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.