Thouroughly modern Millie & 'awa.

Saturday Farmer's Market Flowers. I think I beamed for a full minute after seeing these.

Over the weekend I met a Millie, thoroughly modern; a fireball of a woman. We went out to have dim sum at Happy Days in Kaimuki (read: not Chinatown) and I thought to myself, "how could an experience so ordinary be so rare?" Growing up in New York we'd drive to the city into Chinatown, walk to Mott Street and have lunch as a family. So simple, right? Mom and Dad would take turns pointing out the different dishes and we'd eat and enjoy little by little. Although I am Chinese by ancestry (Dad's side, way back), I consider myself Filipina by nature (and in effect a New Yorker by upbringing), I never learned the language. So it was to my delight when Millie lovingly explained:

Dim Sum means "to light the heart"; You usually order one or two things at a time, eating slowly and talking the whole time.

How charming - stick the keys in the ignition, and ignite the heart with bite-size bits of goodness! The table was half and half; half visitors from New York and half people living in Hawai'i. It was the New Yorkers first time having Dim Sum (myself excluded). Initially, I was appalled that they'd never tasted dim sum, with the plethora of establishments lining the streets of lower Manhattan, but turned my frown upside down that we could could share this experience here. The table was strewn with food (one dish at a time only holds when there isn't 10 ravenous people at once): manapua, fried taro, har gow, eggplants with fish, chicken feet, etc. The New Yorkers tried the chicken feet, if even just a lick. Me-ow. Impressive! There's something so great about being there to witness some one's "firsts," first dim sum, first chicken feet. whatever.

A caveat to this. I myself am not particularly attracted to the taste, there's just something in the texture that doesn't vogue with my palate, something about knowing that it's walked the earth and then will be in my mouth that I can't get my head to stop thinking about, but at the beginning of this year my sister and I made a promise to each other. To keep in touch, we'd do something new every day and txt/call/write/holler at each other. It was New Year's Day and we were having Dim Sum -(pause for effect)- that day I tried the chicken feet.

Not amused! My face twisted into this contortion that probably looked a bit like Elvis rolling his upper lip and a bulldog baring his teeth in disgust. But I have this rule - taste three times. If I don't like it after the third time, I don't like it. Needless to say, two more tries later I was still less than thrilled, so now I respectfully decline. But there are other things I thought I didn't like but have grown to enjoy - like 'awa!!

Oh 'Awa (pronounced ava)! The East Coast ladies came to Diamond Head Cove to for a traditional Polynesian cultural experience. How to explain 'awa? hmm... I can only describe the taste as - liquid earth. It derives from a root, you drink it out of a bowl and all of a sudden it's Alice in Wonderland.. at least for me. When you first start drinking 'awa you need 2 or 3 bowls to feel the effect. Then, hold on to your butts. Your tongue starts going numb, music sounds deeper, and I don't know about everyone else but I always have this overwhelming urge to paint something, write something, recite or beguile something. A warning to ye who sits next to me while 'awa-ing, I will talk to you nonstop, I will delight, entertain and amuse as much I can, without shame, while being wholly true to myself, the cursing ceases, while the creative juices don't just flow - they rage. A note here friends: 'awa is not alcohol; it intoxicates without impairment, saves your vital organs for a rainy day, hangover: not included.

It is a drink to be respected as it is rooted in Hawai'ian history and culture; unlike all things in life it is meant to bring happiness and clarity without you losing you.

I am not a hippie. Not by any means, but 'awa just does it for me. Not only does it make me want to create but it has a way of chilling me out without taking away mental acuity... and the dreams! whooooooooheee!
It's like you go into this bubble, right, where it's lucid, but not, but you can't really wake up from it without feeling like you've cheated yourself a little bit. It tells you, get sleep, refresh, renew, FLY, wake up and be the best version of yourself you can be. Shoots, I sound like I'm one step away from dancing naked under the full moon, but I'm unashamed. DHC - (no, not dick head customer) lies under the watchful eye of the mountain and is a hole in the wall you don't want to miss. The food is 'ono, the tunes are 'ono and the girls are 'ono.

p.s. - all you 'Lost' fans out there. Pono, is the 'Lost' Dog and can be seen regularly at Da Cove. He likes to chill, he probably even likes to 'awa.

Eyecandy:

Marcus and Pono surfing

'awa-ing

The famous apple banana wall and my din din. Fish, greens, Marcus' wicked special green sauce and
an English muffin made from taro which is why it's purple. Yum!

Packrat Memeorabilia wall. Bottom center is Marcus with two 'Lost' Ladies and Pono.

I leave you with this essay by Robert Louis Stevenson: for those days when you know you need something, are just a little bit 'lost', but know deep down you just need to take it one step at a time.

An essay by Robert Louis Stevenson
El Dorado


It seems as if a great deal were attainable in a world where there are so many marriages and decisive battles, and where we all, at certain hours of the day, and with great gusto and despatch, stow a portion of victuals finally and irretrievably into the bag which contains us. And it would seem also, on a hasty view, that the attainment of as much as possible was the one goal of man's contentious life. And yet, as regards the spirit, this is but a semblance. We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series. There is always a new horizon for onward-looking men, and although we dwell on a small planet, immersed in petty business and not enduring beyond a brief period of years, we are so constituted that our hopes are inaccessible, like stars, and the term of hoping is prolonged until the term of life. To be truly happy is a question of how we begin and not of how we end, of what we want and not of what we have. An aspiration is a joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. To have many of these is to be spiritually rich. Life is only a very dull and ill- directed theatre unless we have some interests in the piece; and to those who have neither art nor science, the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a rough footway where they may very well break their shins. It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the world in the most enchanted colours: it is they that make women beautiful or fossils interesting: and the man may squander his estate and come to beggary, but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the possibilities of pleasure. Suppose he could take one meal so compact and comprehensive that he should never hunger any more; suppose him, at a glance, to take in all the features of the world and allay the desire for knowledge; suppose him to do the like in any province of experience - would not that man be in a poor way for amusement ever after?

One who goes touring on foot with a single volume in his knapsack reads with circumspection, pausing often to reflect, and often laying the book down to contemplate the landscape or the prints in the inn parlour; for he fears to come to an end of his entertainment, and be left companionless on the last stages of his journey. A young fellow recently finished the works of Thomas Carlyle, winding up, if we remember aright, with the ten note-books upon Frederick the Great. "What!" cried the young fellow, in consternation, "is there no more Carlyle? Am I left to the daily papers?" A more celebrated instance is that of Alexander, who wept bitterly because he had no more worlds to subdue. And when Gibbon had finished the DECLINE AND FALL, he had only a few moments of joy; and it was with a "sober melancholy" that he parted from his labours.

Happily we all shoot at the moon with ineffectual arrows; our hopes are set on inaccessible El Dorado; we come to an end of nothing here below. Interests are only plucked up to sow themselves again, like mustard. You would think, when the child was born, there would be an end to trouble; and yet it is only the beginning of fresh anxieties; and when you have seen it through its teething and its education, and at last its marriage, alas! it is only to have new fears, new quivering sensibilities, with every day; and the health of your children's children grows as touching a concern as that of your own. Again, when you have married your wife, you would think you were got upon a hilltop, and might begin to go downward by an easy slope. But you have only ended courting to begin marriage. Falling in love and winning love are often difficult tasks to overbearing and rebellious spirits; but to keep in love is also a business of some importance, to which both man and wife must bring kindness and goodwill. The true love story commences at the altar, when there lies before the married pair a most beautiful contest of wisdom and generosity, and a life-long struggle towards an unattainable ideal. Unattainable? Ay, surely unattainable, from the very fact that they are two instead of one.

"Of making books there is no end," complained the Preacher; and did not perceive how highly he was praising letters as an occupation. There is no end, indeed, to making books or experiments, or to travel, or to gathering wealth. Problem gives rise to problem. We may study for ever, and we are never as learned as we would. We have never made a statue worthy of our dreams. And when we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. In the infinite universe there is room for our swiftest diligence and to spare. It is not like the works of Carlyle, which can be read to an end. Even in a corner of it, in a private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather and the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for a lifetime there will be always something new to startle and delight us.

There is only one wish realisable on the earth; only one thing that can be perfectly attained: Death. And from a variety of circumstances we have no one to tell us whether it be worth attaining.

A strange picture we make on our way to our chimaeras, ceaselessly marching, grudging ourselves the time for rest; indefatigable, adventurous pioneers. It is true that we shall never reach the goal; it is even more than probable that there is no such place; and if we lived for centuries and were endowed with the powers of a god, we should find ourselves not much nearer what we wanted at the end. O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessednes; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.


[The end]

“There are two ways to live:
you can live as if nothing is a miracle;
you can live as if everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

Smile for me.
bvw.