Is that you?

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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"

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."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2125043/George-Clooney-arrested-Washington-war-crimes-Sudan-got-you.html#ixzz2n002tJIc

 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