Informed Mythic Narrative

 I’m being the hummingbird. Continuing the thread of reconnect with Dynamic Disequilibrium Elsa P of Elsaelsa is feeding her readers. “Excising the fake…” from her life while doing what it takes to ensure and engage with the pressure of being alive (like the constant hover of the hummingbird) I comment on the blog.

Since 2008 I have learned to engage the aspects and energy of astrology through Elsa and Satori. When another master teacher, Terri Windling, maintained her blog Myth and Moor I hovered there for years drinking in the nectar of an authentic source for storytelling. Between Elsaelsa and Myth and Moor I weathered Pluto in Capricorn wiping out my life as it had been.

I practiced creating mythic memoir weaving astrology with a growing web of knowledge about my Ancestors as an essential source.  This is what I’m calling Informed Mythic Narrative. “Live where you’re planted and grow from there.” My newest Fall Season and Winter is in process. Aging in place we feel the decay of the physical body and try to push back as we have in decades past; that doesn’t work as well. What does? Adaptation at a slower rate. Memory loss and impatience throw monkey wrenches into the soup. Humility comes if I’m practicing my program of truthfulness. If not the pain and suffering extends.

Reading fiction helps me find the real spider web. I’m reading more Joanne Harris to help with that! Vianne and The Night Market. 

Reaching out to real people to help:

Can you come chop vegetables for a crockpot soup?

Could someone pick up a seated walker for me?

Would you drive me an hour and a half to the emergency room?

The chopped up vegetable soup with freshly boiled eggs is ready to eat. Real food, cooking slow with effort. I’m headed for it.

Dynamic Disequilibrium

 I’m parking this link from Susan Weed here:www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/September08/childbearing.htm

Since I post with my index finger on an older version iPhone I’m not sure how these thoughts translate onto this blogger platform. But, I notice someone or someones are reading. 

Over the past 10 days my dynamic disequilibrium has charged me a surprising lesson: life is chaotic and fixing life is never the answer. By nature I am ‘fixed’ having a Scorpio intensity, a Capricorn Moon and Saturn chart ruler. I don’t do the full astrological translations you can research or interpret for your own understanding. 

The saving grace as it turns out lies in my Gemini Uranus placement at birth in the House of Health(6th House) and a very tight conjunction of what I love (Venus) with what hopes, dreams and aspirations I seek out(Jupiter) in the 11th House of “deeply trusting the impact we have on one another and envisioning a better world.” - Elizabeth Rose Campbell.

So as fixed minded as I may be other aspects of me love an adventure and vision for putting love into the world.

The concept of Dynamic Disequilibrium I first learned from Susun Weed. I forget how stunningly true much of her Wise Woman Traditions run smack into the fixity of science and medicine and capitalism. Until I am faced with my body shouting to be freed of the illusion of “balance,” cleansing, or detoxing. 

Against my normal choices and love of a chaotically beautiful family life of a garden with few if any straight rows and overlapping leaves flowers vines, herbs I found my right foot screaming with anger and pain! Shocked by the experiences in a hospital orthopedic surgeon’s office, the disbelief did not end with venting at the young surgeon, Instead the anger settled in my blood streams and my right foot.

Until now. Many miles, hours of waiting for diagnosis and “prescription” a few days of pain and discomfort have led me back to the garden of dynamic disequilibrium. I’m an old woman who is still capable of tapping into the natural world but sometimes I am forced into that moment by wanting a fix. 

Gout. Put me back into the seat or seesaw of persistent hovering like a hummingbird to keep alive. Not in balance but in constantly changing action to remain “in the game”. This post is definitely chaotic but perhaps just what I need to remember what to do instead of fix in place.

There’s a fine YouTube video featuring a hummingbird that suit my needs this morning, I’ll find it and try to paste it here. Hummingbirds Hover… hmm 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mqi2Im1nlr8&t=22s&pp=2AEWkAIB&ra=m

Na Aumakua

 I’m writing with my feet immersed in a Rubbermaid tub filled with dried Mullein leaves and warm water. I wait for the hot water to cool enough to soak my swollen feet. Ahh… maybe now.

Earlier this week I drove our trusty 2004 Forrester Subaru, Scout into Seattle to get Pete to an orthopedic surgeon at the V.A. Hospital on Beacon Hill. It was the first time we’ve gone into the city in about 5 years. Neither Scout nor these two tutu go very far from our South Whidbey home, this drive was a needed reality check. 

Replacing a part for humans is a common thing in today’s society; friends talk about a hip replacement as an “easy peasy” procedure much better than a knee replacement is often something I’ve heard. 

While we ride the ferry between Clinton and Mukilteo I walked to the rail to look out. Many fisherfolk were out hoping to catch Brother Salmon. Looking up and into the sky I began to chant Na Aumakua. This is a chant beckoning my ancestors. A chant calling first on ancestors “from the east while the sun rises, to the west where he sets.” Next, the oli calls on the position directly over head “Mai ka ho’oku’i” to the horizon. 

Systemically, and with intention I called on my ancestors in a hei shaped (net shaped) prayer of sacredness. Sacred space.This oli continues with the sound of my voice calling the ancestors who are my “Mana Trust Fund.” I heard reference to my generational wealth in that form for the first time yesterday as I listened to a Keep It Aloha podcast with Kuha’o Kanaka’ole Zane. Kuha’o Zane is the son of a Pake(Chinese) artist-businessman and a Hawaiian Kumu Hula Master with a multi-generational lineage to the mo’olelo stories of ‘aina and man’s (kanaka) interdependency to the places that feed us. As we rode across the Salish Sea my oli was a prayer to put me in the right place in this journey; not my will but “theirs”. They have a better angle on the episodes on earth. 

So this is the part where I split open from the stunning reality of the hospital experience. We were not playing the same game nor following the rules for accessing a replacement part. My astrologer, Elsa P has been writing about the erasure of truth in the world— reshaped and sanded reality. No one wanted the raw truth of your story. 

With an x-ray that showed a hip with no cartilage left to cushion a leg bone but a man able to walk without pain medication we were given the solution at this point: take a Tylenol and call us in a month.

Ha? There’s more to the episode but I’m run out of blog steam. My right foot is “pissed off” and my truth meter needed to call on my Tea Pot Monk ancestor to help me find a way that is not this nor that. 

You know what this feels like? Dare to say?

Makua o’o

 “Sing to me a song of sandy beaches, gentle breezes ‘auhea ‘oe?”

I began 1995 walking a white sandy beach on the Kaanapali coast of the island of Maui. Newly divorced, I dreamed up a new adventure and new partner. It was Pete, my husband today whose hand I held on those sandy beaches. I have Venus very closely connected with Jupiter in the 11th House; adventures, hopes, dreams and shiny foreign people, places and things beckon me!

We have learned so much about what it takes to sustain an adventure over the decades. Perhaps it was the meeting of another important person on that white Sandy beach in 1995 that taught me about growing up?

Betty Kawohiokalani Ellis Jenkins was a retired elementary school teacher who never really retired. When we met she and I were teaching adults at two different resort hotels on Ka’anapali Beach. “Aunty Betty” was working as kupuna Hawaiian elder sharing Hawaiian culture. The Poi Bowl as a tradition and practice of sharing food (from the Poi bowl) came with it the protocols: no arguments or harsh words when the cover was removed from the open bowl. That practice and those protocols were the same ones I was preparing to teach in my new job as training manager at a large resort.

My elder cousin prompted me to seek Aunty out and ask her permission to share my version of our Poi Bowl tradition. 

Nearly 30 years later Aunty’s permission and her family practice given to her by her mother, have been passed to me. I was privileged to meet and follow Aunty Betty in the practice of Makua o’o, the extension of her teachings from the poi bowl. Today I have absorbed those tools into a lifetime practice. 

Perhaps you are ready to begin, or pick up where you might have lost a stitch?

Makua o’o are tomorrow’s kupuna in training today. Makua o’o is urged to be in honest prepared under the tutorage of kupuna today. Here are a basic set of tools or life skills to consider during that training period:

Observe with a keenness of attention to details 

Think creatively with a sense of intellectual curiosity, interest and concern.

Listen carefully to those words spoken as well as those unspoken

Mime and personify those who exemplify the highest caliber of po’okela

Question for clarification and clearness of thought for decision making 

Practice patience and endurance

Engage in good health practices 

Know that wisdom is found in many places 

Feel the heartbeat of the culture

Believe in Ke Akua

Braided Reality

 I am a fan of the braid. Seated in the dark, once again the only light is that of this hand-sized screen. Enough to make typing possible I woke from a dream—so many dreams! that may be telling me I’ve reached a limit. Cryptic dreams can be slighting or hinting at some truth. 

My gut, the seat of truth, is churned up. What is truth and is reality the same as truth? While reflecting or brooding upon my “searching and fearless moral inventory” a question stopped me in my quest my question: Do I know that why I feel or think life is is not the same as what life really is?

The answer is not always. And when exploring it through my Hawaiian lens real life IS a braid or triangulation of all three: my actions teach my mind (Mai ka Hana ka Ike); my na’au is the seat of intelligence where my ancestors inform me; aloha is the intelligence with which I greet life.

So as fall comes and then equinox the seat of my intellect digests slowly the complexity of my life. A little less food may be part of the story I have do many experiences, dozens of books of fiction, and a new pair of lenses (new glasses) to adapt to. 

An old favorite drawing of mine is newly collaged and awaits being a call to our community. 

The meatloaf I made last night, but didn’t eat was rich with our freshly harvested garlic, Pete ate two servings and the vardo is thick with the smell. 

Life’s not perfect; it’s life. 

My long hair hang loose more gray and white than black it is an unbraided reality. The potential is there. Seeing the strands of my process here makes space for …the mystery. That may be exactly what’s needed on this ‘ole moon. 

Pilina

 The Secret of Snow is a story about the Sami. Written in Swedish by a woman of Sami descent, the book was translated from Swedish into English by a woman trained in translations, specializing in the Scandinavian languages. 

"The Sami people, the Indigenous inhabitants of northern Scandinavia, have retained elements of their pre-colonial, matriarchal traditions despite centuries of Norse, Christian, and state oppression." - Medium

I've read and then re-read the concluding chapters of Tina Harneck's novel and found in her telling, and the translation of Alice Menzies voices and characters who have lifted the kaumaha -- the shame and deep grief, that I had carried as a Hawaiian woman. Born on O'ahu in 1947, the journeys shared in a book about people of the snow could have been those of my ancestors.

This is a post that will need time to tell. 

Pilini refers to enduring relationship, associations, connections. I began with the title but no content. Today, I sit in the small Clinton Library and make small marks to hold a space for what is connecting. The wild fire smoke is difficult for me today. The cool, and air conditioned environment here allows me to practice seeing through my new Progressive lenses, and feel the new frames on my bridgeless nose. They feel different. The clarity of my new prescription is such a joy. Wow. Nice. 

Perhaps more will come ... 

Wayfinders Ball

 Waking to the murky sunlight I know the fires continue. Just after sunset I walked to my garden, grateful to feel the coolness rising from the ground. I took a broad stance and began “to activate the diety of abundance and peace—ho’olono. (Mahalo Manu Aluli Meyer… see her book Ho’opono). 

Looking up and out I chanted E Lono e. Calling to the diety, the elemental power of the atmosphere. A part of me was calling for his life giving rain; though all generated forecasts predict none. 

As I sit to compose this mo’olelo I feel the activation through the simple and beautiful activity of watering my Scarlet Runner Beans, the U’ala who spread like green eel through the flower beds of Calendulas and big drooping Borage. The giant Sunflower is folding in while smaller blooms peek from the stock. 

We have been rewarded for the nightly slug vigilance with my first ever garden grown green cabbage, Do delicious. 

The air quality is poor and my watering was a conscious effort to care for the flowers, Fig and vegetables while aware to avoid too much exposure. 

I am a Wayfinder, after all. Born of the ocean, I reflect on the stories of a brother who grew up in Niu Valley just one valley Honolulu side of Kuliouou where I grew as a girl. Nainoa Thompson’s kuleana was and is that of Wayfinder; first he had to remember what that meant.

For this reason he was given a father, a friend and the last remaining navigator of stars to help him see Tahiti. Nainoa Thompson found Tahiti by watering his garden: he remembered how intelligent his body memory is and eventually with his kupunas help sailed the way finders ball— the waters of this island earth.

Facts are not necessarily the truth and yet there is a place for what appears real. This morning’s episode in mo’o making is a benchmark. I have a hunch about the meaningfulness of this mo’olelo. I wish to give it water.

Moisture in a time of austerity. E Lono E. E Lono noho I ka Wai… I begin with this like a coral polyp begins a 🪸 reef.