Thank-you

I recently made connection with an astrologer and elder who is inspiring me. Donna Cunningham is new to me, though not at all new to the realm of astrology and teaching astrology. I have been exploring her writings and her articles on her blog Skywriter, and have posted a couple articles on my other blog VardoForTwo sharing my experience with tools for clearing energetic thought forms. In related branches of her work Donna Cunningham shares her love and her broad experiences with writing, and in particular I was struck with the concept of reworking or rewriting pieces to keep them fresh and applicable today. That's what this post is about: reworking or reissuing an article I wrote several years ago in the Hawaii Island Journal. This piece was my last regular column of "Makua O'o" written for that HIJ. The relevance lies in the effectiveness of the visualize that is included in the piece; a wish to be 'like a migrating whale' ... spending some time in the Islands and some times kela (over there). The power of visualization and putting it down on paper is evidenced by a look at the life I now live. I have migrated back and forth between the islands and now I live in a tiny wheeled wagon and write stories and blogs for an even more invisible audience. Seven years later and the experiences of living with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities heightening my awareness of life's highs and lows, it's time to review the wish-list, recognize where my journey has led, up-date my thought forms and make new lists of thanks, and create action plans for a Makua who is now sixty-two years old.


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Thank you

Life is a cycle of seasons and try as I might in my fifty-plus seasons to out-run or avoid feeling sad, I think I have learned that I will never out-run feeling sad or any of the full inventory of feelings. When my life has been busy with deadlines and lists there have been fewer moments to feel –sad or anything else. Motion has a ‘feel’ of its own and it must be that characteristic that fills in for the reflective and sensory experience of yearning. There’s a tender and vulnerable sense that pervades me when I feel ‘sad.’ I haven’t died from feeling sad, and yet with age the depth of my feelings increases in direction proportion to the years. Decisions, choices become just a momentary move. Akua brought me back to Hawaii to catch up on my sensory inventory, reminding me how many ways there are to feel; that’s just what one of the things these islands do – give us humans experience with feelings. I arrived nine cycles ago with few boxes but heavy old emotional baggage and a relationship with Faith that was weaker than hot tea seeped from a day-old tea bag. The years of writing this column Makua o`o have been a precious gift given to me by the Muse who has watched me since birth. Aware of the missed opportunities for self-expression, my guardian of the word must have waved the big wand when I began unpacking my bags because I have uncovered and unloaded resentments, short-sighted perceptions and expectations about people, places and relationships in the nine years since my move from the Pacific Northwest. Words and stories have been my magic carpet and thanks to Michael Gibson and the vessel of the Ka`u Landing and then Lane Wick and Karen Valentine who evolved the Hawaii Island Journal, the practice of makua o`o has reached many people. I have no idea how many people have read this column, but maybe the numbers don’t matter. That people have read is it.

This is my last column of Makua o`o. That makes me sad. It’s time to move along with the rest of my life and to tell the truth I know not where the path leads but know it leads some where different. I hope Akua sees me spending time both here in my home of birth and kela … that other place or places yet to be determined. I would like to be a migrating whale spending time here in the winter. So this is a piece filled with “Thank-you”, a phrase simple and powerful. Here goes.

Thank-you, Michael Gibson for making space for my writing in the Ka`u Landing when the teaching of makua o`o was new to me.

Thank-you, Lane Wick and Karen Valentine for creating a newspaper of value. You have invested your talents and your vision into a communication source that has taken information-sharing to a new and inspired level of integrity and heart.

Thank you, Gretchen Kelly for honing my writing with sensitivity to my intent and skill with the craft of word-smithing.

Thank you, Alice Moon for welcoming me to Hilo when I was a first-time published essayist looking to do my first ever book-signing gig. We have become good friends since then, and I am grateful.

Thank you, Tutu Pele and Hi`iaka for the dreams and the inspiration to persist. The energy of volcanoes is raw when you are living on one. Life and death and re-birth are more than metaphoric.

Thank you, Haunani-Kay Trask for being volcanic and Hawaiian. Those who read her stuff and truly listen to her voice accept her anger is hers and if it challenges your place in the world … that’s a good thing. Interviewing Trask was a pivotal piece of work. It was exciting to meet and interview a contemporary revolutionary.

Thank you, Kuli`ou`ou. I knew you at a time past, but understood you so little. I know you better now, and know I have become different because I am a wanderer. That is what makes me saddest of all. It is no fault of yours, and there is nothing I would change about either of us.

Thank you to all who have read Makua o`o. In case you have forgotten, here are those tools of the makua o`o that were shared with me by Aunty Betty Jenkins. Be well, keep practicing and take care.

OBSERVE with a keenness of attention for details

THINK CREATIVELY with a sense of intellectual curiosity, interest and concern

LISTEN CAREFULLY to those words spoken as well as those unspoken

MIME and personify those who exemplify the highest caliber of po`okela (excellence)

QUESTION for clarification and clearness of thought for decision making

PRACTICE patience and endurance

ENGAGE in good health practices

KNOW that wisdom is found in many places

FEEL the heartbeat of culture

BELIEVE in Ke Akua

“Crying a lovely thing, isn’t it? ... It helps you survive. I think the fittest are those who cry.”

- From One Vacant Chair, a brand new novel by Joe Coomer