Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp

During the times of our ancestors, when a bowl would accidentally break, they did not discard it. They gathered the pieces, listened to the voice of the wood, and stitched its wounds with care. They mended it using another type of wood and shaped it in the form of a fish (known as the pewa design) or a butterfly (known as the lepelepe o Hina design) as part of the mending process. The crack became a fish swimming through what was once broken or a butterfly with wings covering the wound.

The more it was mended, the more pewa or lepelepe designs were added. The more the bowl was mended, the more beauty grew.

That was the real value of the object–how it survived, its history and how it was cherished generation after generation despite any “imperfections”.

This is how we should move through time. We are not lost in our fractures. We mend ourselves with symbols of freedom and age. We carry our history in the lines of our repair and in that way we continue. The cracks are not our ending. They are where the light has shown.