The forest was lit with brilliant light late last night and early this morning. If we were down at the muliwai the waters salt with fresh would have blended and breached the artificial boundaries of private property confirming and still the waters rise. Mahina the Moon is fattening and yes the waters rise, all the water within and without rise reminding us how we are so inextricably connected.
Like one Earth meshed net my water is my neighbor's is her neighbor's is their neighbors and there are no boundaries when the water rises no barbed wire high enough nor secret deep enough when the waters rise.
Earlier in the week before the Hillary storm was trumped Pete and I were out at the prairie front, not far from the water's edge the estuary the muliwai. The day was pleasant the sky sharing its blue gown with the movement of clouds and sunshine was making us believe there was still some hope for a bright warm day a future led by progress, and potential for change.
I walked the beautiful stretch of land that is the South Whidbey Tilth campus the grass wetter than expected my little brown leather shoes were soaked before long. But, it made no never mind the air was fresh, the land seemed content with the feedings absorbed with Sunday Farmers' Markets
and one lone Dandelion was still courageous in her destiny to propagate. Such strength of heart!
Put away were the sand box toys now lidded and secured against the surely coming sometime storms of a Salish Winter.
Mostly naked theResident Tree Nation's limbs were nonetheless or maybe more because they were less sinuous with their arms so pointed and unadorned
Mostly naked but for the dangling fruit still remembering how great the season has been.
Mud, and crumbling leaves turn quickly to mold and rot but there is a memory of color and just how systematically Nature withdraws without any help from us and then there is only compost.
A mound of rocks or stones, the common prairie rocks remind me of their beauty as I stopped for one last look out the driver's side window. Common stones. One more opportunity to remember the nourishment of eating the stones
ʻAʻole mākou aʻe minamina
I ka puʻukālā a ke aupuni
Ua lawa mākou i ka pōhaku
I ka ʻai kamahaʻo o ka ʻāina
We do not value
The government's hills of money
We are satisfied with the rocks
The wondrous food of the land
- Kaulana Na Pua written by Eleanor Kekoaohiwaikalani Wright Prendergast in 1893 for members of the Royal Hawaiian Band. Thank you to our friend Terri "Tita Wise' for the beautiful high tide photo from West Beach. All the other photos are mine.
I woke with the image behind my eyes of the small kid time game -- jan ken po-- a game Pete and I played just the other morning when we were choosing whether to head north or south for a spontaneous day trip.
"Let's play three times, for the win," I directed. It's that oldest child role I play in action. "I win we head south. You win we go north."
We playedjan-ken-po our style with no chanting just the simple hand signs of the game. I won two or three outta the three, and we headed south for the ferry. It was one of those Safety Pin Cafe sorta morning, a morning and a day a duck could love. Wet and raining. A Saturday. What I did not remember and Pete remembered when we found ourselves in a ferry backup (not usual for this time of year) was the other ferry on the island was out of commission for the weekend while a new dock was being installed.
Change of plan. We dickered a little about whether the investment of time (both ways) made sense, and agreed it wasn't. Pete did a U-turn and we turned the result of the simple game for choosing on its head. We headed north, and had a very good time of it.
The reverberations from the American Election, 2016 are having their effect on us.
"It's that guy thing, AGAIN!"
"Trump's not MY president!!"
"Woke up after election, mad, sad, crazed but not depressed ...Funny I thought only about fleeing that too might happen but for now action, empathy, support, and strength."
I am sticking with the oddly perfect outcome of our jan-ke-po game, and using that U-turn to gather strength to act as if I am the leader of the world, the country, the nation, I envision. So, the rich and greedy business man has tinkered with all the other men still afraid of the big bad vagina ... OMG, did she say the "V" word? Oh yeah.
Turning child's play on its head I'm using these days after the badly played version of an election to create movement, maybe a movement, a SIMPLE & POWERFUL new version of the game of choice.
On stage children of all colors, parents of all ages, grandparents of all stages, people able and disabled, gender labeled in all flavors, fragrance freed and powered up:
Play the hand game, jan ken po ... rock paper scissors, but instead of the chant where rock breaks scissors, paper covers rock, scissors cuts paper
This hip hop version of the game interlaces the voices of resistance in Kaulana Na Pua:
Let me be your rock (rock breaks scissors)
I got you covered (paper covers rock)
Here, cut through that red tape (scissors cut paper)
Let me be your rock/I got you covered/Here, cut through that red tape
Let me be your rock/I got you covered/Here, cut through that red tape ...
The stage fills with more and more children of all colors, parents of all ages, grandparents of all stages, people able and disabled, gender labeled in all flavors, fragrance freed all powered up.
Let me be your rock
I got you covered
Here, cut through that red tape
The game turns leadership onto its head: I am your rock, You got me covered. We can cut through that red tape. I'm suggesting a revolution starts by changing the rules of the game. Use the example of resistance at Standing Rock.bB a chant that reverberates right where you, and I stand now. Now.
Let me be your rock. I got you covered. Here, cut through that red tape.
I got you covered. How could I do that? How about this post. How about this post goes viral and community musicians put their instruments together and come up with some sound to go with this "Rock- Covered- Red- Tape."
I don't know where this will lead
Don't pretend I've got all the answers
But oh my friend together ...
Let me be your rock
I got you covered
Here, cut through that red tape.
Can you see it?
Can you hear that?
Can you feel your heart?
Pump, pump, pumping ... Kaulana na pua ... Famous are the flowers ... Let me be your rock. I got you covered. Here, cut through that red tape.Haʻina ʻia mai ana ka puana Ka poʻe i aloha i ka ʻāina ... Tell the story Of the people who love their land.
Jan Ken Po
Let me be your rock
I got you covered
Here, cut through that red tape...
Let's do it!
Share this link.
Spread it around.
I don't know all the social media in's and out. But, you might know how to cut through that red tape.
"Today we grieve. Tomorrow we fight. Art & activism matter more than ever. So does community. Stay strong."- Terri Windling
"Mars in Aquarius will PROTEST. I'm just not sure people will feel up to it. They may very welldetachin order to deal with their feelings of depression and doom. Tomorrow the Moon in Pisces will conjunct Chiron in the sign. This is not going to help. Endless, un-healable wound. Arrgh. I wish I had something better to say. These next two days will be rough." - ElsaElsa Astrology Newsletter
"Yes, Terri. Today we grieve. In the dark hour of midnight here in the Salish Sea I was shocked to read, "He is president." No amount of Flower Nation Remedy would change that, but I dosed myself anyway. Then I picked up Aurora Levins Morales' book of essays Medicine Stories. From it she reminds me (in 'False Memories') "Ours is a society that does not do grief well or easily, and what is required to face trauma is the ability to mourn, fully and deeply, all that has been taken from us. But mourning is painful and we resist giving way to it, distract ourselves with put-on toughness out of pride."
Without thinking voice began singing the song "Kaulana Na Pua" written in 1893 by Ellen Kekoaohiwaikalani Wright Prendergast as a protest song when American business men illegally overthrew the Nation of Hawaii, and Queen Liliuokalani. You are so right, Terri today we mourn. And to do it consciously it will hurt like hell. But, to be distracted will hurt us more, longer, and we will remain oppressed. In the art, as in the lyrics of this song that means 'beautiful are the flowers' the Nation of 'flowers' people who protested and who would 'rather eat stones' have persisted in spite of America's best practices to keep us done...and dead. Tomorrow we fight, yes. But first I will grieve, and make that count for something!" - A comment I left this morning, after the American Election, of November, 2016 on Terri Windling's blog "The view from here" on Myth and Moor
Kihei and Mapuana de Silva begin their essay "He Inoa no na Keiki o ka bana la hui" with this paragraph about the song Kaulana Na Pua: "
"This is the song that brought a pair of nearly lost, almost-haoles into head-on collision with the possibility that, in our classmate Haunani Trask’s words, we were not American, not American, not American. Not in our heart of hearts, not if our great-grandparents had anything to say about it..."
I'm at the keyboard with my first cup of peppermint tea, my sinuses are congested, but with my mouth open I can breathe well-enough. The initial shock of the reality of the election has begun to seep into those places that have caused that same head-on collision Kihei and Mapuana de Silva wrote about. That same head-on collision that has haunted me in daydreams and nightmares of being lost, and more than 'almost-haole' living in a world of oppression. Day in night out. Here or there? The low level grief and major level denial does harm to the immune system over time. Post Traumatic Stress, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Environmental Illness. Call it what you want to. The oppression lives, and the American Public and the Powers of Greed have made their agenda clear: Trump-ed.
Today is for grieving as fully as possible the reality of this oppression. Safety pins may not be enough to create a bridge of solidarity, but, they CAN be a talisman, a reminder that common courage is uncommon only if we don't undo the clasp and stick it to the man. If a pin is unfastened long enough to pass it along to another in your circle, your community, your family the remedy of solidarity and understanding is strengthened. In every story that can be told about a more robust and whole earth world is like, let me remember what it sounds like, feels like. My kupuna knew how to put the medicine in the words, the mele, the sound, the movement. They grieved, but then they put the music where it could be found, revisited, and danced anew. Here is how the de Silvas end their essay,
"We dance it, too, because the best defense against loss of understanding is often a strong offense: we believe that “Kaulana nā Pua” has to be danced properly and publicly before it is taken, co-opted, and commodified – as so many of our precious hula have been violated – by those who have no right to touch it. So we are taking a chance and putting our hearts on the line – as has every Hawaiian who ever loved this song enough to sing and dance or not-dance it from the depths of his and her na‘au. "
American imperial tradition, greed and oppression has a long and invested history. "You are standing on Indigenous Land" reminds activist and artist Tracy Rector. To make a difference I must take the time to fully grasp what has happened with this election. All the sweat, and congestion that I feel is not imagined, and is not 'just my fault' these symptoms come from choices I have made, or others made when I was either too young or too unconscious of the false memories of my history. I struggle with a different version of those memories to create a story where I am no longer victim or oppressor. I ramble on my way to some new truth.
Now I know better, and I know the meaning behind the words
