|
The Aloha Spirit: I was always struck by the 'aloha spirit.' It actually exists and it's a beautful thing. I'll relate some experiences which stuck in my mind when I was kamaaina (Hawaiian for 'child of the land).
The Faces of Aloha
John
I met Jon, let’s call him John, when he came to visit my roommate Alan, we’ll call him Allan. Allan was a gourmet chef and part owner of a vegetarian restaurant called Lau Lima - Helping Hands. John had just started working for Allan.
John couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred sixty pounds. He was of average height but small boned and very slender. Blond hair, recently cut. It had been down to his waist he told me. If his skin had been any whiter he’d‘ve been considered an albino.
I actually heard John before I met him. He was playing the recorder and was completely engrossed as any serious mid-twenties guy might be. He didn’t play very well. At least I could not recognize any tunes nor even a melody. But he was enthusiastic and certainly put effort in practicing.
He told me he had begun playing just before he had moved to Hawaii.
John was from Long Beach and I do not know the area to make any prejudgments. Yet I do not like Southern California in a general way but there are certainly many fine people there. John was one of them.
He had gentle nature and a sensitive soul. Probably never had one fight in his entire life and would be shocked to actually find himself in a situation which called for brutality. It wasn’t that John was a coward. In fact, in his own way, I suspect he was very brave. It certainly took bravery to wear a lava lava, the traditional wrap around skirt worn by Samoan men. Had John not been so thin and white he might have made this clothing style work but then again perhaps not.
He had moved to Hawaii because he always wanted be in the islands. Similar to my own reasoning. My chance came when my fiancé and I had broken up. A friend of mine was returning to Hawaii were he had grown up and I thought if I don’t take this opportunity I may never have another so I flew over.
I was a little more savvy than John in this respect. I knew someone there so getting into the flow of the islands, known as being kamaaina, would be much easier. And it was.
But John did have an innocents luck and the islands do have more than a share of aloha spirit. It was a wonderful combination and one that may not have occurred in many places on the mainland.
John flew into the Honolulu airport which is outside of Honolulu and a fair drive if you have a car and the traffic is sparse which is rare. So getting to Honolulu or Waikiki takes a little foresight and planning.
Honolulu abuts the Koolau Mountains. Most of Honolulu which Waikiki is a part is on the flat land between this small mountain range and the sea.
John didn’t end up in Honolulu which is no black mark considering his lack of planning. He did end up on the other side of the Koolaus. In Kaneohe. Which is very ‘local’. I used to go to a gym there and shop at the Windward Mall and I can assure you John would have stood out.
As John relates it he was sitting down on a sidewalk which if you knew Kaneohe would know that many sidewalks consist of weeds where the walking lane wasn’t dirt from the many feet moving over it.
John was playing his recorder. This is eighteen months before I heard him play. The sounds at that time must have been closely related to caterwauling. Yet knowing John he gave it his all and was very intent on his music.
A local Samoan roughly the same age as John, roughly the same height as John but was an easy hundred pounds heavier than John took an interest. He stopped for a while than sat down. He didn’t say a word.
John played for about a half hour more than put the recorder away.
“Hey bruddah, were you stay?”
John had never heard pidgin before and it took a while to understand.
John, in fact, knew virtually nothing about Hawaii. He had had a dream and after graduation from UC Pomona made his decision. He never bothered to do any research nor did he know a soul there.
John explained he had just arrived and hadn’t found a place to stay. John hadn’t much money either.
“Bruddah, come stay with me and my family.”
So John moved into a very small house, hardly more than one decent sized room. The family to which he now lived with was eight in number and John’s friend was the smallest.
But this is Polynesia. This is the land of the ‘aloha spirit.’ John didn’t actually live with this Samoan family in the manner of the mainland. He lived with this family because he was family. He was not an outsider living amongst a family as Margaret Mead had. He shared the same responsibilities and joys as any family member.
It didn’t matter that John was a haole, a Caucasian. It did not matter that he knew absolutely nothing about Samoan culture or anything about Hawaii. He was family and that is all there was to it.
This is not uncommon in Hawaii. It is not a kindness in the sense we of the western culture would think of a kindness. It is about how human beings see and treat one another.
From the civil rights movement I participated in as a youth I recalled a revelation which had never occurred to me prior to my involvement. It bears repeating if the occasion warrants and it helps to understand the ‘aloha spirit’. I posit: 'there is only one race. The human race.'
That is the essence of the ‘aloha spirit.’ Differences are not what’s important. It is the similarities which are. And you cannot get any more similar than being human.
Peter Butterworth
1/16/2007
The Faces of Aloha
Jeremy
His name was Jeremy. The name didn’t fit him though no name would have. Maybe just, hey you.
I met him in Waikiki.
It was sometime after dinner and the sun was nearing its ritual and primordial bath. The sun was going to the immersion quietly. You could tell it wasn’t a young sun as it didn’t complain or struggle. The sun seemed to welcome the bathing with a graceful, unhurried charm.
I was sitting on a bench finishing an ice cream and looking at the ocean from across Kalakaua Avenue. I had sat next to an older tourist couple. From the sounds of their speech I guessed somewhere from Scandinavia.
They also had been enjoying ice cream as I. Less so, they had been enjoying the waves and ambiance of the ocean. They chatted to each other too much I thought to really see the beauty of the scene.
They left as I finished my own cup of delight. I couldn’t leave. There was a wonderful expectation and yet not an altogether newness of beauty to come.
I felt, as I often did, of how the weather was a tangible thing here in Hawaii. It caressed me in a velvety loveliness. A security. As if it said to me, there is peace within you and in the world just now.
I didn’t even notice at first a fairly young man, mid twenties I would guess later, who also sat and admired the scene as he sat at the other end of the bench.
He had turned to me and maybe even said something before I was aware of him.
He was very thin and wore textile that had once been a shirt. Bedraggled shorts and scruffy ‘slippahs’ or the familiar flip-flops so common to the locals and kamaaina.
Stringy shoulder length hair, dirt smudged face, hands and arms where I could see them rounded out his attire.
He smiled at me.
His eyes had a hooded quality; a quality of sadness though his smile was sincere and, well, happy for lack of a better word. Maybe it was just the fading light. His smile had more gaps than teeth.
I nodded. Did I really want this guy to engage me in conversation? I had seen plenty of pan-handlers and homeless in the city where I had worked and lived; San Francisco. I worked in the Tenderloin and yes, it’s the only place left on the mainland that still bore that infamous name. It was a well earned name. The poverty, the drug use, violence and crime were the worst in the city.
I didn’t give pan-handlers money anymore. I just didn’t have enough money and truthfully, I no longer had enough sympathy. One gets jaded when one sees it every day.
He seemed to recognize this but decided on initiating an interaction anyway. Maybe he needed money in a very bad way.
“Howzit, brah?”
“Good,” well, I couldn’t be truly rude not with the beauty around me and a sunset display of reds and oranges soon to awe me. Yet, what could I really say to him? I wondered how he might try to finagle some change from me.
“It’ll be a wonderful sunset, bruddah.”
I nodded as if this was true wisdom. I continued to look towards the horizon.
“Ya know, brah? I never get tired of seeing all this heah,” as he flung his arm out to encompass all of Hawaii. “It’s paradise.”
I wondered at that statement. Considering his lowly status in society I thought that was magnanimous, no that’s not correct. Brave? No, that’s not right either. It was…a sort wisdom, a maturity.
But how could this individual have wisdom? He certainly couldn’t look after himself very well. Probably had little, if any, formal education. Who would hire him?
But I concurred with his sentiment. I also never took this paradise for granted. It was beautiful each and every day. At all times of the day. I knew exactly what he felt. He smiled at me. He understood we had connected. We both recognized the specialness of this place and in this time. There was only sincerity in that smile.
I felt the first pangs of contrition. Regret for seeing the thing, the sign of poverty, the mark of difference. Regret for not seeing the individual. His smile did not hide the fact of his station in life nor did it hide the fact of his dignity. He was not asking for money with that smile.
We chatted and we both understood that as individuals in this society we really did not have common ground to relate and yet we both enjoyed the time we spent together here on this bench, here in this paradise.
We laughed together. He had a rich laugh belying his emaciation. His laugh was evident there was richness in his soul.
I could not stay to finish surveilling the sun as it began its daily ablution. I had to meet Sharyl for a glass a wine. I shook hands with Jeremy. Took his soiled, grimy hand in mine that I would have been loathe to only a few minutes earlier.
I pulled out a dollar bill; change just would not do. He took it with dignity and a smile.
I could see he understood something which I did not. I hesitated a moment wondering if this something was lost on me. Then I realized. Then I too understood.
The money I gave him was not for him. It was for me.
Peter Butterworth 1/16/2007
Hard to describe the 'aloha spirit' in words. I hope these two (of four) little vignettes suffice.
The Faces of Aloha
John
I met Jon, let’s call him John, when he came to visit my roommate Alan, we’ll call him Allan. Allan was a gourmet chef and part owner of a vegetarian restaurant called Lau Lima - Helping Hands. John had just started working for Allan.
John couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred sixty pounds. He was of average height but small boned and very slender. Blond hair, recently cut. It had been down to his waist he told me. If his skin had been any whiter he’d‘ve been considered an albino.
I actually heard John before I met him. He was playing the recorder and was completely engrossed as any serious mid-twenties guy might be. He didn’t play very well. At least I could not recognize any tunes nor even a melody. But he was enthusiastic and certainly put effort in practicing.
He told me he had begun playing just before he had moved to Hawaii.
John was from Long Beach and I do not know the area to make any prejudgments. Yet I do not like Southern California in a general way but there are certainly many fine people there. John was one of them.
He had gentle nature and a sensitive soul. Probably never had one fight in his entire life and would be shocked to actually find himself in a situation which called for brutality. It wasn’t that John was a coward. In fact, in his own way, I suspect he was very brave. It certainly took bravery to wear a lava lava, the traditional wrap around skirt worn by Samoan men. Had John not been so thin and white he might have made this clothing style work but then again perhaps not.
He had moved to Hawaii because he always wanted be in the islands. Similar to my own reasoning. My chance came when my fiancé and I had broken up. A friend of mine was returning to Hawaii were he had grown up and I thought if I don’t take this opportunity I may never have another so I flew over.
I was a little more savvy than John in this respect. I knew someone there so getting into the flow of the islands, known as being kamaaina, would be much easier. And it was.
But John did have an innocents luck and the islands do have more than a share of aloha spirit. It was a wonderful combination and one that may not have occurred in many places on the mainland.
John flew into the Honolulu airport which is outside of Honolulu and a fair drive if you have a car and the traffic is sparse which is rare. So getting to Honolulu or Waikiki takes a little foresight and planning.
Honolulu abuts the Koolau Mountains. Most of Honolulu which Waikiki is a part is on the flat land between this small mountain range and the sea.
John didn’t end up in Honolulu which is no black mark considering his lack of planning. He did end up on the other side of the Koolaus. In Kaneohe. Which is very ‘local’. I used to go to a gym there and shop at the Windward Mall and I can assure you John would have stood out.
As John relates it he was sitting down on a sidewalk which if you knew Kaneohe would know that many sidewalks consist of weeds where the walking lane wasn’t dirt from the many feet moving over it.
John was playing his recorder. This is eighteen months before I heard him play. The sounds at that time must have been closely related to caterwauling. Yet knowing John he gave it his all and was very intent on his music.
A local Samoan roughly the same age as John, roughly the same height as John but was an easy hundred pounds heavier than John took an interest. He stopped for a while than sat down. He didn’t say a word.
John played for about a half hour more than put the recorder away.
“Hey bruddah, were you stay?”
John had never heard pidgin before and it took a while to understand.
John, in fact, knew virtually nothing about Hawaii. He had had a dream and after graduation from UC Pomona made his decision. He never bothered to do any research nor did he know a soul there.
John explained he had just arrived and hadn’t found a place to stay. John hadn’t much money either.
“Bruddah, come stay with me and my family.”
So John moved into a very small house, hardly more than one decent sized room. The family to which he now lived with was eight in number and John’s friend was the smallest.
But this is Polynesia. This is the land of the ‘aloha spirit.’ John didn’t actually live with this Samoan family in the manner of the mainland. He lived with this family because he was family. He was not an outsider living amongst a family as Margaret Mead had. He shared the same responsibilities and joys as any family member.
It didn’t matter that John was a haole, a Caucasian. It did not matter that he knew absolutely nothing about Samoan culture or anything about Hawaii. He was family and that is all there was to it.
This is not uncommon in Hawaii. It is not a kindness in the sense we of the western culture would think of a kindness. It is about how human beings see and treat one another.
From the civil rights movement I participated in as a youth I recalled a revelation which had never occurred to me prior to my involvement. It bears repeating if the occasion warrants and it helps to understand the ‘aloha spirit’. I posit: 'there is only one race. The human race.'
That is the essence of the ‘aloha spirit.’ Differences are not what’s important. It is the similarities which are. And you cannot get any more similar than being human.
Peter Butterworth
1/16/2007
The Faces of Aloha
Jeremy
His name was Jeremy. The name didn’t fit him though no name would have. Maybe just, hey you.
I met him in Waikiki.
It was sometime after dinner and the sun was nearing its ritual and primordial bath. The sun was going to the immersion quietly. You could tell it wasn’t a young sun as it didn’t complain or struggle. The sun seemed to welcome the bathing with a graceful, unhurried charm.
I was sitting on a bench finishing an ice cream and looking at the ocean from across Kalakaua Avenue. I had sat next to an older tourist couple. From the sounds of their speech I guessed somewhere from Scandinavia.
They also had been enjoying ice cream as I. Less so, they had been enjoying the waves and ambiance of the ocean. They chatted to each other too much I thought to really see the beauty of the scene.
They left as I finished my own cup of delight. I couldn’t leave. There was a wonderful expectation and yet not an altogether newness of beauty to come.
I felt, as I often did, of how the weather was a tangible thing here in Hawaii. It caressed me in a velvety loveliness. A security. As if it said to me, there is peace within you and in the world just now.
I didn’t even notice at first a fairly young man, mid twenties I would guess later, who also sat and admired the scene as he sat at the other end of the bench.
He had turned to me and maybe even said something before I was aware of him.
He was very thin and wore textile that had once been a shirt. Bedraggled shorts and scruffy ‘slippahs’ or the familiar flip-flops so common to the locals and kamaaina.
Stringy shoulder length hair, dirt smudged face, hands and arms where I could see them rounded out his attire.
He smiled at me.
His eyes had a hooded quality; a quality of sadness though his smile was sincere and, well, happy for lack of a better word. Maybe it was just the fading light. His smile had more gaps than teeth.
I nodded. Did I really want this guy to engage me in conversation? I had seen plenty of pan-handlers and homeless in the city where I had worked and lived; San Francisco. I worked in the Tenderloin and yes, it’s the only place left on the mainland that still bore that infamous name. It was a well earned name. The poverty, the drug use, violence and crime were the worst in the city.
I didn’t give pan-handlers money anymore. I just didn’t have enough money and truthfully, I no longer had enough sympathy. One gets jaded when one sees it every day.
He seemed to recognize this but decided on initiating an interaction anyway. Maybe he needed money in a very bad way.
“Howzit, brah?”
“Good,” well, I couldn’t be truly rude not with the beauty around me and a sunset display of reds and oranges soon to awe me. Yet, what could I really say to him? I wondered how he might try to finagle some change from me.
“It’ll be a wonderful sunset, bruddah.”
I nodded as if this was true wisdom. I continued to look towards the horizon.
“Ya know, brah? I never get tired of seeing all this heah,” as he flung his arm out to encompass all of Hawaii. “It’s paradise.”
I wondered at that statement. Considering his lowly status in society I thought that was magnanimous, no that’s not correct. Brave? No, that’s not right either. It was…a sort wisdom, a maturity.
But how could this individual have wisdom? He certainly couldn’t look after himself very well. Probably had little, if any, formal education. Who would hire him?
But I concurred with his sentiment. I also never took this paradise for granted. It was beautiful each and every day. At all times of the day. I knew exactly what he felt. He smiled at me. He understood we had connected. We both recognized the specialness of this place and in this time. There was only sincerity in that smile.
I felt the first pangs of contrition. Regret for seeing the thing, the sign of poverty, the mark of difference. Regret for not seeing the individual. His smile did not hide the fact of his station in life nor did it hide the fact of his dignity. He was not asking for money with that smile.
We chatted and we both understood that as individuals in this society we really did not have common ground to relate and yet we both enjoyed the time we spent together here on this bench, here in this paradise.
We laughed together. He had a rich laugh belying his emaciation. His laugh was evident there was richness in his soul.
I could not stay to finish surveilling the sun as it began its daily ablution. I had to meet Sharyl for a glass a wine. I shook hands with Jeremy. Took his soiled, grimy hand in mine that I would have been loathe to only a few minutes earlier.
I pulled out a dollar bill; change just would not do. He took it with dignity and a smile.
I could see he understood something which I did not. I hesitated a moment wondering if this something was lost on me. Then I realized. Then I too understood.
The money I gave him was not for him. It was for me.
Peter Butterworth 1/16/2007
hard to describe the 'aloha spirit' in words. i hope these two little vignettes suffice.
|
