Ho'oulu 'Aina and Hope

"Ho'oulu 'Aina addresses the health needs of Kalihi Valley (on the Island of O'ahu) by strengthening the connection between people and land. Through four interwoven program areas, the community comes together to create a 100 acre upland resource of forest, food, knowledge, spirituality, and health activity. As we restore this land to health and productivity, we learn that healing is reciprocal." - Ho'oulu 'Aina

" The transformation of despair into hope is alchemical work, creative work. And what all transformations have in common, writes Rebecca Solnit, "is that they begin in the imagination.To hope is to gamble," she says. "It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty are better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk. I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope." - a quote from Rebecca Solnit on Terri Windling's blog Myth and Moor

All day long the rain has fallen. Heavy. Sudden. Piercing. Near hail. The temperature has shifted from an early summer seventy-eight to forty nine. The weather, the elemental gods Lono, Kane they are not blind to the smallness of spirit in humans who are bred on smallness and fear. 'Aue the tragic killing in Orlando. 'Aue, 'aue, ho'ouwe kalani!  Oh, oh what cause for the heavens to cry!

Very early this morning I woke to make time to write one more segment in the medicine story that is uprooting old issues of shame and fear. So deep are some of these issues one life-time may not be enough to ferret them out. But, it will not be for lack of trying. I have worn teeth to prove what an aging ferret's teeth are like. In this growing medicine story the character Uncle Moon wrote a letter to a tiny girl on her first birthday. In green ink, written in a flowing script he wrote:

My Tutu always told me patience is something no man can take from you. So this is how you and me learn about patience. I write, we read. I write, we read. Then you learn to write, we read. Ho'omana

In between my piecing of thoughts into story, I diverted and went to one of my favorite art-nurturing watering holes: Myth and Moor. The quote above describing Hope was part of the beautiful offering left there by Terri Windling.

There. There was something to build into my writer's imagination, and medicine story. I felt the push, the shove that must have been what got me out of a warm bed, and into the woods where already the puddles of rain were deep enough to soak my little shoes clear through. The medicine story being written pulls on threads and roots from so many directions: a mele a song whose meaning has been variously interpreted over more than a hundred years; a name that has laid down waiting, waiting for what? Maybe, the names wait for the next waves or rainfalls filled with hope.

A few days ago, I received a message and an attachment from our son who lives on O'ahu. A second podcast produced by Hui Mauli Ola recorded an interview with a wonderful wahine o Kalihi a woman of Kalihi Valley on the Island of O'ahu. We know this wahine Puni Jackson. When Pete and I were newly unended and empty of hope because we no longer had the safety of 'a home' to live in, our son, Christopher Kawika, invited us to met and visit with Puni Jackson. At the time (2007) Puni and her kane had just moved onto the land and the project called Ho'oulu 'Aina was newly hanau. The land was wild, raw and wet! Though we could not stay, we were welcomed and felt the safety of this pu'uhonua.

Nearly ten years after, we listen to this podcast and heard the journey of hope and healing in Puni's words about the healing process of Ho'oulu 'Aina. The YouTube presentation that begins this post is also Puni Jackson (2015) speaking about the personal messages that needed to be transformed, with hope. Through that listening I learned more about the young woman of forty, mother to her fifth keiki, and example of aloha who gave us hope when we most needed it.

"Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope." - Rebecca Solnit

Is that you?

Click here for an inspiring podcast from HuiMauliOla

From under my hoodie I filled a bag with baby green spinach. "Is that you, Mokihana?" it was the voice I knew as my friend the Produce Lady.

"It's me."

"Haven't seen you for awhile," she said as I continued to fill the bag from some foggy place not quite here, or there.

I explained about the Scotch Broom, and my isolation from it. "Oh yeah, I think Peter told me about that."

"It's my first day out, whoa. Another world out here."

She laughed and commiserated. I felt heard. I laughed at myself as I tried to reorient myself to life outside the woods. Shopping for a meal wasn't going easily. Spinach wasn't quite enough for us. The choices and the stimulation: I was already running out of breath.

My short excursion out of the woods was an experience with the wantings: the impatience with the time necessary to heal and re-enter the world. Even now, this tidbit of post is a drive to prove (to myself, and to my unknown audience) that I am still here. You, I tell myself and my gods, 'It is me."

But, really, the me is changing and transforming. I push up against the limits my body says is too much. "But," I say, "I love the words so much. The story wanting to be offered up from this imperfect place." Writing this, and thrilling from the simple act of hitting the Publish key is part of the wantings in the immediate. The glamour of the blog. Different from my handwritten musings, and chapters to a medicine story.

"Is this enough for now?"

"Yes," I say to the Invisible Spark that dispenses Hope and Humor. "Enough just to see how my fingers love the exercise of pressing keys and expressing art."

"Is this ono (delicious) enough for the gods within me and in the channel of the cyber?" I ask myself, and speak the chant. I wait, a little, and listen. And then I am here at the keys with answers pouring out.

The image and link that begins this post was a gift sent to us from our son, Christopher Kawika. This inaugural podcast with Kapono Souza was such a perfectly timed message. The young feeding the Akua within others, and I was in just the space to receive. Kapono's mana'o (his story) was familiar to me: asthma as a young child, invisible friendship, and the journey to 'find wind.' From the edge of the woods of a Salish Sea a rootlet of sustaining health was uncovered, and I find a way to grow from there.

The words below are from Terri Windling, writer and blogger who has helped so many times, has an archive of writing and meaningful explorations about 'Illness and healing" on her space Myth and Moor. They are words that are reaching me across the threshold of a slowly transforming self.

~*~

"In the secular world of modern medicine," writes Kat Duff, "we try desperately to rescue ourselves from the grasp of the Unknowable. Doctors have supplanted the gods, deciding when life begins and ends, working miracles, and taking credit for their successes. This aura of divinity that surrounds the medical profession in our society, and the extraordinary expectations that come with it, is the source of much pain and frustration for doctor and patient alike, especially when cures are not forthcoming....
"The sense of diminishment we often experience in the grasp of the Unknoweable, the face of the uncurable, probably has something to offer us from a spiritual perspective, but in the secular world of [modern] America, it is without meaning and so intolerable. That is why the first commandment in illness is to get well. Sick people are under tremendous pressure, from themselves and from others, to overcome their ailments, and return to life as usual in our fast-paced, production-oriented world." -"Illness and Healing"

"Although powerful work can be born of hard life experience, there are also times when calamity silences us: when shock, or grief, or sheer emotional exhaustion serves to snuff out one's creativity altogether. For those of us used to moving through life by breathing in the world and breathing out art, this silence is an unsettling, even terrifying thing. It is not quite the same thing as depression; it's more like finding the inner room where we go to create is now shuttered and bolted against us. It's like trying to speak without language. It's like living without breathing. It's not living at all." - "Re-kindling the Fire Within"

Curious collectors

The walls of our Quonset are bare bones except for a line of clothespins collecting curious things

... 'word crumbs everywhere'

Wild ain't easy. But who planted easy in there with the nature of things anyway? All around me I see the ruckus evidence of life coming on. From the compost or the unruly jumble of ferns and leaf lace that die upon themselves in no order or arrangement, the wild unfolds. 

My friend, the one I have called Gypsy Woman, who calls herself 'crow woman, soft and tender, curious collector of stories, words crumbs everywhere ...' she mourns the loss of a storyteller on the anniversary of her death. The storyteller stirred the wild patience within her. She was not alone the inspiratrix, Adrienne Rich, did so for thousands. 

Wild ain't easy just ask the dandelion as it pushes against the asphalt or breathes in spite of that Roundup applicator just doing his job. Or say something into the mic about the panic in the free-ranging hen when the sky turns black from the wings of a hungry hawk.

Bracken ferns send themselves snake-like through the slots of the vardo decking

We live such short lives when we live the straight line time story. Once we did this, and then we lived here. We made a bunch of money doing this, and lost the keys to paradise when we did this. Then we died. There's food for thought at Myth and Moor today as Terri Windling collects stories for the wild time giving us grist for the wildness within us if only we recognized there is more than one kind of time. 

My kupuna, my ancestors put that message about time into our stories, the chants, the mele 'ike knowledge or floating knowing which might plant itself in you and become mana'o 'i'o or integrated knowing -- you don't just talk about how beautiful is the flower; you become the flower. As the word roots in your gut meaning cracks the hard pan of your being. 'Eli'eli kau mau Dig deep, and what you find, is yours.

If by some Jupiter-inspired stroke of luck we dreamed up a journey where wild patience made it possible to breath like dandelions or remain curious about sparkly things; or maybe it's the memory of that kind hand who leaves French fries at the boat dock. Maybe then being a curious collector would be a genetic and applied knowing that we breath deeply into through our noses. We are wild time things. There is time to breath slowly and deeply.

I don't know for sure but maybe wild is what I am when I pop a rib reaching for something just out of reach. Damn, impatient at first. But when that doesn't work, patiently I wait (again) till I heal and the rib moves where it can do me some good. And then ... I reach (again) and it was worth it. Damn. Yes. It was worth it. 

Writing the deep

“There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it. I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood. They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.”  -  Lynda Barry (via Gail Arlene de Vos) Thanks to Terri Windling for posting this quote on her blog Myth and Moor

It might be the luck of Jupiter that sparks the headlamp of a miner like myself, one of those children who was told I am "too sensitive." Jupiter brings luck and opportunity. The planet was in the 11th House, house of big ideas, collaborations, friends and foreign lands, when I was pulled prematurely from the cozy womb of my mother's uterus. Looking back at that timing as a writer today, I would say it was one of my talisman a lucky rabbit's foot that has given me the creative rabbit's hind leg muscle to leap even in the dark.

If one is born with marks in the sky (astrology) fixing depth in much of life it is the grace of noticing the light that makes such a difference in playing out the cards that wear the dark suits. Elsa wrote a strong and evocative post the other day about friends who have depth, lots of Scorpio or a heavily tenanted 8th House character. I've been mulling over the post, and the more than 50 comments responding to her essay. If this topic is of interest to you I highly recommend reading Elsa's post here.

Elsa made a comment to her post which lit that miner's headlamp for me. She said, "Another thing worth mentioning, Scorpio does tend to keep a tight inner circle. It’s not the most trusting sign, at least when it comes to things that are near and dear to them. Scorpio / 8th house types are described at “self-protective”. I think this is true. But if you are in their inner circle, your value to them is sky-high. And I just don’t think they run around expelling people unless they absolutely have to."

Keeping a tight inner circle is putting it mildly. With my son now in France after weekly visits over the winter while he navigated the legalities and paperwork entitling him to a spouse's visa, my inner circle drops from three to two. My husband and my cat are my physical inner circle, and I count on one hand the friends who know me authentically. Life with MCS create a small circle. Lynda Barry's quote, "certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight" makes me laugh at the reality of being chemical and fragrance sensitive to much of today's society.  To an extreme one with sensitivities does become self-protective.

But this is not a pity party post. I put the words down, search for the light and make sure my battery is fully charged to get to this ... Over the years that I have made my life a writer's life there have been many battles and most of them are with myself. Giving ourselves permission is the key. Terri Windling wrote today, "Most importantly, we must give ourselves "permission" to be the person we truly are -- as opposed to who we thought we'd be, or were raised to be, or who others would very much like us to be -- and no one else can do this for us. Teachers, mentors, partners, friends can provide support in various ways, but permission has to come from within if we are to own our lives, and our art."

When I discovered the potential of blogs, I took the venue on with Leo gusto (that's where half of that Scorpio energy is fueled). I wanted to write. It made no never-mind that I didn't know my audience, and wasn't facile yet with the methods for creating a blog. I had things to say, and experiences to record. Self-protective by nature the Scorpio within found ways to write from the dark, deep caves of a sensitive. First, I wrote non-fiction ... the stuff that happened. When the stuff that happened threatened me as surely as diaspora, I wrote anyway. The years of re-rooting and isolation have challenged us. Writing what happens seemed to keep me only in the dark. Jupiter, and the rabbit's muscle sought the light. I found myth, fantasy, and larger stories wanted to be told. Again, Lynda Barry speaks for me. "We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay" 

Rather than spend a lot of time here at Makua o'o I created a place, and stories to be able to stay. Lucky me.

Pinning things together while Saturn is in Scorpio

From something called The Learners Dictionary I found the drawings above and this ... " metal pin that is used for attaching things and that has a point at one end and a cover at the other into which the pointed end fits."

The wind is strong today, and a storm is forecast for tomorrow. With all the water piling up in the heavens it makes sense we would collectively experience storm. On a daily basis I learn things about being an Earthling and try to pin those lessons together to make a bridge over which I get from one place to another. More often than not my bridges take me back and forth to places I have passed before; reassessing my past relationship is something I do often.

Bridges are great inventions, evolving over time I'm sure the simplest of bridges was made by stretching ones legs across a stream, a gap in the valley. Into the arms of the stretchee perhaps a small child, a treasured tool or another such loved one went from one side to the other using the human bridge. I wonder about the metaphor of bridges as I finished reading a message telling us about the passing of a neighbor. Death is both bridge and form of passing from one side to the other. I am saddened by the news though I never met the man who passed; I chatted to his wife just the other day for the first time. Still death is universal and though this couple was in the middle of a divorce, the grief will probably be as full and real regardless.

Which brings me to the point of this post. With mortality and passings being as real as that message, I had begun to write about pinning, and unpinning stories. There are so many stories: some wait to be found again, others remain hidden because only a spider or lizard can tell it, and then there are stories which are only told by the young, or by the very old. Here at Makua O'o I tell stories that happen on my way to becoming an elder. With no guarantees I will be wise in the telling, I have simply told them from the heart. Earlier this week I have been coaxed from the caves into which I retreat when the world is too painful for me. Terri Windling and the writers, readers and artist who come to pin stories to tales, and tales to pictures and pictures to dragon wings on her blog, give me fuel to keep giving it ago ... my best is all that I can do ... and that is enough.

Mortality, and Saturn in Scorpio are messengers that urge living to the fullest in whatever form is possible from this side of the bridge. It's a deep crevasse over which my bridge and those of others transits. Travail and transformation equally possible in the crossing. Today I decided to take my next best shot at the journey and climbed aboard the dragon and urged her to spread those wings ...

Take me from the Red Hibiscus Hedge, Mo'o
Pin me with memories sepia and worn
No longer new but not nearly so old
To forget what purpose Dragon Wings serve
Is as likely as never having bridges
That need crossing

So to continue pinning stories I have returned to my culture where first I was dressed in the language of story. There are red hibiscus and dragon wings waiting, and if you forget the password to enter ...
JUST REMEMBER ... it's "thelanguageofstory."

Click to find Red Hibiscus and Dragon Wings

Dressed in the language of story ...

Yesterday the full flood of a Piscean-sky had me "playing with words and images, using corners of my brains I don't usually visit unless I am dressed in the language of story that wears me like a red hibiscus." If there is a verb that needs to live more comfortably in my life it is playing. Too often I am working hard at play, and that rather defeat the jolliness of the activity so there you have it. A path well-worn does not mean a new one cannot be slid upon from time to time, and then with practice slid upon more often.

Regular readers here know that I am in the fits and tangles of learning the language of 'being edited.' I'm not through the woods and out the other end, but I'm learning to play with it ... tricking the demon-mind from her obsession with being perfect. The opening paragraph of my fairy tale in the works includes this description "Dressed for the season in my long skirt, paisley wool shawl, and tea cozy hat with a red felt hibiscus over my left ear my feet splashed in puddles." Now that is a description begging for play!
-long skirt
-paisley wool shawl
Sensible for the season
-tea cozy hat with red felt hibiscus 
-over my left ear
Well now, there's a pitch for playing and whimsy
-my feet splashed in puddles
Oh yeah, a child lives within

My friend JT offered me this about 'editing.'
"this business of editing...Making it all tidy and clear; making the plot arc etc;but I worry that in editing this magic we lose the magic. Now maybe it is true that few people will be able get the story or the magic if it is untamed but I wonder if it needs to suit everyone. Good luck. I love the snippets and flow and hidden parts of the story I like filling in the holes with my imagination and I carry some images around with me. In any case the writing is grand ..."

It is this under-toe that sends me into waters where I cannot touch bottom as I wrestle with the words and tidy it up. The arc of the plot in my tale? No, it does not go from point a to point b and there are holes in it and secrets left untold. Purposeful omission on my part, as the tale was written in doses like homeopathic remedy for the writer, and the reader. The holes are meant to be filled in from the readers' end.

I fear the loss of the free roaming spirit that writes the story through my fingertips. That untamed dragon spirit that without the language of story is constantly on alert and in edit-mode. The middle road has long been one that I find difficult to tread. "Why be normal?" was a license plate I once wore on my sensible brown station wagon.

There are many fine writer's sites and editing blogs that give good and sound practical advice about learning this process. If it turns out this old girl is a dragon that won't be tamed, I do hope there are readers and myth lovers who can recognize me when I am dressed in the language story. Because one thing is for sure, dragons are happiest when in good company.

Source

 Any thoughts?

Red Hibiscus and Dragon Wings

Red Hibiscus for our windows Kaimuki Dry Goods

"Final project, says Maple Head to her class...write down some things you believe in that don't make sense...but don't worry about coherence and shape and narrative style. Just make notes. Play with words and ideas...Try to use corners of your brains you don't usually visit...Write from the heart." - Brian Doyle Mink River

"It was a day a duck could love. For that matter the week was a duck's paradise. Dressed for the season in my long skirt, paisley wool shawl, and tea cozy hat with the red hibiscus over my left ear, my feet splashed in puddles."- Yvonne Mokihana Calizar The Safety Pin Cafe

I am playing with words and images, using corners of my brains I don't usually visit unless I am dressed in the language of story that wears me like a red hibiscus. Fragile. Lasting but a day that is all it takes to make space for magic. Spring is making promises today. The first magenta of salmon berry coaxes me from hiding. Sun and puffy clouds tell me "seasons are for reasons." The sly wind is back and turns the rain fly into a dragon dulled from so much rain but still ... its wings never forget what flight is.  Between the editing first drafts and re-writes  I lose the melody of the story and tears come because it is the song of story that like wet dragon wings knows what is at the heart. I was in need of reminders of magic that can come if I remember to include all corners in the folding of art.

From corners of my brain so rarely visited, drawings and watercolors wished for their moments of light. Drawn onto squares of white paper with black pen and filled in with water colors folded origami tea cups spill a story of silliness ...

 The tea cozy hat with bright red felt hibiscus over my left ear, and hints as to the color of paisley that would tickle the joy from the kitties.

 The tea cup unfolded reveals the fullness of paisley, a long shirt and hair no longer blue-black ...

while sensible black boots splash in puddles and twirl at the end of city blocks.

I am in need of more reminders of the best of times from my homeland of red hibiscus. I went searching yesterday, on the look-out for new lengths of cloth to soothe me. When I was a girl learning to sew there was a place I, and many other girls, women and grand-mothers would go. Back and forth I went as my life took me on planes to become mother, career traveler-trainer and wife. Away did I go and yet when I did return to Hibiscus Island there was that place where girls, women and grand-mothers still went to find lengths of cloth, notions and patterns and the chatter that comes when preparing to stitch.

The length of fabric I found to satisfy my craving for Hibiscus Island is from Kaimuki Dry Goods' Online Catalog. I wished it was possible, and made a call to the 808 phone number from my 808 cellphone. Connected and chit-chatting the sound of a familiar lilting voice, and conversation as easy as pie has me well on my way to ordering yards of cotton with large hibiscus and tropical company. In time for spring, my sensible black boots will take me to my sewing machine and stitch a story that I could love.

Strange that this should become a bit to offer at Terri Windling's Moveable Feast entitled "Desire for Dragons. It did not start that way, but nonetheless here it is and I am glad. Link to Terri's blog Myth and Moor for the answer to the question ...Faded dragons forget what their wings are for?

NEW MOON in Capricorn: January 11, 2013Baffled landscape of nightmare and dream

"While our intellect chases its bright and lofty visions, our most original, powerful ideas tend to rise from muddy, murky depths below: from the clouded waters of the subconscious; from the baffling landscape of nightmare and dream; from the odd obssessions, weird fixations, and uncanny flashes of intuition that rise up from those strange parts of ourselves that we know and approve of least; from those places most likely to make us feel ridiculous, and exposed. The muse, if we follow her far enough, and honestly enough, demands that we bare it all: our angel wings and our asses' ears. It doesn't matter if we're writing genre fiction and not memoir; it doesn't matter if we're painting fairy tales and not self-portraits. "All art is autobiographical," said Federico Fellini; "the pearl is the oyster's autobiography." - from "Dare to be Foolish" Myth and Moor, Terri Windling

There's a lot going on at the deep and muddy depths with so much planetary action involving Pluto (deep) Saturn (responsibility) Capricorn (more responsibility and commitment). With the New Moon in Capricorn coming up on January 11, 2013 Elsa P. wrote

...The Sun and Moon meet at 21 degrees Capricorn, joining Venus, Mercury and Pluto in the sign.  Mars is in Aquarius, the other Saturn-ruled sign, so the emphasis on Saturn here is off the charts....

Elsa goes on in that post with some ideas about how to make use of this New Moon based on which house is affected for you personally. Click on the link above for those ideas. The New Moon in Capricorn will be in my 1st House so I'm going to need to take responsibility and lead. For me, this means taking care of how I appear as I 'lead' and manage. Capricorn spans my 12th house (deep emotions and secrets) and 1st house (how I appear, who I am). Thing is at this stage in my life, some of my emotions have been locked up and in many ways I've told a lot of lies I've come to believe. One of the most effective ways for me to come to terms with the depths of myself is through storytelling, and in particular the writing of fiction.

Here is an excerpt from my medicine story and fairy tale The Safety Pin Cafe: "Did you know humans are the only animals who deny their own metamorphosis?" I was ill-prepared for the question though Raven had not left my side since the old Gypsy woman finished with her reading, and that comforted me. Was it just a reading? "It was just that," The Lady answered and motioned to Raven as she pat the empty seat next to her. I felt his gloved hand on my right elbow but remained where I was. "I want to think about what you asked, Raven." It was the first time I'd addressed him directly and meaning no disrespect for The Lady, this was another of those inordinate questions; not common I believed. I thought of my hens who were molting, dropping feathers rather than eggs. They were not so much changing as the caterpillar became winged, but my hens knew their place and their timing...

At this stage of life, using the effective routes to metamorphosis or creativity is still a juggling act and it matters that I am gentle with my wishes. Because, like they say 'be careful what you wish for.' We, anyone of us, can and has been a faceless woman or man. Terri Windling's opening quotation from Dare to be foolish is the potent potion that I take to both allow me to scream when an offense is true for me and dare to write fiction as a way through the nightmare of being unseen, unheard, unknown.

Behind the scenes, and as I work on my New Moon in Capricorn project, I take my own medicine written in the form of The Safety Pin Cafe. Please note dear  Readers: The ten-doses of the medicine story The Safety Pin Cafe [go to the sidebar on the right, click on each dose to read] will remain here until the end of January, 2013. After that it will go to the backroom where I and my collaborators conjure the story's metamorphosis.

How will you be using the energy of the Capricorn New Moon?


Photo Credit: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/10/29/1-34/

December 30th: need a reason for a resolution?

The Sun conjuncts Pluto somewhere in the zodiac, once a year.  This year, the conjunction falls on December 30th.  The Sun Pluto conjunction only occurs at the first of the year, for about 3 years out of 240, so  if you were ever going to make a New Year’s resolution, this would be the year to do so... In whatever case, this is not a fluffy thing nor a fluffy time. You want to set a goal that will require a focused effort. Read the rest from Elsa P.

From Terri Windling's blog Myth and Moor this quote:  "You're an artist ... that means you see the world in ways that other people don't. It's your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn't make you crazy--just different. There's nothing wrong with being different."  - Cassandra Clare (City of Bones)

Pete and I were up early. Pete finished off yesterday's dishes and I got oatmeal and raisins going on the small stove top burner. The oatmeal was cooked perfectly. I sprinkled each bowl with cinnamon and a dollop of coconut oil and a dose of sesame milk. We ate breakfast over lively conversation about art and resistance.


The topic led to Pete asking, "If there was something physical to [serve] as resistance to get around, over, through what would it be?"
At first I wasn't sure what he was asking. I had to think about it. I think best in silence. Pete likes to talk things through, have conversation. He's got Gemini. We got somewhere between spoonfuls of warm and comforting oatmeal.
"Cold. Cold and damp are physical resistance for me," I said finally.
"I've been dealing with cold all my life," my husband said.
"And, I haven't. Although damp and wet I know. It rains in Hawaii, too. Memories of damp winters and leaky roof." I chimed.
"Thing is with cold, you have to do something to make it better. Just can't sit there. One stone at a time, you have to warm the stone and bring it in. Ask me to warm up another ..." We use stones heated in water and wrapped in wool socks to get intense heat to ward off cold. I got the message he was offering.

If there is a resolution I want to make it is about caring deeply about staying the [long-term] course of art and writing. I know I need to commit to being confident in the work, and open to being taught what I can not do. If I resist? I stay cold. If I stay cold? Well ... Here's what showed up in my writers' group yesterday as I considered the answer to that question.

The Mistress

"Another?" She asked.
"Well really, I'd rather not," I was using my most forthright voice even as my body was feeling more like the insides of the jelly doughnut. The light from the near-shortest day was already deepening the colors outside. Still, there was sun and a blue sky. She was asking whether another dose of practical medicine wasn't what I required. I was trying to assure ... who? I was trying to assure myself that I did not need yet another cold, a second one this season. I continued ...

 "More sleep is all I need, really," my internal edges sense change more thoroughly than many and after all I thought I'd just finished with 10 doses of remedy. The Mistress was patient, infinitely patient, but was not easily swayed when she spotted something out of place. Virgo. She had shared that bit of her birthmarks with me, and I rarely forget.

"Sleep is a good remedy any day of the week, Pale. I know the cold and damp are not your favorite combination. Let it be so, we will make no never-mind." Her voice was calm and reassuring. She cinched her pouch of herbs; the smell of ginger pungent in the air. The Mistress' bent yet still strong fingers rubbed the dry yellow powder between her thumb and fingers leaving the pinkie and ring finger free. "Back into bed then," she said pulling the bed covers back for me she left finger prints of ginger powder at the edges. "For clarity, and dreams that make room for tomorrow." Smiling I simply nodded knowing she had left me with a remedy nonetheless. I nestled against my pillow, pulled the covers against my chin, and slept.

Do you have reason for new year resolutions?

Are you good at waiting?

The Epic Tale of Hi'iakaikapoliopele

" Writing fiction for me is like playing in sand at the beach.  Warm water, the sound of waves, and the sculpting of sand caves and castles give me room to let the playful girl out of an all too confining skin of restrictions.  Creativity loves room to play...The story "Splinters" is my latest adventure at playing in the sand.  Through the process, and through the recording done here on my blog I take the discipline art of studying astrology to frame characters; weave in my love and ongoing appreciation for culture; and, allow my need to express the everyday in some transformative way..."

This is an excerpt from a blog post at Moon Tattoos written on February, 2012 here.  My love affair with blogging has tickled scores of stories and creations that allow me "to express the everyday in some transformative way." The time traveling novel-in-the-making "Splinters" parks for a while, and I write other stories. The gifts of internet access and blog-making lay a foundation for doing what I love. And why do I do this?

" My past is like a patch of nettles, the memories burn as I pluck them up . . .and crush them . . .and spin them  . . .and weave them into coats made out of stories. My brothers are grown, but there are others still caught beneath swan feathers and donkeyskins. And so I continue to spin, and weave, and toss those coats made of words to the air — hoping that someday, somewhere, they will set somebody free.- Terri Windling

The three sentences above are the conclusion to Terri Windling's essay "Transformations" copyright © 2002 by Terri Windling which first appeared in the expanded edition of Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer. Windling quickly, and steadily, became my modern day heroine. I highly recommend reading the whole of "Transformation" for an inspiring read about fairy tales as remedy for life. A writer, painter and blogger come to my world thanks to the internet, Windling's novel The Wood Wife and her blog The Drawing Board are regular fueling and refueling ponds for my creativity. I visit her blog daily, and have read The Wood Wife many times. My copy of the novel is tucked in a basket under my bed along with my other notions and potions of homeo-practical magic.

Like Windling, my life and the journey-journaling as Makua O'o is a winding tale. Over and under, challenged and defeated, up and out leaping or scrambling out of ashes I weave something from nothing. The myth and stories I tell are inseparable from the kumulipo (the creation stories) of my ancestors. But, they translate and kick-off (makawalu) versions of tales that fit me today. When I come to the keys and tell the latest story I am motivated by freedom. This morning I read this at my astrologer's blog:

I intended to withdraw my energy from this blog and the boards in order to focus... It’s sort [of]the Saturn model – finish the work, before you play, but then something weird happened. I found out one of the regulars on the site had been blocked by the communist party in the country where she lives.

The variations on the theme of motivation fueled a conversation my husband and I have been having about The Safety Pin Cafe. This version of tale spinning is new for me. Born like so many of my stories there was a need to remedy an experience. I called for help, asked for permission and let the words fly! That 1-2-3 process is consistent. Now, nearly finished with the 10-doses of The Safety Pin Cafe I want to know: What's it is like to read and visit The Safety Pin Cafe? You see I'm not quite sure what the story yearns for as a conclusion. My Hawaiian storytelling genes are evolving and there's no telling what those artistic genes will do from the borders. Before tying off this lei of words, here's something that inspires my lei-making and story-telling genes. Marie McDonald, master lei-maker and kapa maker has been making lei and teaching her aloha for this art from the Waimea country on the island of Hawaii. In the quote from a 1994 interview in The Waimea Gazette, I heard something to move me i mua, forward:

"I can hardly believe what they are doing with leis today! People are so creative, really inventive and I like to think I had a part in that," she said.
She believes true artists, whatever their mode of expression, have to take the traditional and add to it, not be bound by it.
Marie likes to think of people in the year 3000 studying their past history and saying, "Well, look at the difference... this is what they were doing with leis in the 1850's, and then look what they were doing in 1950 and 2050."
"We're supposed to evolve, to grow, to get better," she said.

So back to the question and topic for this post. "Are you good at waiting?" Help me with a new twist to my storytelling.

Are you reading The Safety Pin Cafe?

Did you read the installments quickly, or did you pace the doses? 

If you are a Hawaii-born reader do you see the way the traditional stories weave and change in this story? What do you think of this?

Do you have safety pin memories of your own?

Would you visit the real Safety Pin Cafe, and hear the final installment live in a location near you?

All and any answers will add to the homeopractical application of this medicine story. I hope you'll let me know what you're thinking. Leave a comment, or email me.

mokihanacalizar@gmail.com

The 'Ole Moons begin tomorrow, so I'll be mulling things over for a few moons.

Until next time.
Bisous,
Mokihana

Inoculated by the Wild

inoculate

verb

Definition: 1. to give a small amount of a disease to a person or animal as a protection against that disease; 2. to introduce an idea into someone's mind in hope that the idea or lesson will [figuratively] grow and become part of the person
Synonyms: immunize, vaccinate, aid, inject, prevent [sickness], protect, ingrain, introduce, insert, implant
Antonyms:
Tips: Inoculate is derived from the Latin inoculare, which means "graft in, implant." To inoculate someone means to implant them with something, whether figuratively, with an idea, or literally, with a vaccine against an illness. Source: http://vocabulary-vocabulary.com/dictionary/inoculate.php

A ragged poultice made from the juice of wheat grass and its pulp is wrapped with a small leaf of la'i (Hawaiian ti leaf). Held at first with a thin rubber band, then one of my hair twisties, and now a couple of proper Band-Aids the poultice does its work. Green stains seep from the wet pulp as I sit to write about something I'm not quite sure is the truth though it truly feels that way in my guts. A few days ago as I went to the warm corner of our Au Hale (the bath house/sewing room/laundry) to get my scarf and jacket a spider frightened me or I frightened her from her cozy place. Instinctively I flung the scarf and Spider went flying against the upright. I had stunned her. "I am so sorry," right away I knew she was hurt and there was nothing I could do to undo my act. I watched for several moments to assuage my guilt and when I saw that she was alive though injured (one of her legs was dangling) and crawling into a new dark hole I finished dressing and went on with the errand which was my original goal.

Two days ago I noticed a small something on my right finger -- the one that types the U and the H -- the pointing finger. It looked like a pin prick. I thought back to what that might be but nothing came to mind, until yesterday. Spider. Two remedies from the plant world are my first-aiders: Noni and Wheat grass. I went for the remedy from home first and slept with a poultice of the Noni fruit leather over night. This morning I opened the wrapping. The bite was infected and two small pricks were visible. More than likely, Spider. Choosing not to panic nor deny something was going on that required attending I told Pete about it. He swiftly asked, "Did you try wheat grass?" I had not. Next he said, "Look it up (on the Internet) and see what you find." I did that. It was early morning and not quite dawn, too dark to go to the Green House to cut and juice the tray of growing wheat. While Pete finished making our oatmeal I searched the Internet and found things to do. Again, I chose not to panic, but acted.

While Pete sat at the laptop and ate his breakfast I pulled on warm clothes and a hat and headed for the Green House. A slim row of the green oxygen and mineral rich wheat grass was my second source of first-aid. Juiced, the grass from Hard Winter Wheat Berries is always growing somewhere near-by. It's a routine, a habit Pete began years ago when we were raw foodies.  Thankful for his consistency we use the juice to nurse ourselves and our JOTS for all manner of injury. This summer when I noticed the Tall One alongside the Quonset was being ruptured by the industrious ants who nest under his skin I asked, "How can I help?" Softly I heard "A poultice of grass," as an answer. I did that and from my vardo window I see the poultice now dried from the summer heat now part of the Tall One and no ants.

In several places in my daily travels to blogs and sites the idea of inoculation has stimulated much commentary (on the blogs) and in my meditations. The definition that precedes this musing is one of many definitions available on the Internet. I chose this one for it offered a broader and more meaningful bridge to cross. From the definition above I found these synonyms useful: " aid, inject, prevent [sickness], protect, ingrain, introduce, insert, implant." I thought of the Tall One with its implant of wheat grass poultice. Again and again the image of our sleek black huntress JOTS after a bout with prey who fought fiercely and inflicted her with wounds. Green juice and poultices applied. Licking the wound and the juice made the healing happen with time.

Astrological inoculation is a topic being discussed at my astrologer's blog. Those discussion stimulate me to make connections between the incidents of my life, my world where the wild is an apothecary. As well as the positions and angles of the heavens which do provide me with awareness, there are options in my first-aid kit that tether me to the wild and I am awed. Here, this morning, Terri Windling offers one more offering, an ointment of art and words that inoculate me. Inoculate me as in 'graft me' to the wild rather than to cure me of the wild I hope to learn successively to note the messages and the messengers where I find them. Windling quotes a writer I wish I had known while she lived in her skin. Ellen Meloy is writer I was introduced to this morning, thanks to Terri Windling. From her book Eating Stone: Imagination and the loss of the wild is this beautiful thought from Meloy:

"Homo sapiens have left themselves few places and scant ways to witness other species in their own worlds, an estrangement that leaves us hungry and lonely. In this famished state, it is no wonder that when we do finally encounter wild animals, we are quite surprised by the sheer truth of them."

Surprised by the sheer truth of how the wild inoculates me through a bite from Spider, a sting from Wasp, a song from Raven, a voice from The Tall Ones -- this  happens as I age and live day and night in the woods. Rather than to cut myself off from the estrangement Meloy speaks of I hope there is enough strength with me to to become more wild, rather than tamed. Stupid? No, unusual in my route is how someone described my ways. Pela. Perhaps.

Sacred everyday, and the gift of handwriting

I was in town yesterday in and out of the post office, into the local coffee shop and community gathering place where Pete and I are planning to play Konane; meeting and greeting my neighbors and friends who were strangers to me three years ago. Several things needed doing at the post office: a card and letter of condolence needed to be written to my family back on O'ahu -- my aunty passed last Monday; another card to my son's girl friend in France needed a message written and a stamp ($1.10 for a snail mail communication); and finally a piece of mail needed to be forwarded to my son. After paying cash for the postage to France the woman helping me asked, "You're from Hawaii aren't you?" It's been a while since I've been asked that. I said "Yes," and was asked the often accompanying question, "It's quite a change for you, isn't it?' Sometimes, the pair of questions will unwind stories I wish to keep untold preferring to soothe my newly retrained amygdala from inciting a riot of fears and regrets. It really does me no good to light that old fire. Yesterday my mood and my sense of well-being were gently living within me and I chatted with the kind and helpful woman telling enough my story to become a little more known to her. We talked of Pele and the reality of the vog as an issue for me, and many others, who cannot tolerate The Goddess' inevitable magnificence. The making of new 'aina (land) is a powerful responsibility and she, The Goddess takes her kuleana very seriously. Reminders of why I can no longer live on the islands of my birth are present daily; bittersweet acceptance is something I embrace with a tender hand. My heart is bound to those islands and yet I remain inseparable wherever I am ... I know that today as I've not known as a younger woman.

The late October skies and temperature have taken on that cloak of grey wool. It is damp here in the woods as I sit next to the heat with layers of ankle length coverings, a scarf around my neck and an ancient purple sweater. Yesterday in town where the Tall Ones have been cleared for the shops and services that make Langley a sweet to know village, sun warmed me as I sat in the Subaru to write my cards and letter. I recall the feeling of ... what? anticipation as I sat with the pen and three blank pages (cards, a letter) to fill with my handwritten messages. Photographs taken by my friend and turned into cards gave me the visual inspiration to draw words together and scratch them with pen; practicing that craft I have loved since a girl. I wrote stories from scratch and left on the blank page a part of my yesterday.

The first card was written to my uncle(and his children) who grieve the loss of his partner and love of seventy years, and mother who lived to be in her mid-eighties. The photograph I chose for my family was a view of Deception Pass in the fog. Shot off a tri-pod my friend told me it was the last shot of the day and a tri-pod was new to her. The image was sublime in greys, the Deception Pass Bridge linking the grand flood of water below. Almost un-noticed but present in the left lower corner of the photo were leaves of a shrub or tree nearest the camera when MK took the shot. The present -- more dense, deeper and close. Inside I wrote to say we here were with them in spirit, and feel the loss with them across the way. Precisely what I wrote? I don't remember. The second card was written and sent to Granville, France on the coast of Normandie. This protograph was of a "hold fast" a fist size ocean rock at a low tide with glossy sea lettuce flowing from it. Held fast to the rock the two were one. There were thoughts and feelings to share with this young woman who wears my mother's jade and garnet ring. Leaving etchings of my hand on the card bound for Granville I could tell her something about me and my family as the letters connected. The third writing was done on a sheet of note paper with a drawing of a papa kui'ai (poi board) with eight different types of pohaku kui'ai (poi pounders). Onto this sheet of paper I wrote a letter to my uncle filling both sides. I had meant to enclose the letter with the card of Deception Pass, but I had sealed that card. Sometimes the universe and the Muse of Pens will intervene and it is those sometimes that enforce the sacredness of the everyday. Into a separate envelope went my uncle's letter. It was written for him alone.

As I age my comfort with pain changes. The heart ache of pain is as real as a sip of tea still too hot to drink; I love the drink but know sometime waiting is best. It's that way for me when I wish I could be _______ and yet know waiting or releasing is best. I allow myself limited visitations to memories and websites/blogs that present a view of Hawaii that is difficult. One of those blogs is that of Joan Conrow, writer, blogger and nature lover who lives on the island of Kauai. I made my once every several months vist to Conrow's Kauai Eclectic and discovered she has a second blog called Kauaipiko, or PIKO. This post was inspired originally by my visit to Conrow's blogs and in particular this essay from PIKO called "The Sacred and The Profound." (The entire essay is deep and provocative exemplifying the reason I visit Joan Conrow's writing only when I am strong enough to eat it.)

Conrow began her essay-article with this:

"There was a period, last November, when unremitting lightning brought day to the night skies over windward Kauai, as thunder boomed, cracked and rolled. Brisk winds swept in rains so heavy and insistent that streets ponded, mud slid and streams rose, flooding buildings, forcing evacuations, closing bridges and breaking water lines. When it was over, Mayor Bernard Carvalho surveyed the damage and issued a disaster proclamation.

The dramatic display by the elements coincided–though Kumu Hula Kehaulani Kekua would say it was no coincidence — with an aha hoano, a sacred ceremony, that she and other cultural practitioners were engaged in at the mouth of the Wailua River, whose source is Waialeale, the wettest spot on Earth...

I sat and read Conrow's blog describing the sacred and profound displays that go on over and over across the Earth; and witness the duality of language and words' influence on the whole. The great floods on Kauai, the "disaster proclamation" juxtaposed with Kumu Hula Kehaulani Kekua's words of an aha hoano, a sacred ceremony describe the same event. Yet, the story that rivets the memory of most? More than likely, the disaster put upon the streets, buildings bridges and water lines will fill more print. What I was given after reading PIKO was the Universe, my 'aumakua, my collective resources who reminded me to be the cultural practitioner I am in the sacred everyday, everywhere I am. Play games, play music and remember to play from the piko and practice protocol where all things connect.

Many thanks to Terri Windling for the inspiration to value the gift of handwriting, written as she is recovering from flu today, Thursday, October 18, 2012.

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.

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?

Crop rotation

I thought of Terri Windling on my way out the vardo door, and went to her blog to find her writing about "Writer's Block"  Among some writers' comments I found this one about "crop rotation" that really feels right for me.

Applied gardening.

Andrew Macrae: "This is what works for me: I practise crop rotation with my creative endeavours. I’ve found that when the nitrogen runs out in the soil in one field, it’s best to leave it fallow for a while and cultivate another. "


http://windling.typepad.com/blog/2011/10/on-creative-burnout.html
 
I feel that way.  Both my vegetable garden and my creative gardens are in need of crop rotation:  we won't plant beans or peas in the same place as this year's gardens though both crops were magnificent and abundant.  Other seed or a fallow plot.  Same with my writing.  From so many public blogs to blogging private, and picking up on writing that has been fallow for awhile.

Words in Woods ... connecting with the writer of Wood Wife

Do you believe coincidences are accidental?

Today has been a good day among the days and nights that have been mine for 60 plus years of days and nights.  Our nights of sleeping in the screened tent are over, at least for the while, and perhaps the season.  They were incredible nights of being with the night sky and the passage of Hina across the heavens.  This morning, Venus was so close to Hina I was shocked to hear Pete say neither Venus, nor Earth has it's own light, so of course, it was the Sun that shone so brightly on the planet.  Really?  Onto the pages of this virtual page, I put the thinking that goes through me and the passage of time seems to include these recordings as if to comfort me with the promise that these tiny moments matter ... even as they pass and maintain no light on their own. 

It was Market Sunday at the Tilth, our once a week morning jaunt into joint ventures with farmers and neighbors setting up their summer stock of Romano beans, round zucchini, bushels of beans, tiny sweet blue corn and purple cauliflower.  Garlic and chocolate chip cooks sell without prices on them, and the day's entertainment set up there microphone stands and gather under the awning for music-making.  We clean the two restrooms making them a safe and chemical-free place to do what humans do, and raise the bamboo poles with colorful flags to beckon Sunday shoppers. 

Before and after the Market, I am here to write, blogging at one or the other of the spots that catch the scent and rhythm of a life that is affected in sometimes large and often now, less debilitating measure.  When it all started -- blogging, it was mostly a life affected largely by the illness.  Somehow, the blogging has been a perfect form of medicine.  This evening after I had watered my row of gorgeous green Blue Lake Beans who are climbing up a newly-fashioned trellis made from twenty-foot fir saplings thinned from a friend's near-by forest, I came to check on a another piece of writing.  Writing that collaborates with spirit, and a willing adventureess.  There was no reply on her end, so I sought the blog space of a writer who has tapped the mythic in me.  That writer is Terri Windling, and the book which did tap me was Windling's first novel WOOD WIFE.  After more than 5 years of not being able to pick up and read books, I did and was treated to the glorious world of myth in the hands of an artist who spoke from the cauldron.  The book sat on the FOR SALE shelf in my local library.  It was $2.00, printed in large print, and marked Discarded from the San Jose Library. I bought it, toted it home, let it air on my Gypsy wagon porch shelf, and within weeks (a very short time in my world) I was reading WOOD WIFE.  It was the perfect fit for a writer and keeper of story the first novel of Terri Windling.  Seek it out if you are in that place where real is fiction and fiction not quite the escape for your taste.

Today, this very good day in my life, I visited Terri Windling's blog and was treated to the latest version of this writer-artist's life.  A version that is somehow, not unlikely, it is a version that embraces the many fragilities possible in a life where words, art, media and worlds of here and there come together.  Today, I read Terri Windling's post entitled "On Blogging" and even before completing it, I am here to pen a connection and will publish it even before I sit to finish Windling's essay.  Blogging has brought me comfort, healing, bridges of transport and understanding across time.  It's why I can imagine illness as part though not all of a self; a piece of what creates a day, a night, one life.

Windling's post "On Blogging" which also includes reference to one of my other favorite artist-blogger Rima Staines can be found by linking here:  ttp://windling.typepad.com/blog/2011/02/on-blogging.html

Blogging may not be a beautiful word, but without doubt it is a word of transformative power ...