"History is no mystery to me"

 

The Hawaiian band Kupa'aina plays their brand of evolutionary revolutionary music. This video is not the greatest quality, but the sounds are. Linking to their website will give you much more about this band and its kuleana.

The heat of summer has come to the Pacific Northwest, a slight breeze tickles the tips of the trees. Their fingers are sensitive to the company of makani the wind and we who share this place need only notice the relationship to be part of it. My son is with us this summer and like the wind (he is Libra, the Cardinal Air sign) he often brings experiences we would otherwise miss. Yesterday we sat to have toasted cheese sandwiches in the shade of the Quonset and the Tall Ones that grow around us. On his ipod was the music of the band Kupa'aina his favorite Hawaiian band. Except for knowledge of one of the band's members, "Uncle Stan" (Stan Tibayan) I did not know about Kupa'aina.While I munched my slightly over-done cheese sandwich I listened to the song "Night Marchers" and before the four minute mele was done tears ran down my face salting the already salty raw cheddar lunch. The title of this post is a nod to the refrain that repeats and haunts the listener in the lyrics drawing from me the kaona, the hidden meanings which are the interwoven strands of memory ancient people embed in language. "History is no mystery to me" is both a revolutionary affirmation and a sad awareness that for some with the blood of Kanaka and those unaware of Kanaka knowing neither history (real or fabricated) mute the ability to attune or worse, history does not beckon for the calling for mystery to resolve is unimportant.

The band's trans-generational membership and the music that each member contributes to the whole is an empowering and sustaining sample of how an ancient people evolves. Two articles-blogposts entitled "Animal Stories" and "Animal Stories, continued" from writer Terri Windling have stimulated me to call on the winds to speak of language and history from the world of the Pacific's ancient people. In each of Terri Windling's posts extensive quotations from Writer in residence for the Chickasaw Nation Linda Hogan expand the readers world. The following quotes are from Linda Hogan's essay "First Peoples", the whole of Hogan's quotes are included on Windling's posts. They are beautifully assembled with photos and quotations from other writers as well as thoughtful comments from readers and writers who attune to the relationship with All. I've included my thoughts about Hogan's messages in this blog post and draw from my experiences as a maturing adult and elder with roots deep and widely influenced.

 "I've found, too, that the ancient intellectual traditions are not merely about belief, as some would say. Belief is not a strong enough word. They are more than that: They are part of lived experience, the on-going experience of people rooted in centuries-old knowledge that is held deep and strong, knowledge about the natural laws of Earth, from the beginning of creation, and the magnificent terrestrial intelligence still at work, an intelligence now newly called ecology by the Western science that tells us what our oldest tribal stories maintain--the human animal is a relatively new creation here; animal and plant presences were here before us; and we are truly the younger sisters and brothers of the other animal species, not quite as well developed as we thought we were..."

"[The] ancient intellectual traditions are not merely about belief ... Belief is not a strong enough word...rooted in centuries-old knowledge ... the human animal is a relatively new creation here." My experience with ancient intelligence stems from my earthly connection as a daughter born to Pacific Islands, and the even more ancient links to China whose culture melted early into the voyages of both my Hawaiian-Chinese mother and her Filipino husband, my father. The thing that tweaks the practical and spiritual lives of someone like me born into a society and culture so heavily burdened by 'occupation' is the bridges that must be built to live with voices and roots that 'speak' in languages so covered with dust and illusion. Difficult to maintain that deep knowing with such layers of illusion? That is an understatement.

Here's an example of how dust and illusion and the influences of the universe do spiritual and psychic house-keeping. When I turned 60, I was living in my car with my beloved partner and husband. My physical health was at a lifetime low. We had no 'home' as most would define it; all semblance of connection with the people and values of Hawaii as I'd know it were steadily eroding. I could not live inside a house and could not be near most people. Sensitivities to chemicals of any kind enveloped me in a tight shell. The invisible, the unspeakables, the homeless, the traumatized. All of those tags could and did apply to us. Attachment to the recent past was an impossible reality. Hawaii 2008 wasn't working for us. I will be 65 this coming November, and we survived and dare to thrive. How did it happen?

The dust and illusion cleared when we began to count on the moon for wisdom and a more ancient reckoning of time. Parked inches from the beach on the southeastern shore of O'ahu at a place we just call The Tidepools, we parked my Subaru. Only after dark would be find a space to back our place of refuge for one night at a time. A newly printed Hawaiian Moon Calendar became our anchor to ancient and applicable wisdom that spoke the language of kuleana, responsibility. We had nothing more to lose, and had everything to rebuild. Night after night, the darkness and the progression of light from Mahina, the moon fed us hope one night at a time. Necessity began clear: a place to sleep in peace, food to eat, clean air to breath. At first most people would not understand what or why we were living from a car. Explanations didn't work for the most part. From November through March, we learned to live with the essentials of a being on the planet. A handful of people understood enough to shelter us and offer us what they could. Counting on the phases and influences of ancient Hawaiian wisdom about moon time, we let Mahina guide us. My dreams and my tap root of wisdom strengthened. I saw that there would be separation necessary for me to survive and hope to recovery. What had worked as a place of shelter and home would need to be released. The island home I was experiencing would not nurture me. But, it is the ancient voices and the dust-covered values of time keeping and tuning to the darkness that has led to the recovery and bridge-building today. It is my present, this present life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 "It seems we have always found our way across unknown lands, physical and spiritual, with the assistance of the animals. Our cultures are shaped around them and we are judged by the ways in which we treat them. For us, the animals are understood to be our equals. They are still our teachers. They are our helpers and healers. They have been our guardians and we have been theirs. We have asked for, and sometimes been given, if we've lived well enough, carefully enough, their extraordinary powers of endurance and vision, which we have added to our own knowledge, powers and gifts when we are not strong enough for the tasks required of us. We have deep obligations to them. Without other animals, we are made less."

Before we left O'ahu and while we slept near the ocean near the Tidepools, Honu and Palaoa, Turtle and Whale visited us often. Their ease with the tides both the shallow ones which offered Honu abundant feeding ground; and the depths of ocean needed for Palaoa to continue long and deep voyages planted seeds for our future, our present. Time is the keeper of progressions, while we learned and practiced making sense of our journey of loss, the culture that develops for us is filled with the assistance of the animals. Here in the woods thousands of miles from the O'ahu Tidepools the animals: squirrel, coyote, owl, chipmunk, frog, the Bird Ones cat, dog, all of them have something to teach. Our third solar cycle here in the woods and the hundreds of moon phases teach us patience and allowing. The mystery of history continues with a layer of something other than dust and illusion. In place of the illusion of 'loss' or 'homelessness' the mystery of living as human catapults us into place. "Oh, there are other ways to be." Into the root of our being, I believe the mystery is what goes beyond explanation and human life can become more equally extraordinary as Linda Hogan described in the second quotation above. We do have deep, and personal, obligation to animals. We are animals, though too often we separate ourselves and live with the illusion that we are not.

Our gifts come over bridges that are build from investments much like Spider invests in her web-building. All around me here in the woods, evidence of her intricate work dangles between Huckleberry arms, off of a porch ceiling. She invests in web-building because its in her nature to do so. We have that nature as well, and after explanations and words such as 'loss' cycle through, there is the present and it is then history. Tonight Mahina closes into the final phase of Ku, a new cycle of light and dark progresses. Ku phases are times of upright growth; and then there will be rest and reconciliation. The elegance of time increases when you can feel the effect of the heavens when she shouts. The mystery is in learning to hear the many languages, and the kaona the many meanings.

The way to the altar

Maka'ala ke kanaka kahea manu.

Translation: A man who calls birds should always be alert. Explanation: The Hawaiian alii (chiefs) wore beautiful capes and headdresses crafted by weaving in thousands of tiny feathers. The Kanaka kahea manu, the bird-catcher, would imitate bird-calls to attract the birds to catch them, pluck out a small number of tiny feathers and let them go. Once he had called the birds, he had to stay alert and be prepared to catch them quickly when they came near. The saying advises one who wishes to succeed to be alert to any opportunity that should arise.

'Olelo No'eau

We were up early. The forest was cool and sleep was refreshing. An odd dream still lingered with me as I sat on the vardo steps tying my boots up I told Pete about it. "A Japanese guy came to work on my teeth. He wasn't a dentist but was a kind of substitute dentist. We were talking next to a bathtub. In the bathtub was a tree, the guy felt the leaves  The leaves looked like the wild berry bushes that grow all around us in the woods. He said, "I'm not used to being with trees (nature)." He was sweaty from his 'day-job' and said, "Maybe I should take a shower." My mother was there with me and handed the guy a red and white towel and a wash cloth and eyed me as in making sure that would be a good choice. I nodded. I told him, "I'm chemical sensitive so we don't use soaps." He took that in and considered it. Next to the bathtub was a huge pile of clothes (dry or cleaned, I wasn't sure) and I wondered in the dream if that was making a bad impression. The dream went along and I was somewhere else. I remember thinking, "If I'm here and the dentist-guy isn't did I get my teeth fixed? Could it have been done in between and I missed it?

The dream was odd because it was not familiar like some dreams. In the light of today I understand how my mother shows up when there is something to move on with. Handing the strange guy the towels and checking with me to see how that would work. Such subtle messages. Something's missing and no if I'm thinking there was no satisfaction ... there probably wasn't any.

The quiet place where we make our home today is the future we imaged in the cycle of the past -- the years of sorting and moving through old connections and redefining definitions of 'home' and 'responsibility' and 'legacy.' Without dwelling (as in 'dwell in that place') on the past there is room this morning to see how far I have come in stepping out of my history and into my future. Cultural values that fuel Polynesian thinking and philosophy unfurls (makawalu) from the idea 'your future is based on your past ... or, your past is your future.' What happens when a woman like myself with grand curiosity conjunct loyalty to the past does not have clear bridges or pathways to a future that makes sense? Build the bridge. Clear the path. Again and again. One bridge will take you from where you are to somewhere else. That bridge doesn't always work, but the confidence in building makes it possible to build another bridge when you need it. The clearing of paths. Now that's where this story is leading.

Yesterday had a murky start to it. The night before was spent in dis-ease. My restfulness was upset by the too-intense-for-me scent of lilies in bloom. Lilies are beautiful, and while I am successfully retraining my ancient brain to calm and choose actions that are less frightening the lilies caused old triggers to clutter my way to the altar. My peace was disturbed; there was something I needed to do differently. That morning I woke late. I looked at the time and decided it was late enough to call my neighbor. She's the one who grows the lilies. When she picked up she asked, "How you doing?" I told her about the over-powering effect of the lilies. I asked her, "I was thinking about cutting the lilies and taking them into the woods. (quite a ways away) We could put them next to your altar so you could still enjoy them; and I'd sleep and breathe better." She said, "Of course we can cut the lilies, but I don't want you not to be able to walk in the woods. We can cut 'em and bring them into our house." "Okay, wow. Thank you so much."


Before the morning was over the lilies were cut and ultimately taken off to be with a neighbor down the hill; the smell was too much for the lily grower as well. When my friend and neighbor came to tell me how the issue of the lilies was resolved we sat and talked about how differently she and her partner had answer my request. Back to that paragraph about years of redefining home and responsibility. Several years ago, when I was returned to the house, in the valley where I lived as a girl I became progressively sicker with what was diagnosed as multiple sensitivity (MCS). It started with an issue of being sick from a fragrant flower. When I asked about cutting the flowers the response I got was "When did you become allergic to them?" The long lesson that I have learned is that sometimes the questions you ask of people are not the problem. The problem is you might be asking the wrong people. I have learned that moving on is the answer. Healing something means hele (move).

The murky yesterday ended with an elegant and unexpected event. While the sun moved into his setting position from our place in the woods, my husband and I took pruning shears and loppers and cleared an overgrown path. The path begins not far from our neighbors' home and is a short cut to an altar set up on a grand tree stump. Beautiful things, precious to our neighbor who grows the lilies sit on that altar. She was given a wooden bench for her 70th birthday last December. The gently winding path was overgrown with shrubs and windfalls, but the clearing was good hard work. A mound of greenery grew at the mouth of the trail as I make the way accessible. The light and shadows changed during the hour or so while we cleared a path that would be a comfortable walking trail. A moss covered log at the first bend offers itself for sitting on the way down (or back up). The longer fallen tree was easily pulled off the trail, thanks to my trail buddy. Before sunset Pete was able to carry the bench down the trail to a place across from the altar. We sat together on the bench with the sun glowing through the tall stands of fir and cedar on the lower side of the land.



Alert to the opportunities it is possible to clear another way to the altar of your present. History offers up broad shoulders and from them one can makawalu. The trick? Notice.

Faces

We've been unplugged for the past few days, a virus by any name is a 'bug' and our laptop needed a retrofit so we went to our local neighborhood computer people; they took very good care of us. Without the technology of a cyber world the world that includes you at face-value is an incredibly generous one, and one that is unedited. Let's take the weather for a start. Around us here in the woods of Langley, the summer season has been uncommon. Late in coming in the traditional definition, summer showed up with sunny temperature around the 4th of July. Living among the Tall Tree Clan, sun is gathered up by the hundreds of tree skins and limbs that reach for it. In the small clearings where our gardens are planted, our beets, the tomatoes, nasturtiums,  summer squash peas and broccoli must wait until the sun moves around the Tall Ones long enough to get their faces, limbs and dirt beds warmed up. Soon, the sunflowers started in May might get enough solar rays to blossom.  In the meantime, our gardens and we grow with the season. My skin has browned up with the sun and the foundations of our life here shore up the priorities that we are claiming as important.  A week ago we took ourselves south to be with the canoe families and a friend took a photo of me, capturing a funny face I don't get to see. That's it above.

The word "photograph" was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς (phos), meaning "light", and γραφή (graphê), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light".^[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photograph

 A simple thing like that, a photograph, is easily taken for granted. Every where you look someone is snapping a picture of a balcony in full bloom with summer annuals, the view across the Salish sea; a cell phone is not just for talking. Without a computer I took a break from thinking about writing and the days and nights filled with everything that is life without a computer. I read a couple beautiful novels. The Paris Wife written by Paula McLain about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife. Written in her voice, this writer captured a fictional account of life in early 1900's Paris and created a face of an icon and the woman who shared his years of 'becoming famous.'A New York Times review thinks the book a boring 'face' of Hadley Richardson, Hemingway's first wife. But I found it enjoyable for the story and the glimpse at both the way a writer maneuvered time and informed me. I have a personal interest in learning more about Paris, and a curiosity about reading a famous writer. While I vacationed from writing, it was a treat to read. The second novel I read was Lake of Dreams
by Kim Edwards. This was another book of fiction that traveled time, back and forth the character-narrator goes between times she has lived and is living, while discovering the life and legacy of a family member who had been lost (covered up, really) to her family's history. My favorite literally device the author employed was the value of letters -- personal communications long-hand written letters that never get to the intended reader. The letters are discovered and serve to link history and amend mistakes in spite of the cover-ups. The links to each of these novels takes you to a website that reviews books. I admit the genre of book reviews online is new to me. Odd? Well, probably but then I've been carrying a cell phone that is no longer manufacturer and would have happily lived with the old tool had it quit working (it would only ring once and then there was no guarantee that the caller would actually hear me when I did answer). I am technologically functional, but admit to not being facile with technological detail.

Communication requires a willingness to send a message, and clarity would be great as well. Not long ago my astrologer asked whether we, her readers sent mixed messages purposely or unconsciously. The idea and question led to discussion about being one who controlled through this type of mixed messaging. Elsa's question got me thinking over the past weeks while the planet Mercury was in a retrograde path; communication can be jumbled or delayed during retrogrades. What I'm thinking this afternoon as I sift through the ideas and choices of story assemblage is this:  sometimes all a teller can do is let the story tell itself. The face of story, the character of the event or the intent behind the story can only be as clear as the teller is capable. Capacity for telling is also a matter of humility accepting that what the listener/reader hears or sees is always filtered through the eyes and ears attached to the face.. Whose face? Yours dear, your dear face, reader.

What do you think about reviews of books? 

Stories we tell, and stories that tell us

"I will tell you something about stories. They aren't just entertainment. They are all we have to fight off illness and death. You don't have anything if you don't have stories."

-Leslie Marmon Silko

One of the oldest stories that my mind remembers is one from Aina Haina Elementary, I am in First Grade. It's recess. The brick wall of the classroom is as clear as it was those many years ago. This morning, I'm not sure of what my mind or the storyteller who has kept this story remembers. It's so long ago yet it tints my today as I try to be with the process of making the writing of a novel. Tender health was part of my story even then. It is still so now, and yet there are differences; I have ways to understand my physical health. I have used stories to explain. I have used stories to create sense from struggle, loss and conflict. Stories are medicine and I tell them, stories, to heal the parts of me that cannot be explained only lived. New symptoms have shown up and I try to use the medicines that have worked. But I know the visitations are asking me to consider both the stories I tell and the stories I listen to or read written by others. Some medicine will work again; others will need amending.

My dreams have included a new twist on old stories. One of them I dreamed while sleeping on a foam mat on the floor of our friends' dining room. For the first time in years I was sleeping overnight away from the safety of my vardo. The wheeled home we built to contain our re-assembling lives has been our nest of stability. I have recovered a new level of well-being thanks to this tiny home, and believe it possible to tell stories of rootedness and self value now. The dream was a 'work' dream a new version of me doing work. In the dream I was prepared with the solution to a problem only to be told the problem changed so 'never mind.' In my old 'work' dreams I am doing the work I had done for thirteen years and dreamed the exact same feeling-sense about 'work.' A new place even for one night and two days shifted my internal world.

I planned this trip away from my nest of saftey, excited yet perhaps still fearful of too much success. Could I do it all just as I dreamed? As it turned out I needed to come back to the woods and my nest before completing the full excursion. But, the story is still different because there was a leap of faith. We drove to the Olympia destination to witness the arrival of 130 Canoe Families from the Salish Sea. Canoe Families, wa'a, are important to me. I am of the Canoe Families as well. Our friends offered us a place to stay so we could witness the Paddle to Squaxin. My tender health has toughened, hardening at the heart as Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes, I recognized that it is important to reckon with the winters of fear over and over again. Being with my husband and two friends who have journeyed with me long was in many ways a personal mirroring of the Paddle to Squaxin. Legacy and reclaimed values of the self are work -- hard, long and repetitive work. The Salish families began with 10 canoes to begin, on Sunday, July 29, 2012 there were 130 canoe families. The last time I slept inside a house overnight was 5 years ago. I tried it again this weekend. It worked enough to get me to the Canoes. I'll try another overnight trip again. The work that is mine is work that includes being willing to see the gift of my 'tender health.' Over time, I have felt the stories that had no optional ending save for that of compromised health, forgotten legacies and medicine that did not have my name attached to it. It is not too long a journey to learn and heal and tell new stories at nearly 65 years as a human woman. I am a woman with a soul that remembers everything; that is big -- everything.  The First Grader at Aina Haina heard and felt stories that would need time to be told. Happening now on Squaxin Island in the South Salish Sea, families of the canoe are growing medicine stories.

“We’re here to try to save our people,” said Gene Sampson, one of the skippers of the Hoh Tribe’s family canoe. “Once the youth learn their culture, they have a choice on how to live their lives.” Read more here.

Canoe Families are welcomed, Olympia, WA 2012

I've put this story here to witness my progress, connect with stories being strengthened and to open space for me to see how life and the medicine of writing my novel are good for me. The characters of the novel have something to tell me, I listen and pray and chant to hear their words and then, go to work.

"My greatest joy throughout my long and fruitful venturing as Mo'o Kanaloa has been the unwaivering belief that clues are most valuable when they can be passed along to those who could connect them with no regard--that does not mean the same as disrespect," Max paused again and motioned to Jacob before continuing. "With no regard for the illusion of a limit to time.  Patterns are sacred; they repeat and include the moment and events just as memory does the same."

-From my novel Splinters in-the-making