Silver and Gold

Make new friends,
But keep the old.
One is silver,
And the other, gold.
A circle's round
It has no end
That's how long
I'm gonna be your friend.
- "Make new friends (but keep the old)
Traditional Folk Song 

That's me and Pete in our booth at Earth Day, 2011 introducing Fragrance Free in '23 

That photo of Pete and me was taken on a blustery April day in 2011. We were out and about with our newly rooting life on Whidbey Island. Slowly I was regaining strength and our Vardo for Two was getting used to the rural South end island world. We were sharing 5 simple steps to becoming fragrance and chemical free. Earth Day great occasion for remembering to love the Mother the place that holds us every day.

Earlier this week Pete and I had a golden opportunity to keep growing an established friendship with our South Whidbey Tilth community; and encourage a new friendship with Aurora Levins Morales. Here's what I wrote on a post entitled "Coach me" on a blog (an old friend) which has been quietly and silently waiting for a time to be loved anew.

"A friend and I sat at the counter of the Tilth kitchen yesterday afternoon. The wet and blustery Elementals had gone somewhere, a nice patch of blue sky greeted us as Pete hustled around on a stepladder reattaching the roofing paper on the lean-to.

Prescott and I were meeting so I could introduce her to Aurora Levins Morales. Until a few weeks ago I did not know of this longtime change agent, activist and author of Medicine Stories. All that changed when Angie Hart, Tilth's Farmers' Market Manager and 2016 Apprentice sent me an email asking "Do you know this woman? She writes medicine stories and has MCS."

Last night Pete joined other members of the South Whidbey Tilth Council to cheer lead and grow our commitment to communities that are fragrance free safe zones. A new friendship with longtime activist, writer, teacher and curandera Aurora Levins Morales is growing now. The spark of connect began with a young woman's kilo (keen observation of a potential). Angie Hart heard an interview on the radio while she was taking a road trip to visit friends and Tahoma (Mt. Rainier). Angie sent me an email with a query: "Do you know this woman?" I said, "No." Not yet I did not know Aurora Levins Morales. I was saving that moment, reserving energy for sharing medicine stories first. After the stories did Feed the Land with medicine stories, I found this site.

I'd said a prayer during the stormy weeks of late summer, asking for a mentor, an activist of color who was living the life, walking the walk, and sharing the stories. Na 'Aumakua my Guardians heard the request. They sent me to an online home, where I discovered Aurora Levins Morales plans to be in Seattle in late December. She needs a place to be before or after her scheduled event. I emailed her with an offer to come visit us at the South Whidbey Tilth, She wrote: "That's fabulous!" in reply to this message, "

 Aloha Aurora,
We have just met with Prescott, the president of the Tilth council to introduce you and your casita for change. She is very excited, newly informed and inspired. An agenda for Thurs' meeting is in the works, and forward movement is in process with a letter of invitation to you part of that agenda. I mua. Your website is an education, she's got it on her Bookmarks!

So there you have it, make new friends but keep the old. We are excited, inspired, loving life where we are rooted. The invitation to a new friend is making that silver connection. Que bueno!

Thanks Mercury (in retrograde) ... about the cancellation of Tea and Toast

 

" I never fear Mercury retrograde... I think the main reason is ... anything that creates a situation where a person glosses over information the first time it comes around. Perhaps you get overwhelmed with a barrage of constant or simultaneous information flow. Perhaps, like me, you tend to set things aside because you didn’t know what to do with them at first sight. Perhaps you’re a slower processor and the world moves faster than you do. Maybe you get overwhelmed, or maybe you specialize, to the exclusion of some data ... - Satori

Astrology is one of my constant navigational tools; I check my bearings regularly. Pete has come along for the astrological ride over the years and like me appreciating how he uses his box of tools and his beast-of-a-truck, my husband has an appreciation for the planetary alignments. We were chatting yesterday and he shared stories with me about his day out in the public.

"Mercury is retrograde," he said to more than one person.
"Oh god, Mercury is always in retrograde!" one woman said.
Another said, "Oh no I'm trying to sell my ---. Is that going to stall things!*!?" He had a philosophical and classic Cancerian statement to encourage peace, patience and a don't go off the edge sort of response (he's got a lot of Virgo). I've noticed that even with folks who don't use astrology the way I do, "Mercury in retrograde" has a universal oh-my-god effect.

Time and study has aided me in seeing the blessing in (almost) everything. Life with the changeable nature of being human, and alive, means I get to re-do, unravel, re-stitch and safety pin my choices and my habits again and again. Tea and Toast at The Safety Pin Cafe is an event designed to keep promises; keeping promises is important, I think. The juggling act that I manage is the border crossings of promises to others with those I make to myself. Satori's description and insight into Mercury's retrograde (October 21-November 10) calms the rabbit-rabid pace within me: this moveable feast is such fun!! Never-mind the potential for the space to be difficult. I did gloss over the potential danger, hoping I could juggle fancy.

Here I am this Tuesday morning recouping from the effects of choosing and hoping to be just like everybody else (who can enter, occupy and sit anywhere). The facts and art of my life require different navigational choices. For now, I write and heal from choices which pushed me to a new border. Mercury's retrograde period covers ground already crossed and I process the information more slowly and make peace with time and limitations. Sorry for disappointing any of you would looked forward to tea, toast and more moveable feasts of story! It's so much about location, location, location. Seasons change, and we are now into the season of Scorpio and winter begins. The Safety Pin Cafe will pop up somewhere close-by, sometime. An unexpected space? Perhaps. That's a promise.

A hui hou,
Mokihana

Location, Location, Location

Many thanks to all of you who have adventurously walked under the red awning and stepped across the threshold into The Safety Pin Cafe. In a few short weeks more than 1,000 visitors, and nearly 200 readers have sampled the medicine story of Pale the Border Witch. The cafe located in a town so familiar, yet without an address, might be found in The Dictionary of Imaginary Places? The story of wandering between what passes as reality in the everyday and what could be just as real in the borders has a gift for any of us who has been faceless, homeless, or otherwise without. Tucked in the folds of a cozy yet mythic story of 6,000 words layers of common magic has been planted in the community imagination. The wave that is Drewslist: what a place! Most of the visitors and readers discovered The Safety Pin Cafe because of the ongoing enticements I've posted on Drew Kampion's email list.

Many thanks also to Annie Horton Zeller and Gwen Samelson from WhidbeyAIR for creating the space to share The Safety Pin Cafe and the Hawaiian traditional practice Makua O'o. The air waves, and the comfortable recording studio of WhidbeyAIR in Coopeville is a perfect location for spreading a medicine story. Mahalo nui loa a pau. LISTEN to that program here.

Simple and sometimes silly, the journey between here and there can dwither (I made that up) a person who is set in the way things ought to be. Mythic arts editor, author and blogger Terri Windling has long been a source of courage and inspiration to me. On her blog Myth and Moor Windling wrote this about "Foolishness" 

"While our intellect chases its bright and lofty visions, our  most original, powerful ideas tend to rise from muddy, murky depths below: from the clouded waters of the subconscious; from the baffling landscape of nightmare and dream; from the odd obssessions, weird fixations, and uncanny flashes of intuition that rise up from those strange parts of ourselves that we know and approve of least; from those places most likely to make us feel ridiculous, and exposed. The muse, if we follow her far enough, and honestly enough, demands that we bare it all: our angel wings and our asses' ears. It doesn't matter if we're writing genre fiction and not memoir; it doesn't matter if we're painting fairy tales and not self-portraits. "All art is autobiographical," said Federico Fellini; "the pearl is the oyster's autobiography."