A pattern worthy of attention

As seen from the N. Hemisphere, the 5 planets arc across the southern sky, shortly before dawn.The last time we saw all five visible planets together was from about December 15, 2004, to January 15, 2005, over a decade ago.

The 5 planets can be seen from around the world. Their orientation to the horizon is different from one part of Earth to another. Denis Crute in Australia caught the 5 planets and the moon from the Southern Hemisphere on February 2, 2016.  Earthsky.org

Spring in the Pacific Northwest has brought a jumbo serving of pollen, Everyone is talking about the high pollen count, and I shift my daily travel plan to accommodate the yearly Scotch Broom in all their ramparts. They do become a wall of bright yellow that is a pollen sufferer's thang to deal with.

We also have the first week of warm to hot weather here, and we put in my tiny time garden yesterday.

Lettuce, chard and cabbage starts. A ring of oyster shells sprinkled around my Pele-influenced garden shape. The caldera of shells is meant to make it difficult for the Slug Nation should they sniff the scent of juicy greens. My two wooden kitties are there to play, and give me a smile when I need one.

 In the orchard, the English Daisies and Dandelions are flourishing. Each morning I ask permission for a few of the bright green Dandelion leaves, and munch them after washing them of all the golden pollen. We put some of the leaves into our blended green drinks yesterday, for a bit of bitters. Then, I collect a few of the sunshine Dandelions, asking first, and left at least half. After a good wash-off, the flowers are going into a canning jar filled with organic Apple Cider Vinegar. Left to mellow and age the rich brew can be sipped by the tablespoon in a glass of water, or drizzled over vegetables. I remembered the apple cider vinegar 'diet' being the first one I ever tried when I was chubbette-size, and a pre-teen. My Ma found the idea in an old book. I helped me at the time ... the thought hadn't come to me in a very very long time.

From my vantage point as a time being the sky chart allows me to see the bright lights, the planets, if I am awake once the sun has set and the sky is clear. Through the incredible Tall Ones Nation, the nation of White Pine, Doug Fir, Hemlock and Cedar I have seen the planets. But, since there is no place from our wooded place to see a horizon's worth of sky at one time, I see at most two or three planets at once. Some things must be left to the Akuas, to faith, to Mystery. Simply believing, because it just might be.

I am re-reading Ruth Ozeki's novel A Tale for the Time Being. I thought to reread the book because she included footnotes. Footnotes aren't usual for a novel, but, the practice came up when a friend and I were emailing about our latest writing projects. We're both in the process of hybriding; evolving the kind of writing we do. I'm not quite sure how my writing will evolve, yet, but re-reading A Tale for the Time Being was one of those messages that clearly was meant for me. Somehow, the many entries and post here on Makua o'o and the dozen medicine stories is part of a search party, a magnetizing pattern that is aching for a 'next'. I'm enjoying the unfolding, less anxious about what, and more interested that it does.

Ozeki's mythical ride of a story came in hardback form. I reserved it a week ago. I love libraries! It was already hot when I got into town yesterday and climbed the stairs to the library door. 'Thrilled' fits as a word, when I saw the paper reserve slip with my name on it. Ozeki's is the only new book in my stack. This time through I began by starting at the back, in old-style Japanese protocol. Let me backup just a tad. I did open the front of the book just to confirm the footnotes. Part I, page one. Three footnotes. Ruth Ozeki, writer, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist Priest begins the novel this way:

An ancient buddha once said;

For the time being, standing on the tallest mountain top,
For the time being, moving on the deepest ocean floor,
For the time being, a demon with three heads and eight arms,
For the time being, the golden sisteen-foot body of a buddha,
For the time being, a monk's staff or a master's fly-swatter, 1
For the time being, a pillar oor a Lantern,
For the time being, any Dick or Jane, 2
For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky.

--Dogen Zenji, "For the Time Being"3

Three footnotes! The bonus though did come from my inclination to read from the back. There I discovered (or forgot after two years) the Appendices. There the writer, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist Priest includes signals and sightings to appease the quantum physicist in a humble reader, or potential hybrid-writer looking for a layered platform from which to leap. I, the reader/writer was tickled silly with what Ozeki left.

Thanks to the technology of the computer, I find out about the 5 Planet Alignment that has been happening since January -- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter. Then, I discover that this alignment hasn't happened since Pete and I left Kuliou'ou Valley on O'ahu to move to Hilo (2004-2005). How fitting to be celebrating our sixth year here on this Salish Sea Island, where an orchard of Dandelions flourishes without fear of being sprayed with Roundup. Instead, the lion-heart power-packed plant is honored, asked, and included in our food choices. Now that is a theme and a pattern worthy tracing.

Add to these two celestial kilo (observations) the 5-planet retrograde about to happen later this month and I see a growing pattern worthy of attention. Just what have I been doing with the trillions of moments in my life, as a time being? How have I lived my gifts, my kuleana my Hawaiian ancestors would say. How have I been responsible with these gifts, or these curses?

When we left Kuli'ou'ou in 2004, the influence of chemicals, those same ones that people use to kill dandelions, had created the final shove to my decision to sell the homeplace. Hard decision. Harsh decision. One of those curse, or gift things Elsa wrote about.

If I'm reading the sky properly, this retrograde period where Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Pluto appear in the sky as going backwards may be a great time to use the slowing down to re-read my life. Maybe it's a time to pay attention to the footnotes, the small and potent explanations, the details left unnoticed or forgotten. Or, maybe the simple Japanese protocol of reading from the back to the front will be a practice in editing my style, and uncovering grace and hope (Jupiter) in unexpected places.

The retrograde period is not forever, it ends in late May when Jupiter goes direct. In the mean time I have a garden going, and a fence line that will serve as trellises for Long Beans and Straight Eight Cucumbers. I have the whole of the novel A Tale for the Time Being to savor, re-reading with a different eye and an open-heart influenced by the Dandelions, and will let those footnotes have their way with me.

Are we a species who seek patterns in our life? Do you?

String Theory and creative process

Many strings help me sort. Some strings dangle temptingly, I snap at them like a hungry Dragon Fly waiting for Termites in the fading light. Other strings have a magnetism for each other. I notice the attraction and tie the ends together. Still others rise from pools once filled with sweet fresh drinking water. Those had lain in the muck of the seemingly dead. A small rain plumps the string and fuzzy moss grows to see a new day.

There I am. Here I be. In the middle of many strings, the cords of connection are feeding new Dreaming. Makua o'o often find the most exciting discoveries when she is still, or stilled and silence. My body and my 'Aumakua collaborate to still me long enough to listen and look within. The ash and burn-filled sky, the domain of Lono, sets a stage for slowing down. One ear and then the other struggle to sort the invasions. One of my medicine woman looks down my ear canals and says, "No wax, but many a fungus infection?" Then asks "What do you do for fungus infection." I tell her "Garlic, turmeric in olive oil." She listened to my lungs, moving her instrument over many places on my back. "It sounds pretty darn good. No wheezing ..." a plastic clip meter is on my finger, "Cool way to measure oxygen saturation. 97. That's good." So there I am. Here I am, navigating through the effects of Old Growth Forests' burning, and my reaction to the loss. Last week I made this appointment with my Nurse Practitioner so she could use her instruments to tell me what was 'physical.' It helps to get a second informed and trustworthy opinion. "You're such an empath," my medicine woman said as I described the role my body plays in the processing of Grief. The suffering of the trees is so much bigger than my own. At the end of the appointment she suggested acupuncture and an acupuncturist who might serve me.

Then, as my dear husband witnesses again the suffering I experience he kicks into protect mode. I'm unprepared for his solution. It kicks my rib out. AWW. Not that solution. Not the one I try to hide as my fondest desire. I am guilt-stricken. Slowed down even more for a few days, more strings dangle, those old dried up ones wiggle tempting me to consider. I huli.

There. Here. These are the strings ... my mind, body and my creative souls notice and play with the process.

Ho'omoku one string

• What you teach, is what you need to learn
• An island grows slowly

Braiding Sweetgrass The book written by Robin Wall Kimmerer a second string

• The Three Sisters
• Thanksgiving Address
• Skywoman Falling

The Bowl of Light The Book written by Hank Wesselman about Hale Makua

• Change your mind about someone
• Expanding upon the meaning of  Precession 
• Expanding the meaning of The Bowl of Light and the action of huli

Saturn finishes his transit through Scorpio

• Retracing Saturn's path and my personal journey/path
• But this time, recognize the maturity of Saturn's place as teacher; Slow and steady (ho'omoku ... he puko'a kani 'aina)
• Move slow to go far ... take our time this time and 'get it right' 
• Jupiter is in Virgo for the next year, that may be the timeline to consider and apply as Saturn moves from Scorpio into Sagittarrius. I communicate and 'throw net' to let my family know what is happening. I think big. I check out delusions. 

More traffic on our local road

• It's time to huli

Trees are cut more often, and close-by

• It's time to huli

My dreaming

• It's time to huli

My writings

• Medicine stories are doses of string theory applied
• Characterization feeds the Dreaming; Dreaming feeds the characterization
• All the strings end up in the medicine.
• Songs come from all the sources.
• Shine's Sign Song is the latest sort, snap, tie, play and write it all together process for navigation. Playful child, meets curious grow(ing)n ups, and cosmology meets botany!

Huli many definitions

Pukui & Elbert Hawaiian Dictionary 1. to turn; to curl over, as a breaker, Fig., to change, as an opinion or manner of living ... 2. ho'ohuli To turn, change, overturn, convert, to look for, seek; search, investigate

Huli from the canoe

The canoe huli.

How do you relate to String Theory?

Live the questions

The most uncomfortable but essential part of finding your bliss, Campbell argues, is the element of uncertainty — the willingness to, in the timeless words of Rilke, “live the questions” rather than reaching for the ready-made answers:

The adventure is its own reward — but it’s necessarily dangerous, having both negative and positive possibilities, all of them beyond control. We are following our own way, not our daddy’s or our mother’s way… Life can dry up because you’re not off on your own adventure.

[…]

There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss. - Brain Pickings, Maria Popova

Mahina rises just ahead of the Sun on an 'Ole Pau morning. On my way between the toaster oven plugged into the tract outside the metal-sided hale au'au  (wash house) I spied her in the space between the long lean bodies of the Tall Ones. Excited to see her and wishing to 'capture' her shape I scrambled up the porch and into the dark vardo. Pete was still asleep, but, not for long as I rattled the wire basket dangling from the ribs of the sleeping room. Sorry Pete. "Honey, can I turn on the light for a minute?" My honey rarely says no to me ... Thanking him I finally found the camera but by that time the clouds were loving the moon more than I and there was no capturing the moon. 'Aue, oh well.

The thing that is happening to me that is a consequence, and reward, as I see it now: I am forgetting more often. Reward? That is something to be grateful for? Let's play through for a minute or two. The thing I'm forgetting more often is what day it is. For awhile now, that has been true. "What day is it?" I'd ask Pete, or he'd ask me. If there was a cell-phone close by one or the other of us would flip the lid on our antique cellphones and read the answer on the tiny screen. Lately though I forget what Roman or Gregorian name captures the day. I know it's 'Ole Pau, but I don't know first off that it's Saturday.

Slow to medium the branches of wisdom, the alaula permeate the distractions of schedules and appointments; or the pressure to be doing (ain't that a kick in the central nervous system) something productive. Or as my son emailed me not long ago, "I had a big comprehension jump in the last week so that's exciting. Mostly language maybe other things." Christopher is living in France, and learning the culture and language. It's been five years since he first arrived in Paris (while still living on O'ahu) to teach lomilomi. It was there he met his wife-to-be, Laurence. The journey of coming together crossing cultural and visa-determined prescriptions has meant juggling the weighty and unexpected demands of both the outside world and the one we function with on auto-pilot. 

Something like that has happened, is happening, with me as I forget the prescribed daily names, and integrate the value of kilo and observe myself as part of the nature of Kaulana Mahina the Hawaiian Moon Calendar. 'Olelo Hawaiian vocabulary replaces English/Roman/Gregorian. Mahina is 'half-half' in shape just before the sun rises. I saw her myself on the way back from the hale au'au. Did anyone else see her? Probably. But, the deal is in the woods this morning Pete was asleep under the covers. JOTS out somewhere hunting, trying to stay out of the drizzles. The Tall Ones watched it all, as they do. And I with my camera shot into the dark. Finally, I learn the name some of The First Peoples' of these Salish lands and sea gave this island. Not just Whidbey Island, she is Tscha-kole-chy. Some day I will find someone to pronounce it accurately for me so I can speak it, integrate it.

Yesterday was 'Ole Kukaki. Today must be 'Ole Pau. "Are you sure?" "Sure enough", said the Cheshire Cat as she lived the question.

A shot in the dark. The Tall One saw it all.

Slow to medium, slowed to medium: Pace for the long haul

"I write fantasy because it's there. I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my imagination. Daydreaming. Thinking up imaginary people, impossible places. Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored. Making it tell the same tale over again makes it thin and whining; its scales begin to fall off; its fiery breath becomes a trickle of smoke. It is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistant; there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't transformed into food for the imagination...(read the entire quote the post "Dreaming Awake"on Terri Windling's blog Myth & Moor) - Patricia A. McKillip

An early winter snow turned to freeze in our Forest Lane World

This is a very different sort of winter. As if winter could be only one way. It makes me shiver to think I might put that thought out into the atmosphere where Lonomakua could rub it between his elemental palms and blow the mana'o the thought like so much fog into the world. Taking it from my tiny writer's hut and telling my secrets, I wonder what would become of such a piece of speculation.

THERE, in those three sentences is the start of what can happen when a writer, this one, takes a bit of information, in this case, famous fantasy writer Patricia A. McKillip's quotation and rub it against the sides of my imagination. Follow if you can ... This is a very different sort of winter. It is! In the real time of winters this one is my fifth in these woods. The Tall Trees around have grown even taller. Through the foggy moisture that is one of this winter's favorite dressing gowns the cedar blurs outside the Quonset. A breeze stirs and rakes the bamboo pole outside my rippling plastic window. The antennae making possible an ether-connection sways, but, the signal stays. Late January and some place nearby the temperature will reach 50 degrees. Near Spring? Not really, but the illusion could tempt the hearty ones into shorts and short-sleeves that only cover their biceps. Not me, oh no, I am layered with thermal top and two shirts, a hoodie and my worn but warm quilted coat. Snow and freeze came early this winter. Short but fierce for this environment. The fog has taken hold instead, Lonomakua the elemental God we name in my home islands is the Atmosphere in Winter. There or here, I recognize the game, the dance he plays with this Island Earth.

A twirling little girl climbed out my fingers to shake and shimmy while the snow and frost came

It makes me shake and shimmy to think about what might happen if I weave the reality of my experiences as a Hawaiian-Islands woman observing the interaction of Lono here, two thousand five hundred miles from the culture that has named him, with the fluidity of my imagination. That shiver is however, the first bite in the slow to medium process that I am coming to know more intimately as I live my art, live my kuleana as writer and storyteller over the long haul. As McKillip has written it is reality that feds the tales of imagination. It is the floating knowledge, mana'o lana as Manu Meyer translates the phrase that hovers in the atmosphere accessible to any, but, only a passing fog until someone eats the fog and transforms it into something sustaining. Food for the writer. Food for one reader. At this point, on this morning just before noon on this winter Saturday this writer has slowed to medium. Slowed the thinking or formation of floating knowledge long enough to consider eating it slowly, writing it medium, practicing the art of rubbing mana'o lana against the cave walls of my imagination.

I can feel the possibility of a mythic tale (I might grow it in some other place ... ), but, something grabs my fingers for a moment and I write ...

This is a different sort of winter. The fifth one for me, my man, my cat. We have come to know the woods, the trees, the creatures of the night, the winged ones who come and teach me how to speak their language. CAW. CAW. Gallump. As more and more trees are felled to make way for human occupation, they, the Ravens come to us more frequently. They track us. They follow the old turquoise Dodge truck, and swoop above the forest green Subaru. They watch us wherever we go, and talk to me when I climb from the driver's seat. I don't make up what they are saying to me. I imitate their language as best I can. I give me a C+ for mimicry. Sometimes a B+. They seem to like that I engage. We are outdoors so often. Few among the humans stay out side the roofed places. Raven come to know us. Are they losing tree top roosts with every tree fall? More than likely, given the pace at which the trees fall, not from wind but from saws, is not slow to medium.

This is a different sort of winter. The medicine stories begun two winters previous have rooted me sufficiently and I weather the new vulnerabilities triggered by the illness with the name MCS. I have no new story finished this winter. But. A space where the stories can be heated up and served to the real community where we live fuels me as I move slow to medium, or, in other cases I am slowed to medium because I forget that my natural pace at sixty-seven is a different sort of pace. It is a different sort of winter. Pausing to consider an ending the myth and the application of floating knowledge drums slowly in me. How many winters it has taken for me to recognize that I love the splits in the road, the possible ways words and tales might make themselves told ... over time. Fed well and often my imagination will remember the words and meanings of my Ancestors, and make sense of them in a different way. A way that accounts for the dozens of journeys I have taken in and out of the portal from the valley of my girlhood. Once was not enough to say, "Out I go. The pot too tight for me." Oh not, but then I was a girl a maiden fresh and firm-of-breast seeking new land.

This is a different sort of winter when I view the journey that began when first I remembered the feel of the letter A, or felt the surface of lined newsprint against my palm, relishing my Big Chief red notebook from the shelf of the Rexall Drug Store in Aina Haina. I was eight or ten, an age many girls were being initiated into their kuleana. Did I, could I have known, those were my early winter initiations as writer? No. I did not. But from this vantage point, I can say to that little brownie with eyes that really need glasses for a brighter future, "There will be different sorts of winters in your future. Keep practicing, Titi. Keep that fire burning there is more to come. Promise me?" I am glad I have kept practicing, pacing for the long haul. Mythic and fiction or a stab at noticing how the weaving and the feeding of a story could ramble like this.

What sort of winter is it for you? I'd love to hear your version of pacing for the long haul.






 

Weird words

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

— Dr. Seuss

 

 

Weird

weird

wird/

adjective

adjective: weird; comparative adjective: weirder; superlative adjective: weirdest

1. 1.

   suggesting something supernatural; uncanny.

   "the weird crying of a seal"

   synonyms:

   uncanny, eerie, unnatural, supernatural, unearthly, otherworldly, ghostly, mysterious, strange, abnormal, unusual; More eldritch; informalcreepy, spooky, freaky "weird apparitions"

   antonyms:

   normal

   • informal

     very strange; bizarre.

     "a weird coincidence"

     synonyms:

     bizarre, quirky, outlandish, eccentric, unconventional, unorthodox, idiosyncratic, surreal, crazy, peculiar, odd, strange, queer, freakish, zany, madcap, outré; More informalbizarro, wacky, freaky, way-out, offbeat, off the wall, wacko "a weird sense of humor"

     antonyms:

     conventional

   • archaic

     connected with fate.

noun

Scottisharchaic

noun: weird; plural noun: weirds

1. 1.

   a person's destiny.

verb

North Americaninformal

verb: weird; 3rd person present: weirds; past tense: weirded; past participle: weirded; gerund or present participle: weirding

1. 1.

   induce a sense of disbelief or alienation in someone.

 

While wandering this morning I found Dr. Seuss' quote about weird on the homepage where a very interesting poem was responding to this visual prompt ...

 

Tess Kindaid's Magazine 247

Weird is one of those exceptions to the rules. Like any art form there are rules but they are meant to be broken, bent, unpinned and assembled differently.

 

Weird is one of those words that is the exceptions to the rules in spelling : " i before e, except after c.

 

Weird words are an art form.

````````

Thank you  Chris McQueeney for the poem, and Tess Kinkaid at Magpie Tales for the visual prompt.

The Artist's Way

Julia Cameron published The Artist's Way in 1992-- a book which in her words, "hammered out spiritual principles as a path to high creativity." I began reading and using those principles shortly after that, some time after my divorce in 1994 and my initial return to Hawaii. I was rebuilding a foundation to start life over. The essential tool in Cameron's The Artist's Way is called "Morning Pages" three long-hand written pages done first thing upon waking. For many years after reading that book I practiced, one day at a time, the spiritual journey through writing those three (and then many more than three) long-hand written pages. In almost twenty years I have gone on to write and live, and create many expressions of my artist's way. As life continues, I have forgotten or found other forms aiding the expression of my art. Last week an old and dear friend, who is also a very fine poet shared with me her newly found joy through the practice of "Morning Pages." As a poet she has also maintained a spiritual path that parallels her writer's life. Are they separate, the spiritual and artist's life? Not really. What she reminded me was the perfect lesson that it seems is one that never loses it's value: practice and play with art and it will feed the whole! I needed this reminder, and am back to writing three long-hand written pages first thing ... before my schedule or my mind take over.

Julie Cameron has written many books about, and as a result of that initial publication of The Artist's Way". I have one of those books next to me as I press the keys for this post: The Artist's Way Every Day a Year of Creative Living. Like a daily reader, I found these two thoughts to include as I share the process, and in so doing, prime my own pump of creativity. "Using our creativity is therapeutic, but not because we need to be fixed. What we need is to be expressive. What's inside us is not all nasty and horrid and terrifying, not all shame and secrets and neurosis. Our inner world is a complex, exquisite, and powerful play of colors, lights, and shadows, a cathedral of consciousness as glorious as the natural world itself. This inner wealth is what the artist expresses."

That thought, that meditation allows me to accept the challenge of my complexity and how easily I can get caught in the quicksand of believing my expression is there to fix. The natural world is complex, ugly, harsh, grand, exquisite, dark and light. The thunder storms of this week have changed the woods from bright to dark. The blazingly yellow new paint on our neighbors house is now a light in the dark forest: not so bad after all! 

"Creativity is God energy flowing through us, shaped by us, like light flowing through a crystal prism. When we are clear about who we are and what we are doing, the energy flows freely and we experience no strain. When we resist what that energy might show us or where it might take us, we often experience a shaky, out-of-control feeling. We want to shut down the flow and regain our sense of control. We slam on the psychic brakes. Every creative person has myriad ways to block creativity. The choice to block always works in the short run and fails in the long run."

This thought, this meditation appeases my old habit of wanting to shut down the flow and regain my sense of control. I have a natal signature (astrology) that is charged with control issues. Saturn (in charge of control) rules my chart. My Mars (what I want!) is smashed up against Saturn (controller) in my birth chart. Bear with me as I make the connection between natal (birth issues and predisposition/psyche) and creative expression. Here's some astrology to put into the mix:

"Pluto in Capricorn turns direct on Friday morning(September 20, 2013) . Pluto is in an extremely tight sextile to Saturn in Scoprio.  These planets are in mutual reception. You’d be hard pressed to find a more opportune time to remake your foundation."

The opportunity to remake my foundation challenges me to blast through the blocks that come up when I get close to letting my words fly. For a year now I have been playing with the production of something big and wonderful, creative and deep, magical and mythical and choked full of metaphor. Can I do this, and make sense of all the part so me in a public performance? Blasting out of isolation means all the old habits and thoughts will have to go too.Writing those three hand-written pages is something I do one day at a time. It slows me down, puts something down on paper, and in the doing I clear the blocks, just for today. What a life!

Turn that ship around! On an 'Ole Moon?

" Mercury in Leo quinunxes Pluto and trines Uranus. The narrative of your story is bound to change over the course of this Pluto-Uranus square. But it takes a while for a big boat to turn around. Perception has to shift before your storyline can change. Can you see it shifting yet? Do you sense the changes in how you see yourself? Be creative under this influence. This is the perfect time to express yourself in a new way, maybe show a side of yourself that is shocking in its fresh and soulful quality. You’re writing the newest edition of you, and it’s okay, even encouraged, to share some spoilers." -Satori

It's an 'Ole Moon during Saturn in Scorpio Season. Translation? It's a time when deep shifting is going on but it takes a while for a big boat to turn around.  An 'Ole Moon in the Hawaiian Moon Calendar is a rest and reflect time. No new projects, good time for weeding, and repairing nets for fishing another time. The big boat metaphor Satori uses in the astrology over on ElsaElsa is perfect for me as I paddle my canoe, yet again, in the deep water of new territory. The voices of fear launch the anchors, "Throw that out there, slow her down!" they yell. "Ain't she supposed to be disabled by some disease?" The old edition of my story has me listening and heeding those dissidents. In the newest edition of me I notice I'm allowing the undertow of habit lure me like the sirens on the rocks. But, as I'm the writer of my fresh and soulful newest story I keep turning the canoe.

Saturn in Scorpio Season is a slow one but it's purposeful and deep. I need to remind myself of this. I am Scorpio and I feel. Slow and deep. The process of writing and designing a creative expression like the medicine story The Safety Pin Cafe is not easy: it's a big ship, a large canoe crossing an ocean of culture(s). Ten months ago the story began to feed itself to me; I wrote it down. Slowly, the medicine of story worked with me. I wrote it down and shared it. It was early Saturn in Scorpio ... just getting the feel for what this could mean. One month ago I fashioned a place for that medicine story to have a bigger audience (I have Scorpio in the 10th and 11th Houses-Public Affiliations.) One week ago our local public radio station contacted me to do an interview on internet-live radio about The Safety Pin Cafe. The host was very interested in my practice of Makua O'o. We talked for an hour. It's now a podcast available on-line. In six weeks I'm scheduled to present the opening of The Safety Pin Cafe, live and "in person" as a storytelling venue.

Is that a slow turn of a big ship? The 'Ole Moons give me the rest time to make sure of my direction and my commitment to my new edition of me. Writing this down in the early hours of 'Ole here I use the tools of the makua o'o and notice how I feel. I ask for clarity and wait for the rhythm of my heart and pray for the patience to not force the next beat. Ask for the reminders of muscle and cultural memory that says, "You are a seasoned traveler, a storyteller who has done this before. Sure and humble, level-headed, you know you have help feel it in your whole body. Wait, it is the time for waiting. Turn the canoe slowing to avoid huli (capsizing)."

Is there a new version of you in the making?