Paddling the Canoe
15 August 2017 | st marys, ga
Capn Andy/100 degrees F.
The Hawaii trip was at its end. We visited my parents’ grave and I flew out to Honolulu later, then left for the mainland.
.
My niece Gina was working downtown Hilo at an exhibition of the new northwest islands and reefs that have been declared a marine sanctuary by President Obama, a Hawaiian. The politics of the mainland seem far away, but the story of the reefs, Gina’s involvement as a schoolgirl in producing a video about them, her inclusion into a world class group of environmental students at UC Santa Barbara, and her later bachelor’s degree at Stanford, and her decision to return to Hawaii to pursue her graduate degrees here at home, all come full circle to this little dot in the ocean. Hilo, the city, the county seat of the county of Hawaii, is a small town. Everyone knows everyone else. There’s no NFL, NBA, or other national franchised sports team anywhere in Hawaii. The local high school teams are important, and the university is the biggest thing, sportswise.
.
There have been many writers who have come to Hawaii to live, Paul Thereaux (?) and James Mitchener for instance. The food culture is vibrant with farm to table, maybe this is where it was rediscovered, how else are you going to get anything in Hawaii for your chefs? The surf culture, the canoe culture, the beach culture. My nieces and nephews are growing up bathed in this and take it for granted. No wonder Gina decided to come back to continue her academic work on her home island.
.
I used to think that the culture of Hawaii was a shallow culture with deep pockets of individual cultures, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Mormons, the Native Hawaiians, and all the other little groups that band together with common language and ideals. No one is in the majority. All have to interact with others and so you have a common ground, a common culture that is somewhat shallow, but rich underneath. If you are here in Hawaii and comfortable in your surroundings with others who talk like you and understand your ways, you will frequently be challenged by an encounter with someone who is totally alien, but you have the superficial culture to communicate, get to know one another, and be introduced into another whole new universe.
.
And on an island, you get to know everyone else, all the cultures, maybe not in depth, but all are aware that this is a special place. I’ve learned that there is always something new to learn and increase my understanding. It is a place where the earth is projecting its essence up through a volcano, the sea is washing over it with incessant surfing waves, the air is untouched as it cleanses itself over the oceans, only to arrive with puffy clouds and pure rainwater to shower on the volcano’s lava, steaming, bringing a profusion of tropical plants and fruits to life. This would be an ideal place to be if the rest of the world decides to blow itself apart with violence, religious or not, when the water gets scarce and the globe gets unlivable, when we can’t get along together, even in a large country.
.
Now we are back in the swamps of Georgia, back in the gulag. There is news of what is basically a riot in Charlottesville, VA. It sounded like a right wing white supremacist rally gone wrong. Later more details came in, it was a reaction to the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from a park in that city. In an age where marijuana is legal, same sex marriages are legal, there remains a reactionary element that to me is no different than the islamic fundamentalists. Before I retired, I found one of my clients to be an african-american church and I had to understand their ways. We talked a lot about things with the idea that they could educate this white boy who had no clue about video production of gospel singing. There was a huge cultural gulf between us. I was about math and science and not about religion. At one point someone said he hated something, he was using the word casually, like I hate internet ads, or something like that. I said it was important to be careful about the word “hate”. It closes the mind to reason, it creates a wall in your understanding, it prevents reasoning between people who “hate” each other. When I retired the fellows at the church were upset that I would no longer come visit them, they said I was like a brother to them.
.
In Hawaii everybody is Auntie, or Uncle, Bruddah, Sistah, and there is a casual acceptance of people who are different, because everybody is different there, so many individual groups, all packed into a small island, all have to get along. Of course there is trouble there, the plaque at the Mo’okini heiau has “United States” on it, but someone had grafitti’d “White States” and now the United States is noticeably more highly polished. There are fights going on all over the world, and most of them are the result of careless use of the word “hate”.