No Arguing Over Poi

Even though my English vocabulary must have been fairly large by the time I was speaking Hawaiian, I wasn't thinking in English. It's hard for me to believe that, but I know it's true because I have numerous memories from the next few months of trying to think in English and falling back on Hawaiian.

My Hawaiian friends didn't know that at first. They thought I was just holding back.

I started singing the songs Lani sang. I wouldn't sing when he did, because I thought that adding my voice would spoil it. But afterward I would repeat the songs. One day I surprised them by singing a song Lani had not sung for days, and which they hadn't heard me sing before. Lono asked how I could remember so well. I said, I didn't know, I just could. I told them I could remember every single one of the songs, by the sound of it, without always knowing what the words meant.

They asked me what was the first song I recalled. I said I remembered a song from before I met them. When I agreed to sing it for them I'm sure at that moment they were both thinking they were finally going to hear me speaking English. Instead I sang the entire 19 lines of the Kaulilua song that I had heard once when I was 5 or 6 months old, nearly two years earlier.

The Smithsonian Folkways series has a tape and a CD called Hawaiian Drum Dance Chants (at the link you can hear excerpts). It has archival recordings of numerous old performances. There are 25 tracks on the tape. Tracks 10, 11, 18, 20, and 22 (110, 111, 118, 120, and 122 on the CD) present different versions of the same Kaulilua song. The liner notes include the words and two translations one from 1935 and one from 1952, both by Mary Kawena Pukui (mistakenly called Pukai in several places on the CD information page). A version of this is what I had remembered phonetically:

1. Kaulīlua i ke anu Wai'ale'ale
2. O ka maka hālalo ka lehua makanoe
3. O ka lihilihi kukū iā no 'Aipō
4. O ka hulu a'a 'ia o Haua'iliki
5. A i pēhia e ua 'eha ka nahele
6. O māui e ka pua 'uwe 'eha i ke anu
7. O ke kūkuna wai lehua a'o Mokihana
8. Ua hana 'ia e ka pono a ua pololei
9. Ua hā'ina 'ia aku nō 'iā 'oe
10. O ke ola no 'ia o kia'i loko.
11. Ki'ei Ka'ula nānā i ka makani
12. Ho'olono ka halulu o ka Mālua Kele
13. Ki'ei hālō Maka'iki'ole
14. Kāmau ka 'ea i ka Hālauaola
15. He kula lima 'ia no Wāwaenoho
16. Ma ke pūko'a hakahaka iā i Wa'ahila
17. Ka momoku a ka unu Unulau o Lehua
18. A lehulehu ke ka pono le'a ka ha'awina
19. Ke ala mai nei o ka puka o ka hale.
[some versions have "Ka hauna" replacing "Ke ala"]

Here's the 1935 translation:

1. Doubly cold it is at Wai'ale'ale
2. Where the stunted lehua blossoms grow
3. They are the fringed flowers of 'Aipō
4. Like the bright feathers that cover Haua'iliki
5. Pelted by the rain, the forest is bruised
6. Crushed are the flowers, they weep with the cold
7. In the sunshine that shines on the waters of Mokihana
8. All things are done and done well
9. I have told you before
10. This is the way that the keeper of the pond made his livelihood.
11. Best watch within and toward Ka'ula
12. Question each breeze, note each rumor, even the whisper of Mālua Kele
13. Search high, search low, unobserved
14. Here is life, it is breath from the body
15. A fond caress by a hand most constant
16. Like fissured groves of coral
17. Stand the ragged clumps of lehua
18. Many are the houses, easy the life, you have your share of love
19. Humanity stands at your door, yes, indeed.

I can hardly quibble with Mary Kawena Pukui (she literally wrote the Hawaiian Dictionary, along with Samuel H. Elbert) but Lani and Lono would have. I know because when I asked them at lunch to explain what the song meant (it made no sense to me then, and very little now, even looking at two translations) they broke out into what bordered on a shouting match over the meaning of the key line, number 10.

When I embedded the excerpt of the song back at the Early Music Memories post, I ended with line 10. The song naturally falls into two halves and that middle line is the transition. It receives dramatic emphasis. It has to be important.

It was at this point that I learned that Lono was Christian and that he had a Christian interpretation for line 10. He said it was a reference to Jesus. That's who the keeper of the pond was, really.

Lani was not Christian. He was traditional. He said the song had an underground meaning. It was all about how the Hawaiian culture and the power of the people had been undermined, but would ultimately be restored. He interpreted 'pond' of the 10th line as being about the inner soul of the people, that still lives on, because it has a keeper, in the guardianship of those who are preserving it.

Mary Kawena Pukui said it's about a ruling-class love affair.

At each of Lani and Lono's lunches, held on the grass on Stoneman Field, there was always a covered pot of poi. When the argument between Lani and Lono got too much for me, I took the lid off the pot and waved my hand at it. They both quieted down, because when the poi is exposed you have to be civilized, the ancestors are listening. So I was told. Anyway, the argument stopped.

By the way, I had no idea at that time what a Christian, or a non-Christian, might be. Neither meant anything more to me than a lehua blossom, which so far as I knew then, I'd never seen.

More of Bharatanatyam

I was inspired by my video find of two days ago to look for similar videos on Google, which often has longer videos and higher quality videos than YouTube, even though they're the same company. That's what I wanted. Longer! Uncut!

A less cut 18 minute performance by Varsha Uma Balabharathy, who was ten years old at the time. Actually they all seem to be 10 or 11, if their age is mentioned at all.

A video with a bit of explanation.

Finally, a video to satisfy all my xenomanic needs for a month. Most of the videos only show the solos. This one shows other parts of Bharatanatyam including some dramatic and comic scenes, as well as group dancing. I don't know what it's about!
I'm so happy!

Mediocre Films

Today's Video Find is a Provider Find!

From time to time, it has to happen. A cool video is going to be found that is actually just one of several, or more than two, of a regular provider of videos I like.

My first provider find is unusual in that it violates the general rule that if Wes likes it it's off the radar. My weird life has made my tastes weird. But sometimes, think Rocky Horror, or Monty Python, the general public likes what I like. Mediocre Films is an example of that.

Mediocre Films is Greg Benson & Co. The official website says "mediocre films / they're better than they sound / Hello. My name is Greg. / I make short films. Check them totally out." They've been on YouTube for about 7 months. There is of course a Mediocre YouTube Channel which at the moment offers 30 videos, there's a Mediocre MySpace, a Mediocre iTunes Video Podcast, and an online store for Mediocre Films Ringtones. There's even a Mediocre DVD!

I first noticed that Mediocre Films was already popular when YouTube announced that it would be offering revenue sharing to some of it's providers, and then I learned that Mediocre Films has been one of their early picks.

Here's the first video of Greg's I chanced upon, followed by one of the latest.

Mating Season (a.k.a. Sexy Panda)



Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show (Episode 2)

Bonus Video Find

I can't wait till tomorrow to make this a Video Find of the Day. So you get a bonus.

I'm not allowed to embed it. You have to take the link straight to YouTube:

Bharata Natyam

For an explanation, see the Wikipedia article on Bharatanatyam

Bloody Dog

As I've said before my first word was "Daddy", prompted by my Mother saying, "tell Daddy who your present [the shit] is for!"

After my parents were both dead I found an old album they had of me. It was called Baby's Album, or something similar and equally obvious. The album had ready-made entries for "Baby's first smile", "Baby's first steps", etc., with room for snapshots where appropriate, and blank lines to be filled in with dates and other details.

The entry for "Baby's first word" had originally been "Daddy", but was later struck through and replaced by "shit" in the kind of bad handwriting my Mother had after she came down with arthritis in the Seventies. So maybe she remembered it a little differently. But clearly our memories aren't significantly different.

A few hours later I parroted "Goodbye Daddy" from memory. Then I went to the hospital and didn't speak a single word again until sometime toward the end of November, 1951. I don't remember what I said now, but I remember Lani and Lono placing it in time for me, and saying I had told them they had forgotten to do some one of their chores. It was an entire sentence in Hawaiian.

Things moved quickly after that, and already by December I was carrying on simple conversations with them, entirely in Hawaiian. It would be several months yet before I spoke any English again. But, unlike my insensitive parents, Lono was alert to the fact that I understand a lot of English, and so he alternated Hawaiian and English with me. Lani spoke only Hawaiian.

After I began speaking Hawaiian, Lani began to warm to me. One of the earliest conversations I remember was one I had with Lono when Lani had to leave us for a few minutes. He told me Lani had been keeping his distance because he had suffered too much from the loss of a younger brother. The discussion took some time because I didn't know what a younger brother was.

I still thought Hawaiian and English were one language and every night after going over the day's events and conversations in my head I would try to make English sounds in the hope of extending my speech to that part of "Hawaiian". I deliberately babbled, with the conscious goal of mastering the consonants and consonant combinations.

That was the main problem. Hawaiian has 7 consonants plus a breath stop: h, k, l, m, n, p, w, '.

The brain injury affected my speech motor control. I could whistle like a bird but I couldn't say hard g when I wanted to. Double consonants like gr and bl were even worse. So I worked on making those sounds constantly whenever I was alone. I recall sessions that went "tok, kok, tok, kok, tok, kok, tok, kok, tok, kok, dok, gok, tok, kok, dok, gok, tok, kok, tok, kok, dok, dok, dok, dok, dok, ..." on and on like that, until I fell asleep.

Speaking of "dok", we got a dog right about this time. He was nominally a Christmas present to me. My Father, who was back from Korea in time for the gifting, was sure that the dog was half Springer Spaniel and half Miniature Schnauzer. He named him Koko Head after the Hawaiian promontory east of the more famous Diamond Head. It was a common name that all the haole would give any pet that had dark fur on its head. Get it? "Koko": sounds like "Cocoa"!

But I already knew "koko" to mean "blood" in Hawaiian. I didn't like the idea of naming something with sharp teeth "Blood". I was very suspicious of this "gift", as you can see for yourself. This is the best picture my Father ever took, in my opinion.

Pete Barbutti

Video Find of the Day

Pete Barbutti was born in 1934 in Scranton, PA. He was doing stand-up in Seattle in the Fifties (? or early Sixties) when he got a big break from Steve Allen. He still works Las vegas from what I can tell. Recently he appeared as himself along with loads of other comedians in Goodnight, We Love You, a movie about Phyllis Diller. I can't do stand-up but I have a lot of respect for people who can. Barbutti is one of my early favorites. Here he is on his final Carson appearance, when Johnny Carson was retiring.



He also plays piano, well, but uses it mostly for comedy. He's especially known for playing the piano with his nose, and with a broom. I couldn't find videos of those, but here's something along the same line.

Anti-Anti-Porn Rant

The previous post puts me in the mood for this.

One of the things that really burns me is the way pornography is blamed for rape. I take that kind of thinking very personally. My Mother, as it happened, grew up to religion-based sexually repression. She used the Biblical story of Onan to justify beating me if my hand touched my genitals even during peeing. She considered pornographic magazines and movies disgusting. Yet she raped me hundreds of times and even masturbated to my distress as often as she had the urge.

She didn't start with dirty pictures and then advance step by step to rape, the way anti-porn fanatics will tell you it always happens. She went straight for the rape. I know that she tried to groom other children for molestation, both boys and girls. She later justified her own masturbation to me by pointing out that Onan was a man. It's different for women, she said.

By contrast, my Father was constantly using pornography. My Mother disapproved at first, then learned to shut up and tolerate it, because, she later told me, it made him more interested in her. My Father never molested me sexually in any way, and he never displayed any interest in other kids either. Or other wives, for that matter.

I'm certain the porn-as-gateway-to-rape scenario happens. But I'm also sure that for every person who follows that route there are ten people who become rapists because they are severely sexually repressed, hate the sexuality of others and use rape initially to punish others for being sexual. And that if they could be introduced to porn to gradually, say, starting with the easy stuff, like Sears underwear ads, and working up to old early Playboys or Cosmos, their hatred of sexuality might be overcome and their impulse to rape dramatically reduced.

My Mother started raping me and torturing me when I dared have erections in front of her as an innocent 16 month-old. Her gateway to rape was a fear and hatred of a toddler's sexuality. Her hatred of pornography was only another symptom of the hatred that made her a rapist.

One of the reasons people can keep justifying anti-pornography is the fact that in many countries when pornography is outlawed rape statistics are also unbelievably low. You have countries where if a woman reports a rape she's charged and executed for adultery, or a victim of an honor killing, and instead of seeing that as the factor that keeps rape reports down, these fools say, "Look, there's a country that doesn't allow pornography, and they don't have rapes!" Bullshit.

My own experience as a child and now also bears that out. I asked for help repeatedly back then and was told I was being lewd. The sexual repressiveness of the Fifties prevented me from being a statistic. Since then pornography has become much more available. Almost exactly the same time, it became possible for children to report sexual abuse. So now there seems to be more than ever. Because of pornography? OF COURSE NOT. It's because kids going through what I was going through can now talk about it, because society is less sexually repressed.

If anything pornography deserves credit for being at least a small factor in freeing people to speak out about the crimes committed against them.

More Loose Ends

Besides the day Robert was born and died the hardest event of Hawaii to place in time is my Father's second stint in Korea. I am so confused about it that I wonder if there wasn't a third. What is certain is he went back. There was talk about how active duty in a combat zone would help him get promoted. Also that being shot at the first trip out was a fluke. It was just because the Army was caught off guard. My Father kept saying there was no danger because his work usually put him far from the actual battles. He worked with a typewriter not a rifle. I remember that it wasn't a whole six months the second time. It was cut short for some reason.

But when? One clue to timing the memory of the second stint was that when he first heard me speaking Hawaiian around the house it was a surprise to him, and my Mother said, "He started doing it when you were gone."

Also there was a change in the rapes that had a bearing on the timing.

Before the change, the rapes were entirely vicious in nature. She was enjoying seeing me suffer, but not using the rapes to get sexual pleasure. At some point, the rapes tended to take place more often in the bath than in diaper changing, maybe just because my toilet-training at home was progressing. Then she started occasionally pulling her own pants down during the rapes and rubbing herself. She was using her anal raping of me as a form of live pornography to masturbate to.

Later on I found that she used rape in that way on a regular basis when my Father was unavailable sexually. So it always happened when he went on active duty. It also happened when he got onto drinking jags, when he would get drunk within an hour of arriving home every night. But that didn't go on so much until I was 8.

So, putting it all together, I think the second stint in Korea took place around the time I was meeting Lani and Lono and learning Hawaiian from them, up to and just past my first Hawaiian words. Roughly Autumn, 1951.