Teeny Excerpt from "He Mele a Hilo"

Nona Watanabe stepped onto the stage, all radiant in her purple and orange and green, sharkbait skin and all....

Something about her just stopped everything. Folks actually stopped eating, mid bite, and she paused for a second, looking, it seemed, into each one of them. And then she smiled, and was like one pure hit of aloha...

Just be yourself, Nona, the old lady in red had said. That’s all you ever had to be.

Tears were pouring down Noelani’s face, and she didn’t care. As she watched her dancers working together, Nona Watanabe in the front, she felt all her work, all her time finally being realized, with Ku’uipo, it just hit her Aunty Kahakunoe and yes, even Jesus, who after all this time, she had tried and tried, but never truly either understood or forsook.

These ARE the ancient times---and these are modern times as well. In the sphere of eternity, distinctions between one time and another are arbitrary--even now, Lo’ihi is being born under the sea--who will write the ancient chants for her?

Who will dance the dances that will be remembered only in part, scraps handed down from generation to generation, revered almost as much for what is lost as what is retained?

Are the ships and airplanes now any different from the outriggers in days past? Are the stars not the same, the sunset the same color? Don’t the rains make the same sound as they fall onto the forest canopy?

When the kahiko dances--or the roots of these dances were first composed, were they not science? Weren’t the kahuna the most modern minds of their day? It was not superstition, it wasn’t even religion or mythology. It was science, as real as those damned telescopes up on top of Mauna Kea, which started off so wonderfully--to view the clearest heavens, but now fallen victim to the same arrogance as the astronomers now try to keep the area all kapu to themselves...

One generation’s observatory becomes another’s, as the days and years pass, and parents change like seasons.

And for Nona Watanabe, she understood finally what it meant to simply be. For in her purples were all the colors of the sky and ocean at night. In her oranges and reds, the color of the sun, setting and rising. In her shimmering greens, the color of the forest, and sugarcane, and yes, even more ocean, the honu, and in her smile, the radiance of the sun itself. With the music and the dance, people, every one of them, felt yes, this is our song.

And then it was over. And for a few seconds, the audience was silent, as if it was waking up from a dream...

Then the thunder came....

Wow. My work was in a sermon.

In my darker times, I wonder if anyone is listening to my words. Then, I realize that these words and this work matters. 


This was preached at First Unitarian Church of Toledo on February 6th, 2010.


http://gqminister.livejournal.com/2822.html


Thank you, to Sunshine Jeremiah Wolfe. 


*hug*
ryka

Eli Coppola Memorial Chapbook Contest

I just found out yesterday that I won the first Eli Coppola Memorial Chapbook Contest... I am still in a bit of shock--it has been disappointment after disappointment with publishers, and I have seriously been wondering if I was ever going to get published as a poet again.

Being trans queer is a weird double-edged sword. I have been remarkably fortunate. I have toured and performed and spoken and met some of the best people a girl could ever dream of meeting. I have worked with musicians and filmmakers, and dancers, and wow... I was even picked up for a reading in a limousine.

But, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I want more than that. I write poetry not just for trans people, but for myself and anyone, trans, or queer, or not. And, I wonder how my work actually fares when placed next to the poets and artists--trans, queer, or not--who inspire me. I want to believe that my work is good on its own, and not just included because I happen to ID a certain way.

Up until now, maintaining that belief has been difficult. As Ryka, I have only been published as a poet once in a non-trans setting, and never in a non lgbt setting. I was doubting myself, and any fringes of talent I was supposed to have retained. But thanks to some weird determination and the help of some very close friends... I have been able to write and take myself seriously.

I was in a 24 hr Post Office kiosk at 2 am to get this manuscript in. I was tired and sad and depressed. But I forced myself to complete the manuscript and put it in an envelope and rewrite the mailing label twice because I kept fucking up the spelling...

When I got an email back, I thought, "great! I wonder who won?" Then I read "congratulations" and I was like, "Huh? What does that mean?" Then I shouted. Then I cried...

Then my friend told me about Eli Coppola, showed me some of her work...and I am even more honored and grateful.  Wow.