Good fortune follows Part II

Very often navigating my way through a difficult stretch of internal angst comes via the voice of an imaged character and creation of a mythic scene. Cross-pollination.

1. cross-pollination. The transfer of pollen from the male reproductive organ (an anther or a male cone) of one plant to the female reproductive organ (a stigma or a female cone) of another plant. Insects and wind are the main agents of cross-pollination.

Cross-pollination | Define Cross-pollination at Dictionary.com

The medicine story "The Three Sisters" grows from the anger, the dis-heartened self who sees slow, or non-existent 'success' as failure. As I write the story, the medicine comes for me. I reread the poem Times Alone by Antonio Machado. 

"Last night, as I was sleeping.

I dreamt--marvellous error!--

that I had a beehive here inside my heart.

And the golden bees 

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures."

Machado's poem introduced to me in Angeles Arrien's book the Four-fold Way has healed me of my dis-heartened errors more than once; I fold the poem and the imagery of the bees doing their healing work. I fold the medicine in. Pelu ke aloha. Nature -- Bee and Wind -- are my teachers, I become Bee. I become Wind. I become a cross-pollinator and use words to make honey from my distress, my failures. 

wind

The latest installment of "The Three Sisters" is called Cross-pollination. Dumpling is on the phone. 

"Hi, Anna this is Dumpling." The woman on the other end of the cellphone sounded sleepy.
"Dumpling, hello. Oh god, I've overslept. Can I call you back?"
"No, this won't take long. Anna, I'm calling to say I won't be taking that order for medicine pouches."
There was a long silence on the other end. Dumpling continued, "I'm not the one to do what you've asked. I don't do those kinds of things anymore. So, no need to call me back." Dumpling hung up the phone.
For too long the expectations of others diluted her real love. Stitching and cutting shapes that held meaning for her was the only reason for doing her work any more. The phone call was not her favorite sort of thing, but, it was the practice she needed and there it was. The medicine was not something to buy or shovel into a showcase, which was what Anna Shields would do with Dumpling's stitchery. The pin money had always come in handy, but now? Now the money felt more like pins sticking into her. She had no room nor desire for the bloodletting. (Read more ...)

Pele and Lohiau told by Kamokila Campbell

When I was a young girl growing up in Kuli'ou'ou Valley in the 1950's and '60's, I listened to the radio. One of the voices that captivated my young and imaginative Scorpion nature was that of Kamokila Campbell. Her voice and her stories were a sound that embraced me when confused about my place and my nature, inspiring me to learn and be fed by listening to the power of voice.

In those days, and only until much later in life, I did not know of the great contradictions Alice Kamokila Campbell would represent. The daughter of James Campbell, and heiress to the grand fortune of sugar  "... In the late 1930s and early 1940s, ‘Ewa was a sugar plantation with miles of swaying cane baking on the dry, flat plain. Kamokila Campbell’s father, James Campbell, pioneered the area years before, finding water and making the land prosper." Finding water really meant diverting fresh water from the Windward O'ahu wetlands of Waiahole and Waikane while spraying and applying chemical fertilizer and herbicides creating great strain on the natural environment and health of the people of the Island. Also included in the article Lessons of a Hawaiian Grandmother written by Kaui Goring, "Even though she was an heiress, whose family mingled with nobility of the time—Mary remembers her grandmother noting that King Kalakaua would play “poka” with her father at his Honouliuli ranch—Kamokila lived among the kiawe trees much of the time wearing a simple mu‘umu‘u made up of two pieces of fabric sewn together. She would even go into the water in the dress. At other times, done up in an elegant black holoku (that Mary still owns) wearing strands of lei reaching down to her knees, she would duck into her limousine, driven by her private driver, to an upscale function in town...For Judy, the youngest of the sisters, Lanikuhonua was a happy and spiritual place. She suffered from allergies at her Nu‘uanu Valley home and the dry climate of ‘Ewa suited her. From the very beginning of her time there, Judy felt the sacredness of the land. She suspects that the spot was a place her grandmother reconnected with the Hawaiian part of herself. For the most part, she threw off the lavish lifestyle she had enjoyed when she was younger and found peace and simplicity. Judy, too, remembers the simple mu‘umu‘u and her grandmother sitting at a picnic table just gazing at the ocean. She even drank her coffee made with brackish water, because fresh water had to be brought in large bottles. “I think the land grounded her,” says Judy, who sees the honor of her grandmother living between two worlds—yet in the end, tried to hone in on her Hawaiian nature."

The nature of being human is a balancing act that is not easily maintained. It is instead a daily and routine act that changes over time. Growing, changing, adapting. Listening, gathering, acting. I juggle the changes and ability to adapt with various degrees of agility. Age changes the speed at which I digest change. Softening the ground of my nature means distracting myself from being obsessed with perfection -- static, fixed perspective. Play a hand of cards, and laugh at how the game plays through. Notice how the wind makes the solid disappear. Today the wind brings rain. Tomorrow the weather man says 'expect snow.' If I were still a girl in Kuli'ou'ou I would not know how to expect snow. But. Now I am an old woman who lives with a man who was a boy who knew. He says "Today I'll wrap heat tape around the pipes." Contradiction. Complementary. Juggling. My taste for listening to voices continues to soothe and inspire. I give thanks for my large ears that can hear external voices, and listen, to the quieter, yet most powerful voice that is within. In hearing the stories from Kamokila Campbell's granddaughters I hear "e ho mai I ka maopopo pono" ... grant us understanding, e ho mai I ka 'ike papalua ... grant us insight still honing in on my Hawaiian nature.

There's only one thing that you gotta remember

"There's only one thing that you gotta remember

/Every thing in this world is either a brother or sister ..."

Nests in winter in a town near-by

I'm reading a book by Charles De Lint Someplace to be flying. The tickle line/title for this post that prompts the morning of writing  is from De Lint's song Cherokee Girl. Both his book set in an imaginary town much like urban Ontario where De Lint lives and the song written in Tuscan for his friend and mythic writer-editor-artist Terri Windling were probably written around the same time, late 1990's. De Lint is a Canadian writer and musician, someone I discovered while Pete and I lived in my family homestead on O'ahu. It was his book The Forest of the Heart that tapped into my internal stream bed of creativity sniffing out a different form of expression. De Lint is a writer of modern myth and timeless connections with every thing in this world being either a brother or sister. At the time I began reading The Forest of the Heart I needed to make peace with my wandering nature and the forms of expression that I figured were not-right. It would take me more living to discover this possibility "wonder, but not worry."(another expression from one of De Lint's characters).

De Lint's characters often include the world of crows, familiarity with Cody (coyote) and expressions of Raven. His work is described as "urban fantasy", I wonder about the tag for his characters' world feeds my growing everyday life with the bird people and the Nature of things. We live with the forest and sleep in a curved room with windows that allow wind and moon and the moving roots to push at the borders of memory. Raven wakes us daily and I holler back at him to let him know, "I hear."

The rats eat out of the feed bowls down in the chicken yard. In the snowy yesterday the chickens refused to walk through the color white stuff, perched on the boards of the compost. My son and I watched, talked with the birds and the rats wore the well-run path from the old coop to the bowl. One of them, one of the rats, truly 'ratty' with patches of hair missing. In a story I have told the rat, "i'ole" is a much maligned creature. But in that same tale it is the rat that finds the horde of food cached in a net dangling in the sky. Secured from the reach of every thing of this world except for the greedy patriarch, the net held every thing there was to eat. Only the rat, much maligned but committed to feeding his starving family made his way in collaboration with the coconut tree, the wind, a cloud and a rainbow. His sharp claw tore a hole in the dangling net, and his long and agile tail allowed him to cling as all the stores of food fell to the starving every body below.

In the civilian world the rat and the Raven don't sit at the table. But there is that internal stream bed that has room for every body. Sometimes I find my way there. It may take a lifetime to sort through the jumble and the trinkets of living in harmony with every time, every body and every thing. Maybe several lifetimes. The clues for what is important come in all sorts of places, and the cycles turn up again if one is awake and aware of the patterns: some things change, but some things stay the same.

E kuhikuhi pono i na au iki a me na au nui o ka 'ike.

Instruct well in the little and the large currents of knowledge

In teaching, do it well; the small details are as important as the large ones.

-'Olelo No'eau

Beach walking 1973

Beach walking 2014

Hoki: Women Jugglers of Tonga ...inspiration for story

 "Folk tales are like collective dreams; they are told in the kind of voice we hear at the edge of sleep, mingling the facts of our lives with their images in the psyche." - Lewis Hyde, The Gift

"When winter comes we often tell ourselves, we aren't ready for it. As if the season was part of our checklists, we say the thing that is exactly so. We aren't ready, but winter doesn't think about whether she is ready. She simply lives it. The world I live in, as writer and border witch, is one that does exactly as Lewis Hyde suggests mingling and weaving the facts of my life with the images in my 'mind' but something else happens as well. I feel the border where the everyday and the myth cross and park myself there, and pin the magic together to create story. Let me spin a tale from this and see where we are ... Read the rest of the story here.

Moon and Sun, Earth and Sea: The importance of their stories

"Entering the world of ancestral memory requires a certain mindset...To understand the many levels of mele, one must digest, believe in, invest in, defend and commit to Hawaiian cultural practices and Hawaiian language arts. The Hawaiian cultural knowledge one possesses, along with the clues presented in chants, creates a stage for enlightenment--a junction where memory and na'au meet and produce instantaneous moments when ancestral knowledge is reborn again.

Know your culture and language well enough so these special moments do not flee without recognition."

-Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele

"The shadows always intrigued her, even as a girl child the patterns that happened onto her skin caused something different. Through the screened window the moon did not ask permission to tattoo her. While everyone else slept, this child made room for the moon and the shadows and grew the voice.

 The wind's silent breezes changed the markings that floated onto her small brown arms. In the night 'brown' might have been any number of colors. The ink of moon's stains were always the same and wore itself on all pallets. But, it was the wind that made the tattooed dancers sway and change shape like hula changed the bodies of her aunties when they moved. She watched and let the shapes bathe their way into her blood, carried as messengers to the place where memories swam.

'Ole Moons after New Moon in the Archer

Venus trines Uranus and closes in on its square with Chiron. What you want does not necessarily blend with your natural abilities. Innovate and use your so called flaws to help others and in doing so you help yourself. Oh, and it’s the end of the Pisces Moon: Don’t forget to drink!-Satori writes about the Wednesday sky

Today and tonight is  Ole Kukahi, the first of the four 'ole moons of Kaulana Mahina The Hawaiian Moon Calendar. Yesterday we were in town meeting with our local techno-experts. We're preparing to buy our first new computer in twelve years! How does a writer work without a new computer in twelve years? The same way she learns to live in 8x12 foot spaces called 'home.' Making do with what is available and as Satori suggests above "innovate and use your so called flaws to help others and in doing so you help yourself." Satori's view of the Wednesday already moving rapidly into it's cloak of night reminds me that my flaw or Chiron wound centers around being caught in feeling sorry for myself ... "too old a computer, too small a home, too wide a gap between want and need."

The 'Ole times are good for reviewing and considering the quality of your actions, decisions, projects begun during the past few days. In this case, the period of time to consider is the time since the New Moon in Sagittarius. All in all, and as things sit today, my New Moon wish has become sweeter and affirming as the mana of homeo-practical magic treats those with safety pins. Last night instead of watching a movie we ate a late and leisurely supper and I read aloud the entire 10-dose story about Pale Wawae, the not-so-young Border Witch. Pete was nestled under the covers with his back against the wall. I read and spin a tale that is as familiar to me as toast. I glanced from time to time and saw eyes shut as all good fairy tales are layered into their proper place when words are caught in the winds behind the eye lids imagination's favorite residence.

Before I finished reading the final words, my voice was collecting tears from the edges of time and memory that even a storyteller cannot predict. Waiting for their opportunity to join in, these tears are a potent ingredient, as The Faceless Woman discovers time and time again and again. I put the story down, the 14 point printed copy lies behind me as I pump these words through fingertips. Last night I did not dream of the border, but Pete said he did and early in the morning found his copy of The Safety Pin Cafe to read again. This time in the quiet of The Quonset Hut, the real Safety Pin Cafe where the silver-haired raven and kitty and safety pins galore nourish the Muse, the writer, the not-so-young.

Finally, I am reading an exquisitely written fairy tale, The Mistress of Spices written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Pete and I watched the movie based on this novel and loved it. The book is a storyteller's and fairy tale writer's delight. This storyteller and fairy tale writer's treat for the 'Ole moons. I read it slowly, not wanting the words to walk too quickly away from the place and the meanings. The small print makes reading less facile. But, the pace is perfect for these restorative moons. How blessed to learn "Cinnamon friend-maker, cinnamon dalchini warm-brown as skin, to find you someone who will take you by the hand, who will run with you and laugh with you and say See this is America, it's not so bad." I read this, and rewind the scene from the movie where Tilo shop owner and Mistress of Spices tucks the stick of cinnamon into the turban of young and tortured Jagjit. I breath in the scent of cinnamon and think How wide the stream of a Muse-led journey is. Generous, Muse. Generous Goddess.

The first snow of winter came early this morning, but is now a memory replaced with broad puddles of rain that wishes not to stop ... yet. We are dry, warm and nourished ... enough. My family is loved. I love my family. The cinnamon toast we enjoyed for brunch today hums in me and calls for company. My tummy is hungry for company. Sausages and squash for dinner.

Haku

"to compose, put in order, arrange; to weave as a lei"- Hawaiian Dictionary, Pukui and Elbert

 “We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind 

It must have hailed early this morning.When we woke, the heavy drops were melting off the umbrellas. Pete found the broom to sweep the steps; one of his Cancer taking-care traits that smooths things here in the woods. Still sleepy and under the covers I peeked through the window, saw no white. Once up, the small patches of not-yet-melted hail were like chunky shaved ice.The illusion of an extended fall is over.

Last night we hosted our first guest for dinner in the Quonset, the real Safety Pin Cafe was open for visits. Our guest is one of the community garden interns who has planted seeds, turned compost, dug beds and shared her considerable knowledge with our South Whidbey world. She is the last of the interns to leave after seven months. She and Pete have worked and traded stories and philosophies in the garden and in the Good Cheer Food Bank. At least once a week during planting and harvesting season these two have shared meals. Last night a new experience wove itself into our lives with dinner-for-three in our tiny house world.

After a few preliminary adjustments to accommodate the smell of scented laundry products, our guest sat in one of the three chairs that fit in the Quonset. JOTS was not pleased, but she got used to our visitor. We sat together at the dark blue table covered with the lovely embroidered table cloth I bought at a garage sale two summers past. I watched her eyes take in the oddities of our way of decorating: blankets and skies of colored cloth arch across her head; aluminum insulation warms the walls; safety pins and clothes pins attach things everywhere. We share our 'how-we-got-here' stories when she asks; the stories are familiar to me, but the details weave different this time.

Soon she will board a plane for Boston to spend the holidays with family, and choose another garden-and-teaching position somewhere. The early winter meal and conversation is a recent memory, a part of our recent yesterday. I wonder how or if the experience will be remembered as this young woman makes her way adding to the composition of her life. My experience with a new guest in our Quonset, and the space which inspires the writings and visits in The Safety Pin Cafe give me pause and ponder time. Decades have passed and yet the cozy space we call the Quonset is so much like the inside of tents we slept in as children. Hung off of clotheslines and secured with clothespins those childhood shelters have imprinted me. Could I have known the safety of those times would transport so well? Not really, my stories were still so young then. But, pela perhaps, the die was cast even then.

One of the things we spoke of last night over Granny Smith Apple Pie was how truths change. When I first met this young woman I wore a mask often, not always, but she began to know I did need it. I believed I needed the mask and have used masks to feel protected. The need for a mask has changed. I have them, but use them less often. My stories are familiar, but change. "We all know how dangerous a mask can be ..." I wonder how that will affect the final dose of the story. Really, I wonder.

And finally, as the already muted light of December turns to night, I have spent the afternoon gathering and preparing lei. Haku lei. Our friends are getting married tomorrow. I hoped to be able to order a lei po'o from Hawaii (garland for the head) for the special day. It didn't work out. Instead, I have enlisted help from a friend (and botanist) to gather greenery and winter blossoms here. That was a treat, and such a great way to get to know more about the harpist and sister storyteller. We collected snips of this and that from the Apple Tree Garden on the grounds of The Whidbey Institute earlier in the week. Today, I took myself into the woods around us to gather salal, wild huckleberry and ferns.

I am a rookie haku lei maker, but have those lei-making genes in me. I asked for help from my Ma and Tutu. My lei is nothing like the one pictured above, but Pete says "That's gorgeous." Woven with lengths of raffia, the red-tips of wild huckleberry, branches of salal and wild blue berry nestle the purple heather. The weaving is a meditative activity, and I breath easily, and enjoy the company of my lei-maker ancestors who knew what they were doing back in their day. Tomorrow morning I'll finish up the second lei.

One can never be sure of what memories will stay intact, and which will evolve and how. Story is like that, too. Inspired by a memory and woven with imagination, and a change here and there. Haku the lei. Haku the story.

The halls ... between fact and fiction

"...having a tendency to think you always need more knowledge before taking action. Instead, it’s time to take more risks, to reach for center stage, and to develop one’s confidence---even if it means allowing your childlike qualities to come out more, and for you to be more of a “character.”- Elizabeth Spring

" ... [your story] is like Alice in Wonderland meets Harry Potter" - Jt 

It is still November, though barely so, and the theme of Medicine Stories is prevalent. Still the season of Makahiki, The Hawaiian New Year continues in its four month cycle. No war. Paying taxes. Gathering to celebrate harvest. Playing games. I've begun my 65th trip around Ka La (the sun) and the quote from astrologer Elizabeth Spring feeds me. Jt's comment about my latest Medicine Story, The Safety Pin Cafe, tells me my "character" grows with age, and practice.
My everyday world is the papaku (the platform) from which today unfurls. Papaku Makawalu. Ancient is the Creation Myth (The Kumulipo). I count on ancient, and use it to push myself into the hallways between fact and fiction, now and then, keia i kela. Journeying between, in the hallways of my ancestral path, I pick themes up. Images and ancestors concoct remedies and medicines that translate across time.

Today, this story happened to me.Tomorrow is somewhere down the hall. I woke at Four, felt for my robe in the dark, put my floppy cotton hat on, opened the vardo door and stepped into my boots. Barefoot, the inside of the boots were cold -- not icy, but barely comfortable. Nearly. Out from the umbrella awning the stars and planets aligned and signed to me: some messages I missed, others were probably not in my language, Makali'i (The Pleiades) was already moving home; I waved to the family.

The cozy den of Quonset welcomed, but still, the lingering smell of last night's dinner cooked too long unattended beckoned. "Good morning," I said to The Cat, glad she was safely occupying her rug in front of the heater. Owl was close, very close last night. After a bit of conversation and chin rubs I carried the white enamel pot out the door, switching from inside slippers to outdoor boots and headed for the wash house. Hot water for washing up. The back deck lights had been left on at the big house massing the forest with artificial light, but above the heavens competed.

Living between covered rooms in the woods, the outside is our hallway. In precisely the best of ways, the labor of executing simple tasks are made more deliberate. It takes five steps rather than one to wash a pot properly, or so we believe. Hot soapy water is a luxury we don't take for granted but enjoy the heck out of every time. As I reveled, my hands up to my wrists in the dish bubble bath the image of three friends chatting in the parking lot rewound. The broad faced dirty blonde woman, warmly outfitted with a heavy coat had her hand on the tailgate window, her head emerging from the SUV. "I look like a homeless person," I heard her say to her companions. I turned at the comment as she continued to explain her bootie of parcels: shopping from the day. Barely enough separates one with a home from one without. What halls separate her rooms?


The artwork Hi'iaka and the Mo'o with link to a current issue on the island of Kauai.