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....
