Ho'oulu ... sit, listen -- for years

"It is critical at this time to dig deeper into the well-spring of our own subjectivity. We are not 'dumbing down' methodology when we wish to sit and listen -- for years." - Ho'oulu: Our Time of Becoming by Manu Meyer

A'ohe pau e 'ike

There is no end to knowledge.

Once again na 'Ole Po have wrestled me down, and sorted through the many thoughts that have either clung tenaciously out of habit or found a place again and again because at every level it suits my culture. That grown knowing that is ancient/modern show up in my dreams, and redefine the drama that walks across my everyday. Last night as Mahina's rounding light hu (penetrated) through the small vardo window Pete and I retold our mo'oku'auhau our genealogy as a couple.

"We always tell it, and then it gets to this point. We tell it different." Pete lay beside me roused from near sleep by my voice. It takes him to that luminous place. The storyteller's voice. What happens when the 'ole moons, and in particular, the 'ole pau phase cycles around us is the story as much if not more than the teller wants to hear itself. With time, knowledge changes. What we have lived (our history) is faceted, seen from another angle. We tell the story as it has changed. Pete tells of out and back, and back and forth journey from the Mid-west.

"It's huaka'i," I said into the night. "A migration, leaving, getting 'out of Dodge' sort of thing." Looking at our history there is opportunity to learn how we/he/me evolve. Are we? As we talked into the night my reading and research which now includes Manulani Aluli Meyer's Ho'oulu folds, looking for places to seep into my gut, preparing me for the conversations I will have when our gathering place (Ho'omoku) welcomes makers of island.

Manu writes, "Relationship with place allows for gross knowing of all aspects of environment and allows for a stretching towards the rational and transcendental."  

'Ole kukahi and Jupiter

Re-telling our journey together as a couple, the facets that have added to our  huaka'i, both together and independently, is the conscious and daily noticing and recording of data -- real life observations, of wind, sky, bird activity, growing and blossoming. Key to the data is the shape and position of Mahina in relationship to our place on Earth. For eight years we have made note of time by things other than a refrigerator calendar. Like our ancestors in my backbones, we are descendants of seafarers and landlocked pagans. The process of softening the ground of our preconceptions -- the ground of our being, is a slow one. We resist change, even if we know it is. Summer comes. The Solstice is less than three anahulu away (3 Hawaiian weeks of 10 po).

We sit, and listen for years. Aging in place. We learn our place. History becomes a little less a mystery. We hu.(1. to rise or swell, as yeast or souring poi; to ferment, overlow, percolate, effervesce, boil over; to surge or rise to the surface, as emotion; rising, swelling; outburst, overflow. - Hawaiian Dictionary, Pukui and Elbert)

Amana ua noa.

I luna la i luna
Na manu o ka lewa
Upwards the birds of the heavens

I lalo la i lalo
Na pua o ka honua
Downwards the flowers of the earth

I uka la i uka
Na ulu la'au
Uplands the trees of the forest

I kai la i kai
Na i'a o ka moana
Seaward the fish of the ocean

Ha'ina mai ka puana
Ahe nai ke ao nei
Thus ends my song of the beauties of this world

-Mary Kawena Pukui

Are you studying astrology?

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CLICK HERE to access 'Links to most popular astrology topics' from ElsaElsa

New Moon in Taurus (today, tonight), May 17-18, 2015 ... Big Growth, New Beginnings

The New Moon in Taurus is blessing us with all kinds of growth. In the woods around us, these shoots of Bracken ferns starting in a small way (March 11, 2015) 

are now nearly six feet tall ...

The season of big growth comes with radical and riotous pollen season. I am one of those who collects the pollen, and must learn through experience, trial, and error what I can do to make peace with Nature wanting, and needing, to grow. Climate change, and global warning has been pointed to as a 'reason' for such long and intense pollens. Washington State is officially declared 'in drought.'

While I weather the storm of pollens from my tiny shelters, I muster the energy necessary to root myself in practices that respect my sensitivities, and concoct toxic-free remedies. My ears are plugged with cotton balls to keep warm olive oil, garlic pressed through a sieve, and dried 'olena (turmeric) sent to me from Kalihi Valley on O'ahu (my grandmother's birth place).

The two month waiting period that limits my ventures out of the woods, tests my patience and my practice as makua o'o (elder in training). A lifetime's journey. I dig in around here, and it's the inner journeys that occupy my time. Time curves, just as the moon fills, flows, pauses, empties ... kaulana (cycles) mahina (the moon). The cotton balls in my ears create a baffle to hearing what Pete says to me, but, I can hear myself very clearly. Funny. Anyway, Last night as Pete was penciling entries and shapes of the moon into his journal we had this conversation.

"How has living with the moon calendar affected your life?" I asked.

Pete didn't hesitate much in answering. "I notice that the moon's light balances everything else. The sun is not everything. When the moon is in her second, ana ... he hesitated with the pronunciation.

"Anahulu," I said.

"Anahulu (10-day/night Hawaiian calendar week)," Pete repeated. "The forest is lit up at night. [Life] is not just about what the sun does."

Then Pete asked me the same question, "How has living with the moon calendar affected your life?"

"It's the 'ole phases that make the most difference for me. The phases that make me slow down and consider whether my actions are going in the right (pono/harmonious) direction...."

"They (the 'ole phases) have become part of everything we do or don't do." Pete added.

Living with moon time, life changes. Governed as we have been in our beliefs about time, the return to Moon time is slowly and steadily make a new coral reef upon while we gain steadily, until we become firmly established.

The New Moon in Taurus tonight is a time for setting intentions, and feeding that intentions with action. Read here for our intention for this MUKU nei. 

And lastly, a 5 minute energy routine from Donna Eden that I re-started this morning. Another good intention ... clear and clean the collective pollens with something re-newed; practice good health practices.

Relationship

"It is not the land which is broken, but our relationship to land."  - The Honorable Harvest

He aikane, he punana na ke onaona.A friend, a nest of fragrance.Sweet indeed is a good friend. - 'Olelo No'eau

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. - Marcel Proust

"Something opens our wings,
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us:
We taste only sacredness."
-Rumi 

"Aloha is the intelligence with which we meet life." - Kumu Hula Olana A'i

"Loving is a rigorous act. Loving is a verb. Aloha is loving." - Manu Meyer

Planting a Doug Fir for David and adding a wind chime so he can rattle it as he passes through.

((((These few words are for my family; remembering my brother David, grieving his passing one year ago, grateful for his life.))))

Reconciling opposites, and a fondness for ambiguity

"My mother's punitive God was the enemy of Coyote. Prankish, lecherous, accident-prone Coyote and his cousins, the unpredictable creators of the world in Native American stories, brough me a vision of this realm as never perfect, made through collaboration and squabbling." So wrote Rebecca Solnit in her article "Coyote".I came across the December 22, 2014 New Yorker Magazine article, drawn to the page of a FREE magazine Pete had brought home from the library.

The wonderful drawing of a rough and lean coyote with the sharpened end of a #2 pencil in his teeth (which I cannot duplicate here) pulled me into the words about the creature we can hear sometimes late in the night, or early in the morning. While JOTS and I are out on our trounces through the woods on the other side of the driveway I see signs of Coyote, sometimes his scat, or the reminder that he or she has preened and the hairball shreds disguise themselves. Because I don't walk very fast, the leavings are something I spot. I make note. Rarely do I see his paw prints, but I keep aware.

Solnit's article continues to describe the stories of her mother's God's enemy, "Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Ohlone people say that Coyote was the first being, and that the world was created by him, and by Eagle and by Hummingbird, who laughs at Coyote's attempts to determine just where to impregnate his wife[...] As the California poet Gary Synder once said, "Old Doctor Coyote ...is not inclined to make a distinction between good and evil." Instead, he's full of contagious exuberance and great creative force...."These supple stories, "continues Solnit, "unalarmed by improvisation, failure, and sex, remind me of jazz. The creator in the Old Testament, however, is a classical musician whose score can be performed only one right way."

When I sat to write this morning, I had just just opened, and read, an email from a good pal. She was forwarding me some astrology.

"Many modern astronomers are allergic to astrology, but from my perspective there is no inherent conflict between the two fields. In the spirit of finding reconciliation between apparent opposites, I'm happy to say that you are now a virtual virtuoso in your ability to reconcile both apparent opposites and actual opposites. I invite you to use this aptitude with flair and daring." 

I'm in total appreciation and agreement that astronomy and astrology are twins. I believe the conflicts are organic. Siblings fight. Most of the quibble about 'science' is just, short-sightedness. My ancestors the Kanaka embraced the ambiguity and creative tension with many points of view . Or as one of my favorite teachers and practitioner of Hawaiian epistemology, Manu Meyers answers her detractors who become impatient when her stories seems getting off point, "It's all points."

My friend knows I'm preparing the ground, digging with my o'o (that digging stick) and braiding the many stories that make for an interesting story. Many stories. So many stories, so little time (at least this lifetime:) Just as I finished reading that email, Hummingbird flew through my open kitchen window, lingering and making that incredible music her wings are blessed with. Have you heard your music? While I struck the keys on this board, I heard her, turned to greet her, stopped writing. She was asking for a conversation! When she backed up, and flew into the woods, I followed.

"Where are you?" I asked when I was on the path between the Quonset and the Bath house. Looking, listening, and then finally hearing her voice, her music somewhere nearby. I felt the blessing. The wild knowing that it's all points. Out side this barely sheltering enclosure the wild and many potential meanings run, walk, hover and soar. Between paragraphs as I take a short break from the keyboard, pick up my car keys and drive into town where there are merchants who package food, stack eggplants, and service hungry humans hunting for a sandwich, I stop for what I hoped would be a semi-wild adventure in our local thrift store. Something is happening here. My button nose tuned by the visits of hummingbirds' wings and spiders flinging themselves off my windows, I feel the oddness of order in an old favorite activity. "Is this what's happening to thrift?" I ask the store manager. "I can't find any thing in here without the funk."

Our town is being sterilized, and there doesn't seem to be much to change that, at least in the short run. Rummaging through bins and tall stacks of odd lot second-hand is no longer good enough. Selling old to look like new seems to be the ordering of today. Display the old to look new. Before getting into more mischief, I knew it was time for me to return to the woods, and the oddity of my ordinary and artful life. Reconciling opposites? That's about it, and improvisation? Oh I do love an unexpected zig where it ought to zag.


Do you have a fondness for improvisation?

Pretty red hibiscus

The wind, ka makani, blows gently through the arrow-tipped leaves of the salmon berry bushes. If the door to the Quonset is open he breezes through, swirling, visiting us, reminded me of the many, many memories wind carries. 

Today is one of those days when family and everything that means will be visiting us. The message from my astrologer's newsletter today notes the feelings that come from being separated from family. Elsa says that whether one thinks about it, or not, the feeling will be there. It's true for me. I am both thinking and feeling the value of my family. I miss being with them. To fill in some of that longing I email, I phone, I send messages, I invite the wind to visit with us here, I write.

Earlier this week I began drinking (more regularly) freshly brewed, and iced red hibiscus tea. It wasn't a decision that came from researching (though I have done that, and did more after drinking). It was one of those strong intuitive nudges. You know da kine. I love the taste of the tangy brew, and when I drink it I am led back to the huge red hibiscus hedge that bordered one length of our family place in Kuli'ou'ou Valley. Thick, wild, tall and beautiful pretty red hibiscus. Little did I know the red hibiscus tea of one of the most research teas on the planet at this point. Good stuff for a hibiscus rooted woman like me. The body and soul does seek out the medicine right for making the whole pono. I mahalo the guidance, and the availability of the dried red blossoms here where I live!

My mother, my brother David, my Aunty Lily, and my cousin Butch had a hand in the original planting of the old red hibiscus hedge back home. I remember all of them, mothers in such meaningful ways. Tomorrow is Mother's Day in the States (U.S.) To all us mothers, "Hulo, Hurray for us." 

Mothers Every where, sharing a cuppa with you!

He puko 'a kani 'aina

The coral reef grows into an island, and the process of that increase started the day here.

"Yesterday the energy of the Scorpio Full Moon still pulsed. The long night's sleep the night just past had fueled us both. We turned out the lights, shut down the computer, and tucked ourselves under the covers and left "the" time behind. Mahina the Fattening One was yet to rise from the Eastern horizon and Ka La the brilliant star of light had yet to fall below the horizon in the West. We were cradled in the sublime between ma waena in the middle or at the tail end of day, and the start of night. Funny how we count, and measure, funny how we account for our progress.(Read more by clicking here.)

Mahealani, Full Moon in Scorpio

The Moon is full tonight.

The Moon Rounds

Traditions are ways and means of being with your relatives over time. The things we do, the way we do those things; the way we relate to the others (humans, elements, creatures) in our environment; the way we reciprocate become traditions. Sometimes, especially in a contemporary community these ways and means are unconscious. Habit replaces tradition, and without 'being conscious of the embodied experiences that define[...]' tradition, there is no differentiation. So wrote Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele in the opening lines to Ka Honua Ola, The Living Earth.  Dr. Kanahele primes us, challenges us Kanaka Maoli to be awake to the ways and means of relating to this living earth and for that I am very grateful. 

Mahina Hoonui

The Moon, Mahina rounds in her cycle toward full. And me too, thickening in my maturity, rounding in ways that both test and affirm my journey. Too many pancakes with maple syrup? Yes, too many and then my body works hard to process the refined wheat. An addiction that I must relate to with care, and forgiveness. I notice it, feel the elastic stretch at my waist, and make an extra effort to chop more onions and add another clove of garlic to tonight's soup. 

The process of growing the new school HO'OMOKU challenges me to round out my obsession to 'make good.' I'm writing out this process as the foundation for this teaching place takes shape. Over at the cybersite where I put my thoughts and discernment I wrote:

"My Ancestors were keen observers. Kilo practitioner and ethno-scientist Kalei Nu'uhiwa answers Three Common Questions About Kaulana Mahina on her website. She answers the question, "Where does the term Kaulana Mahina comes from?" by citing three scholars' definitions, including Pukui and Elbert (Hawaiian Dictionary),Zepelino Keauokamalie and Joseph M. Poepoe. Her conclusion:

"Therefore Kaulana Mahina is a traditional Hawaiian science that employed the methodology of keen observation, hypothesis, and trial and error, noting conclusions and then organizing time by the traditional environmental experts called kahuna."

Between this blog and that one,  I spread the thinking process out and make connections. I round out. And you, where you are? How does the moon round for you?