Monday, March 27, 2017

Each Step Forward Matters: Part I




This has been the harshest of winters yet, but something has reset within me; my decision to stop blogging is over. I've been buoyed and rebooted. The artificial reset of the clock (from Daylight Savings Time to Pacific Time) might have something to do with it and the Virgo Full Moon with all her planetary aspects is likely influential. Or, since the Moon has cycled through her phases since I started this post, this New Moon in Aries gives me further clues. Signs. I'm a Scorpio, ask any Scorpio, we look for signs to check if we're on the right track.

Here are the First Two of Four Signs that showed up to rekindle my passion, and re-open The Safety Pin Cafe.

1. A big metal something showed up in my town. What is that metal something?

It's a safety pin.  A safety pin in this town four years after a medicine story called The Safety Pin Cafe wrote me through another tough Pacific Northwest winter. Symbols and characters fed me a version of life where mythic and ordinary beings laced the wild and civilized natures into remedies and common magic. The story of The Safety Pin Cafe begins with this line: "It was a day a duck could love."

Self-exiled as we have been from Hawaii my birthplace and occupied stolen nationthis Pacific Northwest Indigenous Land has been re-tooling us with its own brand of Tough Love and mythic wisdom. The rains in all its elemental manifestations do wear into any illusions about being in control of outcomes; the damp forces us to make a place within for the warm fires of Spirit.
The physical place where I shop for groceries to make comforting meals; the sidewalks that lead from library to post office where we keep in touch and reach out; the community that raises their voices and faces to me as a familiar being; this space has offered connection like the underground network of roots in the Salish woods of Cedar, Fir, Hemlock, Salal. Weaving the everyday with stirrings in my imagination, I figure the Muses of Creativity were having an `aha, a gathering, and they want to be sure I didn't miss my personal invitation. Muses have long-term purpose and perfection is not primary; expression is no laila, therefore I keep writing. The huge pin on First Street in front of City Hall Langley? I took as a personal (if not collective) sign. I held on to it and let out a long blissful ahhhh, 'A 'o ia, that's it! I had a connection.

2. This blog post, "One Step Forward" by Aurora Levins Morales was written in November, 2016, but I did not find the writing until March, a week ago. The post begins with this paragraph:

"For those who don’t know, right after the election, someone proposed wearing safety pins to indicate that we are allies to anyone being attacked in the post-election upsurge of hate crimes, and while many embraced it, many also criticized it as superficial, and debate over this tactic continues to rage.  There are several things that this very heated argument ignores.  Many People of Color rightly critique the possibility that white liberals will wear a pin as a form of self-soothing, feeling brave for taking a largely symbolic action, without actually doing the necessary work of building ally muscle.  But it seems many assume that these are the only people who would consider wearing a safety pin as a statement of intent, that anyone wearing one is doing nothing else.  It’s an assumption based in fury and frustration, and utterly understandable but inaccurate.  Seasoned and dedicated allies also have reasons to wear them..."
The irony and the synchronicity of this post is Aurora Levins Morales and I had begun emailing in the fall of 2016; prior to these communications I had no conscious awareness of her. It was a young woman, and intern at the South Whidbey Tilth who asked me, "Do you know this person, she writes medicine stories, too?" That was all it took for me to pick up the scent of another Woman of Color, living with Environmental Illness, a writer, storyteller, historian who had just finished a six-year project to design and create A Vehicle for Change.

Our communication began when I emailed an invitation to house and host Aurora on the South Whidbey Tilth Sustainable Campus. With the support of the Tilth Council, Pete and I were excited to support and meet this woman of courage and far-reaching positive impact. She was driving across the US in her newly built 32' Cadillac of a toxic-free home on wheels. By the end of the year, 2016, we would hold space for the woman and her home.

Driving a 32' rig across the North American continent is difficult for anyone; driving a 32' rig for a person with multiple physical disabilities was legion. Around the time that the post "One Step Forward" appeared on Aurora's website, I received an email saying she was sorry to say she was having health problems, would need to receive special treatment immediately, and would have to postpone the long drive from Southern California (where she was in November) to Whidbey Island.

No laila, so, instead of meeting us face-to-face Aurora Levins Morales has inspired Pete and me as we read her books through the harshest winter yet. Remedios infused us early in winter with the poetry and medicine of banana peel and ginger; we applied the medicine of both plants literally and then a new medicine story forces itself out my orifices nourishing my soul as yet another damp cold winter tests my resolve. We had read Medicine Stories during the fall, and those stories furnished a guidebook for our activism, pointing to the holes in our personal and joint histories as a Woman of Color and Recovering Catholics born from opposite sides of the Earth. Kindling included prose and personal experience with Environmental Illness that served us as fuel; as Aurora described our story through the telling of hers.

Levins Morales challenged me as I read:

"So my question about the symbolic action of wearing safety pins is how can we deepen its significance and turn it into a doorway through which people can grow?  Are there more impactful actions we can attach to it?  Can we create safety pin trainings on how to actually intervene in a hate crime?  How can we teach people about both the power and flimsiness of sanctuaries and safe houses, the history of successful and unsuccessful efforts of allies to support and get the backs of the most targeted—everything from the Underground Railroad to Danes wearing yellow stars to the Central America sanctuary movement.  The thing is, we all start from the places our histories have brought us to, and we all have the opportunity, always, to grow, connect, be bigger in our solidarity, clarity and capacity to make change.  Every step forward matters, and this moment of upheaval is a great time to encourage everyone around us, wherever they are on the spectrum, to take the next one, and then the one after that."
There are steps we can take to deepen the symbolic action of the safety pin here. The Safety Pin Cafe was born years ahead of the movement to wear the pin as a symbol of solidarity but the Cafe's story is inseparable from the movement's intent. I am re-inspired to use our experiences as exiles, immigrants to this Salish Island, to come up with a renewed and ready attitude of old people weathered by place and honed by experiences. We know what it feels like to be homeless and invisible; and know the transformation that happens when we/you/he/she are/is supported. Aurora Levins Morales' questions are another set of markers. First, I keep blogging, and writing medicine stories sharing what I know. Then ...

The thing about change is there must be a balance and agreement between the body, mind and spirit for flow to move into the spiral. As a writer of mythic tales it is this agreement that opens the vein, causing creativity to flow. It is that venue of recording the myth that by-passes the loud and critical censor. But still the act of writing is daring, a risky business.  The story Banana Skin and Ginger is taking me from the harshest winter into spring as a plot and familiar characters stretch an old story into something new; a new story not without growing pains. My physical body pointed to old grudges held too long. The next sign showed up as pain.


Monday, March 20, 2017

Spring Equinox, Ka Piko o Wakea: Good Time to Re-open The Safety Pin Cafe

We were at the Muliwai yesterday at noon, at our favorite beach where fresh and salt water, sea birds and many two-legged ones like Pete and me love to be. It has been a harsh winter a time of darkness and a time of deeply reconsidering the gift of life and how to appreciate being where we are. The Safety Pin Cafe opens after reconsidering putting an end to this blog that began as story medicine. Instead I see it was a winter hiatus, refreshed am I with faith in Spring re-aligned as the sun and moon equalize.  The Spring Equinox or Ka Piko o Wakea in the Hawaiian culture is today, March 20, 2017, a good time to acknowledge our connectivity, do ceremony to ask for help from the 'aumakua, the family gods and the Elementals. Kalei Nuuhiwi wrote this on the Hui 'Aimalama FB page yesterday evening:


"... Today is the first day of about 4 or 5 days when observation of the sun's entry into the Kūwā, the in-between, occurs. In Hawaiʻi, it is a time when both Kanaloa and Kane rule over the sky equally along the apex of Wākeaʻs space. Sometimes the term Kāneloa is applied to this event.
Itʻs Spring equinox back home in Hawaiʻi and Fall equinox here in NZ. I guess itʻll be both sets of pule to cover both seasons.
Fun fact, if u leave an egg out till it's room temperature you can actually make the egg stand upright. If u understand heiau, u know y this is a big deal.
Anyway Gangeh....I wish u all a manaful day of realignments, access to mana and building a balanced heiau during the strong earthly polarity of this time."
 ~*~
Mahalo nui e Kalei. I feel blessed to be connected via this spider's web called the Internet. Another reason to keep The Safety Pin Cafe open!
In the short video above we look closely at the pohaku li'ili'i the small rocks and the limu 'ulahea the faded red seaweed. That's Pete talking about this water, keia wai.

I recorded and posted the chant "Pule Hou'ulu'ulu" or "Na 'Aumakua" on FB while I stood just inside our vardo front door. Holding my little camera as I faced East over the threshold of our tiny home welcoming the rising sun, I called to my 'aumakua my family gods, my ancestors from all directions.

The words and translation are here:

Na 'Aumakua

Na ‘Aumakua or Pule Ho'uluulu
*Adapted from Hawaiian Antiquities by David Malo


Na ‘Aumakua mai ka la hiki a ka la kau!
Mai ka ho’oku’i a ka halawai
Na ‘Aumakua ia Kahinakua, ia Kahina’alo
Ia ka’a ‘akau i ka lani
‘O kiha i ka lani
‘Owe i ka lani
Nunulu i ka lani
Kaholo i ka lani
Eia na pulapula a ‘oukou ‘o ka 'ohana Calizar ( insert your family name) 
E malama ‘oukou ia makou
E ulu i ka lani
E ulu i ka honua
*E ulu i ka pae’aina o Hawai’i a me ke'ia moku o Salish
E ho mai i ka ‘ike
E ho mai i ka ikaika
E ho mai i ke akamai
E ho mai i ka maopopo pono
E ho mai i ka ‘ike papalua
E ho mai i ka mana.
‘Amama ua noa.
Ancestors from the rising to the setting sun
From the zenith to the horizon
Ancestors who stand at our back and front
You who stand at our right hand
A breathing in the heavens
An utterance in the heavens
A clear, ringing voice in the heavens
A voice reverberating in the heavens
Here are your descendants, the (name of your family)

Safeguard us
That we may flourish in the heavens
That we may flourish on earth
That we may flourish in the Hawaiian islands and in this Salish island
Grant us knowledge
Grant us strength
Grant us intelligence
Grant us understanding
Grant us insight
Grant us power
The prayer is lifted, it is free.