Under the red yawning: a pin's worth of magic

 "I think that even if illness was suddenly, blessedly removed as a factor in my life, I would still be at this same point in my journey: having reached the years of middle age, and recognizing that time is not infinite, I feel compelled to turn inward and focus my time and attention on truly mastering my craft. - Terri Windling

The Hawaiian Moon Calendar Kaulana Mahina offers me regular emotional and practical tune-ups. Though we can often go without seeing Mahina from my place in the woods, I know there are times to rest, re-view my actions and weed or re-tell the stories I am telling. These re-view times are called the 'Ole Moons, or Quarter Moon Phases four phases before Full Moon and three phases prior to the New Moon. The past four days and nights have been 'Ole. These 'Ole times are not a good time for beginning new projects if given the option. I have been re-viewing, resting and considering the stories I tell. There have been no weekly updates to The Safety Pin Cafe while I attended to the internal clockworks, till now...

Town is busy with visitors and regulars and my thoughts thick and worries weighty. I kept at the business of living and sought out a better feeling thought, and found it. There was a gift to find and wishes to be sent to loved ones. Even with so few spoons, I heed my astrologer's advice and sought the good for someone other than myself. As I crossed that sticky bog where the Worry Wart Clan lay their seductions, my silly-loving fingers found just the bit of magic I needed to pack a moveable feast for two: the gift for the loved ones! A happy orange lightweight and collapsible picnic basket and four checked cotton napkins will fit easily into a parcel bound for a town near Paris. Snacks and tiny star candles will start the moveable feast bound for France.

Keen with the scent of gift-giving the perfect traveling red awning under which I might take moveable feasts from The Safety Pin Cafe called "Here. Here I am." Wrapped in a sheaf of clear plastic at least a yard's length it stuck out of a basket of umbrellas. On a busy day in Salish (which was wearing sunblock instead of rain boots) disguised as a red golf umbrella with a fiberglass stem was the moveable awning for The  Safety Pin Cafe.

A hand stitch, language of birds, a safety pin: common magic, complex nature

"Common" ... western definitions

1. belonging equally to, or shared alike by, two or more or all in question: common property; common interests.

2. pertaining or belonging equally to an entire community, nation, or culture; public: a common language or history; a common water-supply system.

3. joint; united: a common defense.

4. widespread; general; ordinary: common knowledge.

5. of frequent occurrence; usual; familiar: a common event; a common mistake.

"Common" ... Hawaiian definitions
1. hana mau
2. ma'amau,
3. laha, laakea

"Commoner"
1. Maka'ainana
2. noa
3. 'ino
4. hua
5. noa'noa

“I have heard the Amish will place a small mistake or imperfection in a quilt or other handmade item. Why is this done?”
“We’ve heard that many years ago sometimes a scrap of fabric that didn’t quite match was used inconspicuously in a patchwork quilt to give it “identity.” We question whether this is true. We don’t know of any quilters who would do that today. Amish quilts are all band quilted; stitches are very small and uniform. But, no matter how hard one tries, the stitches are not all identical and perfect. A quilt may have an imperfection, but it wasn’t on purpose.” - The Amish People

The door to The Safety Pin Cafe has been open for a week, and oh how thrilled we are to have had so many visitors.  Less costly than investing in the creation of the boards and batten of a store-front and eatery, the cost as a writer and translator of words and history is instead kuleana ... personal responsibility. I am a happy woman sharing the story, the characters and the journey of culture for it is precisely, and imperfectly, that journey of culture evolving that fills the cup of those who walk through the cafe door.

Invite The Possibility

"The Safety Pin Cafe is close, nearer than one could imagine and is open especially to those who straggle borders listening for the comfort of an empty cup needing filling.

 

"This is a stop over place, The Safety Pin Cafe," the chef said as we watched The Faceless Woman empty the mug of warm milk and vanilla. Raven refilled her mug and sprinkled more cinnamon. "Not every one finds this place, it's easily missed among the distractions ... this and that, either or. But, many do find us and we never turn people, mostly woman, away."

The Medicine Story began in the winter ...

Introduction

 We cross borders without regard, ignorant or arrogant of the protocol native to the transitional spaces that take us from this place to that place. Traditions remembered and practiced would maintain and pass along the right things to do, at the right time, and in the right frame of mind. Have we all become wanderers with passports unstamped with the memory of teachings from the Ancestors and Nature? There are rituals to remember and common magic to induce respect for the beings and places that share this planet.

Funny how Nature and Those-Who-Watch time the magic and adjustments for setting things right. Look there under the red awning...

What better medicine then the fabrication of a cozy place, common magic

and company worth keeping.

- The Joy Weed Journal

The Safety Pin Cafe

Red Hibiscus

 

It was a day a duck could love. For that matter the week was a duck's paradise. Dressed for the season in my long skirt, paisley wool shawl, and tea cozy hat with the red hibiscus over my left ear my feet splashed in puddles. The sensible shoes--black leather lace-ups-- answered the silly duck talk coming from the edges, "It makes no never-mind to me. For though I have no oily feathers to shed the rain, my sensible shoes are always game." I'm sure the ducks got even sillier as I twirled at the end of every city block. But by then they were out of earshot.

Most of the other walkers were tucked tight against the insides of their big black umbrellas, from under my red hibiscus I thought I caught the glimmer of blue. Pale and translucent fairy wings. "They don't usually come out in downpours," my eyes scanned the pavement for their scent. Sometimes you can smell a fairy as sure as see one. The wind began to dance with me as I lifted my nose and sniffed from beneath the felt hat now much soaked through with rain. No fairies. But, a large copper pin about the size of a butterfly dropped from the cherry red awning above me and landed on my right shoe. A pin. A safety pin. "My Ma,"besides being famous for carrying a flashlight my mother always wore at least one but more often a couple safety pins. Just in case. Long before it was punk fashion, safety pins were a talisman of security hard-wired in my DNA like knowing how to make something out of nothing. I fondled the pin and felt the distance of time between us compress. There. Here. Together.

A waterfall drained itself off the red awning. I side-stepped the cascade and picked up the pin. Twinkle lights brightened the windows under the awning where a woman smiled from behind pale blue eyes. A bright gold scarf wrapped round her neck seemed to smile, too. She pointed to the sign over the windows. In letters like liquid copper I read The Safety Pin Cafe. Ravens black and shiny as if dipped in wet ink sat in the panes of the windows out-lined and sparkling with fairy lights. "Against the seasonal darkness, the trick is to tickle the light from its hiding places," that was coming from the woman on the other side of the window panes. I smiled as I recognized a Muse and reached for the crystal door knob and pushed the front door open. The smell of warm cinnamon toast and hot milk filled my nostrils.