heavy pregnant sky
windless calm soon comes the rain
anticipation
Itʻs nice to be in undistracted stillness. Even the ground has been still of late. But we anticipate. Not so much waiting, but that niggling in back-of-mind seems to be always present, wondering...
When? We seek equilibrium, reaching out before falling. Or more often than not, like me, we just plop down. Whether we trip on something or other and get strawberried knees, tumble down while going up cement stairs carrying a gift basket in Honolulu, or, during a solo test of Kuʻuhoa, Kumu says "down", down you go. To the floor in a heap.
Sometimes equilibrium is elusive, but we keep trying to reach it, if for nothing else than our sanity. ʻŌlaʻi will continue to come our way. Whether or not we anticipate them, theyʻll show up. And after having earthquake-proofed the house and our stuff as best as can, we deal with the consequences. As best as can.
Consequences of instability of the summit region of Kīlauea are awesome to behold. Wrinkled, torn, and upheaved pavement, severed water pipes, cracks in the ground and in buildings, utility poles askew, those coatings of pale grey ashdust, and the most impressive of impressiveness, the countless kaulu (ledges) and māwae (fissures) we see in and around Halemaʻumaʻu (silent shaking of head)...
All those kaulu and māwae come courtesy of the freely-strewn confetti of ʻōlaʻi resulting from the footstompings of Ka Wahine. Reminds me of the step we did in "Pau aʻu lehua i ka manu e", all those decades ago upstairs at Hataʻs, making the wooden building resound.
And a VERY cool quick gif on the HVO website, because some are more visual than others. I hope that the link works:
Halemaʻumaʻu, June 1 to June 10, she gets comfortable
To the above, add your special versions of wind-on-skin, feeling the earth move under your feet (thanks, CK), the acrid aromas of various combinations of gases, dustings of lehu, and...
And this is what Wikipedia has to say about gifs:
The Graphics Interchange Format, better known by its acronym GIF (/dʒɪf/ JIF or /ɡɪf/ GHIF), is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the bulletin board service (BBS) provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite on June 15, 1987.[1] It has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.
The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of up to 256 colors for each frame. These palette limitations make GIF less suitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with color gradients, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.
GIF images are compressed using the Lempel–Ziv–Welch (LZW) lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality. This compression technique was patented in 1985. Controversy over the licensing agreement between the software patent holder, Unisys, and CompuServe in 1994 spurred the development of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) standard. By 2004 all the relevant patents had expired.
Not that the above is helpful in our understanding of the quaking earth, but the pictures are pretty.
Letʻs visit Puna ma kai:
You know, Iʻve heard talk, already, of folks wanting to name...The Eruption, the Fissures, Fissure 8, various puʻu... My response: Try Wait...She not pau yet.
But tossing it out there in the interest of thinking of names and naming...Try makawalu. I was reminded of this yesterday while lunching (thanks, OM).
The Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation has held many Papakū Makawalu workshops:
They help us see and begin to understand the interconnectedness of things, processes, and thought in our worlds. Kinda like the "noho i waho...a maliu" "be outside...pay attention" phrase tells us, but with a bit more formality and support.
So:
maka.walu
1. vs. Numerous, many, much, in great quantities (sometimes used with implication of chiefly mana). Lit., eight eyes. Cf. -walu. Nā wailele e iho makawalu mai ana, waterfalls pouring down in quantity. Ka iho makawalu a ka ua, the great downpour of rain. Makawalu nā moku, many islands are scattered haphazardly.
We have māwae ʻewalu (Fissure 8). She is erupting in Keahialaka, the place she encountered first when arriving on the Island of Hawaiʻi. The pele from māwae ʻewalu travels...eight (ʻewalu) miles to the Pacific. "Eight", a multiple of four, is, I gather, a culturally important number. For example, Kamapuaʻa has eight eyes... The "Numerous, many, much, in great quantities..." may apply to houses buried, amount of pele, ʻōlaʻi, lehu, acres covered, new land created...take your choices...
All things to think about and consider...
The HVO updates indicate that in Keahialaka, the fountain heights seem to be, overall, declining. And the image above seems to illustrate that the luaʻi pele seems to be held (at the time of the screenshot) in the bowl of the puʻu. What does that mean? I donʻt know...
I do know that I really want to visit the new shoreline at Kapoho. When can. Intricate lae (points) and awa (coves), and looks to be a loko or few (ponds). So different than the pali-clad shore of the Puna coast more toward Kaʻū. And why??? Because, if you recall, the waters of Kapoho were snorkleable-shallow prior to the pele, and thus more easy to decorate. And yes, at the right, we see Kapoho Beach Lot houses and Farm Lot farms still there. We pray they remain safe.
A couple more things...
HVO has an excellent Chronology of Events on their website. Check it out:
Itʻs succinct and helps us remember "When was????"
And again, a part of Mrs Kanaheleʻs booklet previously mentioned in an earlier blog, explaining some of the extremely descriptive Pele chants. Itʻs an excellent abbreviated resource for those of us who are translation-challenged.
I especially appreciate "Apopoʻi..." on page 98. Perhaps you will too.
Headed out for a walk...
As always, with aloha,
BobbyC
Take me with you when you go holo holo new Kapoho Bobby.
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