Saturday, July 30, 2011

Ocean me



Big is the ocean
Small is me
I go to the ocean
And leave the everyday me.

MAULI The 'sometime moon' of Kaulana Mahina

29th po of Mahina
 Mauli (“Ghost,” “spirit”; Malo: “fainting”; Kepelino: “last breath”)




From the woods of Langley on Whidbey Island, I'm writing while Pete cooks up breakfast -- chicken sausages, and a side of Greek Yogurt, and polenta.  My son's with us, sitting outside on the vardo steps in the sunshine of a summer day.  We've had three, going on four summer weather days with temperatures a moderate mid-70's at it's peak.  Nice, warm enough for me who is now so ma'a (used to) moderate I would be hard-pressed to be easy with much more that the mid-70's.  It's what I've gotten used to.

The Kaulana Mahina is my major teacher of learning how to get used something different.  Today/tonight is one of those times of "sometimes, yes"  "sometimes, no".  The MAULI Po, is a phase of the Hawaiian Moon Calendar which is 'missing' on some months; sometimes a month is 29 days/nights long, sometimes it is 30 days/nights long.  Similar to the 'Leap Year' the relationship between Hina the Moon, Earth, where we live and determine our comparison, and the Sun needs a +/- to 'make sense.'  The technical reasons, the science and observable accounting for the Mauli Moon isn't what I'm getting at here.  There are explanations.  Rather than just explain, we have learned to accept that in the counting of time, you can't always nail it down and put it onto a static calendar.  Discomfort?  Well, yeah but life is that way, sometimes. 

The point is unless you look up:  see and say, "Ah, a'ole moon (no moon)" the messages from Mahina are subtle and easily missed...present but not your present. The Kaulana Mahina was created by an indigenous people, living closely with land, sky and responsibility.  Time was regular and changeable.  The newsletter Mahina~Messages from the Hawaiian Moon is newly published, and is available for FREE view for the weekend.  Check it out, join the Mahina 'Ohana.  After Monday, the newsletter is available for $10- a month.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

The Kapu Moons of Kaulana Mahina: Lono Po and the Bowl of Light

"I have told this story, many times, but as all storytellers know most good stories are told with minor variation and still maintain the value and the lesson. This one is about readiness and trust.



Aunty Betty

Pete and I were a very new couple, tentative but willing to venture into a relationship in the later years, we began with letters. Lots of them. I was not yet divorced from a marriage of more than twenty years, my bowl was cracked and through the dreaming Pete floated in. It was unexpected, sweet and unpredictable. Letters, words are powerful commitments and especially so with people like Pete and me. We come from different angles on words, but the composite is ... many unexpected outcomes.

We joined each other in this couple-making in the valley I had called 'homestead' for two brief days and nights, and then packed our ukana (stuff) and moved to Maui where I had a job waiting. I was to teach-train in a large Maui resort. Within days, Pete would be hired as a carpenter at the same resort. It was a special and precious time, our Maui time. Among the people we met was a kupuna who was leading a workshop focused on Hawaiian Values. She was introduced to me by my cousin as someone who was doing what I had done (teaching the value of Poi Bowl). My cousin said, "Find her." Aunty Betty Kawohiokalani Jenkins found me, at that resort. We began to talk and I pursued her as my mentor. She included me in her journey as teacher and inspiration and shared her mother's teachings of Makua O'o.

Makua O'o has been my foundation. Kawohiokalani and I have gone on to teach and learn, grow and age, makawalu, makawalu. While preparing for the last of the posts for this "Unfurling" Wa'a I found this video of Aunty, and share it with you now. A perfect gift and prayer for Lono Po ... "
I've just published the post above in my workshop-blog "Unfurling" with a prayer of thanks specific for the wa'a kaulua (canoe) that has taken me, Pete and a small and powerful group of women through a voyage of discovery.  We are truly blessed with the adventure and more is yet to come.  The study and practice of life with the Kaulana Mahina (time with Mahina) always include po of prayer, and appreciation.  Tonight/today is one of those, the final recognition of a month living with connection to all-there-is seen and unseen.  Lono, god of health and harvest this is your time.

This video is of Aunty Betty Kawohiokalani Jenkins is fine tribute to the many manifestations of health and harvest, trust and timing.  It was she and her Mama who opened the doors to my life as Makua O'o. You who read here, this is one of my points of reckoning:  still up there on stage, dressed and styling (check out the sandals!) and walking her talk.

Mahalo Aunty Betty Kawohiokalani,
Mokihana



To keep track of the Kaulana Mahina consider signing up for my new monthly Mahina Newsletter for $10.00 you receive three weekly messages created specifically for the Anahulu (week) of the month.  Click here.


Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Superficial or Solid: your support, your backbone

I'm just back from a chat with my friend who rents us space for our vardo and the Quonset.  She was in her garden pulling thistles before they go to seed and scatter hundreds more just like themselves.  Prickly stuff and hell to rid if you're not vigilant.  We are four old folks, our friends, me and Pete living in the woods and shoring each other up.  A year ago last summer we were strangers looking for a good fit in a world being shaken by its tail-bone.  There is a maoli concept based on the life of the Kiha that seems to fit here, so I'm putting it down and hope it is a tale that you can digest and make use of it in your world.

"Coming together is not based on equality, but rather on understanding that everyone is uniquely diferent, and that each has a unique contribution to offer."- from Saga of the Kiha by Kauilahuliauikeanu & Kauakahi

The saga of the kiha is the story of the mo'o (the embodiment of strength and tenacity) the supernatural dragon and a parable for building people of value and character. Within this story, the kanaka -- the reader regardless of race, is given a sage-filled journey to understand how important the tail of the dragon, lizard, mo'o is.  The strength of the mo'o builds from front legs, the grasping legs of the young and new generation.  The explorers:  handling, sensing.  Up through the legs and into the body of the Kiha, the power of further exploration grows.  This center of power is called "Mana" in the language of kanaka.  Gradually, the mana moves into the hind legs where support and 'back-up' is given to the kanaka.  The young child, and pubescent woman-man becomes procreative, and then parents become  makua.  Makua are the guiding forces.  What is needed as the young are born and explorative is given from the back feet, and then ultimately, the stories-tales move into the tail, where all guidance waits.  These guiding stories are "moo-lelo"; stories wrapped around the tail-bone.

Sitting here, on my tail-bone, digesting the afternoon chat with my friend pulling thistles I think of my motivation to cross the orchard that separates or is the common land between our living spaces.  I crossed the orchard to check in with my friend.  It has been a trying time for us these few weeks, with tension building for multiple reasons.  We live in this American nation that took from the Kanaka, the culture and life blood of a race once-rich with mana and backbone as strong as Kiha.  Nearly two hundred years ago, Lili'uokalani crossed in a sailing ship to visit with the President of America to ask why with all these endless stretches of land as 'their own' would you also come to take our tiny islands as well? 

Winding my way to the tip of that mo'o's tail bone, I feel the rattle of a country with its tail-bone shaken loose.  We real folks, no longer young, have handled and experienced many things, decisions, jobs, diversions.  Here in these woods on an island in America's Pacific coast I talk to my neighbor and check to see how solidly our relationship supports our mutual needs.  We are independent yet interdependent.  When we came looking for a place to park our wheeled home, we came for a place with people who have skills and hearts capable of opening and supporting our uniqueness.  They were looking for someone who could help around the land; with a truck; a cat who lived outside and hunted rats; and were people they could like and trust; and pay rent.  We fit.  They fit. This afternoon's chat over thistles and poultry digging up the garden filled in the cracks in the foundations: "How you?"  "Been working on that book?"  "Thanks for the re-negotiation on the electric bill."  "Here's some $ for the bath house."  Small and vital maintenance and affirmations is what it takes to keep trust alive, and support real.

Rocky times, and tail-breaking turmoil will test the quality of your support systems.  The Kiha story ends with knowing that a mo'o can regrow a tail, escaping danger, it's internals will always grow another tail of balance and strength.  So, what is the head of the mo'o you might wonder?  The head is the future where we choose what we think with clarity or cloudiness.

What is the Kiha value in your life?  Superficial or solid? Are you someone's go to gal/guy? 

P.S. Thanks Elsa for the great topic that fueled this storyteller.

Monday, July 25, 2011

NEW WORK: Mahina~messages from The Hawaiian Moon

I admit, I am obsessed with Mahina.  She is such a great teacher, goddess, comforter.  The last week of the workshop Unfurling (the four of the on-line workshops focused on the Hawaiian Universe through the eyes of Kaulana Mahina) wraps up this week.  I will take a break from writing and teaching those workshops, and shift a bit, but not stop writing.  So many ideas and thoughts inspire me to just keep it going ... i mua!

I invite you to sign-up for my newsletter Mahina~Messages from The Hawaiian Moon, that I'll begin writing and publishing this coming week-end, as the month of July closes, and the new anahulu begins with Hilo, Monday, August 1st, 2011.

If you have been interested in the content of the on-line workshops, but been unavailable to join in, those workshops will resume in the Fall (TBA).  In the meantime, the newsletter may be just enough to tickle your interest and your inspiration from the energy of the changing sky, Papa Huli Lani, and the influence of Mahina.

WHY THIS NEWSLETTER?

"The start of a newsletter is both an old favorite form of communication, yet different this time. I have loved creating newsletters in print, paper newsletters: editing and publishing them for clients and for the small business ventures I have done alone, or with Pete. There's something about assembling words and pictures that I love. Transforming and transmitting is a twin process of turning compost (loss and confusion) into life and understanding (aloha!)..."


Don't pass up another chance to be inspired by Carlos Andrade's beautiful lyrics and Gabby Pahinui's voice singing MOONLIGHT LADY in the video above.  Share the obsession:)

Click here to read the whole post on the new newsletter :
http://mahinahawaiianmoon.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Rooted to Papa, Knotted with Ni pu'u, Crossing Time, Feeling the kaona


~o~

"Let my inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm,
That will not forsake you, till my tale is told and done.

~o~


~o~
~o~

While the firelight's aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow, Till things we've never seen will seem familiar...
Counting stars by candlelight, all are dim but one is bright;  The spiral light of Venus, rising first and shining best,
On, from the northwest corner, of a brand new crescent moon,
While crickets and cicadas sing, a rare and different tune,
Terrapin Station ..."
-extracted lyrics from the song Terrapin Station-Lady with a Fan by Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter

~o~

Kumu Kawena "Ruby" Johnson

~o~

It's funny to wake from sleep and find your surroundings foreign because of course the dream has been so vivid and encompassing.  From the night-time comfort or the day-time retreat, the vardo has become my solid platform -- small, solid, reassuring.  The years of building her(our vardo) were in no small way a replication of birthing as all births happen, not instantaneous; formed from the bits and pieces of who and what we believed or intuited Pete and I started with our basic nature(s) and knotted what was good for us into place.  The touchable parts of our solid home:  the terra cotta tiles, the stainless steel walls, the arched ceiling of oak painted with milk, and windows that seal firmly and open expansively, all knotted into a place that serves the perpetuating of time with dreams.  Though the earth-bound nature of our lives are vital, just as our beans and peas that wili (tendril and cling) up the fence needed care, and protection from the slugs, the other side of life comes from dreaming that comfort, the vining nature that will burst with luscious sweet peas and tender lengths of Blue Lake Beans.

I'm in a vining-phase.  I feel the dreaming more present everyday in the writing I do, caring that I write more and more the dreaming bridges strengthen even as they are flexible and weather inclimate conditions.  Here at Makua, I maintain the voice that started things while the vardo was in-the-making ... feeling a cultural back-beat while I knotted together parts and let loose the things/beliefs/stories  that were no longer useful.  And in the writing in other places, the voice tendrils with the wisdom and desire to reach for something out there to which I can explore new territory.  Ever spend time with a vine?  Astrologically, I feel the steady progress to securing my Taurus North Node in the artistry of words that are not much like others out there.  It's okay that it might be difficult to understand, Hawaiians call it kaona and know the lesson will be ripe for those with a taste for it. It matters that I am confident and then quieted when it is time to nest, and rest, dream and restore.  Knotted in place, for a time before reaching.

The symbols and links above are a knotted cord of messages rooted in science that is inseparable from cosmos and dreams, rock icons and creatures carrying the codes upon their back where ever they go. 

~o~

INSPIRATION
Mahalo R.A. for the very cool connection with the Garcia-Hunter lyrics to Terrapin Station-Lady With a Lady the perfect knot needed to fill in this story, and H.S. for the imagery of the carbon molecule to link science with Kumulipo.

~o~
.
And you?  What dreams cross easily into the solid world you call your life?



Monday, July 18, 2011

July, 2011 Garden Party




We will remember moments, chants of long ago, songs strummed from a shady place.

A mango tree, a fence of peas gone crazy with the breeze.

Whose to say, this was a time of innocence or languished sanity. 

We will remember moments, chants of long ago, songs strummed from a shady place.

No mango bough or sandy shore, replaced instead with apples and the scent of pine high in the sky cleared for a celebration.

Lines tell of lives lived long, lived well?  Oh who can tell, no matter is it in the long run

We will remember moments, chants of long ago, songs strummed from many shady places.


Friday, July 15, 2011

Recipe re-do

I used to carry recipes tucked into cookbooks that belonged to my mom.  Her familiar handwriting comforted me even though some recipes were no longer foods I ate or prepared, at the time.  Even as I write with my kitty sprawled across my knees, I wish I had the books and wonder whether in my jumble of ukana(stuff) that book might still take up some space? Later in life, my former mother-in-law passed index cards of famous and favorite foods:  Buttermilk pancakes (i made them every Sunday for more than twenty years), Upside-down tuna pie (cornmeal mix and condensed mushroom soup).  The recipe cards from his grandmothers may pass into my son's hands at some point his own facility as cook seems to have fueled those genes, but a recipe box like the one pictured long replaced with the tiny screens with names I admit to know little.

Time and technology mould and fashion our recipes.  I love the crockpot, and chocolate cake, but for the next while I will have to fore-go the cake and savor meals of comfort made in the crockpot.  On most days, that is good:  the affect of rich food and gluten aren't worth the momentary pleasure; but sometimes, I cheat myself and pay the price of anguish.  Healing is a long term process and fixes or cures are often not the recipe that works.  Susun Weed, Herbalist and Wild Woman has crossed my path several times.  Though we have never met, her work as healer, and her story from an astrological point of view continue to offer me options or reinforcement.  The other night I was rereading my favorite astrology book by Elizabeth Rose Campbell.  In it I read a quote from Weed, about the influence of the asteroid Chiron in her life as healer.  In essence Weed said, "It is not my job as healer, to steal the pain of another..."  Her philosophy embraces the belief that imperfection is the place to begin healing, and from that place of acceptance:  "With your cancer, you are perfect " the body-soul will seek out it's perfect recipe.  Somewhere in her story Weed also said of Chiron[the wounded healer] that given time, Chiron will work with your pain and heal the whole rather than to remove the symptom.  At first glance, that sounds homeopathic, and it is.  Nothing wrong with that, and it's an approach or recipe I have used in tandem with others. 

What occurs to me as I fashion the story on re-doing recipes is how allowing I am, or we as humans are, in the adjusting or amending of recipes that work or don't work.  My kitty is mending an infected eye, accepting the juiced wheatgrass we squirt into her tear-duct, licking the juice from her fur that I rub on her back.  We refrain from the antibiotic eyedrops offered, giving her time to heal.  I observe and feel her eye; notice that she is more or less frisky.  Today there is less drainage from the eye.  We are sympatico ... we are common friends.  She attends to herself, notices our vibes.  I try to remember it's not up to me to steal her pain.

Somewhere there is a recipe for two-crust fresh apple banana pie I used to bake when we still lived in Kuliouou Valley.  My friends told me there have a copy of the recipe clipped from the Hawaii Island Journal days.  Ha? I had forgotten I wrote that, and even forgotten how I loved baking and eating Apple Banana Pie.  That pie is as old a food of comfort as it gets beckoning memories of dinners at the old Kaimuki Inn circa 1955.  Not possible to get a hand of Apple Bananas from my Quonset in the woods of Whidbey.  Somehow the recipe slips into space out of reach, at least for a while.  It's painful to know Apple Banana Pie is a recipe lost to me, but it's okay for now because it wouldn't taste quite the same without the gluten of a wheat crust. 

Know what I mean?

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

ASK

"Is there room for the unknowable?"  Well, if you don't make room for it how will you know."  I am an old woman.  Not so old that I don't find moments when throwing a kini into hopscotch squares eludes my memory, but there are days when I know time has passed. 

"You're more Hawaiian now then when you were living there!"  The short reply to that is, there's always more to know about 'being Hawaiian' and since I'm a curious gal I keep digging into things and have found a place where being curious is a very good thing.  Twisted in and out of this place in which I am where curious is good is the ancient belief, some call it 'protocol' that says don't be niele -- mind your business, curiosity killed the cat!  My real life has taught me to see both ends of that protocol and recognize that those protocol based on kapu had and have a place in a pono life.  There are many times when others' business is not my thing; it takes practice to stay freed-up of entanglements.  On the other end of that protocol and beyong the realm of kapu is the seed of exploration that lives in us, at least most of us.  Adventurous genes?  I think so, just read The Kumulipo and you see the evidence of that.

Here's a question for you, "being Hawaiian"  what's that?  Ahhh.  Hit that ARROW on the video above and chant along with Kumu.  Ask for yourself what 'being Hawaiian" means.  I've had a recent opportunity to engage in discourse and discussion with a friend.  The issue of traditional practices and fit arose during our discourse.  Similarly, my son and I have conversations about what is traditional practice and how does one know while reading Hawaiian-written material what to include or believe as real.  Like I said, I am an old woman now and in my life these questions have filled my head and my na'au again and again.  When my cousin Mokihana was still in the flesh I often turned to her, my elder cousin, to ask for clarification.  Sometimes I would get a straight answer:  "Tell the boy to carry ti leaf and Hawaiian salt on the job.  Keep the ti leaf fresh everyday ..."  Other times her answers were parable-like broad and open-ended leaving gaping holes for me to swing across in time:  "So, you found the mo'o."  This in reply to my question about the sacred meaning of our name.  Later, and then again after that the meaning of names or words lead from knowledge to wisdom.  Wisdom coming only after experiencing meaning with bite.

Many people will come up with answers to 'being Hawaiian', but few can give another the answer that fits.  During the past four months E HO MAI has become a daily or regular part of my spiritual practice, asking to have the unknowable accessible.  Saturn(control-freak) has a heavy hand in my birth chart, so authority figures big in my life.  As a girl those protocols were commandments I followed because!  Even then, there was a rebelliousness that would have to wait to be harnessed and I became facile with words.  Fortunately my blood includes the storytelling genes and that is how I move through the changing answers that I get while telling stories. 

All of us have that storyteller gene, and along with that gene are zillions of others that are talking and telepathing 24/7 or 30/10.  The trick I learned while sorting through all the stories I tell (witness the reality I have more than a dozen blogs) is to ask that storytelling gene.  I call my genie "She who watches [and listens]."  She among the zillions has eyes and ears for my best interest, and the only price for stories?  You got it, 'ASK .'

If you want help accessing "She who watches" click here.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Ana ... count Hulu ... by ten

It's a big deal to learn another way of counting.  Barely do I remember the days of memorizing the multiplication tables, but as I pull the words through my fingertips, I see the large white Flash Cards with big dark numbers and feel an ancient sense of wonder at learning something I didn't know before.  In that same vein of wonder the months of study and teaching the Anahulu has cultivated that wondrous sense that it is never too late to learn/remember/grow a new tail.

Kaulana Mahina is a calendar that counts in 10.  By her reckoning the moon's time, allows the phases of time to pass with connectivity. Today and tonight the last of four po (phases) of KU end the times of upright nature.  Led into its KU times by the Hoaka moon (the crescent) all things living pull into the upright.  Ku rounds into the 'Ole Moons tomorrow, giving time for reflection and weeding the progress the garden, your garden.  I was just out watering my carrots, collards, cabbage, beans, lettuce and 10-foot tall peas.  It's the first garden I have planted in a long time. The record-breaking height of the peas astonishes and delights me. We have pictures to celebrate the cultivation.  I water, string and support the ever climbing pea vines talking to them ever step of the way.

Tomorrow when 'Ole draws me into looking at weeding the stagnated parts of my garden I will look closely at the corners of my thinking that might need refreshing; brighten and commend the seeds growing vibrantly as a new tale(tail) of my mo'olelo seeks a way into my garden, my life.  Refreshed with poi cocktails and family, I appreciate the journey and laugh. I have laundry to finish, filtered water to fill into jars:  that's part of the good news.

Ku on.  'Ole tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Family, poi and birthday celebration

My son is visiting.  We have been talking story, taking wood walks and beach walks, hanging out when the weather is clear, and generally just totally enjoying time together.  He brought cartons of Hanalei poi which I have scooped into poi cocktails twice a day since he got here last Thursday.  Soothing, comforting food that suits me in all ways.  Yesterday was Pete's birthday.  After a long stretch of 4th of Julys that can best be described as part of the on-the-run times, yesterday was a day of hospitality, good food, conversation, laughter, sunshine, pineapple upside down cake, presents and live music.  We gathered old and new friends in the orchard for an afternoon pa'ina welcoming people to the abundance of our newly created life.  This is a short post to document a grand landmark.  Whew!  Thank you Ke Akua, what a plan.