House of Many Gods

Click on photos to enlarge! Wai'anae Valley, O'ahu

"Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Home Sweet Hale

“It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it.”
Albert Camus

Tutu (Grandma)

“The hero draws inspiration from the virtue of his ancestors.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

After a torrid childhood love affair with fiction, I got too busy and too grown-up to read all that merely "made up stuff." For years I didn't have time for it. I went whoring after information, thirsted after facts. But now, with the world's systems roiling, our parents passing, and age inexplicably encroaching even upon ourselves, I find once again that I am deeply fed by stories. . .Human stories. . . Yours. . . and Mine. . .

Our lives, I believe, are lifted and dignified when we remember the struggles of those who came before with gratitude, and when we awaken to the wonder of our own parading moments. . .

In her well received novel, House of Many Gods, Kiana Davenport (author of Song of the Exile) demonstrates "that living is a sacred act." My Hawaii novel, Aloha Where You Like Go? is the story of one who journeys to the Islands, learning about life & herself, through this uniquely rich setting. But Ms. Davenport (of Native Hawaiian & Anglo-American descent) writes from the Na'au, the bowels of this 'Aina (sacred land) itself, where the deepest truths of the Hawaiian people and their gods reside. . .

Opening these pages, we find ourselves among the very rocks and roots of the most Hawaiian of places, far from Honolulu city lights: Waianae Valley on O'ahu's Leeward Coast. This is a place and a way of life that few outsiders get to know beneath the hot, sunny surface. I had the privilege of conducting an after school group at Waianae High School for a few years and felt deeply touched to be even a small part of the lives of the children and families of "the coast." They taught me a lot. It is indeed a special place!

This story begins with all the commonplace cliches of the district: poverty, drugs, crime, the struggle for dignity, family dysfunction, and the cultural dislocation and dispossession of the Hawaiian people. But this is no political screed. Through dazzlingly arresting phrases & sentences, the author creates characters and scenes that come to life in your heart. Small kid times, extended families, homely joys, and keening rich pain, all coalesce into a whispering spell that draws a reader like an undertow of the mind. . . I really cared about Ana, and her family. Then a plot twist whisked me to a completely different setting; A land of moonlit birches, of unrelenting snow & cold. . . If you choose to read House of Many Gods, you will not be disappointed. Not only will you touch the ineffable (ah! literature!) but you will absorb a deeply soulful nourishment.

Oh! and you will absorb interesting "facts" and "information" in the truest way: through humanity and caring. Thanks for stopping by today.

A L O H A! Cloudia

MTM: In Bed With an Elephant

Click on photos to enlarge!Hawaiian Rainbows

"Don't buy the house. Buy the neighborhood,"

Russian Saying

Welcome to the HHV!

“Love thy neighbor--and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier.”
Mae West

Wedding pictures at the Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon.

Hilton Rainbow Tower behind.

That is the world's tallest tile mural.

"Canada, in sharing a border with the USA" is like a mouse in bed with an elephant." Anonymous

Some people want to live adjacent to a college campus. I live next door to the 12th largest resort in the world. This "campus" boasts the largest number of rooms at any resort in the State of Hawaii with 3,543 total. Of these 2,860 are traditional hotel rooms, 639 are time share, and 44 (in the Diamond Head Rainbow Apartments) may be rented by the month.

Welcome to the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa!

When Duke Kahanamoku grew up here, folks still knew the area as Kalia, an age-old Hawaiian fishing village. Further down the beach were primitive tourist accommodations like Gray's Cottages (where Earl DeBiggers spent a summer, and found his most famous character: Charley Chan in local newspaper reports of the exploits of Honolulu Police detective Chang Apana).

In the Fifties, the early TV detective show, Hawaiian Eye, was filmed here. Remember Cricket (Connie Stevens) singing to the tourists, and local taxi driver Ponci Ponce playing his ukulele at the curb? Robert Conrad was the young "heart throb" of the show. All of the kitchey tiki paraphernalia has long since been purged. Pity. Arthur Godfrey (forgotten today - but BIG back in the day) sometimes broadcast from here. "How ah ya? How ah ya? How ah ya?" he said, mixing the magic name, "Hawaii," with "How-are-you;" pretty clever to a young kid (me). He too played the ukulele, and my earliest memories of Hawaiian Music are from hearing guests perform on his radio broadcasts. When I moved here, certain strangely familiar Hawaiian Classics gave me an unearthly memory of "small kid times." Part of my soul was here all along...

In the sixties, industrialist mastermind, Henry Kaiser, owned the property and prevailed on Buckminster Fuller to build one of his geodesic domes here. I walked past it many many times as long lines of visitors waited outside to be seated within for the dinner show. Today, the fountain with the three hula dancers (photo above) replaces the dome and welcomes visitors to Waikiki...

President JFK visited, as have many, many world personalities. I remember Bill Clinton drawing enthusiastic crowds to the lagoon, and George Bush rushing past less enamored crowds in his motorcade as he retreated to a closed fund raiser inside - or was it Cheyney?

The HHV is a small city unto itself. Almost daily, I walk down her beach, through her lobby, past her art, admire her carp, and over-hear her guests speak languages from around the world. Popular with corporations and conventions, the grounds often host grand private "events" with entertainment by famous artists. One of the high points of my life was presenting a paper about my work with youth to the annual meeting here of the Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatrists in 2001. A pleasant memory to conjure as I "schlep" through dressed like a bum, and covered in sweat on a hot day. . .

So this is my neighborhood. From my scow, I mean 'boat' I can see the bright windows of world-class hotel suites. There's no place like home!

A L O H A! Coudia

Pause by the Spiral Stream

Click on photos to enlarge!
“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”
Pablo Picasso



“Strangers are exciting, their mystery never ends. But, there's nothing like looking at your own history in the faces of your friends.”
Ani Difranco

Spiral Triumphant!

“The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals."
Madame de Stael

My dear friends:

When you get stuck

spread out a picnic

and enjoy your surroundings!

Thank you for stopping by,

and for your comments.

Wishing you each a pleasant week,

A L O H A! Cloudia

Fifty Years Ago

Click on photos to enlarge!Ted Trimmer: Golden Dream

By building relations we create a source of love and personal pride and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier.

Susan Lieberman"

Royal Hawaiian Band on the steps of Iolani Palace, 1906

"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down."

A. Whitney Brown

Dan Axler: Indiana Sky

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America."

Barack Obama

It was 50 years ago this week that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Hawaii Admission Act by a 323 to 89 vote. One day earlier (March 11) the Senate had granted their "yay" by a margin of 75 to 15.

With the expected signature of President Eisenhower it would be up to the citizens of the Territory of Hawaii to give their assent. A mere 66 years after the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani's monarchy, just 42 years after the old Queens passing, the Territorial Legislature sat in morning session at her Iolani Palace while Congressional delegate (not representative!) John A. Burns relayed his account of the historic vote by telephone from Washington DC, where afternoon shadows already lengthened.

When Territorial House Speaker Elmer Cravalho announced the final affirmative tally, the representatives took to their feet spontaneously to sing the "Star Spangled Banner." Then they sang the Isle anthem, "Hawaii Pono`i." With the future (the Sixties!) and a young President right around the corner, American optimism swept the isles in a tsunami of excitement and opportunism. With full citizenship rights and voting representation, it was hoped, the strangle-hold of the old Big Five companies would be broken. Then a post-missionary, post-colonial, post-plantation-oligarchy, multi-ethnic society might bloom and prosper after lifetimes of labor, denigration, and exclusion. The Japanese-American veterans who we saluted last week: http://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/2009/03/go-for-broke.html

deserved no less. Even the frank southern racism of certain U.S. senators and representatives, fortified by the anti-communist/anti-labor organizer sentiment of the day, ultimately withered before the evident justice of Statehood. If Hawaii was too different, then the decision to admit Alaska first, as 49th US State, might be viewed as an easy step in America's westward expansion.

Not everyone was celebrating. Hawaiians who had endured "future shock" cultural dislocation, genocidal health emergencies, and political dispossession, still felt a deep pulse of love for their nation and their Monarchs. Many Hawaiian families still cherished elder members who had been born in the waning days of an Island Kingdom. These kupuna passed on stories of a stolen past that they had overheard in small kid times as their parents, who had lived through it all, quietly talked into the evening. The mother tongue, Olelo Hawaii, was spoken in private homes, and hula & chant never really died.

Nevertheless, the momentum seemed ordained. 99 % of the 140,744 local voters who cast their ballots in the June 27, 1959 statewide plebiscite favored statehood. America's "affair" with the brown hula girl was rendered respectable as she assented to become Uncle Sam's latest wife.

On August 21st President Eisenhower signed papers dissolving the Territory and establishing the 50th State of Hawaii. "Us guys stay EQUAL now!" Soon jets would bring newly prosperous visitors from the continent, many of them WWII veterans who had forged an emotional attachment with the isles. I still see the hula girl tattoos fading on their tired arms as they sun on da beach with their Midwestern wives. Pearl Harbor continues to welcome daily visitors from all over the world; Many Japanese visitors pay their respects to this day. The planeloads of visitors did come to "get lei'ed" and to catch a whiff of Elvis. They followed their dreams of an American paradise. Did you see Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's incendiary send-up of island tourism on last week's Saturday Night Live?

Far far away from the islands, in every way that places can be distant, lived a very young Me who watched "Hawaiian Eye" and "Adventures in Paradise" on a small, family black and white Philco television. It had rabbit ears, I wore Mickey Mouse ears. Already longing for escape from the conformity of 1959, I dozed off on the living room carpet dreaming of an endless summer of no school, no bullies, no stultifying arithmetic lessons.

Somewhere distant in that long ago night, a train howled and chattered; a Harley Davidson backfired, a finned convertible wheeled past my first window blaring Doo Wop. Stirring slightly in my baby sleep, my lips practiced once again the lovely words I had "sounded-out" from the pages of the National Geographic. "Aloha" means "hello" "goodbye" and "love." A porch (my grandma had a Philadelphia "stoop") is called a "Lanai."

But first I had to grow up and move on to second grade. . .

A L O H A! Cloudia

ps: it still means "love!"

Crane Calls

Click on photos to enlarge!

"For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation? " Thornton Wilder

I'd like mornings better if they started later.

Author Unknown

"Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it."

Honore de Balzac

"Jealousy injures us with the dagger of self-doubt."

Leslie Grimutter

Construction is hypnotic. Watching heavy beams lifted high, then higher, draws an inner "wow" from even the most jaded or mature among us. At times like this it also restores our faith that someone somewhere believes that tomorrow is still coming, and that improvements will be needed.

LIVING in the middle of a construction project is something else entirely! The area all around my boat (my home, office, REFUGE) has been ground zero for the laying of new floating docks for several weeks now. The hushed Waikiki morning erupts in beeps, chugs, huge "clanks" and assorted "rumbles" & "roars" at exactly the time I sit down to meditate - or to write.

Most amazing has been the destruction and removal of a heavy cement pier two boat slips off my starboard side (nautical talk! impressed?). This has required a rodeo of cool work boats, as well as a barge that carries a marooned a steam shovel from one duty-spot to another. It looks like the bathtub toy of a confused little boy.

Huge, sea-dripping blocks of cement are lifted by the "Caterpillar" atop the barge, then handed off to a giant crane that lives behind a temporary fence directly in front of my boat. My mast has developed a massive inferiority complex! The line holding our flags and pennants has even snapped in huffy protest.

And have I mentioned the jack hammering? Even now, workday done, I sense the jangling vibration in my finger tips. Why, I wonder, isn't this text you read all wavy? I feel like the cartoon character wearing a nimbus of wavy lines because Bugs Bunny has lowered a giant bell over my head and "clanged" it with a huge mallet.

I thought I saw a puddy cat. . . .

As I recover my wits, I'll post "before" & "after" photos of the late cement pier. And the barge!

But right now I need to luxuriate in the velvety silence, eavesdropping on the clicks, creaks, and moans of my exhausted, rocking, refuge.

Just another day in paradise. . . A L O H A! Cloudia

Blog Drive

Click on photos to enlarge!Pali Highway "Windshield Shot"

"What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public."
Vilhjalmur Stefansson


Wheeeeeeee!



Do you think this person loves Hula?

"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage."
Mark Russell


Banana truck!


This activity of blogging goes WAY beyond what anybody is saying or thinking. It is nothing less than a world wide nervous system in which all sorts of people see, think, and feel what someone very far away (and often very different) is seeing, thinking and feeling.




Every day I visit England, Pennsylvania, Mumbai, Crete, Texas, Toronto, Hong Kong, Tennessee, Louisiana, and New York CITY! And in each place I "talk story" with a person of heart and mind. Often a picture or an idea stays in my mind all day.



John Gardner once wrote:

"To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one's work may be dying, or have some loved one dying; to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on."

Each reader is a gift. They bring their time, they open their hearts, and come along the path of our words willingly. Thank you my readers - especially those of you who are also writers. We carry on the conversation, and perhaps we are each grace notes in a world filling symphony.

A L O H A! Cloudia

Pali Highway

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." Lao Tzu
"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe." Anatole France

"Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind." Seneca

" It is not down in any map; true places never are." Herman Melville

When driving over the famous Pali Highway between Honolulu and windward Kailua Town, through lovely Nu`uanu, and up into the lush Ko`olau Mountains, be sure to take the OLD ORIGINAL PORTION of the road! It’s called Nu`uanu Pali Drive and it’s well worth a “detour!” After separating from the main road (and the modern world) you will pass by lovely, flower-strewn ponds on your left. Then the trees join their hands above your head as you drive into a cool, hushed trail of shadows and smells. The narrow, twisty lane always makes me feel as if I’ve entered a timeless, magical realm that leaves me refreshed and rejuvenated as I rejoin the rushing highway at last. Of course, a stop at the Pali Lookout is MANDATORY! The winds, the view of the island’s windward shores, the waterfalls curving upward to oblivion, all etch themselves on your permanent record. Here too the spirits sing, remember and lament. Many of them are the wandering spirits of defeated warriors – so it’s just as well to leave before the foxy dusk. . .

A L O H A! Cloudia