Showing posts with label indigenization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indigenization. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Slow down, notice, make adjustments, continue the journey

This is a test; you know those tests with your name on it that show up on your pysche's desk?   The Pisces New Moon and Lunar Eclipse has brought the tide in, and then out. Pollen season and then the surgery has laid me out, I rest, and my racing mind looks for distractions to anchor me as my body mends. The pain from the surgery has eased. So many dreams have dipped me into the psychic soup and I wobble. Pete and I watch Season Three of Merlin. The magic and the cinema opens windows of escape at least temporarily.

I wrote to my son yesterday asking him about the air quality in Paris where he works. He and my daughter in law live just outside the large city. The mayor of Paris issued a reduction of vehicles driving in the city by 50% to help with the smog. My son wrote back this morning and said the smog was an everyday (for a long time) thing. Here in the woods, the trees are quality control agents when it comes to smog, but, have their own demands: they must pollinate and that creates a different sort of challenge for some of us.

Anyway ... I sent a reply to my son and attached a link to this YouTube "Our Narratives Continue". I've also added this YouTube to my permanent sidebar over to the right. I wrote, "I'm watching this for pollen therapy."

The YouTube is the keynote address and presentation at the 2014 WIPCE Conference on O'ahu with Dr. Taupouri Tangaro, Kekuhi Kanahele and their village. Layers of meaning found in the epic saga and myth of the fire goddess Pele Honua Mea and her sister Hi'iaka i ka poli of Pele create a contemporary teaching story. As the newest season of growth begins and I am challenged to clear the way for my ongoing journey at 67 years, the presentation "Our Narratives Continue" help me to discern how valuable it is to know the stories that root us.

Sliding or dancing with words, story and dance I listen and feel the mythic value of Pele's journey and the journey her younger sister Hi'iaka undertakes. Through the re-listening and insertion of Tangaro's translations I navigate the newest spring and wade through the healing tides as a old woman. What is valuable now? What are the dreams telling me ... the deep and soul addressing dreams? Over and again I come to the cyber-library and click on the arrow of YouTube. An important story is told, and I listen with my whole body.

The tools of the makua o'o surface ... they are the tests. I lay them on top of the listening I do as I watch "Our Narratives Continue". Answers come. The right ones? Maybe. This one, but not that one. Sorting. Tide comes in. Tide goes out. Mahina progresses. We notice the shape of the moon, and observe the nature of life as the moon's shape changes. We notice how we change. Do we? Fluid or fixed? Patient or restless?

  1.  Keep a keen sense of observation … NOTICE 
  2. Listen … with your whole body … LISTEN RESPECTFULLY
  3. Do your best in all things … LIVE LIFE WITH A PASSION *
  4. Know that wisdom is found in many places … SOFTEN THE GROUND OF YOUR BEING
  5. Question for clarity when making decisions … ASK
  6. Practice patience and endurance … TIMING IS DIVINE
  7. Engage in good health practices … CARE
  8. Feel the heartbeat of the culture … SENSE YOUR PLACE
  9. Believe in Ke Akua, for this higher power makes all life possible … WE ARE NEVER ALONE, ALWAYS LOVED


Monday, December 9, 2013

Pluto transits the 12th House: digging deep, hiding when appropriate, surviving to thrive again

 "With Pluto direct and headed deeper into my 12th house, I’m acutely aware of hidden or ethereal power, for good and ill. I feel it’s necessary to tread carefully as the 12th is the house of self-undoing and asylums, something I understand better all the time. Just imagine being stuck in a dark well for a number of years. You best keep your wits about you unless you want to be driven insane...
 Elsa P. 12/14/2012
" Hide or perish... I relate it to Pluto in the 12th House.
I’m pretty sure I’ll survive[Pluto's transit through the 12th House], so what I want to do now is milk the transit for all it’s worth.
It’s very powerful…and very hidden.
Just think about that a minute.  You’ve been counted out, but you’re more vitally alive then you’ve ever been before in your life."Elsa P. 12/09/13

Children hiding in caves


"As the propeller drone of an Antonov becomes audible, children scurry into a cave mouth and wedge themselves under boulders.
‘We’ve lived like this for four months,’ Hanadi tells me, a mother living in caves to escape air raids.
‘We boil up leaves and wild fruits to eat.’
In the fields below Hanadi’s caves, rather than standing crops I see graves of Antonov victims.
In Nuba, tens of thousands of civilians now hide in mountain caves."
 He 'elele ka moe na ke kanaka. Lawe i ka ma'alea a kU'ono'ono.
A dream is a bearer of messages to man. Take wisdom and make it deep. - 'Olelo No'eau

I woke from sleep shivering. Yes, it's cold outside but the cold was coming from inside. Coming from the deep sadness. So often, these captive feelings find their way into the fiction I write, the myth converts the unthinkable into truth. The story transforms. And, it will probably go there into the mythic page, but for now the dream wants me to put it down as chronicle. Like my astrologer, Elsa P. I have the planet Pluto transiting my 12th House. The transit began just about now, 5 years ago. December, 2008. Pete and I were living in the basement "Kitchenette". The years of digging deep, hiding when appropriate and surviving [and believing] we could thrive again had begun.  We have made progress with the deep work -- the labor, the kuleana, the responsibility --- of making sense of life affected by toxic chemicals and the culture that has created convenience at all costs. In the early years of hiding we hid to survive. Like the children pictured above, and the situation which forces them into caves the collective fear weighs deep. Unconscious. When woken to the reality of the fear and the sadness, it shakes me. I feel it deeply. I Shiver.

What happens to me, all of humanity, when Pluto transits the 12th House of secrets and insanity is unique to the individual but collective in the culture in which she lives; and the collective is all of us. I did not know the children of the Sudan would show up as I began to write this morning, but that's the way of the internet and the process of searching. I googled, "hiding in caves + photos" and the photo above is what I found. I put it here and connect to it and ride the potential of astrological advice to "milk this Pluto in the 12th House transit for all it's worth." Yesterday I wrote about Aloha. It's the taproot of grounding for me. As I write I breathe it in, and take it into the hiding places within in. When I breathe out the words come and my fingers fly.

Pluto transits the 12th House of my Capricorn Moon. The lessons for me are about deep emotions relating to the 'Moon'/home/nurturing/mother. From the woods where we have parked our Vardo For Two the season of winter challenges us. It challenges me not to be asleep to the depth of feelings that are within; not to be so afraid that I act from arrogance; affirming the ancient wisdom of the mother/earth/my kupuna (the elders of my blood). When I woke with shivers, I dressed in the flannel night gown passed down to me just-in-time and pulled on my wool felt booties. The small stainless steel pot needed to be washed, I walked the short distance to the wash house where there is hot water. Not frozen from the cold temperatures the hot water came. I squirt some unscented dish soap into the pot and scrubbed it clean. Out of the corner of my eye as I rinsed the pot I saw my mother. Her portrait occupies a spot where she can keep her eyes on me. "Good morning, Ma," I wave and smile at her and think ... what a sweetie pie. Through the wash house door it's still dark outside, and cold. Glad for the booties and flannel night gown I return to the Quonset, pull the extra sheet from the door way and set the clean pot onto the burner. Hot water from our coffee pot allows me the convenience of measuring two cups of water to make the morning oatmeal. A handful of raisins added to the oats make a great breakfast. While the oatmeal cooks, I come to these keys and ask for the words that get to the deep shiver of the sad dreams. I hunt. I find. I put the words down.

My people, the Po'e Kanaka, have a history of digging, digging deep, hiding when appropriate, and surviving to thrive again. That kuleana, that responsibility persists. For me, as I write from the woods of the Pacific Northwest, the examples of doing and living the work often comes from the generation we have birthed -- our children. The link to a Tedx Talk in Manoa on O'ahu, filmed in October of this year (2013) is one of the fine examples of longevity, collective wisdom and ancestral abundance. Kamuela Enos was raised and lives in Waianae, O'ahu where the largest population of indigenous Hawaiian population on the Earth lives. This young man is the hiapo (oldest son) of Eric Enos founder of Ka'ala Farms.  Eric Enos is my age, Kamuela Enos is my son's age. During this transit of Pluto (deep and power) in Capricorn (grounded and meaningful) through the 12th House, a significant transformation continues and passes from generation to generation.

Enos opens with this thought to describe his kuleana responsibility, his work, his hana, "It's this notion of "Indigenization" ... taking the tools and the structure of the colonizer and repurposing them to be vehicles for our anestral practices and perogatives to be relevant in the 21st century. Link to the Tedx Talk to listen to Kamuela Enos' presentation.
I have warmed from the shiver of a bad, sad dream. Waken to the clarity of what I can do and do believe. I do my work. I write. I research. I tell the stories and weave the magic that is common. Common in the sense that I know there is a source of lasting wisdom and I head toward it. Make use of the deep transit going on in Pluto? Yes. Lawe i ka ma'alea a kU'ono'ono. E kuhikuhi pono i na au iki ame na au nui o ka 'ike. Take wisdom and make it deep. Instruct well in the little and the large currents of knowledge.

Activate your kuleana.

Ka'ala Farms, Waianae, O'ahu