All In Good Time (papamanawaa)

Elsewhere in a blog entry I mentioned my favorite sign along Mango Road on the way to the ocean, swimming pond at Ahalanui and boat ramp at Pohoiki. 

4 years ago -- felling dead tree & beginning excavation 

4 years later -- the root takes its place as garden art

Although the sign is no longer physically there, it read simply, "It is only a matter of time." Being a fan of (Science) Science Fiction, black holes, dark matter, and quantum cosmology**, the message continues to make me smile. 
 (**One of our many landscaping beds is called "Cosmic Dancer."


When one of our first grand ohia trees died, we excavated a particularly sculptural, twisted root, setting it aside for possible garden art; that was four years ago. Being fond of all things reptilian, I saw its u-shape to be snake-like. I leaned it up against some lava and it sat along the driveway for over a year. 


Eventually, Phil got the idea to turn it upside down and hang a wind chime off each end -- and, since I'd not done anything with it I said, 'go for it.' Since then that heavy root has been relocated numerous times as other tasks took priority. 

Just recently, I uncovered an area of thick moss that I pulled up and saved in the greenhouse -- not knowing for sure where it would go. This week, however, I realized that our beautiful root would look wonderful as a garden sculpture covered with moss. 

The two photos above represent a visual example of how art percolates over time and how time sometimes has its own independent structure so to speak. The first photo is what this 15x12' area looked like after we had begun to whack back the invasive trees, vines and bushes. The second is what it looks like now, with the new moss covered root mounted on where an ohia tree once lived.

Pictured is another example of "all in good time" -- one of the first things we bought was a unique hybrid hibiscus called "Gabriel" -- which promptly succumbed to a common plight here in Hawaii -- leaf mites. It has been severely pruned three times and treated for three years and FINALLY (given time) it is now healthy and blooming. (I almost tossed it out numerous times.)

Note: In Feb 2012, we bought a house in Puna on the Big Island -- while on vacation without really having a plan for the future as such, or even a time table -- more an abstract image of what could be, and a deep trust in our creative power. We discovered two ideas of time in Hawaiian cosmology. The word "papamanawa:" Papa is the Earth-Mother-Goddess -- so we chose to move into the that space, allowing things to flow (while we put in the hard prep-work admittedly.) Another Hawaiian concept is a notion of "vertical time" -- when time stops because we are living in the moment of Nowness. Interesting to see both the philosophical and practical applications 

Winter Reading

Winter diversion -- taking a break from Science Ficion

Many people who know me also know of my life-long addition to outstanding Science Fiction; that I carefully packed and moved about 700 SF paperback to Hawaii, tidily alphabetized by author, is no longer an embarrassment.  It has been interesting to re-read some SF books that I read 35-40 years ago – to note the folded pages or scribbled annotations.  These many years later, it is easy to see how my early conversion to the genre influenced my choice to pursue cultural anthropology.  It is also noteworthy that, decades later, we can now point to black holes, and other wildly crazy cosmological phenomena as “facts” – ideas that were merely playful outlines of what “might be” when I was 25 years old.

On occasion I intuitively gravitate toward a batch of non-SF, never selected because they are “best sellers” but often because they are at someone’s garage sale, or a friend offers a personal recommendation.  Fortunate for me I have a couple friends who know me almost too well and have a preternatural ability to select books that are spot-on. Those include Ocean at the end of the Lane, and The Maddaddam Trilogy by Atwood (special mahalo to Cheryl.) If you are near the end of your favorite book, or find yourself in a state of book dearth, you may want to do a search of these or any of the following titles. 

• The Forest Lover is now tenderly battered from my third reading and from sharing with others; The Wave was an intense ride around the world learning about 100-foot waves and the water-world on which we live and depend; Cutting for Stone I found impossible to put down – a gripping story of twin brothers born in India.  (From a search about the author I discovered this book was #1 on President Obama’s summer reading list.)  Finally is Flight Behavior, an intensely personal journey of self-discovery and how the most delicate of behaviors, like the Monarch butterfly, can teach us about ourselves and our world.

Threats?

I am not sure how I feel about the pop-up I received from the Norton Anti-Virus software today, not that I don't get one every month.  The stats included:  62,987 Known Threats & 5,394 Known Attacks

I don't even know how to think about that, or "that many" threats all simply associated with my computer.  It prompted me to think about a variety of threats (not including the lava that has so preoccupied our awareness for the last few months here in Pahoa, Hawaii.)  So I pulled up a "top 10" list of threats from the Huffington Post from 10/27/2010, and was surprised to find some of my"personal favorites" missing.

• Bio-Engineered Terrorism*
• Solar Flare/EM Pulse/Cyber Collapse*
• Nanotechnology* (my personal favorite)
• Climate Change
• Artificial Intelligence* (smart software)

*Even though I read Science Fiction regularly (as indicated by my additional threats,) it is interesting to me is how little time I actually pend thinking about any of them -- as actual threats.    Things change; shit happens.  The recent hurricanes and lava have presented us all with a chance to look at how little control we have in our lives, and how much our attitude affects the final outcome.

Or, in the words from two of my all-time favorite SF books/movies:

"Live in fear - be a slave." (from "Blade Runner")

"Fear is the little death; fear is the mind killer." (from "Dune)

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