Sunset hula

Last Friday I was lucky enough to see the final hula kahiko performance in the sunset hula series at the pa hula (hula platform) in Volcanoes National Park.

The evening was perfect: clear and still. The three young dancers were just the right mixture of young and accomplished.

The colours were magnificent. I have never before seen the hala (Pandanus) seeds used in leis such as these young dancers wore.

We had oli and hula to honour the ancestors, Pele, Kilauea, David Kalakaua, Queen Liliʻuokalani, who was praised for her graciousness and true Hawaiian ways.

These performances were funded by a grant obtained by Volcano Art Centre. I do hope they get the grant again. The free access to living traditions of hula arts is priceless.

Benediction of the Dreadful Babies: swimming with honu. Again.

The dreadful babies were three weeks old last week.

To celebrate I took them, up up up over the saddle and away to the yonder of the other side, to bathe in the salt water of Anaehoʻomalu Bay.

 It was a perfect sunshiny day in the middle of the week and hardly a person on the beach. The tide was coming in, slowly encroaching on those still slightly rotting toes. A honu feeding on limu kept me company for the couple of hours of my visit.

This time around the dreadful babies have slipped into my life with none of the emotional love them hate them rollercoaster of the previous incarnation.

They are just there, exactly where they should be. No fuss. No bother. A little bit of unravelling and hairiness but for the most part just being themselves.

I do tie them back when at work or out and about - but mostly because that is the most practical way to be in a hot humid climate. I always let them loose at night and wake up medusa tendrilled.

After the swimming, the salt water benediction and beach dreaming, I met another dreaming honu on my walk back to the parking lot. This one had the look of being much looked at. Which is what you get when your dreamtime places are colonized by beach clubs. I love the determination this honu shows not to be moved from its ancestral lands and traditional ways.

Afterwards, while having a something to eat at Keomanyʻs Local Thai (fresh, local, organic) in Waikoloa, I spotted an interesting hula dancer. Love that Hawaiian sense of humour! Thank you Royal Hawaiian Movers for seizing the moment there.

Walk softly and carry a big stick: a day of revelations

At the Farmerʻs Market today, as I was buying lovely herbal mosquito repellant, an accidental palm reader told me that a cataclysmic event is going to change my life radically in 7 or 8 months. You heard it first here. Truth. March/April 2014: what does the future hold?

She was uncannily accurate with so much else, asked for nothing from me, just picked up my hand and started telling me things. Lots of things. Covered me from head to toe, inside and out. Money, love, my house, dreams and aspirations: she got it all. And she knew all about a few of you out there too. Curious. Described my various relationships with you so well.

One of her first statements (after a strange: you will live forever, die in your sleep and someone will be with you at that time) was: "ah here is another writer who is not writing". 

At another point she told me that the dead speak to me but I am not listening. Advised me to start a dream diary. 

Just how many diaries must a girl keep to give the ancestors voice?

That came after an early dawn paddle with the healing canoe. A gift of light in stormy radiance on the banyans.

 A pair of Nene purred a soft greeting.

Down at the waterʻs edge a Kolea, the Pacific Golden Plover was busy, still a little lean and hungry from the recent long migration from Alaska.

I paddle the same bay just before sunrise, several times a week. In the daytime, human occupation hours,  it is obviously a popular little beach for people with children. I know this because I am gathering quite a collection of gifts from the salt water. Plastic spades and brightly coloured plastic sand play toys are tops but little figures pop up with regularity. Once there was even a little die cast metal helicopter.

This morningʻs gift or nudge was a little white haired figure with a big stick.

Am I seriously lacking in contemporary cultural knowledge not recognizing him? Can anyone tell me who this is?

August blue moon

She rose huge and yellow in a midnight blue sky. 

Later I went out to find her dancing in the treetops, trailing night rainbows.

and then there were three

Another kayak adoption effected this week. A 2008 red Ocean Kayak Caper. Even though the ancient white WaʻaKea has crept into my heart as my favourite, the Caper is technically the model I have been looking for for myself: a kayak for overnight touring, with enough hatch space for a tent and food.

The paddle which came with this kayak is a sunrise coloured Carlisle Magic, made in New Zealand. A satisfying amount of poetry and connection there.

This particular Craigslist kayak rescue was poignant. I had seen the posting first about a month ago, at a time when I could not get to the other side of the island so I let it go. "When the time is right, a Caper will come to me", I remember thinking.

Then the posting was refreshed. Still I was busy.

A few days later I email off an enquiry, not very invested.  I thought: "surely that model at that price will sell." response came back:  the kayak is still available.

I make arrangements to go over the saddle of the island. Again.

Turned out the owner of the kayak was in advanced stage of lymphoma, so fragile in body, mind, spirit. It was hard. I really wanted to take him out paddling but he had given up. The kayak had been a gift from his wife.

So it seems this red kayak comes with some sombre baggage for me. I guess my number came up in the do the healing work queue with this little, barely used, red, 2008 vintage, Caper and itʻs sunrise magic paddle

Maybe we all have a healing canoe in our fleet. One way or another.

Garden wrecking rascals

One day last week, I came home to find these two neighbourhood rascals rearranging my garden for me. 

I tried to ignore them, but they attacked my newly painted, glass panelled front door with very determined puppy claws, teeth and tongues. 

 I thought to contain them on the back of the truck to return to their own turf across the road when their people came home. The containment was a little too precarious. I relented when it looked like they would jump rather than be restricted.

I carried them back home, one squirmy bundle under each arm, sternly admonished them to STAY.

Within minutes they are back tearing up my vegetable seedlings. "Spinach? She said there was spinach here. Do you see any?"

It is difficult to believe these super-friendly, know-no-boundaries, trusting, pups have a future as fierce wild pig hunt dogs. But that is probably their fate.

Wild at heart

Remembering all the journeys in place and space, growing up together with a great travel companion.

Lionheart of my heart: Happy Birthday!

Moontree

A swelling Leo moon for Lionheart of my heart. Remembering all the bedtime stories tonight.

Happy Birthday.

Bananarama

This week I harvested a magnificent bunch of bananas that was almost too heavy for me to support as it fell. 

I expect to dehydrate some of these as I know they are all going to ripen at once.  The crystal ball seems to be showing a fruit leather production in the next few weeks.

That is all the banana harvest from my garden for a while. 

Bananas take a year for fruit to mature. I have no more bunches forming right now. Fortunately bananas are one of the least expensive and most prevalent fruits around at the local Farmerʻs Market and side of the road farm stalls so are readily available. I also have plans to plant more varieties. This particular variety is big, rich and creamy sweet with a slight pinkish tint to the flesh. the flavour is NOTHING like those soapy tasting cold storage numbers I used to buy in the frozen northern wastelands.

Feline family: living alongside the locals

Glancing up from my desk the other afternoon , I noticed a subtle movement on the jungleʻs edge.

Looking closer I spot feral mama cozied up with two kittens on the warm lava rock.

There is ʻImiloa, a lava rock black one who is real real curious, playful, an explorer and definitely very interested in me. Tulsi , the tiger striped one whom I met previously stashed on what I think was day of birth under my holy basil, (see here) prefers to play ostrich and bury head in sands of mamaʻs belly so all you see of that young one  in these pics is a choice bit of tailend.

What is really remarkable me was how the colouring was perfect camouflage for this little family. If I wasnʻt accustomed to scanning the bush for movement I would have missed the family

Reflections on the waning moon: paddling with ghosts

The last sliver of the moon was in the sky as I launched alongside a patient fisherman heron.

Reflecting on the waning moon: letting go, gathering story. Honu was there too. Then the sunʻs gilding. Then storm.

This is the place, legend has it, that a jealous wife killed her co-wife and stuffed her in a lava tube while their husband was out on these waters fishing. The swirling bubbles of the slain wifeʻs spirit called him back.

Jealousy has no place in traditional Hawaiian polyandry. The killer was banished by their fisherman husband - sent back to her village. Everyone lost.