  Poetry
This week: When Words Fail Edited by: Fyn  
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Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.~~ Robert Frost
In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.~~ Wallace Stevens
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.~~Rabindranath Tagore
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.~~ Charles Simic
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A week or so ago I ran out of words. My mind was overwhelmed with images and thoughts I needed to express, to put words to in such a way that I could do justice to them, but I found no words worthy. The thesaurus died with a whimper, with words spilling out to lie flat, colorless and pale against a tapestry that screamed for words beyond those yet thought of or expressed. I was struck with a wall of profound silence with ideas hammering, unspoken behind it. But there simply were no words to do justice to what simply was.
It was frustrating. I write. It is what I do, who I am. Yet words failed me when I needed them most. There were, I realized, no words.
I have traveled much of this world. I have lived in several countries and thirty-nine states in the US and been to all but six of them. In a previous life, I am quite sure I lived in England and Scotland. I am, although now living in Michigan, a die-hard New Englander. Once, upon leaving Michigan, I swore I'd never return. Yet, Michigan is now my home. But I have never felt such a visceral pull at all that means hearth and home to me as I felt on my trip to the Hawaiian Islands and especially, Maui. Deep down, internal, clear through sigh of having returned (never been to Maui before and to Oahu on a brief two day stop on my way elsewhere!) home. A 'take off your shoes, kick back aura' of relief, when feelings, stress and worry just slide off your body and you ooze into a puddle of goo. And yet, an energized flurry of gooeyness that never stopped for two weeks.
'Amazing' didn't come close. "Beautiful' didn't even begin to describe the otherworldly lushness of it all. 'Incredible' simply wasn't adequate to describe the feelings that the people there sent soaring within me. I was empty of words; replete with emotion and 'safe-haven-ness' I was at a loss to put concrete words to. A writer silenced because there were no words. I am reminded of a book by Dr. Seuss called On Beyond Zebra. It creates numerous letters beyond 'Z' for creating words beyond our mere alphabet. It was kind of like that.
It was within the Hawaiian alphabet of five vowels and seven consonants, that I could find the mere words to sum up the wholeness, the entirety, the absoluteness of an experience that took me into another dimension of being. Sounds weird, I know. It wasn't the 'on vacation doing all sorts of cool things' glow. Far more. It wasn't the oddness of walking on an island where magma flows much as our blood does just beneath the skin. It wasn't the sight of whales breaching within reach or waves crashing, relentlessly, against lava cliffs. (Those are hard enough to describe adequately.) It was an active 'being-in-the-moment' awareness that I felt the typical tourist never even saw. An attitude, perhaps. A way of existence steeped in history (which was not all pleasant, honorable, justified or conscionable) where that history is alive and growing and has forged a combined people who appreciate their past, as it is a part of them and made them who they choose to be,
Oh, I played tourist for sure. I took a gazillion pictures. I dumped my fair share into the economy. I ingested the histories from back beyond back to Pearl Harbor to newly planted 'school zone' signs outside a school that has been closed for the past five years. I tried poi (a 'to my mind' bland and tasteless, odd-textured substance) that offers more bang for the buck nutrition than many other foods. I tried 'poke' and loved it. I ran around seeing the sights.
But more. I listened. I opened. I absorbed. I envied. Day to day life there, of those who live there, isn't that much different than the lives of those who live in Dubuque, Iowa or New York City or Lebanon, Maine. Warmer, for sure. Perhaps more expensive as it is an island and pretty much everything needs to be shipped in. They worry about feeding their kids, the price of milk or gas and paying the electric bill. Island economy is reliant on the tourist industry and the military presence. Service jobs make up much of the workforce. There are homeless people, drug problems, governmental issues, traffic jams and day to day problems just like any place else. A bad storm can take out the electricity of an entire island. A bad storm coupled with high tides floods enormous areas. We experienced it. What makes the difference is how the people living there handle it. They muddled through it. They overwhelmingly found a positive in any situation. An ambulance navigating a three lane traffic jam had a clear path in seconds as cars nudged impossibly close to each other to create a fourth lane. A community of people banded together to make do when wave surges and seven inches of rain swamped entire communities. No one screamed for help. No one wasted time blaming inadequate resources to help them out. The just did what needed doing. With a smile, a shrug and a sense of 'I can' deal with this or anything else that comes their way.
On some level, not so different from other places. Michiganders come together when tornadoes devastate an area, thumbing their noses at FEMA, opening their homes to those displaced and coming out in droves to clear up, clear out and rebuild. So do many other people in many other places. We are a survival-oriented species after all. But there is a difference that is intrinsic there. Hard to put a finger on the exactness of what that 'that'; is, but it exists and it's there and it is refreshingly different from other places. Not a hundred percent sure of the why or what of it all, but there is a subtle truth to the 'aloha-spirit' that is a law in Hawaii, a way of life and an integral part of who each individual is It is admirable, special and needs emulation elsewhere!
Trying to describe the trip, words like 'amazing' or 'beautiful' or 'majestic' simply did not do justice to the plethora of experiences. Heart-full or mind-full scrape at the boundaries. 'Better mud than blood' was a phrase I heard often. Along with 'Small steps, careful steps' which is more than just how to walk on lava or treacherous terrain. Madam Pele wants her lava to remain on Hawaii. Walk it gently. A fall is bloody, damaging to both the fallen and the fallen upon. Her bloody magma courses near the surface as well as deeply with. Nature has a personality and can be both generous to a fault and very unforgiving. The very grains of sand, black, green, red or tan, need to stay along the shores where they became. Hawaii isn't meant to be brought piecemeal elsewhere. Its ethics and sense of honor to the land needs to be. There's a sense of active pride that translates into action there. You don't see trash tossed to the wayside. People reuse. The New England mantra that I grew up with, the core motto of frugal living was “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Hawaiians have refined this to the max! There is always another use for everything. Resilient, generous, loving, giving are all a part of aloha. It is a spirit that pervades, begins to coat the traveler and it is that which, given half a chance, that is brought home.
Slowly, the words come. I have begun to write of the many and varied experiences of a trip, a vacation that was so much more than that. I certainly never expected to have a life-altering epiphany. I never dreamed I would be so entranced. The world is so full of the extraordinary. I've been fortunate to experience much of it, to share in the uniqueness of so many places. Each gave me a tangible sense of their special offerings. Yet the two weeks I spent recently, has had a profound impact on me, especially in that language of my life, the words I need to express myself. |
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Poetry: March 22, 2017 Issue [#8194]
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