It's early Monday morning, but I climbed into bed before Bruddah Ace ended his beautiful Da Coconut Wireless tribute to Cyril Pahinui. The Waimanalo-born Hawaiian slack key artist and beloved musician passed away of cancer a week ago at the age of 68. The music was old style, nahenahe sweet, just our kind of style and though I love the music, sometimes the memories that swarm from between the melodies are just too much for me to manage in large doses.
I've had several hours sleep. Last night's soup (veggie chowder with salmon) is warming on the burner. I've done my morning writing meditation and been to my favorite online sites already. The morning is well on the way.
A beautiful new to me print, Storyteller, drawn and watercolored by Rima Staines leans against the old flannel curtain. The deep colors and etched faces of a band of enchanted folk are listening to the storyteller who speaks in circles of ancient symbols. I note the details, as is so much of what Rima does with her work ... tucked in the details in full view ... leaving interpretation up to the receivers. I see the tattoo that marks the storyteller's chin; black marks that follow the curve of her timeless face, and recognize the repetition designs Maori-like markings curling above her head like a helmet. Tatau, tattoo. Rima is a woman of Devon in England's far southern elements, but her name and some of her story includes New Zealand, Aotearoa. I feel a kinship as a woman of the Pacific I am.
The new print is a birthday present sent to me by my friend Joan. We have been friends for what three decades now? Sometime between my lifetime as nearly-divorced and newly-partnered we met and lunched on stacks of nachos and told our stories. The mythic times were still in-the-making when we first met. The Wherever you go-ness of our journeys still early in the simmering. Sending me the first pieces Rima Staines's art when Pete and I were building Vardo for Two was a knot, a reconnection -- a source of potential -- in my thread, a continuing journey that had no surety or guarantees. More was to come, but was I willing to live the future wildly?
Rima Staines would introduce me to the whirl of travelers, present-day wanderers building a home on wheels, carrying stories and feeding the wild god with their dreaming. An old friend watched my life unraveling and from the edges she offered me art as medicine: "Don't spit in the eyes of the Old Ones," she'd tell me more than once when I refuse to see the Universe's pictographs. "Write!"
To celebrate the gift, I write. I write my Friends, the Trees, the Birds, the Sounds, the Unlikely encounters into stories. I have written that gift-giving friend into the magic and medicine of stories to feed me when my faith faltered. As I take the slow and necessary steps to gather a collection of stories written when Pete and I were new to each other but so close to the old roots and ghosts of my childhood, I need to remember to live the myth. The medicine of story is in the wild edges where sense seems no sense and adapting to a sick society no measure of health (Kristamurti).
This is a post of gratitude and one to encourage belief in an unfolding path. Returning to Terri Windling's post "Trailing Story" and quotes from Martin Shaw:
Looking over my shoulder, just a little, to those months spent sleeping on the floor of the White Center Kitchenette, building a home with no blueprint in a makeshift basement space ... the comforts of that present were often lost. If we didn't take time to appreciate where we were, I doubt we would have made it to our present Wherever.
Astrologically Elsa P. sent her newsletter today and said this is a day in a week of much support. In an older post of reassurance Elsa entitled her musings, "Wherever You Go ... Your People Are There." It's a quirky and optimistic twist to "Wherever you go, you'll be there" or something similar. I like the story Elsa told. And, really love the heck out of the timing. That post was written in May, 2008 at about the same time Pete and I showed up in a basement kitchenette wondering what our story would do with us.
The long story is long. Do you find yourself with your people, and has Creator given you clues to find them?
I've had several hours sleep. Last night's soup (veggie chowder with salmon) is warming on the burner. I've done my morning writing meditation and been to my favorite online sites already. The morning is well on the way.
A beautiful new to me print, Storyteller, drawn and watercolored by Rima Staines leans against the old flannel curtain. The deep colors and etched faces of a band of enchanted folk are listening to the storyteller who speaks in circles of ancient symbols. I note the details, as is so much of what Rima does with her work ... tucked in the details in full view ... leaving interpretation up to the receivers. I see the tattoo that marks the storyteller's chin; black marks that follow the curve of her timeless face, and recognize the repetition designs Maori-like markings curling above her head like a helmet. Tatau, tattoo. Rima is a woman of Devon in England's far southern elements, but her name and some of her story includes New Zealand, Aotearoa. I feel a kinship as a woman of the Pacific I am.
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| Storyteller by Rima Staines |
The new print is a birthday present sent to me by my friend Joan. We have been friends for what three decades now? Sometime between my lifetime as nearly-divorced and newly-partnered we met and lunched on stacks of nachos and told our stories. The mythic times were still in-the-making when we first met. The Wherever you go-ness of our journeys still early in the simmering. Sending me the first pieces Rima Staines's art when Pete and I were building Vardo for Two was a knot, a reconnection -- a source of potential -- in my thread, a continuing journey that had no surety or guarantees. More was to come, but was I willing to live the future wildly?
Rima Staines would introduce me to the whirl of travelers, present-day wanderers building a home on wheels, carrying stories and feeding the wild god with their dreaming. An old friend watched my life unraveling and from the edges she offered me art as medicine: "Don't spit in the eyes of the Old Ones," she'd tell me more than once when I refuse to see the Universe's pictographs. "Write!"
To celebrate the gift, I write. I write my Friends, the Trees, the Birds, the Sounds, the Unlikely encounters into stories. I have written that gift-giving friend into the magic and medicine of stories to feed me when my faith faltered. As I take the slow and necessary steps to gather a collection of stories written when Pete and I were new to each other but so close to the old roots and ghosts of my childhood, I need to remember to live the myth. The medicine of story is in the wild edges where sense seems no sense and adapting to a sick society no measure of health (Kristamurti).
This is a post of gratitude and one to encourage belief in an unfolding path. Returning to Terri Windling's post "Trailing Story" and quotes from Martin Shaw:
"You know what it is: you have to let a story have its way with you. You can’t tell the story what it is. You learn to sit in the radiance of it until something comes from the story that disturbs you or bugs you or makes you happy, until you have to do something with it. "
Story is first. You have to be in the presence of the story, which I regard as a living being: it’s a wild animal; it’s got tusks, udders; it’s got a tail; it doesn’t behave; half the time you want it to be there it’s disappeared, it’s shuffled off somewhere else. Stories should be filled with so much consequence and danger, they won’t behave for your polemic."When I was sitting on the floor writing my first blog posts in White Center, this bit of art arrived to open a vein in my frightened heart. Funny creature warming big feet by an open fire while telling stories to trees. Ha!?
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| Telling stories to trees by Rima Staines |
Looking over my shoulder, just a little, to those months spent sleeping on the floor of the White Center Kitchenette, building a home with no blueprint in a makeshift basement space ... the comforts of that present were often lost. If we didn't take time to appreciate where we were, I doubt we would have made it to our present Wherever.
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| Enjoying a late summer Sunday at the Farmers' Market, 2018 |
The long story is long. Do you find yourself with your people, and has Creator given you clues to find them?
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