Why Mau?

I’m still on my way, mid-flight, to Hawai’i. American Air has internet access, so I thought to start this first thread with some pre-arrival thoughts. The blog is called Mau. Erin Dudley, a butoh dancer in New York and classmate of mine in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee MFA in Dance Performance program started calling me that because my given first name, John-Mario, kept getting mangled in the saying. I kind of liked the variety of mispronunciations: Jean-Marie, Juan-Mario, Jose, Joan-Mayrio... In any case, I use Mau for a number of reasons. #1: The word was one letter short of Maui, where I was born and raised. The missing “i” seemed significant especially because the capital “I” no longer live on the island. I reside in New York City, the moku of Manhattan. Nonetheless, I identify myself as a Maui-boy. “Nā hono a‘o Pi‘ilani” (the bays of the Pi‘ilani) was how Mauians of old identified the isle and themselves. Though the strategic bays mentioned in the expression are in or near Lahaina, my family lives on another of Maui’s important bays, Ka‘ehu, which is on the other side of the moku. Ka‘ehu’s known today as Paukūkalo. (Iʻll write more about this later.) This important phrase in praise of one of Maui’s great king (the 130th generation descendant of Wakea, God of Light, says Wikipedia) is also a line in the beautiful mele, Kaulana Nā Pua, a song and hula that led me to this conference. (More on this in another entry, too.) #2: Mau Piailug is one of the last living trans-Pacific master navigators from Satawai in the Carolina Islands who guided the training of modern Hawaiian navigators on the Hokūlea to and from Tahiti in 1976. Without any GPS or modern navigational instruments and using only ancient knowledge of wayfinding (the rhythms and sensations of a sun, stars, wind and vast ocean...and guts), these sailors recreated the unbelievable feats of the ancients who migrated to these most remote islands centuries before the Europeans landed in their New World. I don’t presume to be anything like this heroic Mau, but I find him a source of inspiration in my quests. (3) Mau, according to Pukui and Ebert, can mean always, steady, constant, ever, unceasing, permanent, stationary, continual, perpetual; to continue, persevere, preserve, endure, last; preservation, continuation; to continue, keep on, persist, renew, perpetuate, persevere, last; stopped, as menstruation; to make fast, as an anchor in sand; to snag; to cause to be retarded, grounded, wagered, stopped; conceived, as at the very moment of conception. The word’s in the State motto, “Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘āina i ka pono.” The life of the land is preserved in righteousness. There’s latitude and trajectory in the word. (4) Mau sounds like a Pacific Island person like me. Since I’m a Filipino-American (Ilocano-Visayan, for those of you wonder, with familial roots in Maglaoi, Cebu, Ormok) born is Hawai’i, the nickname seems apt. Me ka pono, mau