Run away

Feeling both excited about the upcoming art travel, and very depressed about everything else. It's a confusing bundle of emotions to carry around, and I am refusing to look at it too closely because that just makes things worse. Waiting it out, instead.

One of the things I do to avoid things is to walk out of work at lunch, get in the car, and drive away. Yesterday I ended up at the beach nearby, walking around Haleiwa bay and trying to figure out which of the three flat rocks just off-shore was the murder rock. 

Story time: in 1785, before Kamehameha, Oahu was overthrown by Kahekili of Maui. He placed his own friends as chiefs (ali’i) in each region of the island, which pissed off the ali’i who were already here. The former ali’i up here in Waialua, a guy named Kahakana, decided to organize a coup, and secretly made plans for a coordinated nighttime attack to kill all the new Maui ali’i. Unfortunately, someone snitched and the uprising was stopped - except up here in Waialua, because everyone was running around on foot back then (no horses or wheels), and couldn't get up to the North Shore in time. Our guys went ahead that night and killed Kahekili’s buddy, Hu’eu. The rebels were murdered, and Kahekili even let one of his guys build the frame of his house with some of their bones.

This is where the stories diverge: in one account, to make an example of the ringleader, Kahakana’s body was unceremoniously thrown out onto a shelf of rock just off of Haleiwa beach. The people were forced to leave him to rot, and the new ali'i jokingly renamed the beach “Maeaea” ("the big stink") as the decomposing body fluids soaked into the sand. 

In another story, he was placed there respectfully by his people on a woven mat, and his body attracted fish and sharks, which the people harvested. The custom became popular and eventually victims were sought out to sacrifice and chuck onto the rock so that their fluids would attract sharks, as well. 

The only thing we can be sure of is that a dead body was on the rock after the failed uprising, and the rock was named “Hakakau Kanaka” (“the ledge where the man was placed”).

The rock is still there, but the one I think it might be has shifted position over a couple centuries and is a couple inches underwater now, even at low tide. The other rocks are a man-made barrier of piled stone, and a jagged chunk of reef that doesn’t look much like a ledge.

Two big outcroppings

The flat rock just off the beach, which seems easier to get to, 

but maybe a bit more sunken than it used to be

standing in the tide pools with the crabs, admiring the view

human dumplings bobbing in the bay

Thinking about taking a day off to practice painting on site. Future art/history dorks like me can use it as a visual record and see how the rocks change in another hundred years.