The Lei of the Land

Well, I’m here in Hawaii for the next two months, in a landscape where, famously, the natural world and human culture intermingle in particular harmony.  I hope to share some of this natural beauty & these cultural elements with you through photographs during the time I’m here, and explore some of the contradictions unveiled in this increasing modernized human-nature relationship.

One of the fascinating island traditions here is the lei...

most commonly known as a garland of flowers, seeds or shells used to greet newcomers at the airport. The idea supposedly started way back, as illustrated in old lithographs of Polynesian beauties greeting Cook and his marauding cohorts with armfuls of flower wreaths.

My partner, who is a 4th generation Hawaiian haole, is a little doubtful of the veracity of this myth, given that the islands were probably quite dry in those days and the flower population small. This is certainly no longer the case today, however, when the flower industry on the islands is almost as big as the tourist industry that feeds upon it. There are certainly some contradictions to explore here, not least the effects of the pollutants involved in this kind of agricultural production.

Nevertheless, lei have a rich creative role on the islands – they have long been used to decorate the body of both men and women for the elaborate rituals of hula, and the intricate arts of lei-making as practiced by many old-time artisans are truly astounding to behold. Using nuts, seeds, feathers, shells, ivory, as well as flowers, leaves, ferns, they weave visible magic.

Lei are almost always worn today at formal island occasions like weddings, they’re ubiquitous at funerals, and cast into the surf when one leaves Hawaii as a promise to return. It’s become common practice to give them as gestures of affection to your family and loved ones on special occasions; for birthdays, welcomes, good-byes, and, most timely at this time of year – at graduations.

I am blessed to have a step-son who is graduating this year, and so was recently privy to the arcane practice of an island graduation ceremony. The sight of him with his classmates, more than 400 of them seated row upon row, had a beautiful dignity that I found profoundly moving; the young men wearing maile leaf lei strung across their broad new shoulders, and the beautiful young women with green and white haku lei crowns.

Afterwards, however, the civilized delicacy of the formal ceremony gave way to a truly bacchanalian spectacle of excess as the new graduates carried out a ritual that was astounding in quite another way where lei-giving has morphed into a ‘more is better’ free-for-all where family, friends and classmates give all kinds of gorgeous lei to their friends and family members in a competition to see who is most popular, the proof being a neck-full of lei so thick that in some cases it threatens to smother the human being inside.

I wish I would have thought to photograph some of these walking ‘mummies’, but my photographic enthusiasm was drawn by my own reasonably popular family member, so you will just have to imagine the spectacle of these kids wandering around the great hall, barely able to see above their floral collars, and continuing to pile lei on each other.

The level of sheer waste involved would make this a rather distasteful phenomenon if it wasn’t for the generosity of the traditions evolving out of the sheer enormity of the morning-after bounty. I saw a news report from Kauai yesterday describing how the excess graduation lei were being brought in to retirement homes across the island to brighten the days of the senior citizens there, with others transported to the airport in great armloads and given with aloha to each surprised and delighted new arrival at the airport. My co-parent used ours to decorate the graves of her father and brother, which is another wonderful gesture.