About

" Hanau ka ‘Uku-ko‘ako‘a, hanau kana, he ‘Ako‘ako‘a, puka  Born was the coral polyp, born was the coral, came forth." This coral nature written in the Kumulipo the Hawaiian creation chant, was a secret to me and most of my generation. The language to understand the words and imagery stolen long before I was born set me in motion. I sought identity elsewhere wandering like limu (seaweed) moving with the tide on the lookout for a place to feel at home.

Back and forth, tide in, tide out I looked for stories to feed my insatiable hunger sorting through the lies with an astrological signature, that Scorpio spider sense, sniffing out the half-truths of history made up by oppressors, learning and practicing silence when those who should have been my nurturers struggled with their own wounds of alcoholism, colonialism, and shaming. I tried on different skins, changing costumes to fit-in, transplanted myself, migrated -- huaka'i hele -- thinking 'the next place will be different', infiltrated communities, aborted or amputated my names, and made decisions to survive. There was so much to learn, and so many secrets.

Still the limu wandered. Still the coral grew.

Hawaiian elder, teacher and kumu hula Dr. Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele reminds readers in her precious work  Ka Honua Ola that the gift of chants and the meanings embedded in the words and imagery took eons to become what they are today. She cautions the impatient among us, "Don't be in a rush to unwrap the gift" savor and digest each new awareness letting one bite nourish before chewing more. "The chants are timeless." That gave me hope. If it was true their meanings would be there when I finally found a way to unlock meaning. Trust, could I find that coral core.

I carry my Hawaiian Dictionary using it as a compass and sometimes prop up the screen of my computer to adjust the ergonomics of makeshift world. My understanding of language and culture is piece meal. I struggle willingly to gain insight and meaning piecing meaning together from here, from theirs or there. One of the phrases in Hawaiian that has tethered me all these years is just that ... here, there. Ke'ia. Kela. I read, digest, listen, fill in the blank spaces and then begin again digest, write, integrate, and repeat. Ka Honua Ola the book sits beside Pukui and Elbert's Hawaiian Dictionary mentoring me awakening memories and frayed understanding, Ke'ia. Kela.

The veins of the Internet allow me to listen to Aunty Pua speak, I hear her respond to questions. She challenges me to "Dig deep. Eli eli kau mai." She is talking about the deep work, what philosophers name 'Shadow work or shadow school.' Aurora Levins Morales would call this the work of medicinal history. In her essay "Historian as Curandera." Morales encourages filling out the 'woman shaped outlines' the puka the absences and missing pieces in my history. Go ahead, make up a question that you can answer differently, imagine a story that would fill in what is missing.


Still the limu wandered. Still the coral grew.

This is what I did: squinting through eyes that needed glasses at an early age (I was fitted with my first pair of black and white speckled frames in seventh grade) I loved print, the shape and stroke of making letters that formed words, the sound of the alphabet and the stories that came from learning to read. Two important teachers lit my soul's path as a young girl: one lived on the other side of our hibiscus hedge the other was my kindergarten teacher who created a one-room school house in our Kuliou'ou Valley neighborhood. One would teach me to notice ('clouds have shapes, and then change'), the other would notice I saw stories beyond the words ('she reads with such expression'); both of them opened spaces for my imagination. They are touchstones for me, reminding me life is an adventure and story was my passport. From here.To there. Ke'ia. Kela.

Ma, Dad and me in Kuli'ou'ou Valley, on O'ahu where my brother and I grew up. David is on the Polaroid, Ma is saying, "Wait!" He wasn't one to wait. This is late 1950's 

My son at eight months and me on one of our first beach walks. Deception Pass, Washington 1973

This is what I do: struggle willingly with the many meanings and patterns that exist between seemingly disparate images, definitions and systems. The struggle is not so very difficult and over time it is the challenge that feeds the journey. I blend practices, see meaning in one language and mix metaphors to make room for the language I had lost. I relish the sound of new words to describe what I see, make homemade rituals and find a place for myth to express the emotions that burn within me and erupt from me like Pelehonuamea making new land. The language that is not fluent to me becomes a papa a foundation for new language with the heart of coral polyp, and the stories I tell have a flavor that is Hawaii-born wherever I am on Haumea.

I have discovered the value of all my names at this point; smiling with appreciation for Yvonne because Daddy loved the diva Yvonne DeCarlo, grateful for Mokihana its sound and meaning giving me many ways to understand and stand my ground on my Kanaka roots; wearing and being Calizar shines the pride in my Filipino heritage that was so often maligned, I struggled to find different beliefs; and the legacy kept growing like the coral polyps ... slowly, steadily until at last all names come together to create a whole grounded soul, a reef, an island.

That is what this website represents -- a home coming. The wandering limu and the spawning coral in search of wholeness doing a dance of 'auana has formed a rope flexible and strong. There are so many versions of my personal story, questions to my pondering, and imagined futures. When the world I discovered was unbearable I imagined something different. Creativity and a versatile voice is what we can do with the tangle of struggle and the attempts at uncovering oppression and distortion: turn it into art.

I put the stories here for my family to discover. When they are ready, the pondering and questioning, the myth, the magic and the woven together as facts and fiction will be here for them. Our Mo'okuauhau, our genealogy, I recall and record on its own page and leave it accessible for additions -- births, marriages, new partners, passings or corrections and omissions-- to the history.

This website is an library of the discovering, affirming, juggling appreciation for the names one person, one woman is called in a lifetime. The history becomes less mystery when there is space held for all the stories behind those names. Manu Meyer says, when the third image in a hologram is added to the picture, it really pops; the full hologram of our souls.

I must give thanks to my dear husband Pete for encouraging me to put this website together. He has read everything I have written since we got together in 1995, and is often my first reader. In the years since I became chronically ill with environmental illness and multiple chemical sensitivities he alone knows what it takes to navigate the challenges of our vardo-based safety pin life.

Me and Pete after a Safety Pin Cafe event in 2014

While we both age, the essences of our souls pulse individually: he rummages, sorts, fixes, meddles in the affairs of community building and finds the right tools for a job.  In every way he is my caregiver, doing what I cannot do for myself. Between us we must balance our very different natures. The side-ways moving Cancer-sun man and the deep-water Scorpio-sun woman learn to find common ground. Lucky us. What I do is write, communicate, shake the essence of my creative expression into a letter, blog, medicine story, a blending astrology with the Hawaiian kilo practice I grow every day. I come up with new ways to fill old puka, holes. Though my physical energy is limited, my imagination is not.

The coral grows.

As I struggled with the latest of my health challenges I spoke through tears and asked him about assembling this website, "Is this too confusing, this style of piece-mealing a story here and there?"
His long thin face and hooded eyes lined with landscapes I could swim in said, "It will be unlike any other. It will be like you." 

How great is the journey, and the coral reef grows in spite of the challenges, or maybe because of them. He puko'a kani 'aina. The grand experiment of blogging is pau, but still the coral grows.

From time to time navigational markers -- messages, clues for the journey home, will show up here to remind me how my knowledge of my Hawaiian culture join with my Ancestral memory to create "a stage for enlightenment" that Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele reminds me is there. I have work to do to proceed --protocol needed-- to cross from here to there.

Mahalo nui Ke Akua, e Na 'Aumakua.
Amama ua noa.

"I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island ..." - Leon Russell

Yvonne Mokihana Calizar
Whidbey Island, Salish Sea
Winter, 2016