Under the Blue White Rainbow

 

I have heard Aboriginal elders say that spirits that are getting ready to come into a body lie in wait in certain waters, waiting for the right opportunity. I think stories can be like that. Even when you think you have left a certain story behind, it may be waiting for you, seeking an opportunity to enter you and come alive in you again.

 A certain story has been after me since my first visit to Hawaii, back in 1998, and I'll be glad if it comes after me again.

 During my first days in Hawaii, I found myself in a waking dream. The whole landscape was so vividly alive. Early on the morning of my birthday, I swam at Waimea Beach, on the wild north shore of Oahu, under gentle rain. Leaning towers of cloud and mist rose from the gorge behind the beach. A woman in a wetsuit was going down to the water; her hair was golden seaweed. From the water’s edge, the ocean floor slanted down sudden and deep. I slid into warm, gentle surf.

 I was delighted by a rainbow that appeared to be anchored half a mile away, to my left, by a rocky headland. The rainbow curved over the sea, opening a gateway – bluegreen to begin with, brightening as the sun burst through into the full, vivid spectrum.

 I wanted to swim under the rainbow. It looked like a gate to another dimension. I struck out strongly, beating my legs, towards the rainbow gate. When I raised my chin above the water to check on my progress, I found the rainbow was steadily receding into the distance. Everyone knows you can’t ever catch up with a rainbow, right?

 But now the sea turtles came. First a baby, then a whole pod. I swam among them, kicking hard to keep up. Sea turtles can be fast. 

We swam together to the place of the rainbow. Its brightness had gone, yet something of it seemed to hang in the air. I saw a beautiful soft bluegreen arch above me.

I wrote sloppy haiku on the beach. The woman with seaweed hair approached me.

"I saw you swimming with the sea turtles."

"Yes."

"I am a caller of sea turtles," she announced, quite matter-of-factly. I did not doubt her. "Are you a poet?" she asked me.

 "Sometimes."

She asked me to read what I had written. How do you refuse a caller of sea turtles with golden seaweed for hair?

I want to go under
The rainbow’s ocean gate
Sea turtle takes me through

I returned to Hawaii the following year, and on another early morning, when I was alone on a white beach in early sunlight farther along the coast, a shark came out of the gentle surf and became a woman.

Life rhymes. When I first started teaching public workshops in Active Dreaming, the venue was often a store called Blue White Rainbow. 

 Years passed, and I began to write a novel-length story involving a man whose idea of paradise is a lot like Hawaii; not surprising, since the word Hawaii, I am told, is a contraction of Hawaiiki, a Polynesian term for paradise. So when he dies, my character finds himself traveling to a place like one of the Hawaiian islands where life after life is good until things start to fall apart because it's time for him to move on. I did not complete this book. It lies in a great pile of other unfinished manuscripts.

I am thinking of how stories may lie in wait in certain waters, like those spirits waiting to be born. I'll be happy if my Hawaiian story chooses to find me again.

Digital art by RM

Hold the vision in your mind so you do not become lost

Long before Columbus, the Polynesians discovered and settled virtually every island group in the Pacific, creating a single sphere of cultural life that covered nearly 10 million square miles of the earth's surface. Polynesian sailors crossed the sea in open catamarans, made with tools of stone, bone and coral, their sails woven from pandanus. They sailed without maps, compasses or instruments.    

According to Polynesian tradition, the first human to see Easter Island was a dream traveler and the island was settled because a young king trusted the traveler’s story and acted upon it.     In a time of savage warfare among the Polynesian islanders, a priest named Hau Maka, who was also the royal tattooist, went scouting for a new home for his people. He flew across the ocean in a dream and saw Rapa Nui (Easter Island). On returning from his dream journey, he described the island and its location in great detail to his young chief, Hotu Matu’a.    

The king trusted Hau Maka’s dream. He gathered all of his people and ordered them to prepare for a long sea journey to a new land. The people set sail with everything they had. After two months, they reached Anakena Bay on Easter Island, and found it just as the king’s tattooist had described.     

Polynesians crossed more than 2,000 miles of the Pacific to find and settle Hawaii in the same way.     

Captain Cook saw the skills of the wayfinder when he took the Polynesian navigator Tupaia with him on a voyage of more than 13,000 km from Tahiti to New Zealand. Cook noted that at all times the wayfinder knew the exact direction of Tahiti.    It was hard for the outside world to understand or credit their extraordinary prowess as navigators until the Polynesian Voyaging Society launched a double-hulled catamaran, dubbed the Hokule'a (the Hawaiian name for Arcturus, the sacred star of Hawaii) in 1975, and Hawaiians crossed the seas the old-fashioned way.     

Nainoa Thompson and the organizers brought a master navigator, a wayfinder or waymaker, from Micronesia to train the crew. His name was Mau Piailug. He was born on a coral islet smaller than one square mile, in the Caroline islands. His father and his grandfather were wayfinders. They began his training by keeping him in a tidal pool for hours when he was an infant. When he became seasick on his first sea voyage, aged eight, they tide him to the back of the canoe by a rope and dragged him through open waters until the nausea passed. When he was fourteen, he tied his own testicles to the rigging of a canoe to become fully sensitive to the movements.    He learned to read the coming of a storm in a halo round the moon and in the movement of dolphins heading for sheltered waters.    

In preparing the crew of the Hokule'a for the voyage to Tahiti, he trained them to read wind and water, stars and birds, as he did. The master class took them deeper. On a point of land on Oahu, he had them spin until their senses were blurred and then tasked them to turn, eyes closed, in the direction of the island that was their destination.     When satisfied they were pointing the right way, he told them: "Go there. Be there with all of your senses." He wanted them to grow the destination so strong, in their minds and their inner senses, that they would bring the island towards them, Finally, he instructed them, "Hold the vision in your mind so you do not become lost."

Image: Hokule'a

Hawaiian traditions of dreaming

How much a culture understands of the practice of dreaming is reflected in the variety and specificity of the terms it uses for different types of dream experience. The Hawaiian language contains a rich vocabulary for dreaming that makes a delightful study.

     A general word for dreams in Hawaiian is moe'uhane, generally translated as "soul sleep" but better understood as "night experiences of the soul", since for traditional Hawaiians, dreaming is very much about traveling. The soul makes excursions during sleep. It slips out of the regular body, often through the tear duct, described as the "soul pit" and travels in a "body of wind". During sleep the dreamer also receives visitations from gods (akua) and ancestral guardian spirits (aumakua) who may take the form of a bird or a fish or a plant.

     Like all practical dreamers, the Hawaiians recognize that there are big dreams and little dreams. You don't want to pay too much attention to a "wild goatfish dream" (moe weke pahulu), which is caused by something you ate or how fast you ate it. The colorful term is derived from popular belief that eating the heads of goatfish - at other times a delicacy - in the wrong season, when bad winds are blowing, causes sickness and troubling but meaningless dreams.

     On the other hand, you want to recognize that a dream may contain the memory of a trip into the future that can give you information of the highest practical importance. Especially helpful is the "straight-up" dream (moe pi'i pololei) that is clear and requires no interpretation. There are "wishing" dreams (moemoea) that show you something you are pining for, which may or may not be attainable in ordinary reality. There are "revelations of the night" (ho'ike na ka po) that carry the power of prophecy.

     A most interesting category of Hawaiian dreams are those - believed to be gifts of the guardian ancestral spirits - that are given to promote the healing of relations within a family or community. Dreams are also given by the aumakua to promote personal healing. The ancestral spirits deliver "night names" (inoa po) for babies that are on the way, and cautionary tales are told of misfortune that comes when the parents ignore a baby name delivered in a dream.

      The Hawaiians pay special attention to visions that come on the cusp between sleep and waking (hihi'o) believing that these are especially likely to contain clear communication from the spirits and "straight up" glimpses of things that will unfold.
      In our dream travels, we may be united with a "dream husband" (kane o ka po) or a "dream wife" (wahine o ka po). This can be pleasurable and even compelling, but Hawaiian lore teaches caution. Spend too much time outside your regular body in your "body of wind" and the physical organism may start to weaken and languish. You also want to be alert to deceivers who may take on the form of alluring sexual partners but are actually something else, like tricky mo'o, a kind of water imp. We want to bring energy from our juiciest dreams into embodied life and not leave it out there.

      A favorite Hawaiian legend tells how a goddess accomplished this. Pele, on her volcanic island, was stirred by rhythmic drumming from far off. She left her body in her lava bed, charging her attendants not to rouse her for three days on any account. She traveled far in her "body of wind" and finally found the source of the magical drumming is a luau being held by a handsome prince. The goddess and the prince fell for each other and spent three days making love before Pele returned to the body she had left in her lava bed. Being a goddess, she was then able to arrange for her prince to be transported to the Big Island to live with her as her consort. Humans may find this kind of transfer harder to effect, but it's always worth a try! 

     We have a wonderfully accessible introduction to these traditions by Caren Loebel-Fried: Hawaiian Legends of Dreams (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press). Illustrated with the author's own lively woodcuts and drawing on excellent research among the Beckwith and E.S. Craighill Handy papers in the Bishop Museum, this book takes us deeply and effortlessly into the language and lore of Hawaiian dreaming and is suitable for readers from middle school to sagehood..

    Loebel-Fried's retelling of Pele's dream journey to Lohi'au and of the dream that led to the discovery of the hidden spring of Punahou, under a hala (pandanus) tree are especially engaging and instructive. The famous Punahou school in Honolulu stands at the site of that secret spring, and the school seal includes the image of a hala tree with a spring of fresh water flowing beneath it.  

   Caren generously gave permission for me to use her woodcut of "The Dream of Pele" on the cover of my poetry collection, Here Everything Is Dreaming. One of my longer poems, "Moe'uhane: Island Dreaming" evokes the richness of Hawaiian traditions of dreaming. It begins:

Dreaming is when soul wakes up

and goes traveling.

You may fly across the water

in your body of wind

following the drumming of the waves

to spend the night with your dream lover.

Even goddesses do this.

Art: Carel Loebel-Fried, "The Dream of Pele"

On Pele's Island

The dreamers breakfast on kona coffee
and tropical fruit and stories
of shapeshifting overnight:
plant into human and back again,
black boar into lava rock,
swimmer into shark god, 
white woman into brown-skinned priestess, 
singer into dragonfly whose lover is the wind. 
Forms are fluid, everything quivers
at the edge of becoming something else. 
What else would you expect,
where the land is a thin blanket
over the molten body of a hot goddess, 
rising from her bed below the sea floor? 


- Kalani, February 17, 2014


Phot0: Kalani coast 2014 (c) Robert Moss

Wayfinding on the road to Hana

road to Hana; photo from http://hanaohana.com/   

On my second visit to Hawaii, I flew to Maui and set off along the notorious road to Hana. Glorious views of sea and waterfalls and rushing streams, but a test for drivers; over 50 miles of switchbacks, hairpin bends, and innumerable one-lane bridges. You must reckon the distance by curves rather than miles. The most common road sign reads, “Yield to Oncoming Vehicles”. Another directs you to honk before blind curves where the road narrows above the cliffs so two cars cannot pass.     
    I turned on the car radio and caught the beginning of a public radio discussion of a TV program airing that night on Wayfinding, the ancient Polynesian art of navigation. Nainoa Thompson, the Hawaiian leader of a team that built a double-hulled voyaging canoe dubbed Hokule'a (the Hawaiian name for Arcturus) and sailed it 2500 miles to Tahiti without modern instruments in the 1970s, described the course in navigation he received from a master navigator the Hawaiians had brought from Micronesia to help train them in the ancient ways.

    The master navigator gathered the Hawaiian crew at night on a point of land on Oahu. He asked them to turn in the direction of Tahiti, 2500 miles away. Using the stars, they did this. When they had turned towards the island, he told them, “Now see the island.” When they could do this – when they could see and touch Tahiti with all of their inner senses – he directed, “Hold the vision in your mind or you will get lost.” This was the master class in ancient Polynesian navigation!

   In the TV program (part of which I caught that night) someone spoke of “pointing the canoe in a certain direction and bringing the island to the canoe” – rather than heading for the island.

   Out on the ocean, Polynesian navigators read the dome of the heavens, the winds, the sea animals, and the waves. But the key is holding to the vision. When you do that, you establish a magnetic current that draws your destination towards you.
   That is marvelous guidance for life navigation.

Here, everything is dreaming

Moe’uhane

Island Dreaming

Dreaming is soul sleep

but even more it’s traveling.

You may fly across the water

in your body of wind

following the drumming of the waves

to spend the night with your dream lover.

Even goddesses do this.

Pele left her lava bed for three days

to make love with her dream prince.

Being a goddess, she could bring him home.

It’s harder for humans. Spend too long

with your dream spouse

without bringing him home

and you sicken like rotting silver.

You need to check who you’re sleeping with

because spirits take many forms.

If your prince is a water imp in disguise

you’ll go fish belly white and moist

on the side that rests next to him.

You must learn the vocabulary of dreams.

Never confuse a wild goatfish dream

that begins and ends in your belly

with a dream that comes true

because it’s the memory of a trip to the future.

Don’t mix up a wishing dream with revelation.

Be alert to the visions that open and shut

like lobster pots, quick and true,

on the edges of sleep and waking.

Use the dreams that are given to heal a family

and dreams that show you how to heal yourself.

In beauty and terror, as redbirds or lovely sharks,

as windflowers or razorbacks or honeycreepers,

gods and ancestors are talking, talking.

They show us life’s hidden springs.

They compose songs in us. They give

night names for babies that are coming.

They save our skins when they are worth saving.

Learn to discern when you can sweeten a dream

and soften the sharp future it portends

and when you have to swallow it straight up.

For a second opinion, listen to the birds

or to a bird-man who talks to the wind

or might sail a blossom canoe for you

over submarine tattoos in a gourd filled with water.

In the islands, everything has a body of wind.

In the morning garden, you notice the pandanus

has walked to the far side of the pond

where the fish dream open-eyed;

a palm swapped places with an avenging angel.

Even the land snail goes flying at night

and is the preferred scout of the fiercest goddess.

To become a native of these islands

you must grow double vision, reading signs

in the world and the world-behind-the-world

without going crazy. Persevere

and all your dramas will lead

to the Place of Leaping

where fresh water meets salt water

and you’ll drop your old body

and travel on, as bird or fish or zephyr

to the land tourists never see on the horizon.

Here, everything is dreaming.

On a white beach in the early light

a shark came out of the waters

and became a graceful silver woman

who claimed me as her mate,

there on the embracing sand.

She was so lovely I was not put off

by her hammerhead eyes.

I wonder what unexplainable love child

is swimming out there, in the deep.