Post #324614 by Tiki Lion on Fri, Aug 10, 2007 12:41 AM

OK, I'm doing this all backwards (nothing new there):
Allow me to introduce myself: Tiki Lion.

From a very early age I remember parents' humored take on Pacific Island and nautical themes, mixed with a bit of embarrassment at being "caught" in fondly remembering and longing for something that never was "legitimately" a part of their lives (a flavor of nostalgia?).

Me, I simply loved the stuff!

One treasured set of memories are of a trip to Hawaii with grandparents the summer of my 8th birthday.

One of the happiest times of my life!

Many decades followed, filled with the usual other life stuff, but I kept searching for something lost, a style, an attitude, a perspective, occasionally seeing bits of art, or architecture, or kitch, but never having a framework for understanding my hunger or perceptions...

Then a couple of months ago, the word Tiki popped up in an article, and I realized I couldn't really define the term all that precisely, but thought I knew what it meant.
Sort of.

So I did what I often do these days with such words, and looked first at Wikipedia, which clarified a few things for me, and then more broadly at Google, which returned more that sixteen million citations of "tiki," one of which was this delightful Answers.com page:

http://www.answers.com/tiki

I never knew there was a name for this thing, yet suddenly, now I am home, and finally it all makes sense.

My birthday's next Friday folks, see you at the Oasis!