The halls ... between fact and fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Rooted to Papa, Knotted with Ni pu'u, Crossing Time, Feeling the kaona

~o~

"Let my inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm,

That will not forsake you, till my tale is told and done.

~o~

~o~

~o~

While the firelight's aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow, Till things we've never seen will seem familiar...

Counting stars by candlelight, all are dim but one is bright;  The spiral light of Venus, rising first and shining best,

On, from the northwest corner, of a brand new crescent moon,

While crickets and cicadas sing, a rare and different tune,

Terrapin Station ..."

-extracted lyrics from the song Terrapin Station-Lady with a Fan by Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter

~o~

Kumu Kawena "Ruby" Johnson

http://www.kohalacenter.org/puanakaike/Johnson.html

~o~

It's funny to wake from sleep and find your surroundings foreign because of course the dream has been so vivid and encompassing.  From the night-time comfort or the day-time retreat, the vardo has become my solid platform -- small, solid, reassuring.  The years of building her(our vardo) were in no small way a replication of birthing as all births happen, not instantaneous; formed from the bits and pieces of who and what we believed or intuited Pete and I started with our basic nature(s) and knotted what was good for us into place.  The touchable parts of our solid home:  the terra cotta tiles, the stainless steel walls, the arched ceiling of oak painted with milk, and windows that seal firmly and open expansively, all knotted into a place that serves the perpetuating of time with dreams.  Though the earth-bound nature of our lives are vital, just as our beans and peas that wili (tendril and cling) up the fence needed care, and protection from the slugs, the other side of life comes from dreaming that comfort, the vining nature that will burst with luscious sweet peas and tender lengths of Blue Lake Beans.

I'm in a vining-phase.  I feel the dreaming more present everyday in the writing I do, caring that I write more and more the dreaming bridges strengthen even as they are flexible and weather inclimate conditions.  Here at Makua, I maintain the voice that started things while the vardo was in-the-making ... feeling a cultural back-beat while I knotted together parts and let loose the things/beliefs/stories  that were no longer useful.  And in the writing in other places, the voice tendrils with the wisdom and desire to reach for something out there to which I can explore new territory.  Ever spend time with a vine?  Astrologically, I feel the steady progress to securing my Taurus North Node in the artistry of words that are not much like others out there.  It's okay that it might be difficult to understand, Hawaiians call it kaona and know the lesson will be ripe for those with a taste for it. It matters that I am confident and then quieted when it is time to nest, and rest, dream and restore.  Knotted in place, for a time before reaching.

The symbols and links above are a knotted cord of messages rooted in science that is inseparable from cosmos and dreams, rock icons and creatures carrying the codes upon their back where ever they go. 

~o~

INSPIRATION

Mahalo R.A. for the very cool connection with the Garcia-Hunter lyrics to Terrapin Station-Lady With a Lady the perfect knot needed to fill in this story, and H.S. for the imagery of the carbon molecule to link science with Kumulipo.

~o~

.

And you?  What dreams cross easily into the solid world you call your life?



Moon in June

Our weekend of celebrating our first year here in the woods was a two-day party, cooking and sitting to eat and tell stories at the new orchard table (which now has a fine long bench to go along with it!).  My universe, our universe, the Universe seems to expand with abundance.  Information flowing full-flood during this June with New Moon in Gemini has indeed birthed so many connections.  Pacing the flow is my challenge, but I am excited by the huge sweep of traditional mana'o timing itself so this makua continues to feel alive.  I'm just up from a late afternoon nap, the glory of getting older and mostly-retired and revelling in study is soul sweet stuff for me.  Pete is off on a late evening ferry ride to participate in community discourse in Mukilteo:  there is an issue of the table he has followed for months, and he wants to be there to track and in-put his dime's worth.  It's an equivalent sort of sweet for him.

When I began blogging here at Makua O'o, these pages were a place to anchor my spiritual practice while the physical world we'd known came mostly undone.  Not wishing at this time to recount that journey it is enough, I feel, to say we have learned through first-hand experiences many things we do not want.  Now, the practice of using the tools of makua give me a chance to keep learning, and publishing.  Blogging is an awesome sample of the criss-crossing and dot connecting nature of a Universe ever-birthing.  I am in the process of learning and integrating the mana'o of two of my contemporary, living heroines:  Rubellitte Kawena Johnson and Pua Kanahele.  Both women draw from both kanaka and western spheres of the educational universe.  Those spheres have been my wells of knowledge as well though my gifts have been tapped differently than these two.  My 'degrees' are mostly internal and my journeying has always been through storytelling.  I continue that through blogs, and now on-line study workshops.

Capricorn-based as I am with my moon and ascendent in Capricorn in the 12th house of depth, and the Saturn task master liberal in my astrology, I teach and I heal, I heal and I teach.  Slowly and steadily I heal from the effects of an illness and reaction to the environment and re-learn my place in my universe, and the Universe.  It's important to know the space that is 'my' universe and feel-sense-connect with the bigger Universe in a personal way.  Having been through the experiences of disconnection, diagnosis and healing there is a sense of urgency and a strangely calm symphonic to what comes after -- what is coming now.  That might be the glory of aging!  Or, maybe just the aging in reverse that is often characteristic of Capricorn's who endure?

Na Po Mahina and the Universe

The regularity of Mahina's crossing the sky began our re-membering time.  We watched her, felt her and counted on her while we lived open to the world ... vulnerable in all ways and somehow, stronger because we were turned in-side out like all babies.  Huli,up-ended and birthed again.  Sources seen and unseen help every step along the way contractions and galloping momentum pushes me forward.  What a ride!

More tools for the Makua

Lunar Return Reports
Over on the side-bar (to the right) is a NEW LINK to Lunar Return Reports from Elsa P.  creator and author of the first astrology blog.  Yes, she wrote 'em when the blog was a new word, a new world.  I am using these reports as a new tool, another one.  Elsa's helped a lot over the years, maybe these reports are a tool you could use.  They're very inexpensive and filled with monthly insight.

Monthly On-line Workshops-Study Groups
Count On The Moon "The Blessings of Emptiness" or "'Ole Mahalo" was our first workshop based on the Kanaka's Universe.  The focus was the Hawaiian Moon Calendar.  The blog-workshop venue is growing and progressive, and exciting.  A small group is consistently finding the rhythm of attuning to Mahina, the connection with cycles and the cultivation of their space/place in the Universe.

The current monthly workshop Malama I Ka Ha has just included the mana'o and teachings of Kumu Kawena Johnson, and with this new teaching the meaning and vibracy of the Kumulipo (the 2000 + lines of the Hawaiian Creation Chant) takes on personal meaning.

I am in love with learning, and find stability in discovering connections.  Are you connected?  And to who and what are you connected?

NEW BEGINNINGS: Count On The Moon Workshop in Progress, New Moon Cycle in Process

Hilo Moon (New Moon) has come with the energy of Aries and the explosion of new beginnings.  Our new on-line workshop COUNT ON THE MOON is now happening.  Nothing rushes in back there, slowly the registered folk navigate the new blog-study group and I learn how to share mana'o via an INTERNET wa'a kaulua (canoe). There's still time to register and join in this month-long workshop. 
Email me at ssvardoATgmailDOTcom to register.  There is plenty to learn, and nearly all the moons of April to go through the twelve sessions all ready for you to explore.

Creating this workshop has been and continues to be a major step  in my healing journey as Makua O'o.  Maturing into alignment with the self that Ke Akua sees, has meant I learn to honestly tend to the history I have co-created.  The gathering of pieces from my kupuna (the elders, the traditions) has allowed me to find again, the history that sustains over the long haul.  I age, and still the sticks the OO maintain me and change.  The illusions and beliefs that were either faulty to begin with or were translated with errors show up in my body, my mind and my relationships.  New Moon in Aries, I choose again and set things in stronger positions, and take responsibility for my bettering future.

It's a perfect time to lay out the o'o the tools and look at them, meditate on ways to use them to choose a life of pono.  (To find the Basic Life Tools of the Makua O'o scroll down on the sidebar to the right).  To remember or to learn where Kanaka (Hawaiians) recall their essential nature of connection with All... There is The Kumulipo.

Na Mea Wai Wai Hawaii

"There is life in a kindly reply"
Ua ola no i ka pane a ke aloha

Yesterday I found an email from another Hawaiian native living not far from us . 'The beautiful bird' is living in Portland, Oregon and was searching for an 'olelo no'eau (a Hawaiian proverb). She gave me a brief idea of the reason for her asking, and then the search was on. In times past I carried a library of treasured print resources. Among those books were a basic 'ohana (family) of resources that had been passed to me from teachers, purchased from book stores, and gifted me by friends and family. The decade of travel and wandering as Pete and I simplify and cull and are asked to zen down even more quickly (MCS can do that) means that library of books is minimalized. Multiple chemical sensitivities for me includes being sensitive to and reactive to the chemicals used to print and assemble books, magazines, and other print. The loss has devastated me in the earliest times. Slowly, the loss has turned to acceptance and now it does please me that those books are with my son, my niece and others who were ready for the teaching.

Yesterday's kahea (the call) inspired me and motivated both Pete and me to find the tiny library of Na Mea Hawaii (things of Hawaii) that we do still keep with us. With concentrated effort, Pete found the tiny stack of cards printed with the collection of Hawaiian proverbs assembled and preserved by kupuna Mary Kawena Pukui. The cards fit in Pete's palm, and for many years, and through thousands of wandering miles over oceans, continent and islands those tiny cards have been a daily comfort. Kupuna Kawena, scholar and teacher is among the revered and valued human treasures of culture -- music, language and living practices -- of Na Mea Wai Wai Hawaii. I used to carry and keep close the tome of a book written by Kupuna Kawena, 'Olelo No'eau to do my work with community, used it to add meaning to a project or piece of writing that I was working with, or when I simply needed a bit of wisdom to ground me.

Yesterday's kahea and search led to rediscover the value of those beautifully worn snippets of timeless wisdom. Among them was something the young wahine Hawai`i found fitting for her purpose. So cool! The search also led me to discover that archives and electronic access to Hawaiian language, and archives of Kupuna Kawena's 'Olelo No'eau are available to those who have access to cyberspace. Aue! I have included links to a few of those electronic connections. There is power in the word and to see how a culture and language that teetered on the edge of extinction can now be accessed through electronic libraries, wow, we are indeed not in control of how life will proceed in the hands of generations to come.

Three on-line resources to access NA WAI WAI HAWAI'I:

'OLELO NO'EAU Archives Selected proverbs assembled at Leeward Community College on the island of O'ahu, Hawaii

ULUKAU (Electronic Hawaiian Dictionary) A project created by Aha Punana Leo (the Hawaiian language immersion schools of Hawaii)

The Kumulipo (The Hawaiian Sacred Texts of Creation) This one the translation done by Queen Lili'uokalani, Hawaii's last reigning queen, done during her house arrest when Americans were stealing the 'aina.

The Makua O'o practices using the o'o
"Know that wisdom is found in many places … SOFTEN THE GROUND OF YOUR BEING"