Friday, October 21, 2016

Silver and Gold

Make new friends,
But keep the old.
One is silver,
And the other, gold.
A circle's round
It has no end
That's how long
I'm gonna be your friend.
- "Make new friends (but keep the old)
Traditional Folk Song 


That's me and Pete in our booth at Earth Day, 2011 introducing Fragrance Free in '23 
That photo of Pete and me was taken on a blustery April day in 2011. We were out and about with our newly rooting life on Whidbey Island. Slowly I was regaining strength and our Vardo for Two was getting used to the rural South end island world. We were sharing 5 simple steps to becoming fragrance and chemical free. Earth Day great occasion for remembering to love the Mother the place that holds us every day.

Earlier this week Pete and I had a golden opportunity to keep growing an established friendship with our South Whidbey Tilth community; and encourage a new friendship with Aurora Levins Morales. Here's what I wrote on a post entitled "Coach me" on a blog (an old friend) which has been quietly and silently waiting for a time to be loved anew.
"A friend and I sat at the counter of the Tilth kitchen yesterday afternoon. The wet and blustery Elementals had gone somewhere, a nice patch of blue sky greeted us as Pete hustled around on a stepladder reattaching the roofing paper on the lean-to.
Prescott and I were meeting so I could introduce her to Aurora Levins Morales. Until a few weeks ago I did not know of this longtime change agent, activist and author of Medicine Stories. All that changed when Angie Hart, Tilth's Farmers' Market Manager and 2016 Apprentice sent me an email asking "Do you know this woman? She writes medicine stories and has MCS."


Last night Pete joined other members of the South Whidbey Tilth Council to cheer lead and grow our commitment to communities that are fragrance free safe zones. A new friendship with longtime activist, writer, teacher and curandera Aurora Levins Morales is growing now. The spark of connect began with a young woman's kilo (keen observation of a potential). Angie Hart heard an interview on the radio while she was taking a road trip to visit friends and Tahoma (Mt. Rainier). Angie sent me an email with a query: "Do you know this woman?" I said, "No." Not yet I did not know Aurora Levins Morales. I was saving that moment, reserving energy for sharing medicine stories first. After the stories did Feed the Land with medicine stories, I found this site.

I'd said a prayer during the stormy weeks of late summer, asking for a mentor, an activist of color who was living the life, walking the walk, and sharing the stories. Na 'Aumakua my Guardians heard the request. They sent me to an online home, where I discovered Aurora Levins Morales plans to be in Seattle in late December. She needs a place to be before or after her scheduled event. I emailed her with an offer to come visit us at the South Whidbey Tilth, She wrote: "That's fabulous!" in reply to this message, "
 Aloha Aurora,
We have just met with Prescott, the president of the Tilth council to introduce you and your casita for change. She is very excited, newly informed and inspired. An agenda for Thurs' meeting is in the works, and forward movement is in process with a letter of invitation to you part of that agenda. I mua. Your website is an education, she's got it on her Bookmarks!
So there you have it, make new friends but keep the old. We are excited, inspired, loving life where we are rooted. The invitation to a new friend is making that silver connection. Que bueno!

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Full Moon storms, Pine Needles, Ritual, Oral History

"Perform a homemade
ritual that will enable you to magically shed at least half of your guilt,
remorse, and regret."
From here and there, the different needles dance above our golden wagon's door, welcoming different, releasing guilt, remorse, regret. Dangling with a long trusted crystal globe, the hologram is trebled, not troubled. Aue."  

Pine Needles from the woods in the forest where we live ... two different Needles

A third Pine Needle, nearly twice as long as the straight haired ones of the forest. Those long, thick needles fell from the Pines near the Muliwai the Water's Edge.


The three storms came and went through the western shores of the continental US. We prepared, praying and tethering. The small and powerful move of our golden wagon has shaken loose some old fear, outmoded attitudes and bunched up 'gremlins' in the guts. Visits to the Muliwai, the water's edge when fresh and salt meet, provided us with Nature's Remedy in the form of limu (seaweed) being massaged (lomi) something I miss ... the physical touch.

Last night our son Kawika sent this link to Hui Mauli Ola's Leo Kupa #6 Podcast  The podcast and interview was with Wes Sen, lomilomi practitioner and great carrier of story. My son said in his email to me,
"I think this is our best podcast. And we didnʻt really do anything. It was on a huna moon and he just talked. I met a friend the day before who said heʻd just met Wes too and heʻs got lots of stories.
Almost all of his perspectives were slightly off from mine. A little more depth but just right of center. So they all jump out at me like new almost."
We are having conversation via email about the podcast, I wrote that it was like sitting and listening to my Uncle Bill (Amona), my mother's youngest brother and remaining elder still living in his Kapalama Heights home in Honolulu at 90. Ideas shared in this podcast with Wes Sen stimulate old arguments I have had with myself, and my Ancestors.

My son wrote that to note the podcast took place "[On a] a huna moon." I wrote back, "Good example of how connection works yah? Not too long ago I asked Kalei Nu'uhiwa whether the "Harvest Moon" of October had an equivalency in Kaulana Mahina. She said, no, you don't blend Western astrology with Kaulana Mahina. A few days/phases later she posted Ka Piko o Wakea with description and stuff.
I'm not sure whether it's rebellious of me, or if it's somehow what I'm meant to do but 'blending the west with the essence of kanaka' is what my medicine stories and life as makua o'o reflects.
The everyday rituals that I put together come from respect and reverence, but there are also many holes to my knowing. Like Aurora Levins Morales wrote in her Medicine Stories
"... When you are investigating and telling the history of disenfranchised people, you can't always find the kind and amount of written material you want. But in medicinal history the goal is as much to generate questions and show inconsistencies as it is to document people's lives."
She's a feminist, so somewhere later in this piece she said something about looking for the woman shaped hole of history left by the absences. I relate to it and do look for those holes ... make up something that seems to come from more than 'my only self' ... and put one and one together and come up with a new number.
Astrology if studied long enough is 'older than the hills' and I love folding it with 'olelo I am learning, bits of wisdom like what you're recording here, insight's potential. Young feeding the makua, makua ripens. The ulu like Uncle Wes said, I eat too."

I fold, blend, piece knowledge together in a fashion that fills in that woman shaped hole that screams to be filled... I pray it creates a bridge of value.


Saturday, October 1, 2016

Moving from here to there

Now that the stories have been shared, the land fed, and the New Moon has come Pete and I are moving our golden wheeled home. There's a medicine story for that, of course, and it has begun.  After the first day of patiently applying practical magic and rituals of protocol to ask for permission and give thanks we have spent our first night in a new place. The medicine story starts Just from here to there. 
We are half-way to our goal of moving onto the gravel parking lot just yards away. The journey is slow and appreciative. We open the safety pin and move ourselves.