Pockets of forgetting

... Yes, the work is important as much for the next generation as it is for us who flounder on our swims at tidal shifts: as elders in the making. I write as much for us Old Ones who are forgetting. It's there ... in the pockets of forgetting that the power lies break down and hybrid stories rise like mo'o with gray hair, wrinkled breasts and poetry with many meanings. Medicine." - a comment left on "True Stories", a post written by Terri Windling

My husband and I have these wonderful conversations in the dark as we lie down beside one another in our futon. 'Assume the position' (horizontal) and there is an evenness to the stories that spill from us. I hear myself tell truths that I would otherwise swallow if I were standing; or if it were light. These kinds of truth-telling don't call for Justice with captures, they are the things that must be spoken. They are the power lies that are breaking down. These are the ones that create illusion and dissolution in the lit world. The stories that come in the dark while lovers lie disentangled are food for the Mo'o who have always been the gatekeepers.

When I began the story "A Native Fern"  it was the trigger of forgetfulness that incited the first words. Perhaps, or indeed? Maybe or maybe not, the experience of forgetfulness in this contemporary world could so quickly be a sign of a diseased-state, a signal for the onset of being even more 'less-than' normal. Forgetting faces, or familiar names for things could be cause for fear and that would mean the Forgetful was losing control.

"Sometimes the only way I can determine whether I'm trying to control someone else or whether I'm simply expressing my feelings is by noticing how many times I say the same thing." - Courage to Change, January 29

 As I write the sun has woken the forest, the winds are roaring, the birds' songs excitable. I ask myself whether I am trying, at this stage at this age, to control and use the measurement of noticing ... how many times I say the same thing. I laugh at myself when I count the dozens of blogs, I have written to say what is in my mind and heart. The only way I can justify my obsession with blogs is to realize: there's no controlling how many actually care what I am writing. It let's me off the hook and I wiggle free to swim another tidal shift.

This morning I wrote a new segment to the medicine, bringing The Old Man and his mo'o(puna) his grandchild closer to the Muliwai where the second half of the story waits, and where the tides give answers to old and young who notice.