Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Holding dreams worth living


"Throughout our lives, transitions require that we ask for help and allow ourselves to yield to forces stronger than our wills or our egos' desires. As transitions take place during our later years, a fundamental and primal shift from ambition to meaning occurs.
With this shift comes an initial restlessness, irritability, anxiety, or discontent with our current situation, and a deep questioning of the motivation surrounding our choices in career and relationships. Everything comes up for review." - Angeles Arrien

We are there. A fundamental and primal shift from ambition to meaning has been happening for us for many, many years. The sift is not something that happens once, nor does the process happen fast. The second half of life as Angeles Arrien describes in The Second Half of Life Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom is a time for 'threshold work', rites of passage that begin around the fiftieth year; it's a long story long if that's the way of things. At this point being 71 years old, with Pete's 70th birthday coming in July we consider seven decades pretty long. Both of us at different times have said "I'm amazed to be alive today." The way has been rough often and our choices risky and unconventional. But wow, what an adventure. To be alive now, the issue of shifting from ambition to meaning does mean everything comes up for review.

I'm back at the keys after a mindful break, reopening the blog because Pete and I have made a significant step forward in our long story. We have bought THE TRUCK! And then, pieces of our unfolding lives fell into place with divine interventions.

The Big Ass Yellow Truck

A year and six months ago, our friend Maurine sent us the card above. The card has dangled in various windows or walls of the vardo, weathered by the sun on the Prairie Front, holding the dream, while the gifts of money provided us a reassuring cushion as we made our way to get there.



I sent an email to a good pal back on Hawaii Island: "We bought a big ass yellow truck to pull us into the future, so the dream of coming your way in July will need to wait for another July. Like this truck, we gathered resources for a year and a half and finally (fingers crossed) this 1979 Ford is part of the Good News Process. I appreciate your confidence in the heART we pour into this life we create! We aren't sure what will unfold but the dream is to be creative with the journey and make Earth a little better having been here!"
While the truck was coming our way I filled the pages of this blog with over two hundred posts -- pictures, stories links and experiences. We were parked on the rise on the prairie along a busy Whidbey Island highway. We had many experiences to juggle, edging god out (ego) played hard ball on all sides of the borders; our relationship with conflict and differences were reformulating us. Our version of being creative is not often valued, but our initiations to the many rites of passage are constant; becoming an elder is the long story and I'm grateful for the complexity even while frequently stymied.

Wants and needs

A small but tenacious glow of hope within me wants to be able to return to Hawaii. When the way gets rough or windy or cold here in the Pacific Northwest that small spark tempts us. But you can't always get want you want.


I return to the film, the faces, the lessons and ancestors who are depicted in The Cave of the Yellow Dog and find room between the wants that will not cease, and the needs that are practical. At this stage and real-time now it is so important for Pete and me to secure our home (this small golden wagon) in a way that is more like my Mongolian Nomad ancestors. Though we will do it differently, the creative inspiration makes room for a dream to manifest.


Recently an email came to me with words and an attachment that said, "Could be interesting." A friend of my son has written a paper about ritual and traditions that can and do transplant divine act(s). The paper was written in Paris. The ritual, the traditions are Hawaiian. The tradition written of is Hawaiian dance, hula. The divinity at the core of this written discourse, is Hi'iakaikapoliopele, more commonly known as Hi'iaka younger sister of the fire goddess Pele.

Hi'iaka's story, her epic journey in my Hawaiian culture fuels me at deep and mysterious ways. Her journey was an initiation journey. Her chanting, her specific footsteps embed memory in those of us with ancestral connection. The fact that I remain so far from the islands of my birth still matters, the longing is undiluted (that small and tenacious glow), feeling homesick a low grade fever. But my mundane (everyday) experiences seed me with unlikely reminders that 'ritual travels.' My gods and goddesses are loyal! My job is to remember to remember. Kuleana (responsibilities and rights). Maile's Paper, as we now refer to that Paris originated communication, engages me with new cross-hybrid translations.

What does a goddess's initiation and our current saga from the bunny campground in Langley have to do with 'holding dreams worth living'? Let's just keep this ramble going and get ...

Back to the truck ... 

We used all the money we'd saved to buy the big ass yellow truck. The money was a well-earned gift designated to buy the right truck. The truck came with a name: Banana Split. Cute enough name, but we're thinking she needs a new name. Maybe? Maybe as you read this post and get a feel for how this Golden Wagon World turns today you'll have an inspiration about a name. Great! Send it this way, we're having a contest for the best name. Leave your suggestion in the comments, or reply in the email we've sent to get you back into our bloggie new blasts!

That will be fun.  Getting you involved in "Rename the Big Ass Yellow Truck" Contest. Yeh.


While I took a break from writing here,  the work of tending to the details involved in holding a dream of a chemical and fragrance free everyday life from a small golden wagon has been the necessary work. Good. Hard. Work. Not without irritation and anxiety, Pete and I are making progress. Our bodies are old. No doubt about it. Aches and pain? Oh sure. But we are open to the intervention of forces greater than ourselves. When we got down to the business of growing up to the reality of our lives: sitting together to look at our daily, weekly and monthly income and expenses we were able to see how to help ourselves. And, where we did not have enough resources to help ourselves we had to ask for help.

Within hours the angels and different angles on the problems showed up!

    Pete has been busy building a small 4 foot by 8 foot portable kitchen area off the porch of the vardo'. Many steps involved in fabricating that necessary sheltered area where we are able to cook and prepare food out of the wind and rain.

    We can stay at the Langley Fairgrounds Campground through June.

    If you look closely at the steps, you might notice how Pete has shortened the width of these steps taking several inches off the original. The cooking and preparation area (see the stove) will be to the left of the steps facing the vardo's front door. The idea is to set up the four metal sides when we are camped for long-stays (a month) and use the porch kitchen set-up for short-stays.

    Porch kitchen set up

    We have a reservation at Bruceport County Park, in South Bend Washington for the month of July. That gives us a specific place to go, and two months to get a lot more work done to prepare for our first trip with the big ass yellow truck doing the towing (and stowing. The moveable walls and our very pared down 'stuff' will go in that truck). Bruceport County Park has a sentimental and historic significance for us. It was that park Pete and I camped at during the fall of 2007 after I was diagnosed with MCS. We were driving south from Anacortes to San Sebastapol California to attend one of the first Tiny Home Building workshops given by Jay Shafer (Mr. Tiny Homes). With that journey south we would piece together the early threads of a dream to live in the golden wagon. The story really is a long and weaving one!


    Shifting blogging gear

    This blog and the more than twenty four blogs and stories I have written since 2008 have been my form of non-profit service. While we built the wagon, Vardo For Two, I shared the details of what it was like to live in a basement kitchen, sleeping on cardboard on the floor, while we learned how to adapt to an illness that was without a cure. The process of choosing safe materials was pioneering stuff. While we made our way through, Pete built, I learned to blog.

    In 2017, I started writing A Golden Wagon after we dared to believe we would pack up the wagon, our Subaru, and a truck and move back to Hawaii. Through the posts we were able to raise enough money to do that. But. The place for us in Hawaii did not open herself to us. It was not time, we weren't given permission. We asked, and the answer was "No."

    "ask for help and allow ourselves to yield to forces stronger than our wills or our egos' desires. As transitions take place during our later years, a fundamental and primal shift from ambition to meaning occurs."
    With the big ass yellow truck parked not far from the Golden Wagon, waiting for the next steps that will license her and pay her way on the highways of Washington state ... I make a shift in my writing.
    Keep an eye on this site, A Golden Wagon ... and you will see some of the stories remain free posts and others will be not-quite-free. Myth and Story Medicine the name of my income-generating blog gives my readers and supporters a chance to buy my heART felt medicine. Still tuned for that, too.

     

    Our new life hitched to the big ass yellow truck will mean new challenges, new expenses and support from as many patrons and supporters as we can gather. This post is the start of my new approach to making and offering my heART. We don't need a lot of money to live, but we need more than our social security checks provide us.








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    Our mailing address
    Mokihana Calizar and Pete Little
    P.O. BOX 483
    Langley, Washington 98260

    Mahalo nui to our angels, supporters and readers for your faith and care
    Wish us Happy Trails!
    Moki and Pete







    2 comments:

    1. Perhaps Sunbeam? or Sunlight Before Vardo?

      ReplyDelete
    2. We'll add your Sunny names to the pot of growing possibilities. Glad to hear from you, Elaine! xo Me

      ReplyDelete