The Value of Hawaii 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions

Things You Missed (or, The Dog Ears, Revisited)

THINGS YOU MISSED (OR, THE DOG-EARS, REVISITED) DONOVAN KÜHIÖ COLLEPS the time i went out past the breaks at hau bush four days after you died it rained and pleny pua were jumping out of the water coming towards me reminding me when we saw this once together and you told me it’s because a shark is somewhere near by. My mother also had a pet shark out near the entrance to Pearl Harbor. . . . Some of the catch always went to Ka‘ahupühau, her shark, which she raised from when it was small until it reached over 25 feet in length. Change We Must, Nana Veary our family god is the shark you told me. I was silent on my fiberglass belly not knowing where rain ended or ocean began. Because our body seems so convincingly to exist, our “I” seems to exist and “you” seem to exist, and the entire illusory, dualistic world we never stop projecting around us looks ultimately solid and real. When we die this whole compound construction falls dramatically to pieces. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche the time right after the mortuary guys wheeled you from your room past the file cabinet and out of the house in that black bag and nana was still talking story with you a giant moth with white circles on its wings slammed into the living room window and t.j. screamed and said something something moths something your spirit. 120 KULEANA you would’ve laughed. the time i returned to las vegas for a friend’s wedding to the spot under the freemont street experience where we met years ago years after not seeing each other and we hugged under the electronic f-14s zooming over us in red white and blue formations and i left my friends at the strip and caught a taxi to stand there again to remember the worried look on your face when you saw the struggle in mine. Crazy shit I saw on the train/bus to Vegas: in the middle –one piano of a field —a giant Clorox manufacturing plant with smoke stacks like a church organ —one torn red felt couch somewhere in Barstow(?) with one marbled kitten sleeping on it —the bus driver stopped at a diner in the desert and this family kept staring at me, licking ice cream cones. (even the baby had a cowboy hat) the time i found myself circling the house checking for tears in any of the screens because i found the drawer of bent nails that you had me pull out because you said i did it all wrong and that everything i do should be done well even if it’s as small as hammering a nail into wood because this house needs to be repaired when it’s broken so that the family always has a place to live. i found a few tears in nana’s bedroom screen and fixed it for her. the time i found the first orange growing from the tree that i bought for you on your last birthday when i dragged it into the house in its green plastic pot and got dirt everywhere and said hau‘oli lä hänau papa and you looked at me like i chose this gift wisely while ma yelled because of the trail of dirt through the house. the time i started eating meat again after living in san francisco for so long because i heard joseph campbell on the radio say that life eats life and it reminded me of you and how you forced me to learn how to kill clean and cook Colleps, Things You Missed 121 our chickens when they were fully grown and how you knew that i needed to learn how to deal with that. The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell the time i opened the tool shed and smelled you in the grease crumbs on my fingertips. ...