Note From Home

Aloha!

Aloha friends!

Regular visitors to Comfort Spiral have probably noticed that I'm posting late (very late!) today.

My dad seems to be in his last hours.

My niece and nephew have come from Maui and the Big Island. My brother and his lovely wife have arrived from their home in Canada.

As I am here with my family, I want you to know that my thoughts also go out to all of YOU. The community that exists among us is a precious and new phenomena, and I am very happy to be among you interesting and accomplished folks.

So if I am remiss in my visits to all of your blogs for a while, you will understand. I DO intend to put up fresh pictures daily. Please forgive thin content for a while though, eh?

Meanwhile, there are still flotillas of small fry and happy visitors all around Waikiki. The newly renovated Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon beside our harbor home holds schools of baby fish. These tiny living treasures, the mesmerizing blue of our skies, the smiles of beautiful people; these are the things you notice when you leave the ipod, the mobile phone, and the mental machinery of thinking in your room and go out for a Waikiki stroll. Just feel the sand, the grass, the stone beneath your feet. Feel the caress of trade winds. Soon you will remember that life is more than just what we think about all day long. There is real beauty & relaxation for your soul, and it's all for free. . . When you're walking in Waikiki. . . Aloha! Cloudia

Want to enjoy more Waikiki "street" life with Cloudia? Check out my Hawaii "Taxi Cab" Novel: "Aloha Where You Like Go?" at Amazon.com!

--
<http://www.amazon.com/ALOHA-Where-You-Like-Satisfaction/dp/1598006495
> <www.waikikinews.com>

Springy Zingy

Aloha friends. Regular visitors to Comfort Spiral have probably noticed that I'm posting late (very late!) today. My dad seems to be in his last hours. My niece and nephew have come from Maui and the Big Island. My brother and his lovely wife have arrived from their home in Canada. As I am here with my family, I want you to know that my thoughts also go out to all of YOU. The community that exists among us is a precious and new phenomena, and I am very happy to be among you interesting and accomplished folks. So if I am remiss in my visits to all of your blogs for a while, you will understand. I DO intend to put up fresh pictures daily. Please forgive thin content for a while though, eh? Meanwhile, there are still flotillas of small fry and happy visitors all around Waikiki. The newly renovated Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon beside our harbor home holds schools of baby fish. These tiny living treasures, the mesmerizing blue of our skies, the smiles of beautiful people; these are the things you notice when you leave the ipod, the mobile phone, and the mental machinery of thinking in your room and go out for a Waikiki stroll. Just feel the sand, the grass, the stone beneath your feet. Feel the caress of trade winds. Soon you will remember that life is more than just what we think about all day long. There is real beauty & relaxation for your soul, and it's all for free. . . When you're walking in Waikiki. . . Aloha! Cloudia Want to enjoy more Waikiki "street" life with Cloudia? Check out my Hawaii "Taxi Cab" Novel: "Aloha Where You Like Go?" at Amazon.com! http://www.amazon.com/ALOHA-Where-You-Like-Satisfaction/dp/1598006495www.waikikinews.com>

Voyaging Again

Aloha & Welcome to Waikiki!

click on photos to enlarge
"The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation."

Michelle Obama

I wandered lonely as a cloud

“Memories are the treasures that we keep locked deep within the storehouse of our souls, to keep our hearts warm when we are lonely.”
Becky Aligada

“The world is sweet in the heart, and green to the eye-”
Muhammad


The name should come in a dream.

It did, he heard it twice. But he could not remember it.

It was Saturday night, and the blessing and launching were occurring the very next day. So school teacher Milton John Coleman of Halau Lokahi (Unity School) Charter School here on O`ahu, prayed for guidance.

Soon his two year old son said: "Makaiouaua." Then he wouldn't stop repeating it in the way of little kids; "Makaiouaua, Makaiouaua, Makaiouaua."

Ouaua is the area in Kalihi Valley where the tree came from. The tree that they used to form the hull of the open ocean sailing canoe; the canoe that the school's children had helped to build.

Makai (to the sea) Ouaua. Seems proper.

Voyaging in sailing canoes is how the first Hawaiians came to these islands. Navigating by the stars, by the observed sea & sky conditions, was the way they did it.

These skills were long considered lost, until a man named Mau Piailug was found on Satawal island where he lives in Micronesia. It was he who taught the ancient skills to modern Hawaiians. They have been teaching each other, their youth, and the world ever since. The voyaging resumed again back in the 1970's for the first time in centuries, on board the Hokule`a

(post here:http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3576595805602354327&postID=4391405713998099738)

The children of the charter school launched their own dream of building such a traditional canoe 3 years ago.

They chose to use a non-native species, albizia, for the hull. Thus they helped to restore a native eco-system in the mountains near their school. Instead of hauling the tree to the dump, it was turned into this most Hawaiian of cultural artifacts. Adapting the foreign and making it their own is part of the genius of the Hawaiians. Iolani Palace had electric lights before the White House did!

You can read a local newspaper account of the canoe, as well as enjoy a slide-show of the launching here: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090519/NEWS01/905190322.

Note especially the traditional woven sail, sent by Mau all the way from his Satawal island home.

Imagine the pride these kids feel as they replicate the feats of their ancestors. We are all richer for this renaissance.

A L O H A! Cloudia

A Film That Changed You?

Aloha!

click on photos to enlarge

Photo: Clark Little (c) From the sublime. . .

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Ludwig Wittgenstein

. . . to the ridiculous.

"Novelty keeps us spry, and it cleans up after itself by being gone in a minute."

Peter Schjdahl

There are many different kinds of wars, and of veterans

"It was, I think, the fact that I really had participated in death, that I knew what death was, and had almost experienced it. I had what the Christians call a 'beatific vision,' and the Greeks called 'the happy day,' the happy vision just before death. Now if you have had that, and survived it, come back from it, you are no longer like other people, and there's no use deceiving yourself that you are."

Katherine Anne Porter

Every artist tries to share their unique vision of that which we all experience (if we are paying attention). In successful art and literature, these universals meet a particular vision and setting - "particulars" very different from our own. If the work is successful, we willingly suspend our disbelief and BECOME the person in the story we are watching or reading. We lose ourselves and find "knowing" all at the same time.

I did not grow up in an Italian coastal village in the 1930s - but Fellini did. Today his "coming of age" film Amarcord ("I remember") was shown uninterrupted on IFC. With a father in his final hours or days, and a life that has consisted largely of "saying goodbye" for months now, I was primed to be someone very different for a while.

Amarcord provides me with an added dimension, in that I first saw it as a callow youth when it "came out" in the 1970's. Thus, today I could become Italian and also renew acquaintance with the kid who first saw the film. In what ways is there more richness to it than I appreciated back then? What images have stayed in my head all these years? I certainly remembered the grandfather at the family picnic who climbs a tall tree and shouts: "I want a woman" for hours. The image of the angry father taking a bite out of a hat could have been Homer Simpson - or my dad. The dreamy scenes of falling snow, and coastal fogs, made me a dazzled child again.

Lots of folks like "BIG" movies, and BLOCKBUSTER novels with over-the-top goings on. But there is something truly golden about an artist who doesn't trumpet a "MESSAGE" or "ANSWER" but rather provokes our own interior conversations with a work that unfolds like Proust's Madelaine, giving off new flavors & appreciations as our mind's palate matures.

Another version of the universal story that I like is the film Avalon by Barry Levinson. The Trouble With Angel's, starring Hailey Mills also reminds me of the "me" I was growing up, and the world where I came of age.

Now it's YOUR turn. Tell us a film or book that touched your imagination, provoking YOUR yearning and excellence.

As a character in Amarcord says: "Silence is golden; but words are silver."

A L O H A! Cloudia

My Town Monday: Lei of Love

Aloha! Come In! Duke Kahanamoku,

Father of Modern Surfing &

Ambassador of Aloha

(Multi-Olympic Champ)

“A day without Aloha is just another mainland day.”
Buck Buchanan

We Remember You

“If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child.”
Frederick Buechner

Full Flower

“You may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does.”
John Ruskin


Happy Girl

“I don't want to be stinky poo poo girl, I want to be happy flower child.”
Drew Barrymore

A Great Man

A Great Smile

A Loving Remembrance

A loving Friend. . .

ALL wearing lei!

I've always been someone who needs my "space."

Perhaps growing up in tumultuous surroundings (Seinfeld fans think : "The Costanzas") partly explains it. Or maybe it's the natural space of attention that growing creativity & understanding require? We are so steamrollered with input everyday that merely retreating inward seems a truly revolutionary, transgressive act.

But I do love my neighbors - no, not the visitors of Waikiki. I love them too, but today we're talking about my real neighbors: the "Local" Hawaii mix of Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Portuguese, Korean, & Pan-European. All this DNA, food, cultures and characteristics percolate together here in da sun, stirred by the trade winds, liberally seasoned with sweat labor. Today it is Samoans, Tongans, Micronesians who daily come. . .

I really should try to take more pictures of us for you, but nevah like boddah no one, eh? ("Never like to bother anyone, eh?"). Besides, the people of Hawaii are the unseen presence in every picture I take. From the fallen lei, to the magnificent sunset with flowers that is a piece of each soul here.

Kaulana Na Pua, "Famous are the flowers" of Hawaii, goes the song. The flowers are our people. Riding the subway in New York in the year 2000 (has it been that long?!) I looked about me at the peoples of the world.

I didn't see our special local blend of humanity.

But Polynesian Power is not just for the NFL anymore. According to the U.S. Census, more Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are living in the North American Continental States, than in their own homelands. California is the largest home to these transplants with 282,000, gaining 6,000 since July 2008. Las Vegas and Utah are other "new islands." (Mormon missionaries extensively proselytized, er, "missionaried" in the South Pacific - hence the Utah connection.)

Above the fold in Friday's Honolulu Star Bulletin was this headline:

"Cold wet season puts damper on fragrant lei"

Do you know what this story is about? Lei greetings of visitors at the airport?

That's only a small part of it. Every local person knows that this season of Proms & Graduations requires LOTS of lei. The plural is "Lei" by the way, but "Leis" is acceptable if you don't know any better. Now where was I?

Most Hawaii graduates wear multiple lei from family and friends, many even seem to be peering out of a multi-floral "collar" that comes up almost to the eyes! There is an entire genealogy, typology, and history of lei, books have been written! But this is not so much about rules, as it is a generally understood living-language of appropriateness. The Japanese contributed paper folding and so we have (paper)money lei (popular for broke graduates). There are simple, keiki-strung lei that are a child's first gift to mom, usually plumeria from da yard. There are fragrant Maile lei for a Governor, a VIP, or to untie as a ceremonial opening of a new building. A Hapai (pregnant) woman must NEVER wear a closed lei, just perhaps a "boa" of flowers hanging off of her shoulders, lest there be obstruction in birthing!

There are candy lei to give the kids! Haku lei to wear like a headband of rainbows; Hulu (feather) lei of extinct native birds in the Bishop Museum, fragrant green Ti lei, like a green rope around my neck, cure for headache and chaser of bad energies, my favorite & signature lei. (Also favored by Kahuna: priests, or experts in various arts and sciences: healing, navigating, celestial observation, chanting, blog-writing ;-)

There are shell lei. And a Lei Momi is a lei of pearls. You might call it a necklace.

Every birthday boy or girl receives lei, as do guest speakers. Of course, Aloha Friday (post here: http://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/2009/03/aloha-friday.html)

is reason enough to treat yourself, or a friend to a floral gift!

It seems rather fitting to me that in black & white news footage of Dr. King's many marches he is oft seen wearing a lei, a gift from Hawaii people. As were those seen at Ground Zero in the days after 9-11. Boxes and boxes of them where flown across an ocean and a continent, moist and fragrant "hugs" of Aloha that I wept to see worn by firefighters and others as they performed their sad duties. A world away, but part of our Ohana (family). That's what a lei means: Aloha.

Now it's that time of year when the City sends out the call for thousands upon thousands of lei to decorate the vast grave-fields of military veterans (including President Obama's grandpa, Stanley, who raised him a mile from here). School children, scouts, senior clubs, and just plain neighborhood folks will drop off the thousands of blossoms & prepared lei in time for Memorial Day. They never fail those who didn't fail all of us.

Yes, lei mean a lot to us; Love, respect, appreciation, celebration and remembrance.

Now you will understand these things, when you see the multi-colored celluloid lei at the party shop.

How wise we are becoming together!

To see other My Town Monday posts, visit:

http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

A L O H A! Cloudia

Sunday Muse

Aloha & Welcome to another Waikiki Sunday!

click on photos to enlarge"The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek."
Robert Louis Stevenson

"Troubles are often the tools God fashions us for better things."
Henry Ward Beecher

Riddle of the Sphynx

"What walks on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and three legs at night?"

I am just like you.

Awakening at 3 a.m. for that dread life-review.

How amazing it's all been (so far!)

yet how different and puny are my accomplishments

viewed side-by-side with youthful dreams and expectations.

And this is where the whispering wise one within

draws back the curtain,

the thinning curtain of our illusions,

and smiling shows

immediate evident abundance of blessings:

technicolor skies, and the real-er

unseen coin of affection.

My child's dreams were just that,

provisional aspirations

that pale in the light

of this vivid and only moment.

So this, at last, is true:

I've lived amidst great beauty

and struggle

coming to focus more

on the former,

a farmer of verities

from the stony

depleted

soil of our late day.

In returning and rest

I have found a lovely song

to sing, surpassing

the obituary

I might have built.

A L O H A Cloudia

Two Incidents

Aloha & Welcome!

click on photos to enlarge Dum Dee Dum. . . . Another perfect Hawaii day!

"I like life. It's something to do."
Ronnie Shakes

What's this?


“All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.”
Jack Kerouac

Y i k e s!!!!!!!!

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”
John Lennon

Incident #2:

A father and his 5 year old son have just completed their business in a shop.

The boy has a quarter that he is avidly playing with.

"I'll give you a dollar for that quarter." The shopman says.

The boy runs over to his father yelling:

"No! My quarter!"

His father points out:

"That's a good deal, son."

The boy runs back to the man exclaiming loudly:

"I'll TAKE the deal!!"

A L O H A! Cloudia