Courage to change, open to the mystery

 My grandson danced his first hula performance

A medicine story originally written as a blog, just as The Safety Pin Cafe was written will go to a few first readers on paper (or texted pdf if I can figure it out st my local library) The chapbook HAND TOOLS was created in 2021 year after my grandson was born and is dedicated to my ‘ohana 

Surprising me most is the discovery that my faithful my (this one) has been spotted by ai and is attracting more flies on this virtual web than I ever drew when I actively and fermented blogged everyday for decades.

As my “Silver Hair Raven” and this Border Witch age in place it continues to be our uncommon courage to change that feeds the acceptance of our physical shifts in seasons. Our bodies turn to old lace, we forget, we must forgive more often and make our beds differently or in other places. 

The language and diagnostic systems of medical systems continue to challenge me to cross my eyes and drop down into my seated na’au to find answers and create a different set of positive answers or longer term nourishment.

Aloha is the finest answer. It is the intelligence from which I gain the courage to change.

Safety pin magic, the place holder

 I'm sitting high in the saddle this morning, typing on an adjustable chair in the Langley Public Library. A baby is crying in the kids' room (correction the baby was crying on the changing table in the restroom while mom changed her diaper), the two women behind the desk make no adjustments to the level of their voices, the door slams like a sledge hammer and the keyboard here is mega bigger than the old iphone I normally use to keep this blog alive. So often, I read, "the blog is dead." Who even keeps a blog and who reads them?

It matters to me that I'm able to keep my storyteller genes active and adaptable. It's my kuleana. It's the practice I've committed to and like riding a surf board, throwing a net or parenting it takes depth and repetition.

What's motivates this post is the discovery I made early in the morning hours back in our vardo. The old iphone and the call of my ancestors gave me some clues the current huli, Pluto transit through my 1st House and the deep trenching work of evolving. Pele is moving magma through me to reckon the qualities that are most important (and those that need to be purified, burned out, released, amended) to keep and nourish. 

Here is where the spider web led me. 

https://eddiekamaesongbook.org/songs/alohachant/

The original reason this blog The Safety Pin Cafe was created came from my Ma, my Ma's spirit. She had a message for me and a real safety pin. My life was newly being reinvented, I was pretty mushy and uncomfortable both to me and my husband Pete and all the people who saw us or met us. Our family were not sure how to know me during this time. My M sent me a very physical and practical piece of magic ... she was demonstrated huna as is described in Eddie Kamae's documentary. 

I would come to know the value and practice of this application of knowing over time. The depth and repetition of storytelling has been recorded all over the place here on The Safety Pin Cafe blog. Not fancy or sophisticated(updated to the present 2027 flow of technology) it remains. Held in place like a safety pin held my Ma's blouse together when a button no longer did the job. 

In my case, today I live the reality of applying Aunty Pilahi Pahiki's message of the deep meaning of love, Aloha, in the Hawaiian language applicable to all who follow the clues. 

Thank you Rachel

 One of my greatest teachers died a few weeks ago. She influenced my life and my attitudes about helping, fixing and service in every way. 

https://www.legacy.com/legacy/rachel-naomi-remen-md

Thank you Rachel Naomi Remen!

Inspired (by) Fiction

 I’ve just finished reading Julie Leong’s second novel, The Keeper of Magical Things. What started as a slow read caught fire on day two and I’m inspired by her conclusion.

When the bronze safety pin caught my attention on the post office floor I picked it up and began to imagine a place I’d love to know. A good story rich with metaphor and myth must include the common and familiar to increase understanding and broad fire starters for people of many different intelligences. The safety pin was it for this myth. My Ma used them for many reasons and seasons; no explanations holding up her pants or closing a shirt where a bottom had been.

Without spilling the beans from Leong’s novel I’m marking a potential on my spider web of Sacred Hearts. The common practice I’m recognizing as a safety pin for a future project: libraries. The title of the novel is the neon sign. I’m healing from a bout or flare up of inflammations and part of my recovery is to imagine a kind of library… what kind? We’ll see❤️‍🩹🥰💜

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?