16th Ave Sweetness
A celebration of existence beyond survival..
This week the islands have been hit with torrential downpours. The streams on the farm flash-flooded, swallowing the bridges to the point that a car couldn’t get in or out for hours. As alarming as a racing waterway can be, it also serves as a passage for the influx of water to then leave.. As the rains came to rest, so did a pair of Koloa Maoli, endangered Hawaiian ducks, swimming in a makeshift pond where the water runoff hadn’t yet been absorbed into the earth. I cherish the juxtaposition of these moments: witnessing the chaos of the natural world, and the unfazed serenity that follows. The sun emerges as though the skies had not been seeping, and loving mates find solace in the remnants.
Other scenes I wish to memorialize, country charms I cherish:
The obstruction in our neighbor’s culvert that’d caused his driveway to flood. What did he find? An entire pig that’d succumb to the storm and drifted down stream.
Homes surrounded with water so deep that boys of the backroads took to jumping off rooflines into the massive pools below, no care that the swampy fluids may well be mixed with sewage. Country boys find a way to play in natural chaos, among the reasons I adore them. The boys of Kahaluʻu took this as an opportunity to go mud bogging on public easements. Videos doing donuts off rural highways went viral, and the city promptly came in with yellow signs forbidding such behavior. City folk find ways to kill play under the guise of greater good.
In times like this, it’s best to let the farm settle—equipment and vehicles will only exacerbate the muck. My dad and I work in the greenhouse, joined by the new barn cat, Ziggy, a sweet grey and beige calico with piercing golden eyes. Papa found her at a job site last month. He’s never been a cat guy, nor is he a texter.. so you can imagine my surprise when I received a text from him with a photo of this little cat, and his willingness to bring her home.
I spend a lot of time feeling like I need to prove to Papa my work ethic, showing him all the ways I can care for the farm. But I see the puakenikeni tree is filled with more blooms than ever, and announce my decision to pick flowers and make lei for my Kumu Hula. He says that sounds like a nice way to spend the day, with no judgement or disappointment for lacking in productivity by his standards.
After I gather what I can from the ground, I climb up onto the walls of the greenhouse, hanging off the eaves to pluck the puakenikeni above the roofline. The process of picking is meditative, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed this. As I place handfuls of fragrant blossoms into my basket, I glance over to see Ziggy rubbing against Papa’s shins. He stops what he’s doing and bends down to pet her. Add it to the scenes I wish to memorialize. My Papa is a good man, but he’s become an even better one as he learns to soften.
I tailor each lei to the spirit of my five Kumu and present them after class the following day. They were received with much gratitude, but one Kumu was absent. I placed her lei back in the brown paper bag I’d brought it in, unsure whether I could give it, imbued with intentions, to someone else—ultimately deciding I’d return it to the tree it had come from.
I spend the rest of the afternoon with a close friend in her new home, an old three story walk-up in the heart of a humble neighborhood. She tells me to come up the back way, and as I pass the moped repair shop that anchors the building’s base, I see a woman in her thirties sitting in the stoop with bags tucked alongside her.
The area I was raised and still reside in was known as one of the rougher areas of the island. It’s softened some, over the decades, as outsiders have infiltrated. But it is engrained in me to be wary of people. You never know what to expect, with the meth and mental health crisis afoot. The one time I let my guard down in the city I got assaulted from behind, which has bolstered my inclination to brace myself as I pass an outlier.
She’s not phased by my passing. Her gaze is empty but her thoughts seemed there. Between her race and the puffy jacket she wears, and how she inhabits each, I can tell she’s not from here. She’s an outlier for sure, but one that does not seem so threatening. She doesn’t seem sick or strung out, just sort of lost and somber.
I don’t leave my friendʻs apartment until ten thirty at night. The one bedroom unit has tall popcorn ceilings, and windows that overlook classic board-and-batten sided, single-walled homes built in the 30’s. “It’s perfect,” I tell her.
We spend three hours sitting in the living room, surrounded by piles of books and records and knick knacks. I listen as she divulges the details of her relationship, and envisioned life trajectories. We spend another three hours in bed, respectively working on our computer projects. I, a piece entitled Business or Pleasure..?, and she, a flyer for her upcoming gig. She breaks to make us dinner, a fried chorizo, tomato and egg scramble atop toast. We eat side by side in bed with little lap trays. Afterwards we sip on eclectic mugs of black tea with cream, recounting our awkward eras— which constituted the majority of our lives. We end the evening in fits of laughter, going back and forth reading our google search histories aloud. I could pinpoint when we’d last spoken on the phone because my history was inundated with google searches for g strings, after sheʻd announced she was on the hunt for the perfect panty. As we concluded the search, she says, "it's like a food desert but for underwear," and I still laugh when I think about it.
It’s ten fourty-five when I leave, but the evening is light, illuminated by the moon and a few streetlights. The woman on the stoop is still there.
I pull the remaining lei out of the brown paper bag so that I may smell it on the drive home, but I feel like I’m supposed to give it to the woman. I brush it off the bizarre thought, as I exit the side street and onto the main avenue. The feeling intensifies. “Really?” I ask, and my naʻau confirms. The streets are sleepy and no one is out, so I reverse all the way back to her stoop. I stop in the middle of the street, and hop out of the old pickup truck.
As I offer it, sheʻs understandably confused at the gesture—as am I. She says it’s very beautiful, but she has no use for it. I tell her that everyone can use a little sweetness, and it needs no purpose beyond that. I set it beside her and went off with the night.
The feeling of her spirit lingers with me, and when I consider that feeling, I am reminded of Anjan Chatterjee’s The Aesthetic Brain, a book I read for Philosophy of Art. His entire premise is that evolutionary psycology has informed how we’ve come to see beauty. Bright, bountiful landscapes are idealized because we are hardwired to see them as easier for survival. In famine, a full figure is beautiful because it implies wealth. In times of excess, a slender frame is glamorized because it shows discipline. The romantic gesture of a man offering flowers to a woman dates back to prehistoric times, and was significant because it showed he was so good at providing, he could take the time to gather something that offered no benefit to basic survival. The frivolous beauty was a symbol of thriving. Similar examples are a peacock’s tail or a buck’s antlers. These ornaments expend excessive energy and make them more vulnerable to predators. To bare them regardless serves as symbol of fitness and survival, attracting mates.
Offering modes of survival, like food or money, are necessary, but also conveys an imbalance. It reinforces the narrative that one is in need, without means. But flowers… Flowers are a celebration of existence beyond survival.
We dance to show the Gods we are grateful. We offer flowers to show we are thriving. Perhaps, when we are neither of those things, engaging with these symbols will suggest an alternative trajectory, and signal to the universe that we are ready.
I don’t know that woman’s story. It didn’t feel like my place to ask, nor was she looking to share. But for whatever reason, the universe aligned this to be. The romantic in me wants to believe that this could be her scene to memorialize, her island charm to cherish: a time, quarter ‘till eleven, when a girl emerged from an old white tacoma to offer her a lei. The idealist in me hopes that she remembers this from a place so self-assured, the lostness she felt in that moment was but a blip. A fond reminder of her full-circle.
Either way, my Kumu Hula enjoyed this story of where her lei came to be.