WEBVTT

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I've been living for quite a
number of years in the Pacific,

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in Hawaii.

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And I have great--

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I've had great hesitation
always to arrogate

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to myself Hawaiian material.

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I think that this is a very
long and complex subject

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and one could talk
about it a lot.

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But finally, I
think you have to go

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by what you feel around your
navel somewhere about it.

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But there was one figure
in the Hawaiian religion,

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in the Hawaiian
pantheon, to whom

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I was drawn and feel drawn in
ways that I don't understand.

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And finally, it seemed to
me that I could write it.

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So I was-- felt pulled into
writing about this person.

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The person is the God Kanaloa.

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Kanaloa is the late form
of probably the oldest--

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certainly, the oldest deity
in the whole of the Pacific.

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He begins as a creation
God somewhere back in--

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we know back when the
Polynesian people had barely

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left the Asian mainland.

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And in the earliest known
mythology, the name is Ta.

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And Ta is the first
God with form.

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I mean this is an immensely
sophisticated, extremely

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ancient civilization.

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As old as any
civilization we know.

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And they're sophisticated enough
to have many, many gods that--

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I mean, the first God
that we can talk about

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is just the first
God who has form.

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But there are gods before that.

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And before the gods, the
universe is creating itself.

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This is the only creation myth
in which I know this happens.

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Out of the turning of the
universe, warmth happens.

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And out of the warmth,
the beginning comes.

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It's getting pretty close
to a Big Bang, you know.

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But anyway, Ta--

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I won't go through
the whole story.

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But by the time the
Hawaiian migrations early

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in the Christian
era, Ta, who could

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be called Ta'aroa in some of
the other Polynesian languages,

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becomes Kanaloa.

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And from being the
God of creation,

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he's already moved through
a whole cycle of evolution

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and become the God of the
West, the God the sea,

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the God of death.

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And his manifestations--
because you don't

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have symbols in this religion.

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There are real manifestations.

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The manifestations
are the porpoise,

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the octopus, the squid.

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In certain forms,
the coconut tree.

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And places.

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The places of the dead.

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And above all in
Hawaii, one island

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that lies off the South Coast
of Maui looks like a porpoise

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and was the sacred
island of the Hawaiians,

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where all of their
universities were.

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Where they taught sorcery,
astronomy, astrology, medicine,

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the care of women
and childbirth,

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language, poetry,
everything there.

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All of their magics were there.

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It was not a very high island.

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But this was the
island that when

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they sailed from Tahiti as they
did regularly, they aim for it.

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They didn't aim for
the great peaks,

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they aim for this island.

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Since 1939, the Navy has been
using it as a bombing target.

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It is possibly the richest
archeological site,

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or one of the three or four
richest archeological sites

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in the whole Pacific.

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Make of that what you will, but
the poem is called "Kanaloa."

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"When he woke, his
mind was the West

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and he could not
remember waking.

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Wherever he looked, the
sun was coming toward him,

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the moon was coming toward him.

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Month after month, the
wind was coming toward him.

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Behind the day, the night
was coming toward him.

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All the stars, all the comets,
all the depths of the sea,

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all the darkness in the Earth,
all the silence, all the cold,

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all the heights were
coming toward him.

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No one had been on
the Earth before him.

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All the stories were coming
toward him over the mountain,

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over the red water, the
black water, the moonlight.

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He had imagined
the first mistake.

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All the humans are coming
toward him with numbers.

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They are coming from the
beginning to look for him.

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Each of them finds him
and he is different.

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They do not believe
him at first.

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But he houses the
ghosts of the trees,

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the ghosts of the animals, of
the whales, and the insects.

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He rises in dust.

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He is burning.

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He is smoke.

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Behind him is nothing.

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He is the one who
is already gone.

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He is fire flowing
downward over the edge.

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He is the last.

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He is the coming home.

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He might never have wakened."

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