A Festive Season Around Polynesian Art of Living
The Art of Being
E vai noa ra
The lagoon at mid-morning holds no movement. Time moves differently…
The Tahitians have a word for this: Vai. Water. And also to exist, to be, to remain.
E vai noa ra—and so it continues to be.
It is first noticeable in how Polynesians move in space. Not slowly, exactly, without the urgency that passes for purpose elsewhere. Ori haere, is to walk around without a specific destination in mind. It’s about refusing to mistake motion for meaning. With no pressure to explore, the journey changes meaning,
and there is time to truly unwind.
Around midday, the light filters through the palms and rests on the still water. The air carries the scent of tiare and warm mono’i oils. Somewhere nearby, a soft cascade breaks the silence, steady and unhurried.
The mind quiets as the body listens to the rustle of trees, the sound of water folding over stone, the faint resonance of bowls that rise and fade like breath.
Here, movement becomes something subtle, internal, like the opening of a water lily, the slow drift of a fish beneath the pond’s surface, the play of a shadow across the wood. Nothing asks to be done; everything simply is.
Meanwhile, the trade winds gently blow. Maoake, the wind from the Northeast,
is referred to as te metua vahine, the mother of all winds.
Carrying seedlings that become sea bushes or trees, rustling palm fronds, making rainwater travel like dancing curtains, rippling and shifting the surface of water into diamonds…
