NEW : "These are mythic times" ... a myth maker workshop

"It is no measure of health to adjust to a profoundly sick society"
-Kristnamuti

Quirky photo credit

I've been doing a lot of deep thinking and diving into the muck of life as I find it. Sometimes the discoveries overwhelm me and there aren't enough covers on the futon to hide well enough. My astrologer put it to me straight “Pluto Retrograde: April 12th, 2013 – Don’t Bother Hiding Under The Bed.” Elsa P. my astrologer and the internet's first astrology blogger (she started in 2001) has just published her first novel Heaven, I Mean Circle K. It's a compilation of stories rolled into a 300+ book of her real life. It's not fiction, it's unembellished real life. I've just sampled the first page of the e-book and it promises to be a hoot! Why start this post about my new workshop with bits about my astrologer? Because the workshop is all about taking what you know is real to create stories that affirm: THESE ARE mythic times.

Last month I started writing about piecing this workshop together, " My intention for the New Moon made this morning is to make use of the life I have as Makua O'o and re-translate the definition. Re-define Makua O'o for modernity as Meyer's would say, taking it deeper and spreading it for these mythic times in which we live. I've started to conceive a new workshop called "These Mythic Times" ... coming in April to celebrate Earth Day, 2013. Interested? Stay tuned for more information."

If you are ready to buckle up and dive into the mythic world of story as medicine we will begin Monday, April 22, 2013.
This is Earth Day in the US, and depending upon where you are in the world, the moon will be in Hua or close to it so the energy of a fattening moon will be ripe for story-making. It's not a time for hiding, and is all about being open to rooting out your vulnerabilities and your finest hour. 'How do you give birth to the unexpected?' is one of the questions you will answer in this workshop. With Pluto moving deeper in the sign of Capricorn (in my 12th House) the work for me is about feeling worthy. To make that a 'true story' I have needed to turn the demons who dwell within into characters and plot of mythic-fiction. That's why I write, and that's why I use story as medicine. The workshop "These are mythic times" will take place in my newest story called The Joy Weed Journal. You will be invited to join the characters introduced in the medicine story and fairy tale The Safety Pin Cafe, and through the reading of the story root out the most meaningful versions of your life journey to date. This workshop will be an adventure, similar I hope, to reading a good book you will be transported into the place where a border witch records her private writing. The entire (first draft version) of The Safety Pin Cafe will give any potential work shopper a taste for the characters who live in The Joy Weed Journal. Link here to meet Pale The Border Witch and her friends Raven, The Gypsy, The Fairy Woman and others.

Here is the first page of The Joy Weed Journal. From this beginning, we will dig into the mythic possibilities for your own real stories. It will challenge you, and maybe confuse you to engage in a workshop like this. But, be assured that you can write or render meaning from it. If you will allow me I will involve you in a very, very good tale.

"The screams pierced the dark. One was not enough. I had to be sure I was heard. Three of them, so uncommon for me. My throat raw from the scream. He was beside me. Ordinarily that would comfort me, but not tonight. Not yet. Eventually I took the tape to my waist and measured. The knotted cord -- my tape measure--a familiar tool I counted. Anawaena. The diameter around the middle was Anawaena loa a transverse diameter of an eclipse. "Definitely growing into yourself," Raven showed up at odd and more frequent intervals. Beside me now I heard him, "You are with child," he smiled with a glint that melted my worry. Though no light was cast, I could see him. Soft as the down that feathered his chest, his words comforted me, reassuring. I was way past the age for conception, but then those years and measurements would apply to a purely human experience. What grew within me was more than human and in the world our child would occupy, magic would measure the boundaries.

I sat for several breathes on the edge of my raised bed, feet cold upon the tiles. "You were without sufficient oxygen," he said. "The windows were shut, you could not breathe." He must have felt me gasping for breath and in the dreams all experiences of suffocation manifest in torture. That I could and did scream was a sign of growth. Difficult, but a sign of growing nonetheless.  It was too soon to talk about the dream, the torture, but it was time to be with the weeds, the plants, the prayers. "I'm going out," I said to Raven in the dark. "Can I do something for you?" he asked. "No, not yet," I stood opened the door chasing the images of the putrid nightmare away long enough to take myself outside. The air was wet but not cold. Warm clouds have changed things in the night.

Once inside the curve of the kitchen hut I reached for the lamp and sat down. The green waxy leaves of the Sacred Ones. I asked whether I needed to pull one of the leaves and carry it with me. "No, but speak the words." Caressing the long leaves I began to chant for answers. Softly at first and then more. She woke from her nest in the corner, her head erect and green eyes upon me. "Yes," I said to her. "I'm in trouble." I continued to chant. She watched. She listened, then purred.

This place that has been my home for nearly ten years has come to suit me well: there are people who benefit from my being here, and I have suitable isolation for those occasions of oddity many might judge more than peculiar. Here in the woods I call myself Joy Weed. Four or more times in a month a newly met friend will say, "Sweet name. Funny. Did you change your name when you got to the island? Lots of folks do." I laugh with every one of the queries and tell them all, "That is my real and given name. We are a common breed," I add, and wait to see whether the punch line is lost or found in conversation. The islanders in this part of the Salish Sea are creative types lending a mostly open-mind to being whatever pleases. There are many fairy kin. Native families are mostly transparent, but I feel them nonetheless.

On nights like these the trees that stand tall and closely knit hold hands and offer Raven's kin welcome. It is this arrangement that makes the silver one's visits all the more educational for me. For on my islands of birth, Raven medicine is understood through books; reading about him leaves such empty pockets. The night offered or demanded the flip-sides of character so easily covered with skin that made for being common. A border witch tends a broad hedge of mixed plantings taking from one experience, a second place, a third option and always leaving room for the weed discovered; the one not looked for. Tonight's screams were night magic the sort that strips aside the daytime skin.  Pretense rarely makes it through a night determined to have its way. As I finished the chants and felt the space of Anawaena new within I looked for talismans to hold me temporarily. Like safety pins. A curve of coral from the Tide Pools of my birth home fit in my palms. I held it rubbing its grainy surface to remind me of my past.

"I have never screamed in my dreams," I said. It was another revelation. Raven was preparing to leave, his waistcoat buttons were secured and though his glasses remained on the simple bed table I knew he was readying himself. The Cafe opens at dawn. The Lady rarely left the establishment, but Raven was a sort of free-agent assigned to dispensing remedies in his fashion. I chuckled at the thought and then heard Raven say, "Those were the screams of a real voice, dear Miel."

"Miel?" I repeated unfamiliar with the word. 

"Yes, m.i.e.l. It is Spanish, and has many meanings. When I call you it means sweet, soothing, delicious honey.""

To read more about the character Pale the Border Witch link here to the chapters of The Safety Pin Cafe, where Pale was first introduced.

Workshop: These are Mythic Times
Starts Monday, April 22, 2013
Ends Sunday, May 19, 2013
Cost: $45

If you are intrigued, interested or curious for more information email me at mokihanacalizarATgmailDOTcom.

Hope to see you in the pages of The Joy Weed Journal and the workshop These Are Mythic Times! I think it's a great value for anyone at a point in his/her life when myth (something between fact and fiction) makes sense to your re-emerging best self. And with that, I push Publish and tap into the energy of this weekend's heaven and a 'quirky' outcome.

Thanks,
Mokihana