Getting Personal

Aloha!

C'mon in.

How are Y O U today?

click on photos to enlarge!

OOOO! Perspective at da jetty!

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
Marcus Aurelius



“Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

Limu (sea vegetables) washed up by da surf.

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give thee, the more I have, For both are infinite.”
William Shakespeare

Patient Surf Pup Between Gnarly Rides

"There is no psychiatrist in the world

like a puppy licking your face."

Ben Williams

When I began exploring the blogosphere I wondered why complete strangers, leading average lives (like mine) would want to share the "minutia" of their existence on the web.

I have published a few things; played music (and sang backup) in a few bands. My aspiration as a blogger was to share "quality" content, not to do social networking. Guess I also wanted to send out my messages corked into floating bottles to the world out there:

"I exist. I am creating something of value. Hello?"

To be honest, I also wanted to promote my sweet little novel/self-help/Hawaii guidebook, cultural history book, "Aloha Where You Like Go?"

Many of you are beginning to smile a bit.

I see you there.

Because you know what happened next.

I discovered a realm of interesting people from all over the world, many of whom write beautifully, and/or are talented photographers as well.

I just wanted to express my viewpoint, my accrued life-wisdom, and share this Hawaii home that is so much more remarkable than "travelers" understand.

But

Your kind comments over time have become a "paycheck" that has nothing to do with money.

What I never expected was that I would make authentic friends.

Shannon, Pearl, Daryl, Deborah, Chris, Charles, Mark, Joe, Sandy, Barbara, Dina, Tricia, Thelma, Dave, Travis(s);

You know who you are

And please forgive me if you know that we are pals, and I've neglected to mention you here. I will wake at 3 am and slap my forehead when I think of YOU and all we've shared. I appreciate you very much!

One thing I have definitely learned on this path is that often it is EXACTLY the "merely" personal that has been the real, glimmering, web-based treasure that I have found.

Struggles with health, death, circumstances, dark depression and the blues, as well as the weddings of people I'll never meet. Your seasons, travels, musings, and of course dear pets. We've shared them all.

And it is those confessional posts (with their poignient apologies) that have made of you my real friends,

people I care about.

So, though you all post content of free-standing value (and I will endeavor to do the same) I pledge to you that I will try to follow your example. I pledge to be somewhat less of a "narrator" and occasionally just blurt out something deeply quixotically personal.

I actually feel a lot of warm aloha for your folks.

Oh, and I went to the laundromat and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich today.

Aloha! Cloudia

Royal Visit

Aloha!

Welcome!

Honored Guests:

Japan's Emperor Akihito and wife Empress Michiko

“Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.”
Walt Whitman

No Shadows!

"Whatever you are, be a good one."
Abraham Lincoln

Blooming in Manoa Valley



“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”
Kahlil Gibran

A Lovely Shower Tree

He planted the tree in 1960.

He was a taller, younger man then.

Yesterday they drove him and his wife directly from the airplane to visit the tree. It had grown tall in the 40 plus years, and it waited, blooming as if in welcome - for it is July in Honolulu.

The visit to the tree would be his only public event.

School children, and reverential seniors made up most of the crowd, waiting patiently. Most held small US and Japanese flags. The children were from a Japanese Language school here in town. The seniors remembered years of hard work, years of war, years of life's struggles. But today their faces glowed.

The children were learning their family culture - the seniors had lived it. They all wanted to see and to honor the world's only remaining Emperor: Akihito of Japan and his Empress Michiko.

The emperor walked over to where the children waited and spoke to them quietly in Nihongo, the Japanese language that they study. Until MacArthur ruled in Tokyo this man's father and predecessors were considered living Shinto Deities. To receive a medal, a letter, or to be in his presence, was believed to convey a tangible "blessing" or "initiation" similar to those bestowed by Shinto Priests in their magical nature ceremonies. Free of temporal power, the imperial couple now bestows their blessings purely on a basis of heart and spirit.

A child may think of a ruler as able to live according to royal whim, but it seems that these guests of ours live a life of service to others, to an ideal. Protected, feted & honored, they are not free as you and I are simply to stroll unmolested on the beach here at Waikiki but must see it beyond a velvet rope.

All Hawaii seems touched to host these very special guests. They remind us who we are and where many of us came from; that there is more to life than practicality.

As King Canute showed many ages ago, a sovereign's power is limited. He may not order the surf to recede. But the bonds of love, and the tides of gene & blood, flow undimmed even in our 21st Century.

Today was Lahaina Noon here in Honolulu. Twice a year the noonday sun stands directly above, casting no shadow anywhere. In another fifty years, or a hundred, you, me and the Emperor will reside only inside history.

But Lahaina Noon will revisit on it's appointed day, and the shower tree at Kapiolani Park might still be blooming away the Summer.

Perhaps a grandma or grandma will tell their keiki (kid/kids): "That's where I met an Emperor when I was your age."

Yes, these are the good days. May we live them to the full!

Aloha my Friends! Cloudia

Dumb as Rocks?

Aloha!

Welcome to the

Sacred `Aina (land)

of

H A W A I I

Click on photos to enlarge Hawaiians of old understood that nature was not made of mere "things."

They experienced the living spiritual power in all.

And they called it

MANA.

(Many still do)

Today, physicists call it:

the "Unified Field."

Pohaku (rocks) in particular are understood to be powerful and wise beings. Temples, altars, and (often the) offerings upon them are mineral. After all, these islands are volcanic creations. Liquid lava, at war with the sea, raised up our entire archipelago. It was the goddess Pele, dancing as red hot lava, who bequeathed the resulting land to plants, animals, gods, spirits, demi-gods, and (at last) humans who all voyaged here from elsewhere.

Today, a new submarine mount is rising off of the east side of Hawaii Island, continuing the story. It will not break the surface for millennia into the future.

Handsome Specimen


"Geologists have a saying - rocks remember."
Neil Armstrong





Nature's Rock Art

"The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks."

Gustav Mahler

Stack one upon another and you honor the place.

"If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song."
Carl Perkins




"Naughty" games between foliage and fissure.



"I do not yet know why plants come out of the land or float in streams, or creep on rocks or roll from the sea. I am entranced by the mystery of them, and absorbed by their variety and kinds. Everywhere they are visible yet everywhere occult."
Liberty Hyde Bailey



As the old folks say:

"Here the rocks get (have) faces."




"Since childhood she had walked the Devon rivers with her father looking for flowers
and the nests of birds, passing some rocks and trees as old friends, seeing a Spirit everywhere, gentle in thought to all her eyes beheld."
Henry Williamson

What of YOUR home?
What do the stones sing about in the dark of your night?
Have you heard their chant?



Why not post pictures of the precious gems of your area?

Just throw us a link in "comments!"



Aloha, Friends!

Cloudia

Slack Key Master

Aloha Friend!Welcome back to

W A I K I K I

"A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence." Leopold Stokowski

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

Berthold Auerbach

"All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!"

Thomas Carlyle

"If the King loves music, it is well with the land." Mencius

Whether you realize it or not, you already enjoy Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar.

Hawaii musicians toured the continent back in Territorial days playing their ringing "open tuned" guitars. Soon country musicians, and early jazz practitioners, picked up on the sonics and rhythms incorporating it into their own repertoires.

So some of our favorite sounds today are gifts from the land of Aloha.

Check out Living Treasure, Ledward Kaapana:

Ulupo Part 2

Aloha!

Welcome back to the

Ulupo Hoike Festival!

"Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

click on photos to enlarge! Taro Growing in da sun.

"Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight."
Benjamin Franklin

Banana Light

"The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum."
Frances Willard

The IMU

where food is buried/cooked among hot stones overnight.

"Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic."
Thomas Szasz

MMMMM!



6 O'clock is lomi salmon, 8 is pureed sweet potato,



10pm is unopened haupia (coconut pudding), midnight is ulu or breadfruit and a chunk of sweet potato, 1'O'clock is raw ahi tuna sashimi (on top of long rice, rice noodles), 3 to 5 O'clock is Kalua pork and turkey from da Imu.


"Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by."



Elizabeth Bishop






Kahuna Lomi - Masters of Healing Massage

"Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil."



Zora Neale Hurston








A L O H A, FRIENDS! Cloudia

Ulupo Temple

Aloha!

Welcome to the Hawaii

of Old

click on photos to enlargeSaturday I went to pay my respects to our host culture and to a favorite place.

"`Ike: To see, feel, know, greet, recognize, experience, understand, to know sexually, to receive revelations from the gods..."

From Hawaiian Dictionary, Univ of Hawaii Press

A "Heiau" is a temple.

Ulupo is the largest stone platform and temple complex on Oahu. It was a very important place, made of stones carried hand-to-hand from all over our island.

Hundreds of volunteers over the years have helped to clear, restore, and "malama" or care for it.

Hawaiians leaving "Ho`okupu" or offerings

before the tall stone platform

Our guide


What it may have looked like back in the day.



This picture shows the height.

View from the top.

View Across Kawainui "the great water" Marsh, a very important ecosystem that developed in the crater of a huge volcano that formed a good portion of this island thousands of years ago. It is the largest wetland in the Islands of Hawaii and home to many endangered species of birds.

Kupuna, seniors, shared traditional skills.

Here you see keiki learning to make traditional Kapa cloth and to imprint historic patterns upon it - a technique similar to Polynesian tattooing.

Ipu are gourds that play an important role as containers, and as small drums used in chanting, ceremonies, and hula. See the contemporary plastic ipu?

The temple grounds are once again home to numerous Kalo Lo`i,

or taro patches. Hawaiians consider Kalo their older brother. It is their sacred staff of life. Here, a father and son share a quality Saturday on the `Aina, the sacred land of Hawaii

- And everyone enjoyed a traditional lunch.

Men Dance!

Aloha!

Welcome to

H A W A I I

"Dare to Hula, Leave your shame at home!"

Hawaiian Saying

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