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Huna Article
Huna International
Man's Heroically Puny Efforts
by Gy Hall
I salute man's achievements with this image of a rusting wheel melting in a
tide pool below Crater Hill, witness to departing deep water Frigatebirds and
Shearwaters in the early summer sunrise, casually pissed on by a local
fisherman. I honor this process and I gratefully celebrate those inventors
whose imagination took flight; who, early on, saw the possiblity of "steam
power" and drew pictures of strange looking machine parts, these very parts
perhaps, by lantern light;
Let your minds eye see the young, poverty-stricken ironworkers in England,
sweaty faces highlighted in orange by the coal fires, hammering 14 hours
non-stop, ears deadened long before their prime by ringing anvils, whose strong
forearms gave this machine it's slow, tortured birth, piece by intricate piece:
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The stevedores who heaved and grunted in unison at the beginning of a
journey that measured itself in thousands of life-threatening miles, laboring
to hoist this huge, proud, shiny machine, so beautiful, so powerful, into the
hold of a long distance, rake masted clipper;
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Sailors, willing climb 100 feet above the deck to hang by a thread at the
end of a swinging yardarm in the throat of a howling gale, and facing
fast-moving, deadly mountains of freezing foam simply because they could dream
of nothing else to do;
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Those who planned and skillfully built this machine's solid foundation and
watertight roof, on the crown of a small hill on a tiny rock the size of a
pinprick in the middle the wild Pacific Ocean; Crater Hill in Kilauea, on
Kauai;
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Those forgotten men, speaking tongues native to the Western Pacific Rim, who
learned how to awaken this foreign monster with fire and water, and pulled on
it's levers until it bellowed like a bull and strained against its lines with
the incredible power of 300 draft horses;
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Island sailors who routinely crossed the dangerous Kauai Channel in their
small packets at night, steering by the stars and arriving on an early summer
morning similar to this one at Kilauea Bay, to beat their way into a dangerous
anchorage, off-loading their cargo while bracing against the gusty trades which
relentlessly sought to grind them on the rocks;
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Those who rowed to meet them in tiny boats, towing the heavy hooks and
cables from this great machine;
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And those who risked their lives, sometimes losing them, attaching tons of
weight, tossing wildly in the cargo holds, to the cables.
Let's not forget the truck drivers, flogging their primitive, dangerous
vehicles up and down steep hills with huge loads and nearly nonexistent brakes,
bouncing over rocks on springless seats until their tortured backs ached at
night; then rising to do the same at 4:30 the next morning every day of their
working lives.
Here, forgotten in the sunburst of summers dawn, is perhaps the only remaining
evidence of these monumental, yet puny, efforts; pieces of iron pregnant with
memories of heroic men, melting, slowly locking themselves into lava crevices,
gracefully returning to Mother Earth from whence they came. Which is it: A
Great Monument, blown off Crater Hill by an even greater storm, or perhaps
merely junk unceremoniously shoved off the edge many years ago? No one seems to
remember. The question itself is forgotten by these men's children, lost in the
illusion of separation that seems to confirm their lonely existence. Also
forgotten, but only until the instant it is remembered with awareness (and the
possiblity is Now and Now and Now): The jarring realization...the deeply diving
self inquiry which begins with the utter futility of lifetimes of efforting,
and holds forth the sweet promise of awakening to a new way of being.
Copyright Huna International 1999
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