Wake Up!

May 6, 2014 by emalani 12 Comments

You can’t see the stars like that, girl, not when you’ve got sleepiness in your eyes. Rub them. Wake up! ‘Eleu. I don’t have time to wait for you. We don’t have time to wait for you. Too many generations. Too many have been slept away. Now look.

Yes, it’s dark; it’s cold. But this was never going to be easy. You knew that. And my job is not to soften things for you. We have too much to lose for softening. Maybe that’s why you preferred to sleep all these years. When you ignore the presence of the stars, when they are blocked by the ceiling of your mind, you can rest peacefully. Oh, but I won’t let that happen. Wake up, girl. It’s time.

I’m doing you a favour. I know it doesn’t seem like that now. But, I am. I wish someone had done this for me. I spent years sleeping. Now I can’t escape the stars. I search for them even when they are drowned out by city lights. I long for them even when the sun is shining. You’ll never be able to ignore them again, not when you really learn to see them. And you shouldn’t.

Wake up. Look up. Imagine yourself out there, among them, part of them. You know you aren’t really separate from them, right? Every space, every single space, is filled with memory. So it connects. Never divides.

Now what do you think? No, I don’t want to hear what you’ve read. Forget that now. What do you think? Don’t just recite, girl, ignite. When you give me memorized words with no meaning, that’s when you’ve begun to lose. Ignite that na‘au, that gut-feeling. Tell me what it feels like.

I’m not trying to be mean. I push you because that is aloha. Forget that tourist rubbish. My aloha means that I care enough about you to not let you sleep for another generation. So wake up, girl. We’ll stay here until you can give me something of depth, even if it means we have to stay here until the sun rises. In fact, maybe that’s what you need. When you can’t see them anymore, that’s when you’ll feel them and know they’re always there.

Ua moku ka pawa. The darkness has broken. We’ve been here all night. You didn’t sleep. But there’s no use being awake if you can’t react, and can’t be moved to act. Act. Wake up!

What’s that? You have something to say? Tell me.

That’s true. I was never really speaking to you, girl. I was speaking to that part of you inside that is old, that is so much older than both of us. That’s the part of you that had to be awakened. You know you’ll never be able to put that back to sleep. And you shouldn’t. That’s what will guide you. That’s the part of you that will always seek the stars, searching for the spaces of the universe filled with memory. Let it ignite you. Too many generations. Too many have been slept away.

Now look. It’s time.