Sometimes ...

The summer has arrived with Solstice. I hunt for the yellow bristle blossoms of Saint Joan's (St. John) Wort along the highways watchful of the signs of chemicals sprayed to control growth. If the signs of artificial browning catch my eye I stay clear. In my whirl of definitions the blossoms of Saint Joan are one of the Wild Women Medicines that help me. I've been studying and practicing this wild craft of gathering the weeds. It does take time and attention. While I wait for the weeds to make their appearance I pay someone else (I purchase) the weed/herb to aid me. In my gathering I ask permission when I spot the blossom. Take only a few blossoms at a time. Give thanks when I'm done. And push the freshly-nipped herb into a bath of 100 proof vodka and wait at least six weeks for the blossoms and the booze to do their alchemistry. 

But in some whirls the weed Invades. Beware the invasions, the Invasives take on such a conflicted set of meanings. 

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long way from home, a long way from home

Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done
And a long, long way from home, a long way from home

True believer
True believer
A long, long way from home
A long, long way from home

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

Songwriters: Billy Sherrill / Charlie Rich

Artist: Odetta

Toni Talia and Mokihana
 at the South Whidbey Acoustic Music Festival, Sunday, June 24, 2018

This spring, a season lived in a new-to-us place has been a test of resilience as 'Prairie' and 'Community' pop its boundaries and definitions. What is a Prairie? What is a Community? We had never lived on a Prairie before; and to live (24/7) on this Prairie with a Community is much like a tourist visiting Volcano (on the island of Hawaii) knows the culture of Hawaii or Pelehonuamea. Definitions and those perceptions change as this collective is charged with new comers -- Invasives. Almost automatically and without filters, these perceptions become defensive or magnetic of the norm as culture is poked with new borders. The stakes pulled up and moved a few or many inches from its origin.

I've been reading Charles Mudede for some ideas to digest and understand humanity. Mudede's article How DJ Riz Rollins Changed Seattle is giving me words and images, and more importantly feels to help me sort through the experiences I'm having as 'Prairie' and 'Community' refine or explode my perceptions about humanity. 

The article and the quote I've extracted lay out a picture of late 1990's Seattle when Mudede is newly arrived in Seattle, "The first cool club I discovered in Seattle was Re-bar (which, amazingly, is not gone). Opened in 1990, it was not only a dance club, but also a bar and a theater, with deep roots in the gay performance community. Riz was a DJ at the club in the mid-1990s. His sets would transform Re-bar into a cultural laboratory for the creation of a brand-new race of Seattleites.

[...]Now, the thing that these sessions at Re-bar revealed to me (and this thing was also expressed by the title of a novel that had a huge impact on me at the time, Josef Škvorecký's The Engineer of Human Souls) is the seemingly infinite plasticity of human culture. To explain this as clearly as possible, two things have to be separated: the social and the cultural. Humans are social, but I think this is a deeper and older side of our animality. We cannot be antisocial. We always need others. That is the kind of body we have. A body that moves and works with other bodies.

But culture, on the other hand, can change rapidly. This is its glorious plasticity. But if this plasticity is not recognized, culture is confused with nature and its hard, fixed, and genetic laws, and we impose these misperceptions of the natural on the social body. This has caused a lot of misery in the world.

What all of this means—and what Riz made so clear to me on those Friday nights, and something that has become the core of my thinking as a writer and culture critic—is that our modes of moving through the world can be altered, revised, or completely reinvented. Some people call this social engineering, but I call it cultural engineering. Social engineering sounds like eugenics, or something that happens in an operating theater. Cultural engineering has a different ring. It can happen on a dance floor"

I saw the hand of God in the sky above as the music rose from the red-painted stage

Do we tinker with the ways in which we move through the world in a flowing and plastic in a good feel way allowing culture to be as changeable as clouds? Does a strange way of being trigger within us a need to defend, or can there be room on our dance card for new moves and a different if at first uncomfortable scene?

Later this summer Pete and I are scheduled to open the doors to the Safety Pin Cafe again. For the first time in two years, we will share chant, stories music and opportunity for group participation.

This year the theme of the performances will be 

Water Catchers ... the songs and stories that flow. 

Save the date: Sunday, August 12, 2018

Time: 11:30 AM - 2 PM

Place: South Whidbey Tilth Farmers' Market

2812 Thompson Road

Langley, WA
FREE
Come without perfumes, scented product and essential oils

"Power of Story" at the Safety Pin Cafe, September 2016

To encourage a shift in culture and perception the stories and songs will be global in reach, some Ancient, some written for the page or the blog, and several will encourage the audience to participate. One of the songs meant to magnetize group participation is the song Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie written by folk singer and blues musician Lead Belly, updated and culturally jangled by the body percussion arrangement of singer/composer Moira Smiley. 

I was introduced to Moira Smiley and the music of Lead Belly through one of my favorite bloggers and mentors, Terri Windling. The whirl of connection influenced by the flow of art and music is the magic that calms my worried mother less child long enough to welcome change. Below is the video of Huddie Ledbetter's (Lead Belly) Bring Me Little Water, Slyvie featuring Moira Smiley and a circle of women in percussion. A YouTube instructional video concludes this ranging and rambling post that is the stuff that sometimes makes its way through, or around life.

Thank the Gods and Goddesses for the light that can be more than enough to lead the way through those times of mother less child-ness that threatens to be an invasive only if we forget, or refuse to be the water carrier for the other.

Come join us in August when the Safety Pin Cafe opens itself to Water Catchers. In the meantime I may be found from time to time napping and refueling in that small golden wagon.

xo Mokihana and Pete

Turquoise Windows

"Tutu, tutu. Tell me a story."
"Your tutu is too tired to tell stories tonight, little girl."
"Oh, tutu. Please just one story. Tell me again. Tell me again about the windows.
Tell me that little story, tutu."

There were very few things the woman denied her granddaughter and to share a favorite story would soothe them both of course. Coco brown eyes and freshly washed hair on a child the size of a hand of Apple Bananas -- yes, this keiki girl was a small precious bundle -- nestled into the softness of her tutu's well-worn purple and white muumuu. The girl settled in for one little story.

Once upon a time tinkering was a valuable trait. In this society, everyone believed time was flexible and if one person had more of anything, sharing was common. People shared as easily as they breathed. No one worried much about anything, and everyone was happy with the amount and variety of foods they ate. They enjoyed the lives they lived and loved the homes in which they lived. They respected the funny and sometimes odd ways their families and neighbors spent time. Most importantly, people in this land liked who they were and weren't afraid to change things including themselves, when and if the need arose.

People's jobs fit them. Everyone earned just enough to live comfortably. No one had a lot of money, but there was always enough for everyone. People knew who tinkered with a car that wouldn't go, or a drain that gurgled shut rather than run. Tinkers were open and honest about their opinions, and weren't afraid to speak up. A person wasn't expected to be anything other than who they were, and you wouldn't think of asking anyone to be any different. A finely-developed ability to disagree without battling made life in this place exciting in a joyful way. A day and night in Tinkerland had more life lived in twenty-four hours than grains of sand in your back pocket after an afternoon of body surfing. Tinkers listened to what another person had to say, and if it took a week of Sundays to work out a compromise that was time well spent. Things, people and ideas changed often in Tinkerland.

The colorfully painted homes throughout this place made newcomers chuckle out loud. Visitors immediately noticed the whimsical slopes in the roofs of the tiny homes, slanted into water slides to catch rainwater in old shells of cars that no longer ran. Cleverly sculpted shapes of car tops, turned upside-down with windshields and windows rolled shut became catchment tanks for water. The cool temperatures and high peaks that surrounded this high-elevation community provided plenty of rain. The rain sustained the people, and Tinkers knew the rains came because there were trees to attract moisture in the first place, and not the other way around. Each home was as colorful as the brilliant flowers that shared space with the compact dwellings, and no two homes were painted exactly the same. The reds of Ohi'a lehua, the persistent reminder of the Tinker's connection with the Goddesses and Keepers of their land were captured in the paint pots used to tint many of the framed homes. Coats of golden sunshiny yellow reflected on houses tucked beneath the rough, spread of mango limbs left to grow into huge monuments of living oxygen-makers.

One thing that did repeat itself consistently in the color scheme throughout the township was the shades of blues and turquoise found around every Tinker's windows. Some folks still remember that the water shades of aqua-blues and turquoise are a constant reminder of a time long ago when Tinkers fell into a period of great despair. In that time of sadness and disjointedness, Tinkers lived with temporary spirit-loss, forgetting their place in the union of all things; accumulating more surpluses than the community could use in one cycle of the moon. The unfamiliar excess led to clenching reactions of guardedness, fear and finally greed. The easy sense of comfort and simple appreciation for one's day of glorious life turned to a pallor and dryness in the texture of people's skin matched in the drab colors of the homes Tinkers built in the Sad-times. Those people who suffered mostly severely from greed became bloated, constipated with hoarding ideas that eventually turned the normally light-hearted Tinker folks into Thinkers.

Fortunately, the trees, flowers, stones, water guardians and critter folks of Tinkerland watched this crippling turn of events and wouldn't put up with it any longer. A full turn of the Earth round the Sun was plenty enough foolishness for Those-who-watched, and there was a revolution. No one was hurt in the process, but things had to change. The trees, flowers, stones, water guardians and critter folks turned to th Ocean and the great Order of the Dolphins. A song of exquisite beauty came from the outstretched limbs of the giant mango trees, flute-like melodies rose from the centers of each flower, clicking percussion sounds from the stones and boulders added to the symphony and the winged-ones, many-footed ones and crawling critters gave their voices to the composition.

The Composition of Joy is the music dolphins sing. That's what Dolphins were made to do for humans ... remind them of their joy. One-by-one over a period of thirty nights the dolphins dreamed the constipated Tinkers through their obsession with thinking. The dreams reconnected each family of Tinkers with their watery beginnings, guiding them securely through the obstructions and hardened thinking. At the end of the thirtieth night, the men and women of Tinkerland woke with the sunrise and heard the beauty of the voices in Those-who-watched. They heard everything: the voice of the giant trees, the flute-like melodies of each flower, the clicking percussion sounds from the stones and boulders and the songs from the winged-ones, many-footed ones and crawling critters. The memory of aquamarine gradually replaced the dried nature of the kindly people. They remembered who they were, and have trimmed their windows -- the eyes of a home, in colors of the ocean ever since so they'll never forget.

"Good night, little one, sweet dreams."



This story was originally written and published in the December 16-31, 2002 Hawaii Island Journal as a Winter Solstice story of hope and unity. I've added a slightly modified version here as a Summer Solstice gift sixteen years later. Turquoise Windows is still one of my favorite little stories, and reminders of what's important. I hope you find it so for you, too. E Ola. 

At the picnic table on Samish Island. Thank you, Len!

Happy Summer Solstice and much aloha kakou!
Mokihana and Pete

DIY Fairy Tales

The golden wagon shows its aging face, weathered by the many winter storms wet and windy washing away the beeswax and milk paint that covers her slats of White Oak panels. When the season of mowing began in April I covered the south-facing windows to shield and seal against the cut grass and pollens that tamper with me.

An impulse tickled at me: Let in a little light, add a dose of magic and humor. I sliced frames into the sheets of aluminum covered paper and dangled a favorite card in the small window. A Mobile Home ... a dear mole pulls a curved shell on wheels. The similarity suits us. And, I love the reflection of the Tall Ones in the shiny-ness of the Denny Foil.

 Acres of grass fields is a funny place for someone with allergies and hay fever to park her home?

Isn't it though.

Still, the options for a a wandering pair like ourselves are pebble-size so we make the most of the choices and stir the pot of possibilities. You may or may not understand just what that means. But, let me say the magic of finding safety and root in that inner sense of self-worth takes a whole lot of imagination...and cooperation from the many seen and unseen.  If we were not living in this field on the prairie some might define us homeless.

"This too can be a special place, fostering a sense of self-worth, self-reliance, and responsibility, where respect and civility are cherished values." - "The Honolulu Homeless Project That Could Have Only Worked in Hawaii" by Duane Kurisu

The discerning reader will feel the pulse of a duality, or plurality, of stories as I post the pictures and the narrative of what happens when making hay, for someone with hay fever, takes on the glow of fun to create solutions.

There! See that Rex of a Guardian clinging to the boulders in front of a seemingly innocent vase of flowers? Good, that can only mean you are able and willing to see the necessary in between world that turns hay fever into gold.

Remember that old tale of Rumpelstiltskin? "Spin that straw into gold" and some promise of a happy ending gave us readers the hope in an improbable impossible outcome. Well, here is a hill of Thistles, not straw. A hill of Thistles pulled by hand over a couple days during the real and truly finished week lived here on the Prairie Front.

This hill of Thistles was rumbled down the road and up the hill to a herd of Big Sheep who ... unbelievable as it sounds to those who know such things about Sheep, love thistles. Pete drove his truck Bernadette to the the hungry Thistle-Eaters and not without many punctuates to his paws. Luckily he has a Dumpling of a woman who plucked her safety pin off her shirt and freed those infectious thorns from thumb and finger.

Thistle pulling was part of the necessary steps involved prior to calling on the big Petroleum eating machinery to cut down the tall grasses on the near or more than twenty acres that surround the Small Golden Wagon.  Whoa ... what to do and why do it?

"Is it the pollens?" the Mower Man asked.

"Yes, and more," answered the Dumpling woman.

The field of freshly mowed grasses could have flipped a switch of frenzy, but instead we packed up the trusty and intrepid Subaru named 'Scout' for a Road Trip of fun away from the making of hay. Where did we go for this?

 To one of our favorite beaches that faces west where the Salish Sea blows pollen-free and the beach filled with stones, pebbles and patterns of Earth made a bed of such magnificence.

Yes. That's the beach where pebbles, rocks, and stones stretch as far as you can see. And when it's a place that you need millions and billions of Tiny Points to touch you every where you can't get to alone? This place can do the math, do the medicine, make the magic clear the congestion and turn the tables on dispair.

While the Mower Man made hay I found on a bed of stones like the Border Witch who found herself with a Silver-haired Raven.

Cut grass in a field needs to 'cure' if it's not raked. Twenty acres of field is more than our man Pete could manage. The afternoon away was not quite enough to restore our selves and souls so we gratefully accepted an invitation to head for Samish Island. Where friends awaited us ... See what we did on Saturday. All Saturday.

Our friend Linda Good and Pete parked on a bench on the beach.

Linda and Pete and Len Good with a bag filled with his 'magic striking stones.' Hopefully, Len will read this post and the real story behind those sparkling stones will get to this blog to add some science to the magic of a meandering tale.

These friends are, among other talents, storytellers and musicians. Check it.

We had a grand little time playing my one four-chord mele 'White Sandy Beaches, Gentle Breezes.'

And then Linda and Len joined in.

And then ... Linda left the picnic table to sing to the neighbors.

The mountains north and east include Kulshan or Mt. Baker tucked under the clouds.

Where as we sat a rainbow grew slowly and steadily before the sun began it's sinking exit in the West.

Though we hoped it might be possible to spend an overnight in the seaside cabin, or stretch ourselves into the back of the Subaru as we have in years past, neither choice was doable. Instead, we bid our lovely friends 'Aloha and much mahalo,' handed off two bunches of Bok Choy and headed back to the Golden Wagon on the prairie.

It was a long and taxing drive for the old dears challenged by the late hour and the MANY many other cars with blazing head lights and impatient drivers on the road, but, with luck and the blessings of Red Hibiscus offered to the journey and the Ancestors we made it safely back at midnight. With gratitude and tiredness we shuffled our clean clothes from the bed into the back of the car, trading places with the quilts climbed onto the futon with that dangling card at our heads and tucked ourselves into a deep sweet sleep.

Ahhh ... the gold of a good sleep is something the birds know intimately. They wake with morning birdsong that can only mean: "Oh yes, thank you we get another day on this magnificent planet!"

The smell of cut fields was still large. Our traveling adventure was only half way through, and the juggling of pieces in this Rumpelstiltskin were still in play. It was a Sunday morning. A Sunday Farmers' Market would take place within a few hours. Like Elves in another one of those old tales Pete moved tables and benches from one place to another on yet another stretch of freshly-cut lawn to help with the setting up for the market to come.

The arrangement we have here on this place called Tilth involves a weekly rearrangement of our living spaces. A cubby where we hang our clothes or dry them after we wash them while also giving us a privy of convenience converts to a public restroom for vendors and visitors on the weekend. A kitchen used for making meals and sitting somewhere other than inside the Golden Wagon transforms into the Laughing Cat Cafe.

The Long and Tall Elf is most responsible for all this 'straw into gold' Rumplelstilskin-ness. He did his magic and we packed ourselves up for a ferry ride and headed south.
To EASY STREET ...

The joint was hoppin' and every body was talkin' there on Easy Street. We signed in for a table for 2, took a few laps (the West Seattle Farmers' Market was in full swing) while we waited. The cellphone rang and it was our son CKB calling from Pu'uPohakuloa He'ia on Hawaii Moku. He was about to take a walk under the Pele-red sky. We talked, me on the busy sidewalks of urban West Seattle and he on an island where Tutu was making new land.

We never did get that table for 2 but DID instead find two stools at the end of the bar where the record store and city diner that inspired yet another fairy tale fed us pan cakes, crispy bacon, two eggs over easy (they call this the Dolly Parton) with real maple syrup. I wanted blueberries too, but our waiter explained, "So sorry, we stop adding blueberries at 11." No worries, the Dolly filled me good and plenty. And the L & T Elf had big breakfast sort of bean-eggs and salsa-ish burrito dish with cups of good buzz coffee. 

With bellies filled and our souls satisfied with conversations and content for stories yet to come, we walked a few more laps through the West Seattle Farmers' Market, chatted with one of the vendors we know from our Whidbey Whirl of farmers at markets and continued with our DIY fairy tale.

 The International District and Uwajimaya was swarming. We wound our way into the Pioneer Square District where excited fans were heading to a Father's Day Mariner's baseball game,

then stepped into the cool air-conditioner land of Asian consumer heaven of Uwajimaya  for a bag of frozen Haleiwa Brand poi, Daifuku Red Bean Cakes (mochi) with black and brown sesame seeds, Mung Bean threads (long rice), a packet of smoked wild Coho salmon and a small handful of new cards to mail to lucky friends and family.

We arrived back on the prairie with our tale mostly told sometime near five Sunday afternoon. The lit message in our Subaru tells us to "Check Your Engine." With all our wanderings, it's time for some maintenance of our trusty 'Scout.' The hay is curing nicely, still fragrant though less inciting, time does flow and a Monday morning is well on her way. 

Our man the Tall and Lean elf is a collector of mementos. If you are lucky enough to see the stash of tiny treasures that fill his compact boxes of precious memories you would be surprised and delighted at what counts for gold in his world. Lucky me.

And among his treasures: cartoons. This is one of his favorites.

Life is one crazy kind of adventure. Fairy tale or personal nightmare? The trick or the trickster is out there with the flip of a card in the last, or the next game of solitaire. Stories do hold us together or chop us up into disconnected versions of helplessness. If there is choice, and free will always an option the DIY version I love is the one that mixes things up well and good. Like this one lived all over the Salish World.

A little bit of planning, a lot of looking out for the clues to magic alive and well and respect for the abundance with lots of saying, "Thanks!"

How's your fairy tale shapin' up?

Low-key toxin-free resolution

"The temptation to overdramatize is strong. Going through with a splashy but messy  conclusion may have a perverse appeal. But why not wrap things up with an elegant whisper  instead of a garish bang? Rather than impressing everyone with how amazingly complicated  your crazy life is, why not quietly lay the foundations for a low-key resolution that will set the stage for a productive sequel? Taking the latter route will be much easier on your karma, and  in my opinion will make for just as interesting a story."  - Free Will Astrology for Scorpio this week "Let go and let God. Let go and thank the Goddesses." "Congratulations on the work you've done to cleanse the psychic toxins from your soul,  Cancerian. I love how brave you've been as you've jettisoned outworn shticks, inadequate  theories, and irrelevant worries. It makes my heart sing to have seen you summon the  self-respect necessary to stick up for your dreams in the face of so many confusing signals.  I do feel a tinge of sadness that your heroism hasn't been better appreciated by those around  you. Is there anything you can do to compensate? Like maybe intensify the appreciation you  give yourself? " - Free Will Astrology for Cancer this week

Poppies on the Prairie and a Fish Dinner

 Palm-sized Purple Poppy Popped in our garden

I made open-faced sandwiches made with fresh fennel baked Rocked Fish dunked in cornmeal and black sesame seeds on top of a  simple slice of Essential Pan du George (a whole wheat bread) with a side dish of sweet melt-in-your-mouth sliced Garnet Yams already baked in olive oil. The fresh horseradish root was there to be sniffed to clear sinuses.

All of this was happening while Pete did this ... pulling one of those Invasive Species with thorns.

It was just that kind of day.

And how about you?

This place renamed

A blog allows an unfolding and changing journey to be told as story living itself out in real-time. This blog, and another before, have been a place -- virtual as it is, to share the amazing journey of a small golden wagon and her people.

We built a very small home to learn how to live with Environmental Illness or MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivities). It has been ten years since we began handling a dream a vision made physical and attached her to a 1966 Dodge 1 ton truck we named Bernadette.

Vardo for Two is the name we gave to this place, and it is with the greatest of respect for the Romani that we use the word, and name, Vardo. Too often people have called her a 'Gypsy Wagon' and too often we have gone along with that description. But it is not; and the Romani would not appreciate the use of that phrase.

We designed this place with the Travellers (the Romani) as inspiration ... not as a way to steal a piece of their history or culture ... but, perhaps to connect with the spirit of a People who know how to be intimate with the Land where they are, wherever they. Throughout their long time on the planet their ways have not been well-received by the Settled. We have ten years of experiencing many versions of being received by the Settled; we are initiated with tattoos seen and unseen.

She, this place we live in is a golden wagon for two old people with the blood of Hawaiian-Filipino-Chinese and Polish-Ukrainian-Irish ancestors running through our bodies. We are makua o'o, elders-in-training and this blog is a place to read about life from a golden wagon with the Settled.

What do you see?
A Small Golden Wagon. 

What's the story?
At one time this was part of the story.

And then ... 

The answer we got, was "NO." Not now. Not there.

For now, we negotiate and navigate life from our Small Golden Wagon, make amends if we have used a name, and stolen a bit of magic without permission and give gratitude to the People of the Roads, the Romani, and offer this ongoing story as a gift to all who read here.

Like the Faceless Woman from the medicine story The Safety Pin Cafe we are in a place of unhinging; we need to unhinge and unplug for awhile so don't be surprised when we disappear.

Can you relate?

Any questions? 

Caretakers' Culture and PowWow

The plants are fully-leafed; the grasses rise like flags with their seeded heads adding pollens to the season of rebirth; fledglings fly over head and on the heels of their parents looking to be fed, Mother Eagle targets the resident hens; and our two-on-the-prairie world of the winter changes as human people and activities fill the Prairie Front and South Whidbey Tilth.  

In the traditions of my Ancestors a Caretakers' Culture builds upon the shoulders and foundation of  love and respect for the 'aina -- the land and all the beings who interconnect--, people being part of that connection but not reigning over any of the others. On a regular and cyclical basic there are ceremonies, rituals, and prayers of asking for permission and listening for answers, before assuming my needs entitle me to what I want.

I look to the elemental forms for guidance: notice the wind and his direction, notice the clouds as they change and now that Pele is fierce in her molten-making activity I feel the movement of change internally though Hawaii Island is more than 1,200 miles away. That distance still travels the same 'skin and gut' of the same body ... Earth.

Clouds overhead on Whidbey Island

Clouds forming as lava flows into the ocean near Pahoa on the island of Hawaii days a go.

Living with Environmental Illness and allergies sharpen my awareness of Ancestral protocols. In many respects my body moves so much differently than the pace of my contemporaries, and we, Pete and I,  learn to anticipate how one action will affect the next and that string of choices and actions may cost me hours, days or months of recovery unless I/we ask for clarification before hand. With the grace of the gods, loyal allies and timely breaks, road trips and helpful dreams we make it through. Sometimes there's collateral damage when the communication is messy and a do over and course correction is the way.

The month of May has been a time of steep learning curves negotiating with many people who have a culture set in their patterns.  I appreciated reading and applying the new-to-me writing of a young woman, Sarah, who observed "How to Approach the different Astrological Sun Signs" (Water: Scorpio, Cancer, Pisces; Fire: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius,  Air: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius; Earth: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn.) Astrology is one of the sources I turn to and tap a broad view of navigation metaphorically and practically.

Pete and I are both Water signs but not the same water sign. It helped me to remember that. Adjustments are sometimes difficult, especially when they come at us quickly, and we haven't had time to get our bearings before the next wave of change comes at us. To be in sync while we cross this new territory of negotiating with more than one or two people at a time, I felt the need to check the water level of my most intimate and trusted partner: How much reserve energy did we each have? How much energy did we have collectively?

In particular, I embraced Sarah's observations about Water signs when she wrote,

"Water signs, Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces are very receptive to feelings.." She clarified. "That’s not to say water signs don’t have the ability to be rational or don’t have the ability to take in a thought or anything like that. We all have different charts with different placements in different elements that make up our own personalities. From a very basic stand point though, when you’re dealing with a water signs they will most likely do best when someone comes to them from a feeling place first. They need it to be detailed and filled with feeling so they can feel it too."

PowWow vendor had just the earrings I have sought for a long time ... to celebrate and decorate hearing ... the heartbeat of the Drums (the heart beat of the culture)

The odd magic of this time, when adaptation is paramount to survival, came as my Scorpio body wisely closes one of the senses in order to feel my way through the rough tides. For weeks through May and into June the onslaught of pollens have shut down my hearing; this is not the first time my ears have done this. To deal with the external world, I must listen from within. These ears are no small funnels of collection. These are elephant's ears, and they have a knowing that goes to old places for refuge.

June will bring more change to the partnership we have with the South Whidbey Tilth Community. I asked a good friend who is also a Buddhist Priestess living with Environmental Illness (and a Leo Sun-sign) to offer me  counsel and insight. She wrote her reflections and allowed me to see into her circumstances. I felt her message. I was moved, provoked were my heart and mind to act on crafting an agreement, a contract to describe a Caretakers' Culture. In part she wrote:

"Community is a very interesting and fluid subject, and these are extremely potent and challenging times to connect with others.  There is definitely more urgency now.   You are very lucky to be living on Whidbey, where folks, by and large are stable and oriented towards sustainability.  Our situations are perhaps different in focus;  you and Pete are becoming an integral part of an existing community, and need to adapt to their standards, and figure out how to evolve them.   Though I have been active in various Buddhist communities both here and in Japan and even on the outskirts now of one allied Tibetan Buddhist community here in Portland, I largely am interacting with just a few members of that community because of health boundary, not the community at large at public meetings and gatherings ... I need to create and lead a new visioning of place and boundaried community that will be welcoming and contributive to those interested in Buddhism and seamlessly meet my environmental health needs and not make a separation because of illness, neither denying or focusing on suffering, limitation, etc. (my emboldened emphasis)We canaries have to create a new good enough regenerative/sustainable normal for everyone, as pretty much everyone is on the path to becoming ill." - Mahalo nui and aloha in all ways to our friend for permission to use this quote here!

To ride the waves of this changing culture on the Prairie Front it helps to have places and people we can go to sit with, laugh with, dance with and feel an embrace of acceptance; feel the heartbeat of connectivity. And especially during the hours of being inside at the Annual Tulalip Veterans PowWow, in spite of congested ears I could hear and feel the deep resonance of the drum's heart beat.

Inimitable.

It's important for most of us beings to be reassured as new definitions of interaction and interactivity challenge the used-to-be. Another old friend gave me this useful tip as I listened to her with one slightly unclogged ear: "Find a way to chill and calm. Enough to feel the magic. Then, be the magic."

One Saturday in May we sought out good friends on Whidbey to share laughs; lunch-- Star Store croissants filled with sliced meat and avocado--; a four-chord ukulele melody and lyrics about white sandy beaches; and watched as Pelicans flew over in their straight row. A week later (just yesterday), we drove to the Clinton ferry dock boarded the Tokitae and headed for the Tulalip Rez for PowWow.

West Beach fun ... thank you Martin, Teri and Cindy.

We arrived at the gymnasium just before 1:00 PM where the crowd of audience, family, dancers, and drummers gathered. We stood at the doorway. Pete from his higher perch of a position said, "The seats look pretty much booked." I stood in front of him. I felt the magic building even as my ears were closed against so much other sounds, I could hear the heart. Without turning to see where Pete was my feet took me across the floor weaving through gathering dancers, the direction of the M.C. and the seemingly fully occupied bleachers.

There at the base of the bleachers were two very narrow unblanketed (markers/place holders) places for two tiny butts like Pete and mine to fit. I laid my markers down (my cushion and my straw hat) and looked back at the doorway to signal to Pete but the ceremony was beginning and I could not catch his eye.

For ninety minutes I sat next to a family of dancers and singers and within inches of the drum and the drummers. I watched the dancers as they helped each other with their regalia -- fashioning security to a moccasin using masking tape worked; the back and forth contact between members of that family their facial features marked them; I watched. For the next ninety minutes my heart opened generously and appreciately to the magic of the Drum, the Voices, the spirit of family and the collective soul.

When Roxanne White, organizer and voice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women took the microphone and spoke of the many who are taken from this world as though they are invisible I heard. A blanket was spread on the gymnasium floor and anyone and everyone was invited to put what they could to raise funds to help the cause. Then Roxanne sang and then led the audience in dance. The M.C. opened the dancing to everyone who has been affected or been in an abusive situation. I rose from my place and joined her. There was a place for me to add my presence. I danced!

Almost fifty years ago when I was a newly-arrived and transplanted woman from Hawaii,  25 years old, my first job was that of a Head Start teacher here on this same Tulalip Reservation. I had so much to learn, history yet to realize was lost; and so many lessons to discover. This gymnasium was a vision of future magic. These people of Tulalip and all the tribes who came to join them would relearn and restore their cultures to a vibrant and ever evolving Caretakers' Culture. This one happening now ...

When I finally did find Pete he said he had been sleeping on the grass outside, prone and stretched fully on the Earth with his eyes shut. He felt the drums. He felt the heart. He felt the beat. He said he heard one of the dancers comment, "I was flying." With one less source of stimulation (sight), Pete could feel the concentrated magic.

We water signs found our way -- personal paths -- to the magic.

UPDATE: I have removed the videos of Saturday's Pow Wow, and correct my enthusiasm for the power of the event out of respect for the singers, dancers and people because I didn't ask permission before hand. Many people photographed and recorded throughout ... I was swept up and was excited to share our experience.

My apologies for any disrespect to the culture and the protocols. I know better, best to practice knowledge, integrate the potential into wisdom to come or what am I really about?

E kala mai au. Mokihana