Singing along with the Land
When I was a young girl living in Hawaii I used to spend hours upon hours outside riding my bike & climbing trees looking for menehune. I went barefoot as much as possible except when shoes were absolutely required & even then it was just cheap rubber flip flops so that when I lost them my mother wouldn’t get too mad. I got mistaken for a boy a lot. I kept my hair short because I hated brushing it hated showering hated all those things my mother wanted me to do so I would be a well-behaved young lady. I smelled like ocean like dirt like horses. My mother called me filthy. I called it glorious.
Growing up near water as a baby I swam before I could walk. Even now I like to live near water. My grandmother says she is like this too. When I’m away I carry conch shells to hear that ocean song when I’m longing for it. An astrologer once told me it’s because my moon is in Cancer. If that means my heart is an ocean, then yes I suppose that’s true.
It’s not too well insulated in the small home where I live now, which I like because I can hear the ocean & other things too like the rain falling on the roof & when it gets windy it rocks my home so hard my first winter, coming from places where I knew hurricanes & tornadoes, I was afraid it would fall over but it never did. This wind here is fierce but it does no harm, only shapes the landscape in a harmonious way like a strong current cuts through the rock.
In Hawaii in school we got to learn some language, a little hula & a little bit about how to play the ukelele. I was never good at string instruments but I did like hula. We got to learn the original names of all the places & so many of their stories. My favorite were the Maui stories & when I got to visit these places I got to see them there all those old spirits like Haleakala where Maui captured the sun.
I think it was a good way to learn about the land & even now as I move through different places, I like to learn their names & stories which can sometimes be harder to come by. But I think there is something universal that sits behind language, because what is language but an expression of what is & what cannot be forgotten. I think it’s possible to learn a language but not really know how to speak it. Like learning a story & not really understanding what it means in that heart-connection kind of way. & I think even if the words are long forgotten & long unspoken in the landscapes where I walk, I can sit still & quiet & listen & be, like a lonely flower blooming amongst the bushes & feel that language. It’s good when we have the words so we can sing along with the land. But even if words can somehow get forgotten, I think their original meaning cannot.
Images are digital scans of 35mm color film I intentionally sent through the x-ray scanner.
