Da Kine Stories: HAWAIIAN METAMORPHOSIS

During the 16 years I lived and worked in Hawai’i during the 1990s, I observed many of my Hawaiian friends, acquaintances, and people I met in recurrent meetings and activist gatherings as they were going through what I came to see as a personal, social, cultural and political metamorphosis. This painful process is a response to the renaissance of Hawaiian culture that sprouted in the 1960s and has been growing and flowering ever since. Hawaiians I have known seemed to move from their culturally innate aloha through hurt and rage to a mature life-choice to live aloha. That choice is the most important step they make in reclaiming Hawaiian culture and the most difficult.

What is amazingly sad is that, to this day, most of the world is still ignorant of the history of the Hawaiian Islands, the suffering of generations of Hawaiians, and their exemplary response to injustice. This is true in spite of the fact that people from all over the world enjoy Hawaiian vacations and come to live permanently in the Aloha State. I submit that even the following very inadequate thumbnail sketch is preferable to perpetuating that ignorance.

Da Kine Stories: RUNAWAY

One evening in the spring of 1989, while on spring break from her senior year of college, my 22 year old daughter wistfully remarked. “I sure would like to live and work in Annapolis, but it’s too expensive.”

“Not for you, I replied. “You can live at home.”

“Oh I would LOVE to live at home! But not with my MU-THER”

“Great! You take care of the house and I’ll go to Hawai`i.”

“Would you really?”

“Would you really?”

“Deal!”

Poetry: NIGHT ON THE SANDBAR

Here we sit, friend, you and I, silent,
Alone with the sea on a moonless night.
I look for the line where water meets air.
It isn't there.

Have you ever completely lost faith in facts,
In what we all preach about Life, Cosmos, God?
Ever lost touch with your body, with Earth -
Your reason adrift?

Da Kine Stories: SOB STORY

I'm not one to cry - except when I hear Hawai`i Aloha...or Kaulana Na Pua...or Honolulu City Lights. I never make it through Aloha `Oe....

I'm not one to tear up - except when I see the Big Island through the window of a jet and know I'm almost home from self-imposed exile.

I'm not one to sob - except when I see pictures of my beloved Queen Lili`uokalani, hear her music, read her words, or touch her statue.