Harvest or waiting

"What crazy roads behind the scene," says the voice that wonders how on Earth I navigate the workings of words and scenery on a cybernetic page. Sometimes, and more often than I care to admit, I have very little idea how things work here in Blog Land. Or pela, the reality is that my equipment (this laptop, the digital camera and my facility with programs) is much like the tools my dear husband uses to craft homes and build our nests. We work with ancient software and carry our tools in a cardboard box. Making do with what we have, life is just what it is and there is a comfort in knowing we pay for what we have and no more. I have been at my tiny desk attempting to download photographs into files, and when they make their way from camera to laptop I am lost as to how to reclaim them. Save for the beauty above! Somehow I did find it and put it here. Maybe, the 'Ole Moons and the energy of Mahina are trying to remind me to wait and later, this facility will come. Beautiful faces of flowers planted around us and in the orchard-- the harvest of transplants from a friend; spring Sunflower seeds warmed in the green house and Nasturiums that return for a second season. I do wonder what it will take for me to move through and up to an evolved facility with the trappings of the computer. Slowly we have built a life on a foundation that is truly, more animal than primate: we manage without high technology, yet know it will be nice when an icepack beneath the laptop is no longer necessary.

For now, the flowers are plenty to remind me of the gift of a present harvest.

Animal Nature

Dense fog has settled upon the moku. "Ah, Spider is splendid in her work, capturing for a time the sweet dew and brings it close to our canopy.  Thank you Spider" Our night of sleep has been filled with the images of unlikely company and situations. They trail like wisps of fog. I cannot capture them as well as Spider, but there is a faint remembering. Sleeping unplugged--without electrical currents running through the vardo, we are refreshed and available to other streams of awareness and pela (perhaps) it is the chaos of non-human awareness that makes dreams such a different world. Outside I hear the squeak of the wringer from the Au Hale (the wash house) Pete is washing and wringing out clothes. Hopeful that the fog will burn off by noon I note the squeak has stopped, his foot-fall replaces the sounds as I finish the sentence and swallow the last of a freshly sliced, fresh picked peach.

The paths around our tiny home spaces are littered with the work of Squirrel harvesting and eating pine cones. Pitch is every where: under foot, under sock, on JOTS tail and paws, and if we are unprepared on pants bottoms pretty much permanently. Yesterday while Pete disassembled our Quonset kitchen preparing us for our winter look, we had time in between tasks to reflect upon the nature of our life here. "I think we are being prepared to become more animal than human," Pete said as we sat together. The statement was simple and unembellished; it felt right and I simply nodded. Kolonahe, the gentle breeze played with the wind chime dangling not far from the bench upon which we sat. The Tall Ones were quiet as the sun moved lower in the sky. They watch us as we are busy with our work, perhaps they watch us just as they watch and feel Squirrel move up and down their skin and talk between them remembering stories of other Squirrels or some Two Legs who lived before us.

My Scorpio nature enjoys the deeply private times that allow me to tell stories that make sense of inexplicable circumstances. I make them up, write them down, and sometimes they tatau my emotions holding on to a memory for too long. Fortunately, I believe this is fortune at any rate, I fuel my animal nature with astres (the stars, planets, the moon and sun and the heavens) and the inexplicable becomes more navigable. Right now, over at my astrologer's blog she writes about a Scorpio.

..."So many people are socialized to think they won’t have to raise a hand in life. It’s fine, until some bastard comes along who wants to kill your for sport.
With Uranus in Aries squaring Pluto, don’t be surprised if this storyline pops up in your life."

"Raising a hand in life." Just what does this mean in my life? Many things have forced me to raise my hand, make a move and take action to save my life. All around me I watch Squirrel and the Tall Ones maintain their lives, above me the Osprey Women dive and catch as their babies imitate. The Heron has come to our man-made pond because the season has dried out other fishing spots; only three planted goldfish remain. While I walked the beach with a new friend earlier this week she noticed things I hadn't: a sound behind us, the murky streak across the sky. The sluff of bank behind us was her signal for moving on. The evidence of forest fires on the other side of the Cascades, no rain for months, a message of interconnectedness.


This weekend Pete and I joined an intimate Story Circle at our local library. Five of us shared stories and began to know one another. I cut and fabricate simple props made from recycled cardboard cartons and paper; and netting we use to protect (with some success) our blueberries from the hungry birds. The props help me learn the story of "How 'Iole Saved Hawaii." As I cut the shapes each prop touched the stream of heart that takes a story deeper than memorization. The often maligned 'Iole -- The Rat, and his role in a time of famine was rendered into written form and offered to me as a gift for telling. Terri Windling writes of the magic and the responsibility of listening for language that is the domain of ALL. Not at all singular as a human activity, Windling has a blog post here that ties things together for me with inspiration from David Abram:

... "Entranced by the denotative power of words to define, to order, to represent the things around us, we've overlooked the songful dimension of language so obvious to our oral [storytelling] ancestors...

The gift and the responsibility of a writer, and a Scorpio like myself, is to hear the song in every thing around me. When I tell of 'Iole, "a skinny rat who has been surviving by eating the dried pitch on the stones ..." I hear and see how the pitch that sticks to every where here in the paths beside my Gypsy wagon is no less the pitch that sustained a rat in Hawaii a very long, long, long time ago.

Go play: An intention for New Moon in Virgo, Saturday, September 15, 2012

New Moon, Hilo in the Hawaiian Moon Calendar, is a time when Hina (the moon) rises while the Sun is visible. To the eye, Hina is invisible but it is that soli-lunar synergy that makes Hilo a powerful time to clear the boards and begin anew. A great time to set an intention. I've been feeling so much ... the sorrow and the pain overwhelming; the responsibilities; so many adult decisions, on and on. Something my husband said as we were just waking up made me think again, think and choose again. Choose different. I've been catching myself when I start spinning old tapes or not-enoughness and wrote about a subtle yet powerful shift and movement here.

Elizabeth Spring's suggestion for tapping into the energy of a 5th House North Node has been keeping me company when the old tapes habitually kick-in. Spring writes:

"Your fifth house North Node here wants to have more fun, and to see life as a game worth playing. It can bring out your entrepreneurial and artistic side as well. This Nodal axis wants to get personal—to risk the love affair, to have a child, to express itself creatively. It doesn’t need to get philosophical and talk about saving humanity---how about just one child at a time? And maybe that child could just be your inner child that’s been neglected for awhile..."

 

I have a partner who is no less a Pan or Puck of European folk tales, more like Robin Hood in ways that make me wonder about our fated connection as Nest Builders. He is off for the morning with his tools, doing things most people like to talk about as good deeds to be done. While he goes off to do things with people, I am here enjoying the oatmeal and raisins he cooked up for us. Pete has a lively Jupiter in the 5th House of creativity and spontaneity, so I am gifted with that example every day. Aware that my journey forward in health includes lightening up and playing more I searched for something to encourage that intention. I found this from Wikihow. The article describes how to embrace your inner child and starts with this:

Remember what it was like to be kid, running around without a care in the world? Well, stop remembering and start embracing your inner child! Here are some ideas for reconnecting with the trusting, fun-loving and perceptive part of you that may just have disappeared under piles of hard work and life's trials.

8 Steps follow for the how-to embrace your inner child, and this one is particularly fun:

#6  Never say the phrase "I'm too old". Try "I'm in my middle youth" instead. Tonight's (in the US) Hilo moon is a great time to stop (just) remembering and start embracing my inner child. Some fun is available if I go do it. That Puckish influence is worthy of rescued action. Go, go. Go play, middle youth!

Awaiting Makali'i ... Makahiki Season begins late October

 Makahiki

The Makahiki festival punctuated the yearly farming cycle in ancient Hawai`i. Celebrating harvest and Lono, the Hawaiian god associated with rain and fecundity, Makahiki marked a temporary halt to activities of war and occasioned lesser changes in many other daily routines. For religious reasons that coincided with seasonal weather, activities such as deep-sea fishing – associated with Ku, the god of war – were kapu, or prohibited, during Makahiki. Beginning in late October or early November when the Pleiades constellation was first observed rising above the horizon at sunset, the Makahiki period continued for four months, through the time of rough seas, high winds, storms and heavy rains...

Source:
http://www.hawaiihistory.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ig.page&PageID=534

Our top of the island home place is making room for changes. Like the land and critters who have lived here a long, long time we prepare for harvest and look to the season of sharing and rest. My ancestors of Hawaii were keen observers of Nature in all her seasons, but were as well keenly aware of the daily realities of Nature. Noting these realities was an inseparable part of the net that made what they as kanaka (human) did with what happened to Nature they saw, felt, heard and believed. Theirs was not a culture that controlled Nature, but was instead one that knew through generations of observation and living, they had a place and a part of that net.

Here on this moku, my kane and I move things around in our tiny home place to prepare for winter. We will need to insulate ourselves from the coming cold. Yet the irony of an insulating season is that balance necessary to be warm enough without walling off the warmth of relationships and aloha. I draw upon the evolutionary and astrological mana'o (wisdom) of the timing involved in this winter coming this Makahiki Season approaching. Thanks to my enrollment in a wonderfully deep and insightful on-line astrology class I reinforce my knowledge and learn to make peace with the nature of Saturn as that planet of long-term lessons moves through the sky. It makes good sense for me to pay attention; Saturn is my chart ruler and will affect the collective's (all of us) charts as well. Saturn moves from his 2.5 years through the sign of Libra into Scorpio (for the next 2.5 years) on October 6, 2012(oops, corrected that). When Saturn moves from the constellation Libra into the constellation of Scorpio the constellation Pleiades will also be rising on the horizon (in Hawaii) around that same time. Timing. The lessons of Makahiki Season are both practical and metaphoric. Each harvest time there is an accounting of what has been planted and what has been tended; how well we have managed our time-gardens-relationships rise on the horizon.

Pete and I have been in this home space for two years. We have planted ourselves in individual and collective ways: he is very involved with people, I not quite as much. What I do is so much internal and deep rooted work. My imagination and  love of stories that I find there are my community. However, while the planet Saturn has moved through Libra in the past 2.5 years I have attuned to the relationship I have with my attitudes and my friendships. Both of them have needed dusting and adjustments. Part of the healing and recovery from an illness of reactivity is to learn the difference between reacting and choosing to respond. It is a unique healing process and very much a process over time. This Makahiki I am blessed with finding new stories to fuel my needs as a storyteller, and wahine on a healing journey. With adjustments to my attitude (and that does cover a lot of ground) I have found new stories to tell. First, I was invited to gather with a small group of storytellers at a Story Circle in my South Whidbey Island community. It  has been many years since I have told story publicly and in a group. I'm making space for this invitation and refreshing my attitude about storytelling while asking for what I need to feel safe in the process. I said "yes" to this invitation several weeks ago. But only last week did the story that wished to be told show itself.When I discovered Leilehua Yuen's rendering of "How I'ole Saved Hawaii" I knew this was it.

Like I said, it has been many years since I've told stories in public. The old excitement at performing bubbled up. I made preparations: printing copies of the story at the library; and read the story through several times. In the meantime, I searched Leilehua Yuen's (old) website and found no contact information. The protocol for me as storyteller and artist is to ask permission. My prayers and my practice allowed me to continue practicing the story in my heart and mind. Yesterday(four days before the storytelling event) I GOOGLED and found Yuen's current on-line presence. I asked permission to share her beautiful Makahiki story "How I'ole Saved Hawaii."

 Aloha e Leilehua,

I hope this message reaches you and your 'ohana at a good time, and finds you all in good health. I am a storyteller, and author, and makua o'o. My name is Mokihana Calizar. While searching for a story to share at a story telling circle here on Whidbey Island in the Pacific Northwest, I discovered your "Makahiki Stories ... How 'Iole Saved Hawaii." It is a beautifully written version of Na Koko a Makali'i and one which weaves such aloha into each of the moments, and characters.

I am writing to ask your permission to tell a version of your story, crediting you for your rendering, at the South Whidbey Story Circle that takes place this Sunday, August 16, 2012. It is the first of its kind, a small gathering of storytellers to be held at our local library. When I first found your story I wasn't sure how to contact you. But, this morning I GOOGLED, and found your current website, and email.

You are living your story with grace and strength. How wonderful is this. I will wait to hear from you, and refrain from telling this story of I'ole until you have responded to my kahea.

To read some of my writing some of my work is here at my blog www.makuaoo.blogspot.com

Aloha nui loa,
Mokihana Calizar

This is what she wrote back:

E aloha no e Mokihana,

He oli komo keia!

Your event is August 16? AUE!!! I only just now received your e-mail. I am so honored that my telling touched you so that you want to share it. Please feel free to do so whenever you wish.

I would love to see pictures or a video and learn how your next storytelling session goes!

Malama pono,

Leilehua

The season of harvests is always a process and a journey of many plantings, done when the time is right and with attention to the elements of Nature as guideposts. I'm reading and listening the sweet and potent story of I'ole the rat who makes a decision, asks for help, and saves himself and his family (and Hawaii) during the season of Makahiki. The link to Leilehua Yuen's Makahiki story above will take those who are interested to a beautiful story of inter-relatedness and 'enoughness.' I hope I am able to share her story in a heart-felt way as I celebrate and acknowledge the net of Makali'i.

Mahalo e Leilehua:  her current website www.leimanu.com

A signature sky

When I was a girl my aunty had story for a sky like this one. "God is taking his sheep home," she'd tell me. The mango trees and plumeria grew from the ground around us when the clouds pillowed in a sky like this. She had time for me and over time her memory retains its sweetness. The pillowed, sheep sky and sunflowers in our orchard signed itself, Aunty Lily Sky.

What a difference

It might have been too much sugar and caffeine. Or, it might have been me exploring (exploding!) the fit of the Nodal Shift I made the other day. Regular readers know I study astrology with Elsa Panizzon via her blog ElsaElsa; I am not a astrologer. But, if there are new visitors a bit of history ... At a pivotal time I discovered Elsa on the Internet. She saved my life by telling me in essence "if all your friends are deserting you, you might as well float." The advice was so obtuse it made perfect sense. Struggling with the decay and disease I could not explain nor inoculate against, I began writing (this blog and others); helped my husband build a Gypsy wagon to live in and float through the high tide of Global Warming, sensitivities (in all its manifestations), and kept learning astrology via The Astrology Blog. Elsa was the first astrology blog on the Internet, and has proven to be a source of constancy while encouraging a cyber community that respects diversity and 'respect' in general. I'm one of the old gals who is a regular but 'low-key' contributor. I don't write or post much on her blog but participate when I am inspired by the writing or am particularly 'educated' by an interpretation, and am an appreciative student in Elsa's on-line classrooms. My history with Elsa began in 2008.

Earlier this week something Elsa said began to tickle at me like an itch just below the surface. It's not a new thing for Elsa, but it was a new potential for me. From the Boards a year ago I found this that says something about my ramble today.

Elsa wrote: Lots of people out there who have been at it as long as I have use these other systems. I don't know if they have ever tried equal.  people do get attached to their placements and if they move, people don't like it but I can't tell you how many times I have explained their equal house chart to someone and had them realize it described them, instantly.  It's just a no fail thing for me but I would not stop searching on my word. I am just weighing in.

The link to that Board post will give those who are interested, more discourse about the different House Systems(used or preferred when reading an astrological chart). For me, the shift from reading my astrological chart using the Placidus (uneven house) to Equal Houses does two things right away. First, my Scorpio Sun (that does not change when you change the House system) moves from the 10th to the 11th House. Second, my North Node in Taurus (again that does not change) but it does move my North Node from the 4th to the 5th House. The nodes of the moon are polar opposites and with the shift in the way I interpret my chart I am there with what Elsa wrote above: "I can't tell you how many times I have explained their equal house chart to someone and had them realize it described them, instantly.  It's just a no fail thing for me..." The North and South Node influences are a key marker for my life navigation. I've learned and applied a lot of the writing found at Elizabeth Spring's North Node Astrology website. What I'm experiencing with this Node Node-South Node move is: this feels more like me!

Elizabeth Spring writes about an 11th House South Node, "With the South Node in the 11th house, there’s a chance that you need to move up an octave in choosing friends who support you and your dreams, and also a need to leave behind peer pressure in any of its forms. It’s important for you to become clear on who you are and who you want to spend your time with—move away from the crowds or groups that simply fill your time, and find a few “heart-mates” instead of acquaintances, and look for the community or place where you really belong. Look around a bit, so that you can sit at the right “camp-fire.”  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.” Spring's expertise and focus as an astrologer has taught me to examine the South and North Nodes; I've done that. Using my own chart and the patterns and challenges that come up or repeat themselves it makes sense for me to feel the shift in Houses within the signs for a deeper and clear sense of direction. She goes on to say, "Your fifth house North Node here wants to have more fun, and to see life as a game worth playing. It can bring out your entrepreneurial and artistic side as well. This Nodal axis wants to get personal—to risk the love affair, to have a child, to express itself creatively. It doesn’t need to get philosophical and talk about saving humanity---how about just one child at a time? And maybe that child could just be your inner child that’s been neglected for awhile..."

That's the thing with 'sugar and caffeine' and the explosion that took place over the passed couple of days. Too often I've capped off the childlike character to make peace at all costs. It's not a bad thing -- getting along-- but even that can be taken to excess. I'm feeling so close to defining myself so I can and do find people who will be friends with the me I am today. The journey through is messy, there's no way around it when the answers are down there in the muddle. The fun I wish for has hastened me, that little girl me, to remember a friend with curly red hair and freckles. We used to make up dance routines to songs like HARVEST MOON, and explored the wondrous taboos of breasts on friends who had them when we didn't. So long lost this old friendship. I wonder too often if I was ever that playful girl  with a friend who knew I was creative and goofy. But, I was and I still am. I love to make up stuff, love to dance and hope it's not too late to save that girl child. What a difference a move, a day, can make. Twenty-four little hours. Sing it Esther!

Nest building

I thrive on the possibilities of connections, and know that the solitary times prepare me for the planned and unexpected meetings with those who just make me feel good. Inspired by beautiful blog connections like this one over at Terri Windling's the spirit of nest building is made bigger and more right as my husband and I prepare our nests for winter.

a view of our VardoForTwo when we lived on The Ledge 

our first nesting place

I've written a bit of a tale (a brief one) over on our other blog where WE BUILD NESTS. You might like to read and view the world that surrounds us in the woods as we build nests here.

Where do you build your nest?