He puko'a kani 'aina: Out of the woods; the inspiration to risk; the reasons to connect

"... With the Moon in Leo Friday and Saturday, ask yourself – how does this make me feel? What makes you feel vital is where you will want to go. If something feels as though it makes you smaller, less vital, alter your steering. Let it all sink in without rushing to judgement. What feels validating is the right direction..." - Satori

Saturday was road trip day. We headed for Olympia with a stop in Lacey first to be with our friends Joan and Lana. These are long-time friends I first met when I wore a suit, sat in corporate board rooms and collected a salary from a drugstore company. That is a long time friendship that has spanned not just the career shifts but also the decades of aging and becoming, unraveling and stitching together ... and staying friends as change has made us feel every sort of feel.

To get to Olympia we mostly woods-like people had to navigate the freeway where:

65 was just a suggestion
75, 80, 85 was more like it
MPH that is

When we were done with the ride to and from my dreams still raced, trying, I think, to catch up with myself who was lying still.

 We sat and ate Artichoke and Salmon Quiches in Traditions Restaurant in Olympia.

... the macaroons were delicious.

After lunch we stepped into the 2017 Olympia Zine Fest to experience the DIY publishing world of small magazines (zines). I towed my oxygen tank and ceramic mask into the large building, knowing it was a risk to be among a crowd of mostly very young zine fans and zine writers with product and fragrances etc.

We purchased two zines. The first because of its title Radical Nuns. The title made me laugh from behind my mask. The young woman (Cait Olds) behind the table was trying to eat her lunch when I said, "We live with a radical nun." Pete added, "She was the body guard for Angela Davis." The young woman put down her lunch and started to write down the name of our radical nun.

Empathy Exercise (Her comic on blindness and classroom practices, "Empathy Exercise" was presented as a lightning talk at the 2017 Comics & Medicine conference in Seattle, WA. )written and drawn by M. Sabine Rear is a black and white printed zine on heavy stock. I liked the differently sized zine but it was the recommendation for the zine that led me to buy it. I was looking at a pink-red zine with a line of spoons progressively bending and entitled Bending Spoons: A Field Guide to Ableist Microaggressions (2015). I chuckled behind my mask and said, "I really like this. It's good." Not very original commentary, but I did and it was good. The woman dressed in black (not the creator of the zine) said, "Oh if you like that you should look at this." I did. I read through the small zine about blindness slowly, but it read quickly. It was $2. "Do you need some tax with that?" I asked. "No tax." 

The back cover of M. Sabine Rear's Empathy Exercise zine

Introduction to Radical Nuns by Cait Olds

Microcosm Publishing is "Portland's most colorful, authentic, and empowering publishing house and distributor, Microcosm Publishing is a vertically integrated publishing house that equips readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and bookettes about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice. The then-distro and record label was started by Joe Biel in his bedroom in 1996 and is now among the oldest independent publishing houses in Portland, OR. Microcosm focuses on relating the experiences of what it's like to be a marginalized person. We constantly strive to be recognized for our spirit, creativity, and value. Our books are printed in the U.S. on post-consumer papers while we double the industry standard in our number of women authors.
Radical Nuns is published by Microcosm Publishing.

We brought gifts for our old friends: fresh ingredients to make pot roast with every color vegetable we could find. It was a surprise, unexpected sort of gift. Joan asked, "Do you want me to cook this for you?" "No," I said with a pang of heart singing. "This is for you folks. A lovely meal with sodas and beer."

These final two photo were in my email on Sunday. "Roasting up your gifts" was the title. Joan and I have cooked hundreds, probably thousands, of meals in our various pots with fresh vegetables, as well as frozen with roasted, baked and stewed meats of of varying sizes for families, friends and strangers. It's one of the things we do: cook! What was the most fun for me was to come to the decision to assemble the box of ingredients knowing the love for our old friends would get cooked up with the moments of our road trip: out of the woods, inspiration to risk, and reasons to connect.

Over time we all go through, or get caught up, in the hard times that bring us to our knees. Somehow the downward pressure finds that internal strength that is resilience, stubbornness, adaptability, passion. We get up again. The age difference between us and the young zinesters at the Olympia Zine Fest is decades wide. Pete and I were the oldest ones there, and I was the only one toting a 02 tank wearing a ceramic mask. I wasn't able to stay more than a half an hour maybe. We didn't check the time or look at our cellphones for that detail.

What we did experience was the vitality of a day lived fully from manic freeway frenzy (why are these people driving so fast?),finding a few more fresh (we needed purple, orange and red) veggies at the Oly Coop, shopping for a six-pack of beer in Fred Meyer's, and then walking into a restaurant, sitting down to eat and enjoy company (only moving once to avoid the whiff of Patchouli-scented candles from the gift shop), and finally opening the doors to our first dose of  'festival' in many years. Crowds are not our usual venue. It made no never mind though for a while the crowd was just one part of a day in our lives.

Zine is the scene I've wanted to know for a very long time: it was the buzz and the hands-on flavor I was after. To get there, I guess it was believing that was part of the way to Elsewhere. Not a bad way to go, and worth the extra bit of planning and shock of life outside my comfort zone. I learned somethings. We had some laughs. And are inspired to keep at this idea of putting that trip to Elsewhere into a differently-sized zine of our own.


Stay tuned.

Thanks jt and Lana, it was a great Saturday with friends!

xoxo Mokihana and Pete