Soggy season, mending work

Today is 'Ole Pau, fourth po mahina (moon phase) of reflection and considering the current state of affairs, and internal pono (well-being). I've been doing a lot of mending, and dreaming. To assist with the internal workings I take things literally and am stitching and patching things I can see.

a huge purple egg patch is filling in where once warm and stretchy tights kept me warm.
Follow the ----> for the soggy season story at The Safety Pin Café.

Perfect fit

Magpie Tales

 

"Dear Ma, I LOVE THEM! Your needles have been busy. So deft! Is that what keeps you flexible rather than brittle, and warm at heart in spite of all that rubbish and rhetoric about being old? I love that you mixed the wool with the dog hair. Yes, I can feel the difference, someone taught me to notice things like that. I love that they are big and floppy and if I tug them, up they reach. Up and over my knees. I'm tucking into my cozy chenille robe about to slide into those Birki's and will be out the door to feed the chickens who don't have a Ma to knit them floppy socks. The dark Kona roast is bitter and rich, the perfect top-it-off gift for the near-snow white knit.

Thank you my love you are the perfect fit!

T" 

 

 

This is a Monday morning tickle of words inspired by Magpie Tales' wonderful photo of socks, coffee, toast and other comforts: Magazine 243...

Pacing and places

I have refueled and restored myself after a morning of telling stories, chanting and gathering with fine neighbors and friends at The South Whidbey Tilth Farmers' Market. With the wind and clouds active in the storytelling, I felt my aging storytelling self shift several times lowering and slowing the pace. A visiting Titmouse just flew into the door with the wind, then back out. She is traveling at wind speed today. Fast. Such a gift to be living in the trees and the breeze. The risks? There are those. We make ready and batten hatches down, and beyond that I just try to shift my gears, and drop the healing medicine of warmed 'olena-garlic-olive oil into my ears as the wet and moldy season begins in earnest.



Kalihi Valley 'Olena ... mahalo Ho'oulu Aina

Baby girl my tiny Cousin Keala chopping 'olena

My ears are filled with the pungent yellow-orange brew capped with cotton balls. From across the ocean the medicine of my family roots is concrete in its application. The young generation have their hands and hearts in the care and nurturance of our culture. I am here. They are there. The blonde-haired keiki girl among the youngest members of our 'ohana lives the pace of childhood...curious, exploratory, vibrant. Her mother birthed her with the blood that is part me, and so many other parts. The pace is steady ... and the route broad. How fortunate for us to know we are part of each other.

The wet and cold valley where the golden turmeric, 'olena, grows is the valley where my grandmother raised my mother. It is as wet as the grounds that surround me now. In this place, this island where tall Fir, Pine and Cedar keep me company and dance with the high moving wind I feel the heat of the fire, the heat of Haumea Mother Earth. The Winter storms and the winds that bring rain across the Pacific bring news from Hawaii and dump it onto the Pacific Northwest. I call my old kumu in Haleiwa on O'ahu's Northshore. She says, "This goofy weather ... raining like cats and dogs."

The pace of nature ... slow to medium. Over time many different paces make for a human's journey. Not always satisfied with medium or slow, sometimes we rush. We imitate the wind at storm pace. We try to keep up with the stories weaving so furiously. But then, on occasion the chance or the demand for Nature's Pace pulls the internal lever, and I slow down or pick up a stitch on a story that has been waiting its turn. On this New Moon in Scorpio and a Solar Eclipse ... make a wish grounded in the deep. Eli'eli Kau Mai

Mahalo Kaliko and Keala!

'olena ... turmeric
keiki ... child
'ohana ... family
kumu ... teacher
 

I am here

"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. 

 (A person is a person because of other people.) "

African Proverb

 

"Au a 'ia

(I am here.)" *

 

Hawaiian chant

and

Hula

'A red wool beret ... perched like a cherry on a sundae' ...

 

"We, as Native Hawaiians, must continue to unveil the knowledge of our ancestors. Let us interpret for ourselves who our ancestors are, how they thought, and why they made certain decisions..."

- Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele Ka Honua Ola

* The prophetic chant ‘Au'a ‘Ia, ..." the drum dance that gives their class its name and mission. They are "Kama, kama, kama o ka huliau" -- children of the turning tide and changing times. And they are urged to hold fast to their "moku" -- to this land, to their heritage, and to their years of study. Life will turn quickly now for them, one turning point after another, but the dance and the years leading up to it have given them a set of "pōhaku kū" -- of anchor stones -- that will ground their mats in the wind and steady their nets in the tide..."- HMI

My toes are chilly from an early morning walk with my pal, my cat JOTS. We were ready to spring from the slowed down 'ole po mahina (the 'ole moon phases) just pau. The three reflective, feed-and-repair phases amplify the position of the stars and planets: Mercury in his retrograde (backing up) journey, the long term squaring off of Uranus and Pluto. There is nothing we can do about how the Heavens traffic the energy from their position in the hei of Grandmother Ku'uku'u. They are there, and I am here, you are there. We are where we are, all together.

 

The chilly temperatures remind me I am here on Whidbey Island, and not in Kuliou'ou Valley back on O'ahu. There is a sadness. There is an awareness of how deep my roots are. I feel the connection. There are stories that fold in and hold me. The other day I wrote about a net wearing the small red hat pictured above. Memories of the original storytellers who ensnared me with their magic opened up in me. I gave the story this name: The Net and The Red Hat. You might enjoy that one ... READ MORE.

Raven is outside calling me, and if I ignore him any more he will surely have some mischief stored up for me. So ... off I go into the further-ness of this amazing new day!

 

Magic-makers live!

Once upon a time when the world was falling inside out a friend watched as step by step and then in halves and quarters .... we built a space from which to begin again. Early in the days and nights of mending and dreaming of the new life being re-created that friend sent special packages of magic and magic-makers, art from across a continent and an ocean created by a woman named Rima Staines.


'we built a space from which to begin again'

 

 

That magic-maker and artist became one of my life-lines and spider web connections as strong as Grace and alive with passion to live a life fully turned to ON. Rima was living in a moveable home, a Bedford StepVan at the time of our first meeting (thanks to the 'web'). We shared stories of wee home living, and magic that wayfarers understand to be life empassioned. Rima encouraged me when critics chastised our awkward new beginnings from a home no bigger than most peoples' walk-in closets.

 

It makes no nevermind, magic-makers are fueled with a spark and fire that will not be easily put out. We root, and we regain deep footings ... and today in Devon, across the continent and over the Atlantic waters Rima Staines and her husband Tom Hiron have launched a marvelous project ... A THEATRE AND TRAVELING CIRCUS FOR THE IMAGINATION --  HEDGESPOKEN

 



Rima and Tom have designed and created a crowd funding project to build a traveling circus decked to be their home as well. The life of traveling storyteller and artist is one I relate to and write about in my medicine stories; and wish to encourage and bless this in the real-time venture. So here is a serving of encouragement, with blessing entwined and mixed well. Click on the link above to discover the magic and real life being conjured in a town called Devon, and if you've the resources to contribute, please do.

 

Many good and lucky coppers to you Rima and Tom.

 

Terri Windling has a lovely post with lively pictures of HEDGESPOKEN rolled out in a field in Devon, UK.

 

Alchemy and Amulet

"The same pain that can blemish our personality can act as a creative force, burnishing it into an object of delight."

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Alchemical Wisdom

 

Amulet

"around my neck hangs an amulet ..."

Rima Staines

 

My on-line writers' group has been re-opened with prompts, tickle lines, to draw the inspiration up and out. One of the prompts is "The dream tasted ..." I drew the next word like the Jack-o-Spades. Odd. I took the prompt and began to write. "The dream tasted odd." The pain that can blemish was working at my deep self seeding my dreams with memories and different endings that I could not predict. That is the alchemy of dreams. Skilled dreamers like Robert Moss lead dreamers through the protocol and landscape of the multiverse; I am not so skilled and practiced. Yet, the seeding of my dreams led me to be with my Dad. The cat-skinner and bulldozer operator who cleared many pathways and roads during the 1950's through 1970's came in my seeded dream. With smooth and uncalloused hands we sat together. Few words. That was just the way we spent time, mostly. Few words, grunts and facial expressions filled in where words would have been over-kill. We traveled in the dream and avenues of uncharted potential cleft the pain of clear-cut. In his day, that was the work he did. Done in the harsh environment of man's work my father cleared trees for roads, reservoirs peoples' wants. The dream was odd. It was a burnishing dream, buffing at the hard edges I have on my heart. Writing becomes my polishing cloth. The dream the torch's flame.

 

I read Rima Staines' entry and pictorial journal as she creates an amulet, and connections are made.

 

 

Yesterday, when Pete and I packed up early in the morning for a day trip out of Dodge and out of the forest our first stop was Home Depot. Yes, the forest elves shop at the big box just like all the contractors and DIYers. Not often, but sometimes we do this. Pete would do it more often if the huge store wasn't an hour's drive. But anyway ... yesterday we stopped at the big box to find more mylar-wrapped bubble insulation for our Quonset floor. Winter comes, and soon the floor that is only a tile away from bare earth will get very damp and cold. We will layer the floor with that insulation (which I can tolerate) and cover it with our cotton rug.

 

Pete found the insulation as I sat in the passenger seat reading another chapter in the latest library-borrowed novel I am devouring. Blue Plate Special. Kate Christensen's autobiographical memoirs has contributed to the seeding of my dreams. In the early pages of her memoirs she describes the harsh yet real pain that is her relationship (or lack of one) with the father she so adored as a girl. She is the first-born. Quickly I related to her 'shyness' with her father who could never, and never did allow for closeness. Like the swipe of wipers over the fog-stained windows of our car that morning in the big box parking lot, a plaid flannel shirt and a well-worn baseball hat dressed a medium tall man. A dad. He and his daughter, dressed in a long-sleeve tee shirt and black gloves walked in a bubble of precious time in front of our Subaru. Neither was conscious of the two old people in the green car. The faces of joyful interplay was impenetrable. She clapped her mittens and made some small talk that drew her father closer. Laughing and then she did this pat pat pat with her mittens-gloves like the patty cake of nursery tales on the man's back and belly. I know that gesture of alchemy. Love. Her Dad surrounded the girl with his left arm and gave her a knuckle sandwich, that playful stuff that makes time stand-still.

 

We watched this silently. Then, we looked at each other "That was something!" Pete said. "Yeah, he will never forgot that. And, she might forget it happened until years later when the fog is thick and she puts on some black cozy mittens." The alchemy of forgiveness and memory is an amulet.

 

 

Mahinakulu (Kulu Moon Phase) ... Ku'uku'u Spins the Webs

Here and there, and almost everywhere signs of Grandmother(and her clan) Ku'uku'u the great spider tell us she is plotting. More than one species make their hei (net) setting up the potential for feeding themselves.

I observe. I make note of them. Practice the first tool of a makua o'o: notice. Down at the shoreline at noon the tide was coming in, but plenty of sand and rock lay exposed. Heron was still and hunkered down, reflecting her body space into the water, her bill inches from the malie (calm) surface. The fog was thick again, three days in a row. We sat and lunched while the seagull inched closer to the chicken bones we had cleaned of flesh. He coveted the remains. Wasps did not wait, landed on the napkins greedy, hungry.

Back on kuu'one hanau (the sands of my birth; Hawaii) The Moon Phase Project is an online forum designed to notice and record lunar knowledge specific to the unique observations where you are. I have purchased the journal created by Kealopiko. It's a wonderful tracking tool with helpful visuals to follow the phases, and lines to write in as mahina moves across the sky. The one suggestion for the journal is to make it more useable for makamakule (old eyes, like mine.) But, not really. That would simply mean more trees to turn into logs. I will not be going there!