"There is some evidence of ripening." - Satori

Emu in the Sky, Milky Way (photo credit: Barnaby Norris http://kamilaroianationsidentity.weebly.com/the-dreaming.html )

"... Saturn-Neptune is the longer term, common feature here. It’s reality in shift, in flux. In July there was a focus on considering what we wanted in relationship to what was real and possible – updating our thinking and our attitudes. Now we’re seeing how those ideas panned out in their infancy. There is some evidence of ripening. Something useful is becoming solid now, or it can become solid if we take advantage of the opportunities presented and claim the reward..." - Satori's Daily Forecast: September 4, 2016

September 4th is our wedding anniversary. Twelve years ago Pete and I signed a document that said we were legally married, I did the asking and after some deliberation Pete said yes. A friend was our officiant and with her husband as witness the four of us sat in our Wailuku Drive rental cottage, in Hilo to celebrate our wedding. A week later we would gather a larger group of family and friends but this intimate sit down do was a time I remember with fondness, especially as I reflect on the title for this post, "There is some evidence of ripening." 

We were in a time of flux in 2004 having sold my family home early that year I was also making decisions about addressing health issues. Instead of opting to surgically remove my thyroid I chose instead to keep my thyroid and alkalize my body -- I went to New Mexico and learned the Anne Wigmore Raw Food Lifestyle. Me and my thyroid was still here to live another day, and Pete and I can celebrate a relationship begun in 1995, ripening in commitment with a marriage license nine years later, and an anniversary twelve years after that!

As a couple we have a Scorpio Ascendent, "With a Scorpio ascendant you’ll have a subtle and compelling power about you. Perhaps you look a bit dangerous." We are a bit dangerous looking together, a lanky wild-haired white man and a dumpling brown woman who live in a house no bigger than a shoe, on wheels. What we are doing today, perhaps as a form of celebrating, is attend to the kilo (observation) of the stars, and planets, along with the Sun and Moon. Satori's description is such useful knowledge. Our challenge at the moment is to keep doing the homework necessary to understand the issues of 'hunting' and the characteristics of the prey we seek -- a safe next home in community. To do that we are looking to the navigators (Ancient wayfinders) who have never forgotten how Emu in the Sky, The Milky Way has the answers mirrored in the sweet honey in the rock.

If you are still with me, remember I am weaving a story that pulls threads like a spider pulling silk. The process is exquisite, but, not fast. The pieces will stick together ... eventually. Trust me, suspend all disbelief.

Using Satori's Daily Horoscope that begins this post, I pick the bits of her narrative to feed this ramble. 

"Saturn-Neptune is the longer term, common feature here. It’s reality in shift, in flux." As a couple via our Composite Astrology Chart the Saturn-Neptune square is testing the way we appear to the world (Saturn is transiting our composite First House) with the way we relate to our 'siblings'(Neptune is in our Third House of neighbors, community, siblings, our relationships, the way we communicate). This planetary affect is subject to change, because Neptune is all about water and water cannot be contained. Saturn on the other hand is about long term reality lessons. Mm.

"In July there was a focus on considering what we wanted in relationship to what was real and possible – updating our thinking and our attitudes. " In July we recognized we had to make a move from the woods. Winter winds have been bringing down trees and limbs around us and the mold in the wet woods is more difficult on me. I started to write my way into understanding why and how; and together Pete and I went on a road trip. It was on this trip to the dry country desert of Central Oregon that we slept on an old wooden stage, on a foil-insulated air mattress under the Milky Way. I didn't sleep at all the first night and was visited and realigned by the Emu.

A night sky where the dry country tides appear to be invisible are, in fact, incredibly powerful sources of water moving. The internal waters affected by the pull of the stars is best noticed when one sleeps outside. At our most receptive moments when the physical body is horizontal and open to restoration there is a grand opportunity to "update thinking and attitudes." The whole physical package is exposed to the giant Emu, the Milky Way. Usually diluted by civilization's human-made light the Milky Way is brilliant and magnetic in the dry country tide country. We were in Central Oregon to visit friends. It was our first 'vacation' and road trip in many years we were exploring the possibility that a different place might suit us. In this environment I could breathe without congestion; I felt different, I felt better. When we left after three days we thought: let's move here. 

"Now we’re seeing how those ideas panned out in their infancy." That idea did not pan out. Though many pieces could have worked, they didn't. Boundaries were laid out by the woman we visited; she had a life in motion a plan envisioned and steps being walked, the fit was not there. Emu had nonetheless begun tuning and realigning our thoughts, and attitudes.  

"There is some evidence of ripening. Something useful is becoming solid now, or it can become solid if we take advantage of the opportunities presented and claim the reward..." 

The Leo New Moon under which we made that dry country tide road trip has fattened and waned into the Solar Eclipse and New Moon in Virgo just passed on September 1st. Something useful is becoming useful, but the prize is not quite what we thought it would be, or, the story is not yet done.

I'm picking up the thread of this post after a day long road trip and anniversary celebration with Pete. Such fun we had adventuring and exploring, chatting and laughing, eating and eventually meandering north and nearly to the border of British Columbia. We were exploring the area around an Intentional Community that has been together since 1984 as one of the five communities of the Evergreen Land Trust.

In the course of our road trip yesterday with time moving at 55 MPH seated side-by-side in our Scout the Subaru, as is so often the case, I learned what a difficult day Pete had on Sunday (we were road tripping the next day, Monday, the holiday, Labor Day). The gist of Pete's difficulty came from hours of listening to opinions and attitudes from the community whose support we are seeking to establish a safe fall and winter home. Slowly but steadily the morphing reality of support was triggering his Mars, his ego. He was alone to field that exposure(I was holed up, refueling myself on the futon in the vardo), and though he is a capable and hail adult male, advocating for a 'safety pin lifestyle' is invisibly difficult work. (Saturn-Neptune again!) Reality is shifting. This proposal we made asking to move into a much more public setting was a big risk, we were thinking big thoughts, and taking a chance in the larger community. We hoped to find a way to include others, attempting to educate them about the reality of life on the edge.  

When we returned to the woods there were two new emails for us; one was addressed to me and the second was Pete's. The mail to Pete was a community member's latest response to our proposal to move onto the land where the rock lives. The email includes this opinion and vision:

"... [We] recently tentatively approved a plan to create the conditions to have our first on-site resident caretakers...This essentially involves creating a bathing facility adjoining our existing bathrooms, use of the kitchen for daily meal preparation, and allowing appropriate placement of a gypsy wagon, an equivalent of a tiny house sleeping room, for the first residents on the land this fall and winter.

This development opens the door to a broader vision for the reorientation of the [] land to better meet the needs of some lower income members of our community..."

Here's the part that challenges me to write with honesty and self-care. In essence this email piggybacks a future vision, which is noble and potentially fruitful, with our immediate  need for shelter and request to "create the conditions to have our first on-site resident caretakers."  The reason we approached this group in the first place  was our five years of our common grounds of respect for diversity and love of land. This is land not sprayed with chemicals for decades, a basic condition for our survival. However, what this email fails to recognize is the immediate harm opening the door to "a broader vision for the reorientation of land", at this specific time, will mean to our fragile lifestyle. More and broader discussion with more people including county zoning authority could tip our slim margin of safety in the blink of a key stroke on the ENTER key. 

This Safety Pin Cafe style of life is not just a metaphor for small, simple and efficient connections. Pete and I live in a vardo no bigger than a shoe, and you know what happened to the old woman in the nursery rhyme who lived in a shoe. We opened ourselves and our safety pins to believing, trusting, we could pin ourselves to this community. As the email Pete received stated, we have received "tentative approval to create the conditions for the first on-site caretakers." As a new day unfolds, and a night of sleep with Emu's watchful eye checking on our newly aligned thinking and attitudes, we know it is time to 'pull the plug' on this proposal.  The conditions for the first on-site caretakers (Pete and Mokihana) have not yet been secured. Each precious step is one we have learned must be taken with a spiritual component weighing equally as important as all else. 

The email addressed to me was from the friend who opened my heart and ears to the lyrics of Sweet Honey in the Rock's  "The Ancestors' Breath". Her mail was one I had anticipated with pleasure, and the reward I got was affirmation. It was something useful! This friend has long shared the realities of life of the edge as one who lives and moves around as part of the artful though often life-threatening dodging someone with MCS does all the time. Part of what she wrote was, " at the time we spoke, I didn't make the connection about the rock you spoke to and the great metaphor --Sweet Honey in the Rock. It's a beautiful image to think of honey in a rock, and all that can mean..."

Here's where the holographic picture of evidence ripening pops! While the voices and opinions, the visions and the fears of human beings, have filled the air ways and the email spaces, the Ancestors' Breath, the sight of Emu, and the sweet honey from the Rock have tied the holograph together. Like the spider connecting silk for her web. The final piece, the final voice of Ancestors came from a committee of worms. Yes, you are reading correctly, that is NOT a typo. Worms, not words.

You see, in the photograph above the missing piece of protocol and respectful practices I forgot. My son called late yesterday afternoon. Pete and I had just finished discussing the email he received and it had finally dawned on me ... my mistake. That call from my son was the family connection, the ancestor alive now, I needed to flesh that holograph out. I said, "If I am the one who is responsible, and I do take full responsibility for it, for the spiritual pono (harmony) of activity and story on this land ... then, my mistake was not asking permission of the worms in the worm bin (pictured above) who would have to be moved to accommodate our lifestyle, and the vardo. Ha!

I had indeed introduced myself and asked for permission from the rock. But to the creatures small and potent earth makers that they are, I never asked them what they thought. However, the rock knew what needed to be done, and so the message passed from the rock to the worms. And the answer: a'ole, no! This is not the place for that couple with the Scorpio Ascendent. We have the ripening evidence and who better to hear but the voice of compost makers, Earth Worms.

In the end it's all compost. Later in Satori's horoscope that begins this ramble is this: "Desire is part of this. You really have to want it. If you’ve gone off track or forgotten the ideas, that’s okay – here they come again." What I had forgotten was the lesson in "The Ancestor's Breath" ... 'listen more often to things than to [human] beings.' I hear now. The gold, the treasure, the anniversary gift was compost and what better evidence of ripening can there be. Thank you, mahalo nui loa a pau Aumakua.