pancakes with maple syrup? Yes, too many and then my body works hard to process the refined wheat. An addiction that I must relate to with care, and forgiveness. I notice it, feel the elastic stretch at my waist, and make an extra effort to chop more onions and add another clove of garlic to tonight's soup. The process of growing the new school HO'OMOKU challenges me to round out my obsession to 'make good.' I'm writing out this process as the foundation for this teaching place takes shape. Over at the cybersite where I put my thoughts and discernment I wrote:
"My Ancestors were keen observers. Kilo practitioner and ethno-scientist Kalei Nu'uhiwa answers Three Common Questions About Kaulana Mahina on her website. She answers the question, "Where does the term Kaulana Mahina comes from?" by citing three scholars' definitions, including Pukui and Elbert (Hawaiian Dictionary),Zepelino Keauokamalie and Joseph M. Poepoe. Her conclusion:
"Therefore Kaulana Mahina is a traditional Hawaiian science that employed the methodology of keen observation, hypothesis, and trial and error, noting conclusions and then organizing time by the traditional environmental experts called kahuna."
Between this blog and that one, I spread the thinking process out and make connections. I round out. And you, where you are? How does the moon round for you?
Today the heavy rains have blown in from the south
The Tall Ones, send pollen clouds thick and golden.
But, heavy 'ua kalani (rain from the heavens) dampen their dust storm temporaily.
The angle of our lucky fish wind sock is pushed from the wind out of the south.
The post 'Enough ... Mauna Kea under seige' and the another raging issue of controversy in Hawaii, got me thinking. People are watching, curious, and perhaps, motivated to see how what happens there affects us here. Henry Curtis, writing on his Ililani Media blog is the bulldog/watch dog of all issues energy in the Hawaiian Islands. Curtis is hot on the okole of the ram-jam buy-out of HECO (Hawaiian Electric Company) by Nextera Energy Hawaii and the President of that company, Eric Gleason.
There are other optionsfor keeping the lights on in Hawaii besides the sale of HECO to Nextera. (If you are curious, live in the Hawaiian Islands, and are invested in exploring and supporting other options, click on that, read the articles Curtis has published). Pushed ever closer to the buy-out by Nextera Energy as a done deal just for the heck of it, let's go back to the top of the mountain, Mauna a Wakea (Mauna Kea) and consider the following essay about the wind wake ... the largest in the world, as a matter of fact, rising from the islands of Hawaii, "barely a speck in the 64 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean."
Back in 2003, a feature article "Little Islands Big Wake" by Laurie J. Smith " appeared on the NASA website Earth Observatory. That article was republished, and included in Na Maka O Ka 'Aina's documentaryMauna Kea: Temple Under Seige. Here's part of what Smith wrote in that article:
"On a map of the world, the Hawaiian Islands are barely a speck in the 64 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. But oceanographers recently discovered that these tiny dots on the map have a surprising effect on ocean currents and circulation patterns over much of the Pacific.
In the Northern Hemisphere, a system of persistent winds blows from northeast to southwest, from North and South America toward Asia, between the equator and 30 degrees north latitude. These northeasterly winds are called trade winds. Typically, the trade winds continue on an uninterrupted course across the Pacific — unless something gets in their way, like an island. Although many people associate Hawaii with flat, sunny beaches, the elevation of the major Hawaiian Islands generally exceeds 3,200 feet (1,000 meters). Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii (commonly referred to as “the Big Island”) both tower nearly 14,000 feet (about 4,300 meters) above sea level. In addition, Mount Haleakala on the island of Maui stands at over 10,000 feet (3,055 meters) high. Hawaii’s high mountain landscape presents a substantial obstacle in the path of the trade winds. The elevated topography blocks the airflow, effectively splitting the trade winds in two. This split causes a zone of weak winds, called a “wind wake,” to form on the leeward side (away from the wind) of the islands. “If there were no mountains on the Hawaiian Islands, then nothing would happen. The trade winds would just blow smoothly across the ocean with no effect,” said Shang-Ping Xie, professor and researcher at the University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center and Department of Meteorology.[...]
From the small Quonset Hut that is my writing and eating place, I look out and see the fuschia bells of the salmon berry flowers. Moving toward fruit, I observe the process and the progress of a woman practicing kilo. I am a woman practicing kilo. Simple stuff. Maintain a keen seen of observation. Technology evolves, the eye and head the starting point, the telescope, the satellite, the computerized tracking. More and more, better and better. Or, is it so much better? Raven hollers at me from the branches of the Tall Ones. I hear. I get up and outside. We do a little call and respond. Still, I cannot see where he sits. It does not discount his being there. Back in my place at the keys he continues. The weather and winds described in Smith's 2003 article are the same ones that have evolved in the dozen years. Yesterday's heavy rains were incited by those Hawaii-touched wind wakes. Here. There.
It's that lead paragraph that really gets me in the gut.
There in the middle of the great moana nui a kea, the great open water, significant chain reactions are triggered by the akua (the elemental forces, energies, geographic, oceanographic, and atmospheric dieties). Humans are part of the process because we are present. We are part of the whole process. In the struggle to maintain our place in the process it seems we lose sight of what our part is. First, we are part of, not the whole. The issues and current protests about Mauna Kea are old ones. What is sacred, and why does it matter?
"A species and a culture that treat the natural world with respect and reciprocity will surely pass on genes to ensuing generations with a higher frequency than the people who destroy it. The stories we choose to shape our behaviors have adaptive consequences."- Braiding Sweetgrass ...Robin Wall Kimmerer,
In the Foreword to the book Ka Honua Ola The Living Earth Taupouri Tangaro, PhD and son-in-law to the author begins with this paragraph, "Ka Honua Ola is about being conscious of the embodied experiences that define the culture of Hawai'i and differentiate it from the culture of the none-Hawaiian world. Does such a pointed statement shock you? Well, take a deep breath, for it is true--the author will not recant. But if this statement seems to hint at cultural imperialism and isolation, read again. Defining and differentiating do not automatically imply disconnection. Hawai'i equates profound connection without limits to earth, sea, sky, and soul" [...] "We, as Native Hawaiians, must continue to unveil the knowledge of our ancestors. Let us interpret for ourselves who our ancestors are, how they thought, and why they made certain decisions. In the process, we treat them with honor, dignity, love, and respect--whether they be akua, ali'i, or kanaka--because they are our 'ohana, our family. - Ka Honua Ola The Living Earth ... Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele
The placard on the wall from the exhibit "Native People, Native Places"
Today the sky is clearing, sun feeds the forest and lights the space inside the Quonset. I take a deep breath, mahalo the forest for feeding me the oxygen that was just moments ago part of their leaves, their needles, their feathery cedar fingers. Before we next reach for that switch to turn the light on, what songs will we sing, what stories will we tell, which stories will take care of us?
"Entering the world of ancestral memory requires a certain mindset...To understand the many levels of mele, one must digest, believe in, invest in, defend and commit to Hawaiian cultural practices and Hawaiian language arts. The Hawaiian cultural knowledge one possesses, along with the clues presented in chants, creates a stage for enlightenment--a junction where memory and na'au meet and produce instantaneous moments when ancestral knowledge is reborn again.
Know your culture and language well enough so these special moments do not flee without recognition."
"The shadowsalways
intrigued her, even as a girl child the patterns that happened onto her
skin caused something different. Through the screened window the moon
did not ask permission to tattoo her. While everyone else slept, this
child made room for the moon and the shadows and grew the voice.
The wind's silent breezes
changed the markings that floated onto her small brown arms. In the
night 'brown' might have been any number of colors. The ink of moon's
stains were always the same and wore itself on all pallets. But, it was
the wind that made the tattooed dancers sway and change shape like hula
changed the bodies of her aunties when they moved. She watched and let
the shapes bathe their way into her blood, carried as messengers to the
place where memories swam.
