Uchronia, Pneuma

In peril of erfinden, inventing and making up, trying too hard to find, to be defined, to be fine. All these notions of Utopia, imagination, Einbildung: The discovery and fabrication of paradise islands, a setting either for the ideal or for the unwanted and discarded. Tropical paradise, all [more]

In peril of erfinden, inventing and making up, trying too hard to find, to be defined, to be fine. All these notions of Utopia, imagination, Einbildung: The discovery and fabrication of paradise islands, a setting either for the ideal or for the unwanted and discarded. Tropical paradise, all these places we are reaching out for, only existing when named and described, the perfect flat Projektionsfläche, object of projection. Verzeichnet on maps, ver- indicating a mistake, something marked and signified out of line. The Hawaiian space being characterized, imagined and written on galore. Words forging an island. Pineapples. Magnum, P.I. Coconuts. Aloha Shirts. Elvis. Toast Hawaii. Pizza Hawaii. All the Pacific beauty is clearly not beyond words, not indescribable, das Reale, blissful oblivion, ist fern. Cultivated and modified. And so much we wish the enclosed space to offer the room for dwelling in actually existing interior space, heterotopia, to lose touch by physically striding through Utopia. We chase it away with rambling and finding words for it, instead of staying between the lines. To escape the imagery I alter my perception, state of mind, setting it on island time. Uchronia. It is not time slackening. It is deciding what is of significance. If a response of hectic, feverish, frantic drama and outcry is necessary. It never is. Island time puts me in another spot. Irony is over, bye bye, making me soft and gentle and rosy. I lose the sharp, black lines of our Berlin outfits, of our bones shaping us so very pronounced.

This place is my construction site. I wonder where and how I will get placed. First of all, I am a haole. Hawaiian Dictionary, Ulukau, the Hawaiian Electronic Library, University of Hawaii Press: “White person, American, Englishman, Caucasian; American, English; formerly, any foreigner; foreign, introduced, of foreign origin, as plants, pigs, chickens; entirely white, of pigs.” In Beijing, on white plastic chairs bogged down in squishy brown puddles, under strings of fairy lights, flaring unsteadily and hazing the night in auspicious, raunchy red, waiting for my 馕 náng coming out of ovens auburn from corroding, black from soot: in Beijing they would pat my knee and identify me as an Uyghur woman. In Berlin, around Kottbusser Tor, wan from the neon lights that the concrete throws back onto our bodies, they might address me in Turkish. In the light of day, limelight, in the library, crooked over a book holding characters, they might mistake me for being part Asian. On Hawai’i I hide my German accent under a coat of accumulated britishness, and, oh, sometimes it works and they ask me, where are you from, New Zealand?, and I light up, all pleased. But though my skin is getting dark, my hair wavy and almost ‘ehu, bleached and streaked from the light, the sand, the salt; but though I have the feet of a local girl, wide spread toes, enough room for the strap of the slippers that passes between first and second toe to not abrade the skin – I will be the German. This time however, I am not one of them, this time I am not a tourist, I have a home. I can feel it for the first time at Waipio Valley Lookout, sitting on the grass with a hilarious can of PBR in my hand; looking down onto the ocean, waiting for humpback whales; looking down into the valley, flatness, black sand and shades of verdure enclosed by steep walls; looking at tourists with their sunburnt thighs, their scarlet, peeling noses. I can spot the Germans, in heavy gear, accurately following Brittani’s description. Their shoes heavy and safe, ready to conquer wild and unknown territory. We, I am part of we, we walk down the only road into the valley in our slippers. Some of the German tourists will walk around the valley’s beach like they are moving through a museum, interested, stunned, but carefully and slightly detached. A satsifying sensation of discovery seems crucial. Some of them look the other way, frowning and very focused as soon as they realize I am also German. Some of them will smile and wave and nod their heads.

And down in the dense and thick valley, I hold my breath.

Notierung, notions:

aloha. ha. haha. hatschi.
halare (Latin to breathe). exhale. exhaled. exhalar.
hale (of a person, esp. an elderly one: strong and healthy).
哈 hā (Chinese breathe out).
haole. without breath.
halo.

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