Natural Impressions: Hele me kahau 'oli

Ka Makau

The makau (fish hook) holds the past while grasping the thread of the future. We need to reach forward using nä mea kapu, those sacred things, those customs and mo‘olelo to set the rudder. To look back at the wake of your coming, pick your star in the future and set the steering paddle.

The fish hook, like the cross of Christianity, has both a mundane and a spiritual form. In Hawai‘i it is the central philosophical and spiritual symbol. It symbolizes the connection between heaven and earth; it helps us reach to the heavens.

Cast a hook and catch a star in heaven; hold it fast so that we may partake of the collective ancestral spirit and wisdom and be spiritually sustained.

In the mundane, the hook fetches up the secrets of the kai hohonu (deep ocean). Cast a hook and partake of the gifts from below so we may be physically sustained on our life’s journey....

"If you are blinded by the many lights on the byways of Hawai‘i today, all you have to do is look to the heavens. The stars have shifted constantly, and yet are in the same place upon the appointed hour. They’re solid as the fluid world of Te Moananui (the vast ocean). Everything is changing and yet everything is the same - Sam Ka'ai

Earth Song

I heard the spring wind whisper
Above the brushwood fire,
The world is made forever
Of transport and desire.
I am the breath of being,
The primal urge of things;
I am the whirl of star dust,
I am the lift of wings.

I am the splendid impulse
That comes before the thought,
The joy and exaltation
Wherein the life is caught.

Across the sleeping furrows
I call the buried seed,
And blade and bud and blossom
Awaken at my need.

Within the dying ashes
I blow the sacred spark,
And make the hearts of lovers
To leap against the dark.

I heard the spring light whisper
Above the dancing stream,
The world is made forever
In likeness of a dream.

I am the law of planets,
I am the guide of man;
The evening and the morning
Are fashioned to my plan.

I tint the dawn with crimson,
I tinge the sea with blue;
My track is in the desert,
My trail is in the dew.

I paint the hills with colour,
And in my magic dome
I light the star of evening
To steer the traveller home.

Within the house of being,
I feed the lamp of truth
With tales of ancient wisdom
And prophecies of youth.

I heard the spring rain murmur
Above the roadside flower,
The world is made forever
In melody and power.

I keep the rhythmic measure
That marks the steps of time,
And all my toil is fashioned
To symmetry and rhyme.

I plow the untilled upland,
I ripe the seeding grass,
And fill the leafy forest
With music as I pass.

I hew the raw, rough granite
To loveliness of line,
And when my work is finished,
Behold, it is divine!

I am the master-builder
In whom the ages trust.
I lift the lost perfection
To blossom from the dust.

Then Earth to them made answer,
As with a slow refrain
Born of the blended voices
Of wind and sun and rain,

This is the law of being
That links the threefold chain:
The life we give to beauty
Returns to us again - poetry by: Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

i n s p i o r á i d

Remember, there are no mistakes, only lessons. Love yourself, trust your choices, and everything is possible - Chérie Carter-Scott

. . ★ . . :: Sharon Mau is a freelance photographer, journalist and conceptual artist based on the beautiful tropical island of 'ihi-kapu-lau-māewa more commonly known as Maui Hawaii - Paradise on Earth - Island of Rainbows, specializing primarily in tropical flowers and beaches :: . . ★ . .

Personal Interests :

Photography - Nature - Linguistics - Philosophy (philosophie, from Old French, from Latin philosophia, from Greek philosophi, from philosophos, lover of wisdom)

Bliss

(blɪs) — n

1. extreme happiness; ecstasy; utter joy or contentment

2. paradise; heaven

By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more...

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage
save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths - thy fields
Are not a spoil for him
thou dost arise
And shake him from thee;
the vile strength he wields for earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send'st him,
shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling,
to his gods,
where haply lies his petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities,
bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans,
whose huge ribs make their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys,
and,
as the snowy flake, they melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar alike the armada's pride,
or spoils of Trafalgar.

Thy shores are empires,
changed in all save thee Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?

Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since:
their shores obey the stranger, slave or savage;
their decay has dried up realms to deserts
not so thou,

Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow
Such as creation's dawn beheld,
thou rollest now.

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests;
in all time calm or convulsed-in breeze,
or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole,
or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving;
boundless, endless and sublime

The image of eternity-the throne
Of the invisible;
even from out thy slime the monsters of the deep are made;
each zone obeys thee;
thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

And I have loved thee, ocean!
And my joy of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne,
like thy bubbles,
onward
from a boy I wanton'd with thy breakers they to me were a delight;
and if the freshening sea made them a terror
'twas a pleasing fear,

For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane as I do here.

From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Canto iv. Stanza 183 by Lord George Gordon Noel Byron (1788 - 1824)

Natural Impressions

18 July 2010

Hele me kahau 'oli

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