Strands of Time

 "Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it ... We do these things not to change the world, but so that the world will not change us." - Gandhi

The library was quiet for a Friday at noon. Rain had come to Whidbey Island, dampening the pollens and dust that fill the air. Men and equipment were busy with their Man Work at the campground. We left them to do what they do to potholes; and are left with the residue of  asphalt mixed into the sandy fill, used for repairs, to breathe. "Insult to injury," a friend commiserated after hearing the story. We nodded over the fancy dancer coffees in our to-go cups.

We are campers these days and nights. We are here today, and in another somewhere tomorrow, or next week. If it were possible I might like to be one of the witches and non-witches who move between 'Strands of time' in the world of Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland's seven-hundred and fifty-two pages of The Rise and Fall of  D.O.D.O. The themes -- magic, greed, love, conflict, unexpected alliances, and characters -- witches, scientists, academicians, military big wigs, and technological geeks give both Pete and me a window of escape.  Or maybe like all good fiction the present and the possible become more the same than different.

Time travel has long captured my attention, and as I sit here and edit the threads of one place with another ... and make sense of the many, the difficulty or the expectations about what might come next settles like dust after a good soaking of rain.

Grateful and anonymous the present is: a place to access the magic of a cyber page to cross time and put it here. Pete is back in his reading corner, in the world where strands of time literally pull one character from here to there. Future or past?

A poem about being with Hawks on the prairie recalls a recent past. The Hawks who hover when they hunt. Hover while they prepare themselves for the pounce. That time has passed. We have moved camp, but the words waited until now. They have waited for the pounce.

We prepare to leave the campground, the asphalt off-gases chemicals that burden me. That 'insult to injury' so we move.

In another place

Hawk flies low 

Circling the prairie

Glides on currents felt.

I imagine the way 

Through the sky

Breathe deeper as 

Those wings pull on my ribs.

This is where I am

Pull the long story

On old newsprint.

Hawk’s sharp golden eyes 

See those places

Even through my eyes 

That are more old than young.

My nose pulls on the scents

A curved beak 

Snatches life somewhere.

In that other place she

Is called

I'o*.


*I'o in Hawaiian is the name of the Hawaiian Hawk.

© Mokihana Calizar, 2019

Weaving strands of time, I do that with the essay that follows, written almost twenty years ago, when I was new to the practice of writing for pleasure and pocket change. I had ended a career writing training manuals for a Seattle-based retail corporation, ended a marriage of more than twenty years, met Pete, and was living in the family home my brother and I grew up in. The Ka'u Landing was a magical gift, a beautiful Hawaii-Island publication looking for new columnists. 'Without thinking... the heart can do her work' set down a memory of a place, a space and a time in history that will not come again. This was Kuli'ou'ou Valley just before the century aged, in a place my soul will forever occupy space. My physical self stands far from that place where innocence was taken for granted and age? Age was yet to be fully understood.

Writing pulls me out of the dark places where I think (too much):

"It takes a great person to creatively inhabit her own mind and not turn her mind into a destructive force that can ransack her life. You need compassion for yourself, particularly in American society, because many people in America identify themselves through the models and modules of psychology that inevitably categorize them as a syndrome. Lovely people feel that their real identity is working on themselves, and some work on themselves with such harshness. Like a demented gardener who won't let the soil settle for anything to grow, they keep raking, tearing away the nurturing clay from their own heart, then they're surprised that they feel so empty and vacant." - John O' Donahue quoted on Terri Windling's Myth and Moor

Perhaps you have memories of innocence taken for granted, and age? What is happening as you age?

~~

Without thinking ... the heart can do her work

Some days pass like racing clouds in front of a nearly full moon. The shape and luster of the clouds shift without asking and delight pairs of human eyes as we watch how quickly the skyscape changes. Seated on the smooth caramel-colored slates of the worn teak bench a childhood companion joined me in the sharing of one of those times when clouds race, and moonbeams play.

More than fifty years earlier this friend and I spent time in this same backyard and played. In the shadows of the trees, in the shade of mango boughs, we spent time together in places bound in the magic syrup of children’s imagination. We did things without organization, our parents didn’t watch and left us to our world … and in the process memories were created to be shared again and again in seamless film between ke’ia and kela. Ke’ia now. Kela over there.

Children are born to tinker. The world is without scripts and floors of brown dirt and tiny stones easily become the floors and walls of Simplicity’s glorious hearth. We tinkered with life that surrounded us and became easily comfortable and comforted by the idle rhythm of unstructured play. Our wall-less experiences stretched for the ceiling, the sky over Kuli’ou’ou, and we knew that changed all the time. Somehow the foundation of possibilities, these spaces, birthed through tinkering, cleared broad paths on which we have lived our lives. Writer Brenda Ueland calls this time of long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering “moodling.” I love that word! It is during these “moodlings” that our imagination plumps us into loving, lovable, flourishing beings.

The light of the near-full moon is soft and then sharp, regulated irregularly by the movement of the clouds. The wind is busy; in spite of swirling makani our plastic dishes of Chinatown goodies and plates of tofu salad are pa’a. Good food, truths and queries, giggles and laughs from the belly all find time and a place in the company of others. Spontaneous socializing. No appointment was made for this kind of fun. It was the sort of living we knew as children, and find again, here in the home place.

In life’s flow the journey is lighter, the laughter easier and the sadness more easily accepted. With the morning, and a good night’s sleep, the memory of a day lived well is a great way to store up hope.

It’s hard for me to say we’re old, but some say it. “We’re at that age,” they say. What age is that anyway? Middle age, half moon age. When old friends gather and widen the circles of stones to include their daughters the question of age becomes a fuller answer. The wisdom of having lived stretches the limits of younger expectations and things from the “Sometime in my life I’m gonna list” becomes what’s happening now.

Living from the middle has something to do with being able to see life’s beginning and guess at the ending. We have gathered to shower our daughters with Aunty Wisdom, drinking tea and sips of wine we prepare a young woman for marriage and celebrate birthdays with friends living with diseases known to take lives. We have lived long enough to understand the meaning of wandering and live the lesson of needing to explore the world without forgetting who we were in the beginning. Each of us has danced the movements of ‘auana, and wandered far from the home place where the size of a backyard sock-baseball diamond was a giant’s field, requiring many strides to reach second base. But today, the space between the clothesline at home base and second is only a car’s length away.

When Kuli’ou’ou girls gather under a moon-filled sky, watch clouds race, eat poke and roast pork, and look across the moon-lit space of a familiar backyard, the moodling memories that live throughout our selves giggle, flap and embrace the show, shade and light without hesitation or thinking. Without thinking the heart can do her work.

“Without Thinking … The Heart Can Do Her Work” was originally written and published in the Ka’u Landing, September, 1999. This version of the article is edited from its original. 

ⒸYvonne Mokihana Calizar, 2019

If this post-for-pay tickles your fancy, delights your imagination, warms your heart because you too love a memory of (your) Kuli'ouou, or fuels you in some way please consider sending me a tip or a token of your appreciation. Email me at mokihanacalizar@gmail.com. I will send you a THANK YOU SO MUCH reply, and send you our snail mail address where we can receive your thanks.

Mahalo nui,
Mokihana