Moment of Peace

ALOHA FRIDAY
at Last!
Welcome, Friend

click on photos, you know why. . .

It's nice at Waikiki. . .

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
Walt Whitman

But the other day I went into the back of Manoa Valley. . .

"Some people never go crazy.
What truly horrible lives they must lead."
Charles Bukowski

It is a riot of greenery back there. . .

"The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay
and which is a sparrow,
he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing."
Eric Berne

I love communing with the leaf-life

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."

Aesop, The Lion and the Mouse

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There I found this delightful fountain.
Let's relax and enjoy it together for a moment!

The land, the `Aina, is lonely.
It has been only a place to discard the unwanted,
to ignore, to comodify,
not a mother to visit in love.


The land asks:
"Where are the children?
When will they come and play and laugh with me again?"
The land is lonely for us.


Let us be children once again,
companions to the birds, leaves and winds.
Just as in the day of humankind's youth.
And our spirits shall again be young.



ALOHA, cloudia

Formal Clouds

Aloha, Friend!

Welcome to Thursday in Waikiki

click on clouds to set them free

I never saw a cloud wearing a tie before.



“With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker,
can gain a reputation for being civilized”

Oscar Wilde

" You must not blame me if I talk to the clouds"
Henry David Thoreau

“Dreams are illustrations...
from the book your soul is writing about you.”

Marsha Norman

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly,
our whole life would change."
Buddha


The House Of Clouds
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning


I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud---
I build it bright to see,---
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.

Thank YOU for your visit/gift today! cloudia

Spice in the Stew

ALOHA, Friend!

Welcome to Wednesday in Waikiki



click on photos for increased delight

Sometimes it is the "flaw" that brings beauty.



“The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.”

Havelock Ellis

Sunning



"Touch the sky, look the sun straight
in the eye and laugh."

Linda Ellerbee

Well hello there!

"You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence."
Psalms 16: 11.

The taste of our food
is one of the basic joys of life.
But what is this "taste?"
The tongue can distinguish only:
Saltiness, Sweetness, Bitterness, Sourness, and
what the Japanese call: Umami
a word describing the Pungent, Savory, Tangy or Meaty.




Quite a crude palate from which to represent
that parade in our mouths called:
"A fine meal."




Most of us know that much of illusive flavor
comes from scents.
Magical scents!
Our sense of smell is a very poor cousin
to the highly developed olfactories of our animal friends
but without it, our lives would be much, much poorer.




Just like music, scents can transport us to other times and places;
Think of the smell of pumpkin pie - or the perfume worn
by a feared or beloved teacher decades ago.
Even here in perennially Summery Hawaii,
I can close my eyes
and smell the Fall leaves burning
with just a hint of frost in the air.
In fact I've smelled them while reading some of your blogs!




Scientists called Flavorists
can discern, and recreate the volatile chemical signatures of scent/flavors
from nature and also from the test tube.
The foods we eat are much more complex than most of us wish to know!

Sometimes the search for a crucial ingredient can discover the key molecule
present only levels of "parts/per/billion."




This got me thinking.
America is called a "Melting Pot,"
though many prefer to call it a Salad.
Nonetheless, it is the individual ingredients
that make up the very Flavor of a family, neighborhood, city, country-
our whole world.





Often we lament our very smallness;
What can I accomplish in this vast meal of life?
Perhaps you are not the main ingredient,
the lamb in the lamb stew,
or the business person in this money-driven banquet
of our post-modern world.




But just perhaps
you & I
are essential ingredients
in the aroma emanating from life's kitchen!






Without our parts-per-billion existence
something essential would be lacking;
The meal might be abundant,
yet lacking that magical Something
that makes of it
a Heavenly Banquet.





Thank YOU for joining our
Blog Salad today!

It wouldn't taste the same
without
Y O U!

Let's Sneak Away

Aloha, Friend!

Welcome to Tuesday in Waikiki


click on photos to enlarge

A Rainbow A Day, Keeps Depression Away

"Every great advance in natural knowledge
has involved the absolute rejection of authority".
Thomas H. Huxley

Pomp and Circumstance Eugene Savage, 1938

"Never lose sight of this important truth,
that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself,
a knowledge which can only be acquired by occasional retirement."
Johann Georg von Zimmermann

Island Feast Eugene Savage, 1938


"There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come about through encouragement from someone else. I don't care how great, how famous or successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause."
George Matthew Adams

Many of us believe that 'doing the right thing' is about knowing and obeying 'the rules' so that God, or the Bogey-man, can't play 'gotcha' with us - even if we transgress a rule in good faith, ignorance, or compassion.

Others consider 'intention' to be the golden rule - though deluded people always arrange to believe that they have only the best intentions (for they know best).

What I know is this:
If you do good to yourself and others in gentleness,
you will end up a very different person than one who followed every rule perfectly, yet reduced compassion to a slogan.


Remember to take time for yourself in this season of hurry!



A L O H A, Cloudia

Tiki Cave

ALOHA, Sunday Friend!

click on photos if you like, eh?

Sand Island Access Road is an industrial area of our Honolulu
known for shipping, industry, and marinas.

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"Creation, we are taught is not an act that happened once upon a time,
once and for ever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel

It's also home to La Mariana, a private marina.

LM is known for it's piano bar and restaurant.
It is like making a trip back to the tiki bars of the 50's.

Wonderful specimens are everywhere in abundance...

This fellow is eating a delicious pig.



While we ate, my friend told me about a time
when he was wandering about on the Big Island, Hawaii.





He came upon a cave full of very old Tikis.





What were they doing there,
these family heirlooms passed down
over generations?






The missionaries
told the people to
burn
these "infernal, pagan images."






Imagine
the extra-terrestrials landing among us.





Their technology is clearly far ahead of ours.
They tell us that our beliefs are primitive;





Then they tell us to burn
our churches, synagogues, mosques & temples.







Unable to part with the spiritual treasures
that our parents and grandparents valued,
we might bury the Torahs, Bibles, statues, & symbols.







And that's what happened
to the Hawaiian people.

Sleep well, gods!







ALOHA Friend, cloudia

ALOHA Saturday

It's ALOHA Saturday
in Waikiki
and YOU are most welcome!

click on photos for all the usual reasons

"Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul."
Henry van Dyke

"If we are to achieve results never before accomplished,
we must expect to employ methods never before attempted."
Sir Francis Bacon

"The pedigree of honey
Does not concern the bee;

A clover, any time, to him
Is aristocracy."
Emily Dickinson

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Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.




Naomi Shihab Nye



ALOHA, cloudia

The Shopping Season

ALOHA, Friend
&
Welcome Back to WAIKIKI

click on photos, eh?

Royal Hawaiian Vista

"A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning,
as if supported by the rays of the sun,
a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee,
joy accompanied me as I walked."
Anais Nin




Walking Man's Hula Lesson

"For me, the vast marvel is to be alive.
For man, or for flowers or beast or bird,
the supreme triumph is to be most vividly and perfectly alive."
Al Purdy

“Education is a kind of continuing dialogue,
and a dialogue assumes different points of view.”

Robert M. Hutchins



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Ah, "Black Friday!"
Consumerism run riot.
Some commence a season of
hurry;
others of us
simply enjoy this annual
respite from the ordinary.

Whatever your day holds,
take a moment
to pause
and look at where you've come.

Congratulations!


ALOHA, cloudia