I am fucking consumed with optimism, ambition, and a sense of purpose. And anger. I went to the heiau again, and the sun was drowning me in yellow rays of hope. Pā mai nei ka lā ma koʻu ʻili. Whatever isn’t forbidden is compulsory. Heads will roll, and storms will follow. But in this moment, I rule myself, and the world lies before me. And what I do next has to make a difference. Because until this moment, I have pissed on what was given to me. I make the same mistake over and over again. I know the wall is hard, but I can put my hard head through it this time. I miss my kids, and I love every single person I have ever loved. Aloha for me is not something that goes away. Not with betrayal. Not with lies. Certainly not with disappointment. Aloha means love among many other things. You don’t need to know ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi to know what it means. It’s that feeling in your chest when you pick up your daughter after her first day of kindergarten. It’s the smile that beams when you buy an unhoused kupuna a sandwich. I’m rambling, but my point is it’s all connected. Hewa in the right hand becomes hewa in the left. Aloha spreads the same way. You can’t keep it until you freely give it away.
Animal fat
I’m going to sit here and listen to pop music. Blurred lines. It is mayonnaise. Bread is easier to chew with animal fat. She would say how does meditating bring animal fat in to your mind? Why can’t you just breathe? Count down. Okay, 100. 99. 98. 97. 96. 68. Turn the lights on. I cannot. I cannot breathe.
You are not dumb. But you are not smart. What’s upsetting to me is that you’re not concerned about what you don’t know. You like being stupid. Not stupid, ignorant. You like not knowing the answer. For me? Never. I have to know why. You? You want a dark-skinned stranger to make the margarine flat on the bread. Me? I’m looking for butter.
God
What monsters are alive right now when god is not awake? The time is short. Spacetime is a difficult concept. Matter bends spacetime in a way that’s difficult to wrap your mind around. Matter moves spacetime. More matter, more movement. But your and my time is short. We don’t live in the capacity of spacetime. I mean, we do, but our capacity to understand can only see years. Minutes. Sometimes, seconds make a difference in our understanding. Time, as we speak about it, though, is a human construct.
We talk about what I would do if Hitler were alive. Read. Read. And then read. Know. They aren’t putting Jews in an oven. But this is what happens first.
Consensus
The thing about doing the right thing. You’re probably going to piss someone off. There is no consensus. Think about it. What question has a consensus answer? Beatles or Stones? Creamy or chunky? Tits or ass? You want to go a little deeper? Buddha or Jesus? They both kind of said the same thing. There is no such thing as everyone agrees unless someone with a gun is pointing it and saying, “Agree!” At that point, come on. I’ll say anything with a gun in my face or a knife at my throat. The irony is we’re all the same. We’re all exactly the same. There were different traumas along the way. We’re all verily, similarly fucked up. In the same way, when you watch Discovery, and you thought chimpanzees were herbivores, and then they rip a monkey’s head off. I mean, you understand they have to eat, but that was violent in a way you don’t learn at the zoo.
Thatʻs not funny
These jokes are funny only if someone doesn’t know you. When they know you’re not lying. When they know it’s the truth. The irony is that’s what’s funny. Lies aren’t funny. You laugh at a clown because he painted a face over the truth. When you know the clown, it’s not haha funny. The paint comes off sooner or later.
Lā Kūʻokoʻa
Today, November 28, is the day that the independence of the Hawaiian Kingdom is “celebrated.” I vacillate about how I feel about this. My natural tendency is to be skeptical about arbitrary (i.e., man-made) constructs of “nation,” or even “independence” as it is used in this context. Independent from exactly whom or what? The kānaka of ko pae ʻāina were here for millennia before the European and American colonial powers happened upon us. In 1843, their recognition that nā aupuni kahiko already existed, that a real Lāhui already was flourishing in a place that they “discovered” was an external recognition. We already knew who we were. Kauikeaouliʻs attempt to diplomatically protect Hawaiʻi from the onslaught of impending imperialism was not a declaration of independence. It was an identification to the world. And in the end, it only delayed the dam break of change brought on by disease, capitalist-driven greed, corruption, and the ideas of Euro-American (aka white) superiority.
The recognition of independence was militarily usurped by America when it became convenient and beneficial to do so, and summarily ignored by Europe. What is there to celebrate from this legacy?
Here is where I vacillate. Because I do celebrate Lā Kūʻokoʻa. I celebrate the intricate, aloha ʻāina-based society that was already independent. I celebrate a society that was able to support a population (comparable in size to what exists today) with innovative, sustainable methods of land, water, and resource management, food independence, and spirituality. Modern Hawaiʻi, with all of its modern technology, would starve in less than a month if the ships and planes stopped coming. I celebrate the Lāhui that has survived every effort, both natural and invasive, to eradicate it. I celebrate the resurgence of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi to a degree that was unimaginable (with the exception of some very special kānaka mākua). I celebrate what I see happening on social media; Kānaka TikTok is a vibrant, living community. I celebrate the new ways of teaching at every level, from preschool to university. I celebrate that we now acknowledge the diaspora and are actively looking for ways to bring people home. (I was away for 25 years, and there were times I thought I would never come back.) I celebrate that I feel pilina to everything I am trying to describe.
Our kūʻokoʻa is not given to us by recognition from any “other.” Our kūʻokoʻa, our ea, exist in us. They exist in the Lāhui. They exist in the aupuni, in whatever form it has come to take in 2025. Kānaka maoli came very close to extinction. I celebrate that this did not happen. I celebrate the future, a future I did not even know was possible. That future is now.
Aloha Lā Kūʻokoʻa.