TROUBLE: Another Toast Story

" THE TROUBLE COFFEE & Coconut Club (its full name) is a tiny storefront next door to a Spanish-immersion preschool, about three blocks from the Pacific Ocean in one of the city’s windiest, foggiest, farthest-flung areas. As places of business go, I would call Trouble impressively odd....Trouble’s specialty is a thick slice of locally made white toast, generously covered with butter, cinnamon, and sugar: a variation on the cinnamon toast that everyone’s mom, including mine, seemed to make when I was a kid in the 1980s. It is, for that nostalgic association, the first toast in San Francisco that really made sense to me. Trouble’s owner, and the apparent originator of San Francisco’s toast craze, is a slight, blue-eyed, 34-year-old woman with freckles tattooed on her cheeks named Giulietta Carrelli. She has a good toast story: She grew up in a rough neighborhood of Cleveland in the ’80s and ’90s in a big immigrant family, her father a tailor from Italy, her mother an ex-nun. The family didn’t eat much standard American food. But cinnamon toast, made in a pinch, was the exception. “We never had pie,” Carrelli says. “Our American comfort food was cinnamon toast.”" http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/toast-story-latest-artisanal-food-craze-72676/

My friend, Jt, the person who inspired the character The Gypsy Woman in Medicine Story #1: The Safety Pin Cafe is always on the prowl for good stories. We have been pals for a long time and that says something for the tsunami and drought experiences,  that is life in general or made specific with illness and trauma, wipe connections and friendships out with little hope. We in many respects are two ends of the pole with her Taurus opposing my Scorpio. Fortunately for me, and perhaps for our friendship, I am a committed student of astrology and turn my obsessions and tight-fitted control-isms over to a power greater than myself and that power includes the stars (and the moon!). With time, quite a lot of it, I feel and open to the quality of Taurus a Scorpio like me needs. Astrologically? My North Node of the Moon is in Taurus and in my daily life that means feeling at home with exactly where I am in my own skin. Taurus loves a cozy home! So, The Gypsy Woman emailed me with a toast story this morning. Another toast story. Another toast story you might ask? If you ask, it might be you have not read, nibbled and swallowed the medicine and speciality on the menu from The Safety Pin Cafe.

"A plate of fine bone china, only slightly chipped but sparkling clean was arranged with cinnamon toast cut into stars and moons and ... ducks."

There is surely a magical and mythic connection with border witches, fringe-dwellers and human beings who find themselves in precarious positions. TROUBLE's owner, Giulietta Carrelli lives a story close to my heart. Her inventiveness and her facility with what I believe are the safety pins of common magic, is what will save us all from the inflated Ideas and entitled rule-makers. TROUBLE is a tiny space with a world of safety pinned in places that include childhood at its best; tastes that last and best of all the belief (that is Carrelli's) "The smallness of her cafés is [a] device to stoke interaction, on the theory that it’s simply hard to avoid talking to people standing nine inches away from you. And cinnamon toast is a kind of all-purpose mollifier: something Carrelli offers her customers whenever Trouble is abrasive, or loud, or crowded, or refuses to give them what they want. “No one can be mad at toast,” she said.

TROUBLE and its owner are small and recognizable in the San Francisco China Beach area. It's vital this recognizability: one of her safety pins. John Gravois puts it this way in the Pacific Standard article, A Toast Story "More than a café, the shop is a carpentered-together, ingenious mechanism—a specialized tool—designed to keep Carrelli tethered to herself."

“I’m wearing the same outfit every day,” Carrelli says. “I take the same routes. I own Trouble Coffee so that people recognize my face—so they can help me. Carrelli also found safety in simply being well-known—in attracting as many acquaintances as possible. “People are taken aback by her, but she reaches out.”” 

The interview and article in Pacific Standard Magazine is an inspiring and connective story that beats the drum for common magic and the vitality available to us all. It's a story about toast and safety pins, facility in the face of impossible odds. Like the border witch with a name often mispronounced, (PALE ... say Pah-Lay not Pale) TROUBLE comes with big, lace-up boots necessary when walking on the wild side.What a world this is and all the more reason to keep being who we are at The Safety Pin Cafe: "We continue to make life as artful as imagination will allow; and turn the rest into myth"

 

Stay tuned for Medicine Story #2: The Joy Weed Journal coming with the Lunar New Year.

"The Cafe's in the orchard ... " Raven observed

"The Cafe's in the orchard. If there is one thing for certain, it's this: with help they will pitch this cafe with ease, without it they will labor." Raven observed as the two old dears carried poles and stacks of tent from the turquoise truck, the truck they name Bernadette. Raven was quiet in his noticing, but the tree was listening.

"Is one better than the other? I mean if they have help to raise the cafe it will ease their effort. Without it they labor, but that is not bad either." The Ancient Fir was always curious about humans at their work.

The hens were curious too, but don't make much commentary about things they know nothing about and continued with their business.

"It was the old woman's idea and the old man's labor that led to the Cafe being positioned in the orchard. The large canopy tent is a gift from their friend who is packing up his truck and his happy heart to journey south to California where it's warm all the time. The old woman thinks it will be fun to have the tent/cafe nearby as she plays with the magic." The Ancient Fir is within earshot of all the conversations and is expert at hearing the magic that rides the border between words and belly intelligence.

"She prayed those song words she sings to ask for permission when they'd finished raising the tent. She's consistent in asking." The tree was swaying remembering the old woman's chanting.

Raven watched as the woman went about the orchard pushing on the small button capturing images in the black box. He appreciated that about the woman, she chronicled. Ravens have exceptional memory rather like the human's digital black box, but legions more expansive. "I like that she is looking at the tent through the limb of the Gravenstein. It's a view the apple will see after all; and the hens will see the Cafe whether they comment about it or not."

"There is room for magic in that orchard, and it gives the old ones another shelter to play in when the rain makes it inconvenient. Perhaps this tent will draw the help they need when sharing the labor is what's needed. Perhaps the season of long nights and dreaming will send them stories worth telling. And, who knows with our meddling this winter could be just the one to continue common magic." Raven liked that idea. Flying from The Ancient Fir's dancing limb the black-feathered bird let out with a chant of his own. The Old Man and The Old Woman took it as a blessing. They were glad.

Tea and Toast Time at The Safety Pin Cafe

THE SAFETY PIN CAFE  ... the moveable feast of storytelling pops up again!

"Enfin un peu de temps pour vous ecrire! Time flies!" said my dear Laurence. She is so right. We opened the tent space for The Safety Pin Cafe on a Sunday just after the New Moon in October (October 6th by most calendars). A grand and satisfying time it was. We were blessed by the Raven who brought the sun shiny Sun. I kept my promise to give thanks to the place and the space of the South Whidbey Tilth for being a chemical free place to be. But time did fly before we could contain and finish the sweet celebrations of common magic that is the signature of The Safety Pin Cafe.

What? What are the sweet celebrations of common magic of The Safety Pin Cafe? Of course there is the magic of story ... and that was surely shared and spread around. But what was missing because time flew were these promises:

1. Sit and fold an origami paper cup (as a symbol of connectedness)
2. And eat cinnamon toast cut into stars, moons and hearts (because it's fun and fun is THE magic!)

HERE'S YOUR INVITATION*

Join Mokihana Calizar, Pete Little and Pam Winstanley for an afternoon Tea and Toast Time at The Safety Pin Cafe.

Date: Sunday, October 27, 2013
Time: 3 pm until 5 pm in the afternoon
Where: Freeland Library Meeting Room (click for directions)
Freeland, Washington

What to bring? Bring your sweet self and a favorite tea cup or mug to sip hot tea.  If you have an extra tea pot or tea cups you'd like to share for the afternoon come a little early and we'll add them to the party.

Please don't wear fragrances or scents on you or your clothing, Mokihana and Pete are chemical and fragrance sensitive.

* If you were there to help with the magic of making The Safety Pin Cafe a reality on Sunday October 6th, an especially warm welcome back. If you weren't there on October 6th but wish you had been, come for Tea and Toast Time October 27th!

RSVP if at all possible. (leave a comment here, or email me at mokihanacalizarATgmailDOTcom). We'll be setting up tea tables and bringing in toast so let us count you in for Tea and Toast Time.

See you then,
Mokihana, Pam and Pete

Read here ... about THE CANCELLATION.

"Fiction and poetry are doses, medicine"

 "In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"  - Gabrielle Roth

"A plate of fine bone china, only slightly chipped but sparkling clean, was arranged with cinnamon toast cut into stars and moons and ducks." - from The Safety Pin Cafe

 “I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn't lost.”  - Jeanette Winterson

" Scorpio Sun is both the puzzle and the puzzler.
Seeing what is beneath the surface is what Scorpio does best. When presented with a situation where the pieces don’t seem to fit, Scorpio moves those pieces around until they do. When Scorpio can’t make those pieces fit they throw the puzzle in the trash and set off to find a new one, amputation.
 - Satori H.

The weeks of late August and September fill with the details and finishing touches for the opening of a mythic and magical place, a place where common magic is the medicine: The Safety Pin Cafe. The story is transforming me as I believe "Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines," as Jeannette Winterson wrote above. The original Safety Pin Cafe is my daily place of medicine making where meals for the belly and the imagination are cooked up simultaneously sometimes; or separately as when I sit to eat oatmeal and am 'dosed' with the flavor of spice: cinnamon the friend-maker.

What continues to thrill and enliven me is the process of becoming. I love digging around, and with a broad Scorpio signature, I am both "the puzzle and the puzzler." Nature all around me in the woods does the work of becoming without as much rumination. To be human with a will that often forks into two (or more) directions at once is perhaps just one more example of quantum reality ... the wind does it all the time! As I shift a gear and compose this JOTS is stretched across my leg trying to ignore my jiggling arm that keeps striking keys. I write during the 'Ole Moons reflecting on the progress made during the months of the magic medicine story begun in November. Many surprises and challenges have made the process time-consuming. I thank my ancestors who speak to me through dreams, and that amazing box of a computer connected to the cyber-web which allows me to see and hear things like these videos.  My husband Pete encourages me as he sees my energy build after a cycle of challenge and isolation. The dreams and the stillness temper and bake my refueling mana and I listen to the quiet, and what is most important rises to the surface. I lap it up like cream to a kitty. I have much to learn to orchestra the opening of The Safety Pin Cafe. Layers of symbolism, storytelling and collaboration with others make for an event that stretches my imagination and my capacity to create.