The Riddle of Red and Black

Guy Noir, the Prairie Home detective, spent many years trying to puzzle out answers to “life’s persistent questions."

Some of those life questions are very important, such as how will I make a living?; what career should I  choose; is there life after death? 

Others are not so important as that, but nevertheless persistent, which is to say. . . they keep coming back again.

This morning I find myself researching, in order to answer a question that has perplexed me for a long time, ever since Pat and I started visiting the Hawaiian Islands about a dozen years ago.

The question is: What’s up with these red rocks and black rocks that seem to constitute the entirety of this Hawaiian island archipelago?

Spoiler alert: I haven’t completely figured it out yet. I will be describing herein my path of wonder, not necessarily giving you an informed report on the subject of red rocks/black rocks in Hawaii.

While I have not yet fully discovered why some Hawaiian rocks are red and others are black, I have managed to gather some learning along the way.

In many ways, I am person who is driven by an appreciation for lifelong learning.

The ancient dynamics and pyrotechnics through which these islands were formed is described in noteworthy detail here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Hawaiian_volcanoes. 

You can learn far more about this subject by following the above link. 

But getting back to my little take on it . . . In our ten visits to Hawaii, the photo that I snapped which best shows what lava looks like is:

This dark gray/black solidified lava flow is called pāhoehoe. You see it throughout all the islands, but mostly on the big island, Hawaii, because it is the newest island, and the one that still displays an observable continuance of recent and still-active volcano activity. It’s fascinating stuff, especially for a curious person like me who took a geology course a long time ago.

We enjoy traveling these islands, year after year. In noticing the vast array of different volcanic rock formations, this question about the red rocks keeps popping up, as “one of life’s persistent questions.’ This never fails to fascinate me. 

Here’s a pic, taken a few years ago on Maui, that shows two layers of black rock with a layer of red rock between them.

So we can see that there is some kind of “story” told in these rocks, some sort of history.

Geologic history, Earth history. Hawaiian Islands are perhaps the best location on the planet to identify features by which Earth reveals itself, by telling, in the rock, its own story.

SO, what about that strip of red rock in the middle? you may ask? I’m glad you asked.

I don’t know, but I did ask a Hawaiian about it.

As she began driving our tour bus up into Waimea canyon, I asked Jana about the red rocks, and she said the difference was:

“Rust.” The red rocks have rusted. And, she said, they are older.

I greatly appreciated her immediate answer. It has helped me a lot. It does seem, however, a little too simple for my over-active mind to accept completely. Nevertheless, her concise explanation was confirmed a few days later when I found online a Galapagos report from Cornell U:

     http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/GalapagosWWW/LavaTypes.html

Herein I found an authoritative source confirming that the difference in color, in some cases, is “a reflection of age. The older ʻaʻā . . . has weathered and the iron in it has oxided somewhat, giving it a reddish appearance.”

And that’s good enough for me to understand a little bit about what is going on in these vast, ancient islands, which represents processes that have built up our vast, ancient earth.

Meanwhile, back at the beach, I found, two evenings ago, a different working out of the red/black interface.

In this scenario, I surmise that, somewhere along the ancient timeline, red rocks were weathered down to red sand and grit, then deposited at low places. During that time, the volcano or the weather must have torn black boulders loose. The black rocks tumbled down into red sands as what you see here. It appears to be black lava rocks trapped in red sandstone, nowadays being gradually dissembled by the thrashing Pacific Ocean.

Or something like that. That’s my answer for the riddle of red and black, one of life’s persistent questions.

  Glass Chimera

Wai'ale'ale

Kauai

Hawaii

where long

ago hot lava

spewed up skyward

into prehistoric atmosphere

and falling back down to earth

deposited Wai’ale’ale the mother of

all Hawaiian volcanoes dormant volcanoes

now

stands

as cloud

catcher

mist

collector

waterfall

dropper

streams

trickle

down

ancient

crater

plummet

and then

flow

Wailua

River

to Pacific

from

magma

mountain

Wai’ale’ale

Selah

Mahalo

Glass half-Full

The Beginning and the End

To go with the flow, or to go against it—that is the question.

Whether ’tis nobler to nurture the notion that mankind was innocent in some presumed condition of noble savagery—or to accept traditional religion that pronounces us guilty of offenses against Nature or against God.

If we are, or were, indeed, noble savages in our beginnings, why should we have taken on the disciplines and restrictions of religion—doctrines that judge us culpable of sin and thus in need of repair, salvation, or some kind of evolving perfection yet to be realized?

Hawaiians, for instance, who were alive here on the island of Kauai (I am wondering, as I write this on Kauai in 2018)—those Hawaiians who lived here in 1778 when Captain James Cook suddenly showed up with his fancy ship and his threatening weaponry, his magical gadgets, highly-trained crew, impressive use of language and documents, his tailored clothing and highly developed European culture—those relatively primitive people who first saw Capt. Cook’s two ships sail up to the mouth of the Waimea River . . .

Why should they have accepted his intrusion into their simple, primitive life?

To go with the flow, or to go against it—that was their question.

Would they go with the “arc of history” or resist it?

Did they eventually accept highly developed European culture to replace their traditional tribal existence? Did they accede to it out of submission, or out of necessity, or out of attraction to the new fancy stuff they saw? Were they conquered? Or were they taken by the hand and brought gently, Christian-like, into 18th-century civilization, and ultimately into 19th, 20th and 21st-century lifestyle?

Look around Hawaii today. What do you think?

They accepted it.

They went with the flow. One thing we know for sure about the so-called primitive Hawaiians of 1778: they knew how to go with the flow. They were here on this remote island in the middle of earth’s largest ocean, long before we technolified haoles were here, and they had arrived here at some earlier time because they knew how to make “the flow” of this life and the Pacific Ocean work for them.

So now, 2018, it is what it is. Hawaii, like every other place in our modern world, is what it is. Some may lament the demise of noble savagery that has been the result of Captain Cook’s intrusion into this paradisical (though deadly if you don’t know what you’re doing) island. Others may celebrate the entrance of the Hawaiians into modern life.

Some may come and some may go.

Captain Cook came. He left and came back again. The beginning of Captain James Cook’s Hawaii experience happened when his crew sailed their two ships to the mouth of the Waimea River— a river that flowed from mile-high Waialeale crater down to sea level at the southwest shore of Kauai.

He died in 1779, shot dead by an Hawaiian on the Big Island of Hawaii, at the other end of this island archipelago. His sudden demise came in the midst of dispute between some of his own crew members and the natives of Hawaii.

Many have lived and died since that time.

Two days ago, up on the other end of Kauai island, the northeast end, at a strand called Larsen’s Beach, we witnessed the life-end of another person, a contemporary. The man was a traveler from Pennsylvania. He had been snorkeling at a reef in unpredictable waters when the Ocean took hold of him.

A little while later, his flippers floated to shore. After we had witnessed a team of chance beach visitors (us), and then a couple of jet-skiing lifeguards from some other nearby beach, and then EMT guys flown in on a “bird,”—after we had witnessed all this collective noble attempt to coax life back into the snorkeler’s breathless lungs and heart, we saw his neon-green flippers float back to shore.

Maybe he was going with the flow; maybe he was going against it; maybe he was fighting against the current, or maybe he was just going with that flow of life and death that eventually captures us all.

In my case, that flow will, in the long run, take me to death, and then resurrected life, as was demonstrated by Jesus.

Am I really going with the flow, you may ask, in joining the historical current of the Christian faith into which I was born?

Or am I going against the rational flow by subscribing to such an incredible prospect as life after death?

God only knows.

 

King of Soul

Sand Beach

(With appreciation of Matthew Arnold’s poem, Dover Beach)

 

The Ocean is strong  today.

The waves roll in; the sun is bright

upon the Pacific. In this island surf the light

sparkles and tumbles; the rocky shores stand,

steadfast and vast, under a friendly sun.

Let’s do the beach; this afternoon’s energy is vigorous.

But hey! from this long splash of spray,

where sea meets the sun-kiss’d land—

Listen! we hear the pounding roar

of sand grains which the waves draw back, and fling,

forever, upon this high strand.

Beginning and ceasing, and then beginning again,

with a forceful rhythm it perseveres, to roll

The eternal resonance of wonder in.

 

Dear Matthew, back in the day,

heard this on the North Sea, and it brought

into his mind the ponderous ebb and flow

of our melancholy brood; we

hear it still the same; yet with that lamenting we discern

a reverberating of relentless purpose

in this pounding Pacific shore.

 

Oh sea of faith!

Persistent and unrelenting, all ‘round our earth’s shore—

you flap forever like folds of a bright banner unfurled.

Although I also feel

that ancient melancholy, the long, withdrawing roar,

retreating, in the breath

of the evening wind, laden with our roiling refugees

and the uncared-for masses of the world.

 

Oh, people, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

to boil before us like a pot of strife—

so disjointed, so distraught, so stubbornly the same,

really has somewhere some joy, love, and even flashes of benevolence,

some certainty— here and there a little peace— even some easing of the pain,

while we here on this fragg’ed globe

get swept with fake news and tweeting dweebs who incite us,

as ill-informed combatants clash with their devices.

 

Glass Chimera

Good ole boy coconut mining

You can't just bust into a coconut.

Maybe you've seen one at the grocery store. But what you have laid eyes on there is not a coconut; it is the inside of a coconut. Notice that the tasty white stuff cannot be seen; its still hidden inside.

There's a reason why the tasty white stuff cannot be seen; it is impossible to get to if you're a regular person. You have to be a special person to get to it--a coconut farmer, or some kind of a specialized food-processing robot, or a Hawaiian with a machete.

Or a good ole boy with a sharp saw. In the grocery store, you understand, what you see of the coconut appears to be an outer shell; but in the wild, that shell is actually an inner liner.

Like life itself, it's a hard nut to crack. But with a little work, some persistence, and an appropriate tool, the obstacles can be dismantled.

Glass half-Full

Feeding Hawaiian Birds and People

While staying on Kauai, Hawaii, I have been observing a cardinal every morning. This beautiflul red bird has lighted upon the deckrail, shortly after each sunrise each day. His visits demonstrate a boldness on his part to venture into areas of human domain. But that boldness is tempered with a shyness by which he promptly flys away as soon as I make any movement in his direction.

Comparing these bird encounters with similar episodes at our home in the Carolina Blue Ridge, I surmise a personality trait that seems to be characteristic of the cardinal breed. It’s probably my imagination that the  colorful creature has some comprehension of his special status among the kingdom of the birds. He seems to understand  (or so it seems to me) that this human is fascinated by his flashy appearance; he also knows that his bright profile is, in some settings, a liability, because the bright red makes it easier for nearby predators to catch sight of him and perhaps eat him.

However, Mr. Cardinal’s skittishness did not interfere this morning with my continuing attempts to capture a pic of him. I was pleased this morning to find that the different physical arrangement here in Hawaii have made it possible for me to snap the pic.

My Christian perspective on life in this world prompts me to accompany this amazing  (to me) photo with a scriptural reference. Here’s the first one I thought of, in the words of Jesus:

“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

In this case, I, human, am representing the heavenly Father in dropping those cereal crumbs onto the deckrail for our scarlet friend.

Meanwhile, feeling satisfied that I have managed to capture, here in Hawaii, that flighty image of the bright cardinal which I could never manage to obtain back home, I’ll cast another crumb of interest in here for you to nibble on.

Before Mr. Cardinal visited this morning, I was continuing my read of Edward Joesting’s excellent book on Kauai, Kauai: The Separate Kingdom.   

https://www.amazon.com/Kauai-Separate-Edward-Joesting-III/dp/0824811623/

In chapter 7, Mr. Joesting reports on the beginnings of commercial agriculture on the island of Kauai. The earliest enterprises were initiated by a trio of American business partners who were working with Hawaiian leaders with assistance from Christian missionaries who had arrived in the 1820’s.

Long about 1835, some Americans leased a large tract of land from Kauikeaouli (Kamehameha III) Kaikioewa, the governor of Kauai.

What fascinates me about this development in Hawaiian history is the changes in motivation that Hawaiian working people found themselves adopting in response to the new capitalistic farms.

On page 131 of his book, Edward Joesting wrote:

“In agreement with the philosophy of the missionaries, the lease stipulated that native laborers be encouraged to work on the land. For this right the company would pay to the king and the governor twenty-five cents per month for each man. And it was further stated that each worker would be paid a satisfactory wage and be exempted from all taxation. This taxation had taken the form of labor performed for the chiefs and such other contributions as the chiefs wished to impose.”

As agriculture and business later developed in Kauai during the next twenty years or so, what this arrangement amounted to, economically and sociologically, was this:

Whatever ancient cultural motivations that had traditionally compelled Hawaiian working folk to labor for their tribe and their chiefs—these motivations were being supplanted by new incentives, directly related to 19th-century agricultural scales and practices, and modern, capitalistic business.

On page 132, Edward Joesing wrote:

“The idea of Hawaiians working for an employer who paid them wages, which could be disposed of as the earner saw fit, suddenly introduced a concept of independence that was not easily understood by the commoners and was feared by the chiefs. Adding to the independence of the commoners was the fact that the commoners no longer had to pay taxes to the chiefs. It was more than the average islander could comprehend. There was nothing in their history, no precedent, no legend, that could be used to bridge the gap. . .

On occasion the workers went through the motions of caring for the fields, accomplishing practically nothing. The plantation manager was beside himself (mad). He did not know the Hawaiians still could not comprehend the fact that their wages and the things they bought with them would be their own posessions and coud not appropriated at will by the chiefs.”

My rationale for combining these two different encounters—one with a fresh understanding of historical changes in 1830’s Kauai, and the other with a visiting cardinal this morning—my reasoning may not be entirely clear to you; it’s not even so clear to me, except it has something to do with this quote from a gospel:

“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

 

King of Soul

Puff and Jackie Paper

For many, many years I have wondered about Peter Yarrow’s mention of “a land called Honah Lee,” in that silly old song he wrote about a dragon named Puff.

Just yesterday I was wondering as I wandered along the shoreline of Hanalei Bay, Kauai, Hawaii.

While vacationing on the north shore of Kauai I had been feeling a little constricted by the touristy setup there. It was obstructing my sense of adventure.

So, busting out of conventionality, so stealthily did I violate the boundaries of tourist propriety by launching into an unauthorized jungle trek.

Past the condos and the pool and the shuffleboard court and the boats-for-rent and the obligatory paraphenalia of predictable recreation, I stepped stealthily into a kapu area of overgrown, untended wild Hawaiian hoohah! 

Through broadleaf wild flora damp with recent rain I did venture, stooping beneath gangly trees, tromping around some ancient black volcanic boulders and fearlessly bounding over others, I hazarded the uncharted course I had serendipitously set for myself, plodding along the secret shore, and footprinting wet brown sand, I splashed forth  through shallow wavelets along the neglected eastern edge of Hanalei Bay.  This untamed pocket of Hawaiian paradise has somehow proliferated between two resortified developments of American flimflam.

’T’was then the dragon entered my mind:

"Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea,

and frolicked in the autumn mists of a land called Honah Lee."

Here was I, perchance, sauntering adventurously through the last wild boundary of Hanalei Bay, maybe a little like the legendary Puff in that old classic Peter, Paul and Mary song:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z15pxWUXvLY

Within the deep recesses of Baby Boomer recall, Puff the Magic Dragon still yet  blows through, across an ocean of imagination. Can you hear the tale?

"Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff

and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail;

Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail."

Once upon a time, when there was as yet no jet-plane, no cruise-boat, no trans-Pacific ocean liner. . . long, long ago while approaching an island far, far away, during an age in which the only transport to these remote islands of Hawaii was by sailing ship. . .

"Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,

and brought him (from highly developed, civilized countries far, far away) "strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff."

Do kids these days even know about strings and sealing wax? This is ancient legend stuff. I mean, who uses strings and ceiling wax these days? Who folds an envelope and closes it and then affixes the back flap with a buttoned string and a blob of richly-colored wax impressed with a regal insignia?

Nobody I know of. You?

These were communicative implements of a by-gone age, when persons of certain authority or rank used strings and ceiling wax to assure a remote recipient that the letter or parcel being hand-delivered had originated with the accredited sender.

Such strings and sealing wax were used in centuries long gone, when mighty sailing ships voyaged halfway around the globe from London or Lisbon or Boston or some such port of great commerce.

Those majestic ocean-going vessels would arrive with pomp and fanfare at many  an exotic destination along the way, where fabled creatures inhabited magical shores, places where a fast-industrializing world had only recently managed to  impose  its rigid demands of productivity, efficiency and conformity on clueless, unsuspecting noble savages such as Hawaiians were when all this commercializing globalization had only just begun. 

Puff the Dragon was the quintessential  wild uncivilized creature of old; he held sway over that formerly vast, untamed region where primeval legends prevailed, as yet unspoiled by modern mediocrity, a time and place where magic and myth, not capitalizing pragmatism, still reigned supreme.

So, in the 1950’s-60’s televised commercialized USA where young Baby Boomer imaginations ran wild with the likes of Mickey and Minnie and Davy Crockett and the Jetsons and the Flintstones . . .

Little Jackie Paper, the nascent civilized child, found Puff among his privileged playthings. And letting his imagination run wild, he frolicked with Puff in the autumn mists of a land called Honah Lee.

For a few years, he made play of Puff— until young Jackie decided to move on to bigger and better pursuits . . . baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet, Elvis and the Beatles, Mustangs and Volkswagens,  Lost in Space and lost in purple haze,  caught up in fantasy and privileged college days, gathered up in protests and rockfests and counterculture forays, and eventually outgrowing even all that stuff and finally picking up the better “toys” of governments and companies and  corporations . . .

"A dragon lives forever; not so little boys.

painted wings and giant’s rings make way for other toys.

One grey night it happened; Jackie Paper came no more,

and Puff that magic dragon ceased his fearless roar."

Surely we now understand this about Peter Yarrow’s classic song of forsaken childhood innocence: In the end, Puff ceased his roar because . . .

Jackie ceased his playing. The roaring voice that had bellowed was not Puff's at all; it was young Jackie's intonation of Puff’s imagined roar.

Remembering this old tune while trudging along Hanalei bay. . . dredges up old memories.  My feeling is that the quaint longevity of this simple song slips up from beneath the surface of a sea deeper  than mere child's play.

It is a longing for the past; it is a vague recollection from our collective vault of  wishes and dreams; it is a pining away for a former age of mankind, a time when the people who were in charge of things were benevolent and empathetic, a Camelot time before the brouhaha of democracy, a Shangri-La time before the anarchy of revolutions, before the abuses of communism. . . a simpler, Arcadia time before everything got so complicated and leaders were not so self-infatuated, a time when . . .

"Noble kings and princes would bow whenever they came;

pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name."

 

  King of Soul

Tall Tales of Hawaii

The islands of Hawaii are the very tippy-tops of huge volcanoes that erupted from the ocean floor a long, long time ago. So while each one appears to be a small island, they are in fact all very high volcanic mountains surrounded by water that is a couple of miles deep.

How this happened is a funny story.

Several geologic ages ago, ole mother earth began spewing out a gargantuan pile of molten lava through a hot spot in the Pacific ocean floor. Solidifying as it piled upward during eons of  time, the great magma pile finally popped up above sea level and became the island of Kauai.

Over vast periods of time, one pile after another eventually rose above sea level to become a new Hawaiian island.    The molten  lava flows were being extruded from earth’s inner parts because of very high heat way down underground. This extreme hotness is always being generated somewhere down there, by mega-friction between between our planet’s internal moving parts. Every now and then the resultant outward pressure overwhelms all the surrounding crud. Molten rock then bursts through and gets spewed out through whatever weak spot or fissure it can find.

Volcanoes, we call them. This process is how the eight islands of Hawaii were formed.

If you look at a map of the Hawaiian archipelago, you’ll see that the islands are all strung out in a geographical chain. This is because, as each volcanic mass was slowly mounting upwards, the bottom of the ocean was, at the same time, taking its own sweet time sliding along sideways. Consequently, each volcanic tower became an island in a different location.

Although we are not generally aware of it, our earth’s outer layer is divided into several giant mega-slabs. These vast tectonic “plates” (as scientists call them) are always shifting. Only seismologists and geologists can  track these planetary developments; technicians have hyper-sensitive seismologic equipment that detects the changes and documents them.

So that’s how we know about all this stuff. We have people somewhere all the time keeping tabs on the incremental, though massive, shifting of our planetary home.

Way, way down deep beneath Pacific waters, a very gradual but steady long-term northwesterly movement of the vast Pacific “plate”  determined in what geographical arrangement the Hawaiian islands got placed. A  generally southeast-toward-northwest sliding, over time, thus established a southeast-to-northwest configuration of the Hawaiian islands chain.

Each island pile is an extrusion of earth’s internal processes. These planetary developments are actually happening beneath our civilization all the time, although we are rarely aware of them. Every now and then ole mother earth makes her inner workings known by spurting out a fresh load of melted stuff.

Volcanoes, we call them.

The latest  is happening now on the biggest, newest Hawaiian island, which shares its name with the whole group—Hawaii, the “big island.” You may have heard about this new volcano; it’s called Kilauea. Video reports of its activity have lately been all over the web and other media.

I’ve been to Kilauea, and seen the bright molten lava as it was sloshing down its deep crater hole in the ground. But that visit was a few years ago.

This morning, I woke up in a breezy dwelling on the absolute other end of these strung-out islands.

Here on Kauai, I spend part of my morning reading a very good book about this island, Edward Joesting’s Kauai: The Separate KIngdom.

  https://www.amazon.com/Kauai-Separate-Edward-Joesting-III/dp/0824811623/

This scholastic work has opened my eyes to some fascinating history of this oldest Hawaiian outcropping. 

The ancient storytellers here seem to have had a sense that their beautiful islands share a common origin. 

Long before we had sophisticated seismology equipment to track planetary changes, we humans had ancient storytellers, people like Moses, Josephus, Homer, Confucius, Herodotus, and many others.

Today I’m reading about some ancient storytellers of Hawaii. In his book, Mr. Joesting writes of native legends that go way back in Hawaiian time.

  It seems to me that some of the ancient storytellers must have felt a tribal urge to somehow, through tall tales, bring their islands back together as one.

This is Hercules and Paul Bunyan-type tall tales, Hawaiian version.   

Edward cites the legend of the demigod named “Maui”— not the island of Maui, but the mythical deity whose name that island bears. As a sort of early comic-book hero, Maui did some amazing feats.

Edward Joesting provides this mythical account, on page 7 of his book:

“The demigod Maui, among his various escapades, chose to draw all the islands together into one land mass. To do this he had to catch a giant fish called Luehu, but the fish avoided all of Maui’s efforts.”

(Long story short, after Maui had managed to snap the big fish on a line . . .)

“Luehu pulled Maui and his canoe around the Hawaiian islands, wrapping the fishline around the islands and drawing them together with great strength. The only two islands that actually touched were Kauai and Oahu (even they are the two farthest apart).”

(But Maui’s project was complicated. He had eight brothers who were helping him with this unique angling expedition.(Talk about a fish story!) As it happened. . . at one point in their super striving to keep the fish Luehe on the line, the brothers got distracted by—I’m not making this up— the sight of a beautiful woman.  She must have been the first Miss Hawaii, quite an extraordinary femme fatale. Because the sight of her caused Maui’s eight brothers to lose their concentration for the matter at hand . . .)

“At that moment Luehu escaped from Maui’s line and the two islands drifted back to their original positions.

The legendary hero Maui returned to Wailua (on east shore of Kauai). His brothers had disobeyed his orders, and so he turned them into stone and sank them in the mouth of the (Wailua) river. The eight boulders remain there still.”

Now here’s the ancient tall-tale evidence that corroborates the geological, volcanic facts mentioned earlier in this blog: According to the legend abpit fearless leader Maui . . .

“At Kaena Point (on Oahu) there is a rock called Pohaku o Kauai, Rock of Kauai. It was a piece of Kauai that became stuck on Oahu when the two islands touched.”

So there you have it: the two islands of Kauai and Oahu shared a very important rock, which goes to show you . . .

These two islands— Kauai and Oahu— surely were generated from the same volcano! Either that, or they share a very big fish-tale. Take your pick which.

Glass Chimera 

Sukkot, Hawaiian style

About 3000 years ago, Moses led his people, the Hebrews, out of Egypt. The people had been oppressed under Pharoah's enslavement for a long time.

Their need to bust out of oppression had came to a certain fullness, and so Y_H the Lord appointed Moses to direct them out. By fleeing Egyptian oppression, they escaped slavery.

But their newfound freedom was no walk in the park; they soon found themselves in what seemed like a never-ending arid land of deserts and perilously adverse wilderness.

During that new phase of their development as a people, Y_H the Lord gave Moses instructions and laws that would enable them to live together as an independent people, and ultimately establish themselves among the nations.

Their God-given set of laws included the well-known--now infamous--Ten Commandments. But those commands were only the first of many, many more laws that numbered more than 600.

Among that long collection of principles for healthy, spiritual living, was an instructive celebration called Sukkot, also known as Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths.

The Sukkot was a celebratory commemoration by which Y_H ensured that they would not forget the Egyptian oppressions from which they had recently escaped.

Instructions given in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus include an annual arrangement, during harvest time, of leaves and branches to form numerous huts as temporary dwelling places for each family. The Hebrews would, by living in these tabernacles (sometimes called "booths"), call to remembrance the poverty and oppression from which they had escaped through their Exodus from Egypt.

In subsequent history, the Hebrews came to be known as Jews, because, many centuries later, their last vestige as a landed nation (until 1948) had been established in the land called Judea, along the Jordan River.

Some Jews and Christians, even today, observe the Feast of Succoth ceremonially by constructing and camping in palm-thatched huts such as those Hebrews of old might have done in the wilderness of Sinai.

I have never seen such a hut or tabernacle, but I have read about it in the Old Testament. I have also, from time to time, heard or read of Jews and/or Christians who still celebrate the Feast of Sukkot in this way.

A few days ago, I was reminded of Succoth while visiting the big island called Hawaii.

On the upper slopes of the volcano Mauna Kea, I saw what appeared to be a kind of hut or tabernacle that resembles the Succoth structures of ancient days.

A group of zealous Hawaiians known as We Are Mauna Kea had constructed this structure:

The Hawaiians with whom I spoke there called the hut a Hale (Ha-lay), built by human hands to commemorate their heritage of regarding the Mauna Kea volcano as a sacred place. The sacred designation of the place is now imperiled by construction of massive buildings on the peak. The large structures--some already built and others proposed--are used for purposes of scientific observation and electromagnetic data-gathering.

As I pondered this Hawaiian Hale hut, I was reminded of the Succoth hut in the ancient Hebrew scriptures.

Methinks there is something fundamentally human going on here, between the ancient Hebrew Succoth tabernacle and the legacy of Hawaiian Hale to revere Mauna Kea.

I'll call it, in both cultures, "wanting to get back to our roots."

I'd like to think that Alex Haley, author of "Roots", would agree with me. "Roots" is about African huts and heritage.

The purpose of Sukkot is remembrance of past slavery, and deliverance from those oppressions. The Hebrews were delivered from slavery, and they should never forget it.

Everybody know the Jews are unique in the history of world cultures. Here is one reason why:

The Jews, with help from Y_H the Lord, were one of the first people-groups in the world that was able to effectively retain, preserve and extend their history and their worship of God through the ages. Part of that enduring oral/written/celebratory heritage is this Succoth practice, established for purposes of not forgetting the past--not forgetting the "oppression from which we were delivered."

But the Jews are not the only people who should remember the sacred elements of their past.

Likewise, the Hawaiian Hale pictured above represents, it seems to me, a similar inclination to call forth the people's identity with their ancient culture, to remember "who we are and where we came from."

And maybe of little bit of "Don't mess with us!"

Glass half-Full

Itelalia from Hualalai

In this picture we see Iwana Bananna's backhoe.

In the background we see Hualalai volcano.
This picture was obtained at great personal peril by the haole blogger, Itelalai.
Hudunit legend says that in the year 2015 during the lunar eclipse Iwana will use his backhoe to dismantle the Hualalai volcano and dump its magnanimous lava into Kawili bay.
When this is accomplished, the cows of Bashan will come home to roost. They will discharge their guano blessings, parrot-fish-like, upon the god Bashir's head.
Be prepared for that day. Anything could happen. Hudunit legend says that shortly after that time climate change will have run its full course and Bashir will arise from the muck and mire and reassemble Hualalai, then ascend to its peak and proclaim free lunch for everyone on the planet who volunteers to cease farting.
Reporting from Hualalai, this is Itelalai, I tell ya. I call 'em the ways I sees 'em, no ifs ands or butts.

Glass half-Full

The Sacred Place?

This world is a wonderful place, but it's also a terrible place. We are not in agreement here about a lot of things. The human family is all torn up as a result of our disagreements. So what else is new.

Well here's something new for me, but it's actually a reshaped experience of an old conundrum.

It started yesterday when my wife and daughter I, who are presently on the big island of Hawaii, took a drive in the rental car up onto the slopes of Mauna Kea volcano.

It was a large experience: there we went crawling, in a mid-sized automobile as any tourist would do, up the slope of this massive hunk of hardened magma, which had piled up 32,000 feet from the Pacific Ocean floor, to a peak 13,796 feet above sea level.

We didn't go all the way to the top, because having no 4WD limited our ascent. Of course, as tourists, we wouldn't be taking the time to hike the rest of the way to up, so we satisfied ourselves with what was available at the Visitors' Center, as most "visitors" or tourists probably do.

We arrived at this little outpost/equipment store/educational display that is the the Visitor's Center, and bailed out of the car to have a look around. It's at about 9300 ft. above sea level. With some disappointment at not having reached the summit, I decided, as most tourists who stop here do, to check out the what was inside the small building.

I learned a lot up here, three quarters of the way up Mauna Kea. There were two information sources:

~the instructional video about the Mauna Kea volcano itself, its history, and the scientific station up on top with very high-tech telescopes.

~the vigilant We Are Mauna Kea representatives, across the road, who were protesting further developments on the summit.

The video inside was very impressive, and informative. You can probably find it online somewhere. For my purposes here, I'll say merely that the big picture for the scientists seems to be exploring, visually through super-telescopes and scientifically through electromagnetic data collection, the outer regions of our solar system and beyond. I can appreciate this, find it interesting, but its pretty much beyond my down-to-earth curiosities.

The protesters across the road had set up a small Hale, a special shelter made of stones and leafy coverings. At its entrance was a stylized artistic rendering of Queen Liliuokalani with her fist raised high in the air. This was interesting to me. Having developed an interest in Hawaii's last reigning monarch, I had read her biography during a previous trip to Oahu. Queen Liliuokalani's life was so interesting to me that I had included parts of her story in my 2007 novel, Glass half-Full. But I always thought of her very regally, as a queen, not typically standing with her fist in the air. But that's the position in which she was depicted at this protest site.

A cheerful, young woman there explained to me that they especially want to prevent construction of a newly proposed 18-story high observatory. She handed me a printed page which was quite professional-looking and concise, with an explanation of their We Are Mauna Kea objectives. My reading of it later unearthed another objection of theirs-- the disruption/excavation of 8 acres and 64,000 cubic yards of public lands. The basis of their protest is stated with several points listed. The first one is:

Mauna Kea is a Wao Akua, a holy realm, a sacred piko.

About an hour later, as we departed that place of instruction and confliction, my heart and mind were disagreeing with each other about the controversy between these two camps of human beings-- the Sacred Place Savers who were protesting, and the Knowledge Gatherers who were erecting tall telescopes in order to learn more about the expanding universe.

This is a little bit like the ancient dilemma of mankind: choosing between the Tree of Life or the Tree of Knowledge.

Who is to say what place is sacred?

Who is to say what place is useful?

The protesters' plaintive objections reminded me of a song I wrote and recorded many years ago. It's a tuneful lament that touches on this great divide between two different people groups of mankind:

Sitting Bull's Eyes

I wrote the song In 1978, which was about the same my time my life fell apart in a big way, and I turned to the Creator of the Universe for some help. I then returned to the faith of my fathers and mothers, which is Christ.

As my walk with the Lord through this life has progressed for lo, these many years since that time, I have from time to time studied the sacred places and beliefs of different people. In human history, we can find thousands of incidents of one trive desecrating the sacred places and beliefs of another tribe, or one religion destroying the sacred places of another religion. Rather than trying to cite them all, I'll just mention one particular example, which is the one I know the most about.

In the history of my own faith heritage, for instance, I find:

~Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar desecrated the Jewish temple in Jerusalem

~Seleucid conquerer Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated that same temple

~Titus the Roman general/emperor destroyed that temple

~Muslims later occupied the sacred mountain in Jerusalem where the temple had stood

~Christians took that site from the Muslims

~Muslims took it back

~In 1967, the Jewish people regained possession of their sacred temple mount in Jerusalem. But being sensitive to potential destructive forces of politics and religion, they wisely decided to maintain the Muslim ascendancy that had fallen upon that holy place, leaving their own people, the Jews, to pray at the sacred wall beneath.

~Here's my spiritual attachment to that sacred site in Jerusalem. It started with a man named Paul in the first century AD. He was Jewish, but had a new vision, based on the work of Jesus the Christ. Paul was the primary expositor of the Christian faith (which I later accepted as my own). He traveled all around present-day Lebanon, Turkey, Macedonia, Greece and Rome preaching that the truly sacred place of the most High God is found not in the temples erected by men, but in the souls of men and women who believe in Jesus the Christ.

Sacred is not found in a place or thing, but in the hearts of men and women who believe, and act in accordance with their faith.

So from my Christian perspective, or perhaps any other person whose values were influenced by being raised in the post-Christian Western culture, who cares about whether a place is sacred or not?

Well, there is a very important attribute of human relationships that I have come to admire when I see it in people: Respect.

Respect for others, and for their traditions. Respect others as you would want to be respected.

Meanwhile, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaiians of ancient heritage strive without success to prevent the high-tech wizards of our modern age from desecrating their sacred place. Who is going to win out here?

I think you know who will prevail in this Mauna Kea situation. It seems it has always been this way. The strong throw their weight around like bulls in a china shop and destroy all that is holy and sacred of what remains among the indigenous and weakened peoples.

Has it always been this way?

Yes. This is the history of the world as we know it.

Will it always be this way?

Who knows? Not me. But a wise Teacher wrote long ago:

"I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all."

We shall see about that.

And the greatest Teacher of all said: "Blessed are the peacemakers."

But who is a peacemaker anyway? Is it a person who lives peacefully. . . or a person who shuts down troublemakers by imposing peace on their violent schemes?

Whatever your answer to that question is, please consider this: Take it upon yourself as a sacred duty to do the best you can to respect others, and to obtain respect for those who are unable to retain it.

Glass half-Full

People are Looking

People are looking for something,

where east meets west,

when bright west is best

and light from east

is least.

People are looking for something

where dark meets light,

oh what an amazing sight

when waning spark

wanes to dark.

People are looking for something

where light meets dark,

maybe go to a park

and watch set of sun,

night begun.

People are looking for something

where west meets east;

east was a brightening feast;

until west becomes best

for the day's rest.

Glass half-Full

Life is grand on the strand

As I wander lonely on the strand

in sun and sky and surf and sand

I find a place I had not planned

to encounter in this island land.

Now when we encounter something unplanned

which then becomes the matter at hand

and then it starts to make adverse demand

upon our life so carefully planned,

surely then we must renew our plan,

so we won't fall and be buried in the sand

and maybe fail again and again.

That's just the way it is:

ain't life grand?



Glass half-Full

What's a Vacation For?

Now that we finally got to July and being on vacation, I have at last gotten around to catching up on a few personal projects that I would like to have undertaken long ago.

One project is learning how to actually make best use of the Macbook Air that I've been blogging on for two years now. Two and a half years, actually. Micah gave me the laptop at Christmas 2011. I've been stumbling around on it ever since, managing every now and then to get a word or two that made some sense out on the 'net for all the world to consider. haha.

On this vacation, my brother-in-law John, the Mac guy, has been very helpful in this personal proficiency-improvement project, especially with utilizing the pictures from iPhone that I've been snapping to elucidate our Costa Rica vacation.

In the midst of this steep learning curve, a picture popped up on one of the Mac files, a picture that I had forgotten about, thought I had trashed forever, except that lo and behold it is still rollin' around in the Mac and so I managed to pull it out of the trash. Pat took the pic exactly two years ago on Maui, Hawaii, at the Sun Yat-Sen park, which is a small memorial to the founder of modern China, Sun Yat-Sen. Here is his statue, with me standing next to it because I think Mr. Sun was a great leader:

A little research I've done today uncovers the impressive fact that both the major factions of modern Chinese liberation--the Mao-led Communist party and the Chiang Kai-shek-led Kuomintang-- claim Sun Yat-Sen as a major contributor to their initial movements to wrestle the governance of China from the dying Qing dynesty, because Mr. Sun led the revolution that knocked the Qing out of power in 1912.

Another reason I think he was a great leader relates to a quote from him that I discovered on this very same statue-base in Hawaii two years ago. The quote is carved into one face of the statue's base:

"Search into the nature of things, look into the boundaries of knowledge, make the purpose sincere, regulate the mind, cultivate personal virtue, rule the family, govern the state, pacify the world."

This principle(s) have been bopping around in my mind for these last two years. When I saw the pic pop up in my Mac wanderings today, the profundity of this wisdom suddenly came back to me. So I spent a couple hours today trying to find the source of the quote, which turns out to be not Sun Yat-Sen himself, but rather Confucius, in an old classic called The Great Learning.

I learned this when a google search finally led me to a pdf from a biography of Sun Yat-sen by a Stanford scholar, Marie Clare Bergere. http://books.google.co.cr/books?id=vh7M1u4IGFkC&dq=sun+yat+sen+%2B+nature .

The idea of "searching into the nature of things" is one that Mr. Sun made a central part of his own way of relating to the world and trying to make it a better place. I like that strategy, and it is the essence of my writing projects, the blogging as well as the novels.

Here is another pic from that Hawaiian adventure two years ago, just to illustrate what I mean by looking into the nature of things. This pic reveals just how everything, including the earth itself is just kind of. . . stratified:

Glass half-Full

Mauka/Makai

Where earth has poured out its magma heart
onto ocean's sphere, things begin to happen
differently.
Then stony solidity challenges watery
dominance,
and blocked kinesis thrusts
interference
patterns onto the wavy deep.
'Tis then the great fluid finds its
fury,
and the waves their wobbly wanderings.
'Tis then
the splashy sea find its unsettled voice,
lending boisterous mayhem to the world:
Islands become frontiers of landed life, and
continents become monuments of tectonic
discontent,
and mankind finds itself at home therein.
This is a fair place to spend eternity,
if it were so,
but if not, there is a better world
to which we go.
Don't ask me how I know;
it is the substance of things unseen
to which our faith doth flow.

Glass half-Full

Kai kai Kauai

Surfy shimmer late afternoon slant light
hath revealed glimmering
truth that midday overlooked,
as each wave topples in from aquamarine bliss
blasting gold and magic disappearish foam upon the beach.
Silvery rumpled water plane retreats back to sea
leaving sheen that descends into coarse brownsand,
mottled with micro rivulets crisscrossing intersecting
as multiple mini-sandstorms settle from their infinite mini-maelstroms
upon this shore,
racing, streaking wavelets o'er the smoothness of ancient speckled sands
where sandstonish texture takes over as crystalish water is disappearing
constantly and forever
and ever and amen
according to shapeshifting strand line as erratic as
a dowjones database
Jackie Paper will sail no more on this particular
day
but the sun sets down its golden splashes same as
it always has since
God only knows when.

Glass half-Full

Kauai kai

First is the sunshine, everywhere
bright on this deep Pacific blue; way out there
Puff blows up his silver-whites
and pushes them into distant cumulus piles
onto absolutely flat
horizon.
From there afar sapphire stretches at me
rolling into nearer aquamarine
then clearer azure.
The ocean surfs in, tossing frothy white
o'er brown-gold beach, sloshing
sparkles
everywhere, all the way up
into micro wavelets of universal energy;
they flatten
in sine shadow lines that skitter across the cosine sand.
Eons away from any continent
and far far far from any heckled world
in a land called Hanalei,
Hawaii and Thee
I see.

Glass half-Full

Sun Yat-sen's memory in Hawaii

Sun Yat-sen was a great leader who managed to lead, 101 years ago, the Chinese people out of their dynastic bondage to the Qing empire.

After many previously failed revolutionary attempts, Mr. Sun was able, by 1911, to summon enough organization and gumption among his countrymen to actually accomplish the liberation for which he had spent most of his life preparing.

How he did that amazing work, I don't know. As nearly as I can surmise from a little bit of incidental reading and a movie or two, his role in Chinese history is similar to George Washington's in our American story. But he was not a military man, as Washington had been. Sun was a thinker, a planner, but he was intelligent and perceptive enough to actually put his revolutionary thoughts and plans into effective action. As a result, he is the founder of the Republic of China. So, since he was not a military leader, I perceive that his role in China's liberation from feudalism is more akin to Thomas Jefferson's.

During his education here in Hawaii (where I am now writing), he became familiar with the writings of Jefferson and other proponents of freedom among the opinions of mankind.

Sun Yat-sen was not, however, a politician; his piloting of the fledgling republic was, I think, removed from his grasp during the 1920s and '30s, and supplanted by the chaotic joustings of military warlords. By the time he died in 1925, the nation was in disarray, and hobbled as a collection of feuding factions. When the Japanese invaded in 1937, the two main groups--Communists and Nationalists--had to make an uneasy truce to drive Hirohito's army out. After the war, Mao's People's Liberation Army were finally able to wrest power, by 1948, from Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang army, which Sun Yat-sen's comrades had formed during the 1911 revolution.

Thus did Mao Tse-dung, Deng Xiaoping, and other Communist leaders enforce, at long last, the People's Republic of China.

Not the same as the Republic of China (1911-1948). Nevertheless, it's all a progression of Chinese politics and military victories. From an optimistic American perspective, one might say that Deng Xiaoping had initiated another revolution, a relatively bloodless one (until June 4, 1989.)

As an American, I don't know much Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China, but I am happy to report that a very important part of his ideological development was accomplished during his youthful residence and education in Hawaii. Yat-sen's brother, Sun Mei had moved to Hawaii in 1879, prospered greatly, and was one of the richest men in Hawaii by the turn of the century. During those years, Mei saw to it that his younger brother was brought to the Islands to live in freedom and to be educated.

Sun Mei's wealth included 3900 acres of agricultural land on the slopes of Haleakala volcano (now dormant), on the island of Maui.

Two days ago, Pat and I drove through Sun Mei's formerly vast land-holdings, in the district of Maui called Kula. There, very near the old Sun Mei homeplace, we found this memorial, built to commemorate Sun Yat-sen, father of the Chinese Republic, who had spent many an hour, many a month over many years, there in reflection, respite, recreation and rest, before later going back to the Middle Kingdom and making world history.

I will end this brief historical observation with a fact that is, to me, and also (I hope) to the world, quite significant:

Sun Yat-sen was baptized a Christian in Hong Kong in 1887.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

Lover Beach

The Ocean is tidy this morning.

the tide is half; the sun comes up

over the swells; Lanai and Molokai loom

across the choppy blue. Old Maui volcano sleeps,

cloudy and vast, heart of the island.

Come to the veranda; bright is the sky!



Always, from the breaking waves

where Pacific pelts this sun-kiss'd isle,

Listen! you hear the roaring power

of our planet that flings up watery wings

and pulls them down again on shifting sand.

Roar, and whisper, and roar again

with cyclical slumber to lose and win

a perpetual thrust of planetary din.



Poet Arnold felt it long ago

among the pebbles of Dover beach, summoning

the futile strands of faithlessness

and existential woe; I

find instead the inevitability of faith

called up to bloom upon this far-flung ocean isle.



The ocean of despair

so near and far in present past, to pound us down on human shores,

throws its tantrum of pointless angst, with cynic sand.

But now I only feel the wave of our resolve

upon a flagg'ed pole of hope,

advancing, in the sun-stirred air

of dawning day, o'er the bright edges of our vision,

as lilies of the field.



Ah, love, let us be true

to one another! for the world, which seems

to pound upon us like a surf of strife,

so relentless, so provocative, so hard,

has a terrible power all its own

that would dash our love and hope in forceful blight.

But we here on our sun-bathed isle,

caressed with waves of love and delight--

we subdue the heartless poundings of the night.



Glass half-Full

BodySurfer's Intuitive Calcs

Ocean waves, generated by the interplay of lunar and earth gravity, travel very long distances across open water. When a wave reaches land, having no more water in which to move forward, it breaks upon the shore. How many millennia have humans been observing this? A long time.

Standing in shallow water very near the shoreline, we would see the hapless bodysurfer waiting to experience the thrill of catching a wave and riding it the short distance until he and the wave are tossed onto the sandy beach. If you happened to be at Ka'anapali beach, Maui, Hawaii, yesterday, that adventurous bodysurfer would have been, perhaps, me, or one of the other hundreds of free-floating small-time adventurers.

The body surfer is not a real surfer, you know. He's just a clueless vacation visitor, not really serious about investigating the larger potentials of the great swells on the north shores of these far-flung islands. He doesn't have the board. He just has his own body, which he has trained to float. In my case, I learned to float at YMCA summer day camp in Jackson, Mississippi, long about 1956 or so.

Consider one wave coming in--the one that I'm going to jump into in just a few seconds here. How does this little dance between the wave and the bodysurfer work?

When the wave is still out in deep water where there is nothing to alter its somewhat ideal sine, or cosine, or bell-jar shape, it is a force of energy moving through the water, rearranging the shape of the water surface as it moves forward. It is moving the water somewhat, mostly up and down, at any chosen point of the ocean surface. Within the force of the wave there is kinetic energy moving those millions of molecules of H²0. But the wave is not really moving as much water, or anything else, as it actually has the physical power to do. So within the wave there is, along with the kinetic energy that is in constant use, potential energy.

So every wave that travels across the Pacific, approaching the beach, is a combination of both kinetic energy and potential energy. When the kinetic force of it hits the beach, the potential energy is suddenly converted to strong kinetic action and the wave totally expends itself on the sand. All that physical force erupts upon the shore and upon whatever happens to be there, be it a surprised snoozing sunbather, a sand castle, or a bodysurfer like me. Over long periods of time, this wave action churns rocks down into fine sand, and this is how we get our beaches. It also steals sunglasses and plastic cups and rubber rafts and other stuff that we consumers drag to the strand with us.

What the bodysurfer seeks to do is partake of that thrilling moment within the wave when its potential energy is instantaneously being converted to kinetic force, and thereby producing for him/her a few seconds of very fine sporting excitement. This occurs when the wave's natural shape is being violently altered by its contentious encounter with the sandy bottom. Entering shallow water, that potential energy has nowhere to put all those water molecules that were formerly being moved up and down in such a gentle, rolling manner. Suddenly there is no more "down" available to the wave, because where there was deep water before there is now something solid that does not yield to the wave's force. In this case, the "something solid" is the edge of the island, i.e. the shore.

So the rambunctious wave tosses all those water molecules up into the air, in a kind of tantrum. Like a spoiled child that has grown accustomed to having its way all the time, the wave shouts with much sound and fury that signifieth nothing, if I can't have my wavy way here, I'm going to throw all this liquid in the air! Waugh! Now it's splash and crash time.

So suddenly the formerly tame motion becomes an eruption of spray through the air, and foam upon the sand. That noble wave that hath traveled afar all the way from Japan or wherever--it just gives up the ghost and dies right there on the coast of Hawaii.

But not before this thrill-seeking tourist can get in on a little super-planetary wave action, ha! I love it.

Glass Chimera