'Aha Update: Full Moon Gathering on The Prairie Front, Sunday, December 3, 2017

If we are lucky the sky will clear enough for us to see Hoku, one of the four Full Moons (when counting in the Hawaiian way) and super moon rise Sunday evening at 5 PM. It's a 'super moon' because the moon is close to the Earth at this time, and is the last 'super moon' of 2017.

Astrologically, Sunday's Full Moon in the sign of Gemini has this potential, according to Elsa Panizzon:

"... This full moon [at 11 degrees Gemini] is also distinguished by the fact it’s part of a tight Mutable T-square.  The Sun, Moon and Neptune interact at 11 degrees. I think first of a tidal wave of emotion.  But there are many other potential manifestations.
Neptune is associated with the ethereal; things imaginary or unseen. This is for good or ill.  If you wonder about that, just think of someone praying for your well-being as compared to some casting a spell for the ruin of your soul."...

Personally, I'm thinking of someone praying for my/our well-being as compared to some casting a spell for ruin.

Supermoon November 2016

Please join us, and come fragrance-free please, for Full Moon Gathering. We will have a Crockpot filled to share a cup or bowl of something warm and comforting. Pete and I celebrate and appreciate being here on the Prairie Front; offering ceremony focused on well-being.

Sunday, December 3, 2017
Full Moon Gathering
5 PM
The Prairie Front (South Whidbey Tilth)

The weather forecast is for 'partly cloudy' but you know how weather has a mind of her own:) Dress in layers and the possibility for cloud bursts. The kitchen is warm and toasty, and you will be most welcome to duck and tuck in as we celebrate Mahina's company as Earth's only moon.

Bring your personal wishes, offerings, and prayers (and a drink or nibble,too) to share in ceremony.

Hope you can join us!

xoxo Moki and Pete

Rising like mist

View in Full Screen to spot Sparrow

I have an affinity for Sparrows. Yes, I capitalize their names and I've shooed them off my cooking table, scolded them when they've been into food untended. These flyweight wing people are our every day company here on the Prairie Front. They maintain territory separate and distinct from the Chickadees and they're adamant about me keeping a respectful distance if I walk too close to their ground cover housing.

When we count the time that records the way we have lived with our attention regularly observant of moon and sun, wind and bird presence, and the tenacity of Dandelion it makes for a community rich with things to say. Last night the bright light shining through the well-born flannel sheet serving us as curtain surprised me awake. After a weekend of one rain squall after another I didn't expect Mahina the Moon to be so clearly there. Like an excited girl with a favorite hobby, that 8 year old pinched me, "Yes, you can get up and put this down!" Rolling out of bed I found my sketch pad/ kilo pad where I write observations down. Pete keeps a Chinese coin on the wheel well for drawing a circle so we can fill in the shape of the moon phase, the illumination, the po, we see. She was beautifully clear and a perfect 'half-half' illuminated on the bottom. I filled in the shape with my pencil then stepped outside in my night shirt and red rubber boots. It was chilly, but oh so deliciously enlivening. Clouds and stars, including Makali'i the Pleiades were out as well.

This morning I watched a distinct band of mist rise from the field behind us, the same field where rainbows also like to rise when the conditions are just right.

We have been blessed with a place to expand our lives and experiences as mauliauhonua ones intimate with the place(s) we live. In no small way this chronic condition of intimacy is fed by the illness that is called Environmental Illness, or MCS. Intimate with the place we live when one or more symptoms of the illness rise like mist I take a lesson from nature and notice what else is going on. Turning symptoms into art; sharing observations as if they mattered; inviting perspectives that change the way life is lived. 

Click here to see the many things I kilo (noticed) from the Prairie Front today. What's happening in your world? Let us know in the comments, or email we'd love to compare notes:)

xoxo Moki and Pete

'Aha Update: Community Came

We bought a fine turkey and cut it up into pieces, seasoned with chunky salt and a small bit of red clay from Kauai mixed liberally with Italian herbs. The rubbed bird pieces marinated a few hours in the frig over whole carrots, cloves of garlic, chopped celery. We woke at 3 AM to pull it out and bring it to room temperature; at 4 AM Pete turned on Jude's Crockpot for an 8 hour slow cook. 

Masks gifted to us last year (thank you Prescott and Michael) decorate our refashioned Laughing Cat Cafe kitchen while gleaned Granny Smith apples (thank you JC)  waited to be prepared in a new-to-me Crockpot apple crisp recipe. I meddled with the recipe you can link to; I used gluten-free oat flour and gluten-free oats, left out the cinnamon and replaced it with vanilla, added spoonfuls of tangerine marmalade (thank you Peter) in place of brown sugar (without measuring) and didn't melt the butter but cut in slices of butter and worked it into the dry ingredients using my fingers.

Our friend Madir was the first to arrive, feeling very CanCan ... love it!

Two Peters serve up the savory like-Hawaii style turkey, which at the last minute (during the last two hours of cooking) I added sister Margaret's gift of Minnesota wild rice( ... wow, how yummy that addition was/is)

Maria, being very patient, and her people Angie and Ben came for lunch

That's Pete and our friend SR who drove down from Anacortes

Peter read us poetry

Angie mixed up an infusion cocktail (she likes to mix whatever herbal infusions Pete had ready for refreshment)

I made a wish for my 70th birthday that included this:

"... The community I desire is not grudging; it is exuberant, joyful, grounded in affection, pleasure, and mutual aid...Taking part in the common life means dwelling in a web of relationships , the many threads tugging at you while also holding you upright." - Scott Russell Sanders

That community showed up for a day of thanksgiving laden with dishes to add to the feast. We are so happy they did!! And for those who couldn't make it in the flesh, we held space for you with us in spirit.

Mahalo nui, xoxo
Mokihana and Pete 

The Couple

The Couple
Yvonne Mokihana Calizar

Fever built
slowly, but steadily
Within
Winds ripped
quickly, and steadily
Why here
Why now?

Sleep did come
welcomed
On a rocking
set of wheels
Would I,
Could we,
Become seasoned?

The dreams
did not assuage
the fever lingered
Dialogue
Let me get at
some sort of
Meaning.

Once up, dressed
Save for my new
Red Rubber Boots
I stood upon the steps barefoot
and heard
One.
Then watched the other

Overhead and close
Enough to thrill
The life back
Into me
Black swooping
wings and a chevron
Tailfeather

The resident
Native Wind People
The Couple
Came to check:
"So you're still standing 
and breathing beginning
another journey without
regret
Forever, being your own
unpeaceable kingdom." *

The poem is mine, written full flood and unedited on a pre-Thanksgiving morning in the kitchen while trucks and vans and other wheeled vehicles race somewhere too fast. The concluding quote I borrow from David Wagoner thanks to Terri Windling's blog post on Myth & Moor.

'Aha Update: Joy Luck Club

Amy Tam's classic Joy Luck Club a story of Chinese family history; secrets kept and revealed; recipes of continuity; adaptations and assimilation; and the joys and luck of real life over time, is a favorite in our house. We have read the book and more than once, more than twice, we have borrowed the movie from our local library to watch Waverly's rise and fall as chess champion in her formative years. Then there are the moments where I cringe at the affect of the white husband who marries for the exotic in spite of rich mother's caste system don't go there monologue; and the other white husband who adds just a little shoyu to flavor Lindo's signature squid dish at a formal family dinner. 

November has been a month of many initiations; the south winds and storms have been ferocious; a new decades begins for me; we left the forest for the prairie.

We woke to this red sky in the morning on Sunday.

The promise of heavy weather delivered throughout most of the day. Winds, fierce and rilling, stirred the environment (all of the environs of elemental and sentient beings). The red sky signature, this observation was present for less than a minute and then was gone POOF.

We drove into town  to get away from the wind for a little while. When we pulled up in Scout the Subarus Pete spotted this rainbow glowing and growing in the north.

And just as quickly as the red sky's message left within minutes, so too did ke anuenue. POOF.

The Raven Couple, resident corbae who I watch for expectantly every day, treated me to their thermal grace. A long effortless glide in the sky above loosened the tension that built throughout the red sky infusion of extreme winds. These are the native wind people.

And then sometime before midnight when we could not sleep, Pete pulled his cards and captured this spread of luck. I sat and watched from my perch on the futon, unsure of what he was capturing. "First time, first four cards I turned over," was his answer when I began loading picture from the camera.

We have so much to learn about being wind people; it is not my favorite condition. Wind is the kuleana of my younger brother. In a dream my brother and I were together, he said before the dream's signature POOFED, "You be my good luck." I heard a question in his voice before he left, and wondered what he might be telling me. We have Chinese swirling in the blood. A bit of joy shatters a hundred griefs. Ancestors tether me to the joy, sit me at the game that brings good luck long enough to recognize it; or wake me when the omens are ripe for plucking.

Wheww. 

'Aha Update: Thanksgiving Open House

Pete and I would like to extend an invitation to our 'Aha Community: please, come to the Prairie Front, and share time, good food and company. We have much to celebrate and be grateful for! The wonderful and often times windy place we now live with offers us a fragrance free and chemical free haven to keep on keep'n on; and to continue the give-and-take of a vibrant and generous commons.

We will have a Crockpot of hot food, something wonderful for dessert and a small but cozy little tent of a space to welcome friends and those who might not have a place to be. Our one request is that you come fragrance-free (especially from laundry products and dryer sheets).

Join us on Thursday, November 23, 2017

From Noon until Two PM

In the "Spider Web Kitchen" 

On the South Whidbey Tilth Campus

Bring potluck if you wish

Come for a bowl of something warm and comforting
Share story & laughter

Or, just drop-by to say hello 

It's our way of saying, "Thank you!!"

Drop us an email or leave a comment to let us know 

you'll be coming.

xoxo Mokihana and Pete

New Moon in Scorpio, early hours of November 18, 2017

"...To me, this looks like a man and a woman in agreement. We’re talking about Scorpio here, so the agreement may be secret and/or unspoken.  It’s a power couple of some sort.  Word of the day – Loyalty...We set intentions under new moons. You’ll want to do this, Friday night, ahead of the early morning lunation. (Click on the link to ElsaElsa for ideas for the House in which the moon will transit in your natal chart.)" Elsa P.

It's been a busy week what with the storms of Lono, making adjustments to moving and having a super duper birthday. But, before the opportunity slipped through our toes, Pete reminded me to post and publish the New Moon in Scorpio happening in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 18, 2017.

Tonight, Friday the 17th, we will head to the water's edge and send our intentions for the new moon while the tide is still on its way out. We'll be out at the Muliwai (Sunlight Beach) at 4:00 PM just before sunset. Join us for simple and powerful new moon ceremony, if you wish. (J.C. you bring the doughnuts:)

Directions to the Public Access lot at Sunlight Beach:
Off of Bayview Road (behind the Goose heading toward Maxwelton Valley) take a RIGHT on Sunlight Beach Road.
Drive Sunlight Beach Road until you're at least 3/4 of the way through. Look for a small red cottage on the beach side with the name STOWER or STOVER on the house. The public access parking lot is next to this house.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back from the Muliwai with these visual memories after sending out intentions out with the tide and the setting sun and moon...

A pallet full of sea leaves (weed) like the leaves from the maples and the chestnut on land

Kala and Mahina Sun and Moon setting together

A birthday wish ... for the rest of my life

What do you want for your birthday?

"Many people shy away from community out of a fear that it may become suffocating, confining, even vicious," Sanders adds; "and of course it may, if it grows rigid or exclusive. A healthy community is dynamic, stirred up the energies of those who already belong, open to new members and fresh influences, kept in motion by the constant bartering of gifts. It is fashionable just now to speak of this open quality as 'tolerance,' but that word sounds too grudging to me -- as though, to avoid strife, we must grit our teeth and ignore whatever is strange to us. The community I desire is not grudging; it is exuberant, joyful, grounded in affection, pleasure, and mutual aid...Taking part in the common life means dwelling in a web of relationships , the many threads tugging at you while also holding you upright." - Scott Russell Sanders

That would be my answer. 

In spite of or because of the unexpected, abrupt, and traumatic episodes associated with chronic-illness, the journey is beyond imagination and simultaneously fueled by our imaginations. At times the only way through a particularly troublesome, painful, disjointed experience is rest, quiet, isolation. Terri Windling writes: "One of the strange things about a long-term medical condition is the abruptness with which it can overturn your life. Most of the time it simmers quietly in the background, folded into the rhythm of the days, time-consuming and annoying perhaps, but also familiar, under control. That control is entirely illusory, however, for bodies are complicated things and don't always act in the prescribed ways that medical textbooks say they should. And when they don't, there isn't always a clear and demonstrable reason why. One day you're just like everyone else: doing your work, paying your bills, making plans as though the future is ordered and predictable; and the next day you're flat on your back. Again. Feeling like Charlie Brown the umpteenth time Lucy pulls the damn football away..."

But there are other times when being with others is the juice of life that makes for the balance. I am awake and seated at the counter of the newly transformed Spider Web Kitchen on my 70th birthday morning. I have drunk two cups of peppermint tea with honey, and nibbled my way through treats left by a certain spider (who snoozes under the covers at the moment). The roar of commuter traffic is well underway. Out from the woods we have exchanged the quiet of forest and mold for the openness of prairie and highway noise. A cup of that for a dose of this ... you know the reciprocal element.

I wish for myself and my community the web of threads that both keeps us connected and supported while allowing room to wander off to our corners to tuck in for solitary times of restoration. The kitchen clock ticks, I hear it between the sound of rubber on wet pavement. My birthday has begun. Hot damn ... let the music of the day sing on~~

Thank you for reading my blog and being part of our web!!

xo Mokihana

P.S. And other practical wishes for my birthday?

- red rubber boots (being supplied by Tita Wise)

- a big bag of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda (anyone a Costco shopper?)

- Brown Butter & Coconut cookies from the Flower House Cafe in Bayview

- birthday apple pie (Yes, I'd love it Jude!)

- beach walks 

- moon gatherings on the Prairie Front

- fragrance free visitations for tea and company

And pics added to ...

`Aha Update: Exchanging currency

I'm an Elsa P. fan, a long-time reader and client who found Elsa Panizzon's blog when Pete and I were living in a kitchen while we built our vardo. A blog was new to me in 2008 but astrology has been a long-time interest for me. There was something I was looking for when we lived in that kitchen in White Center. Everything I thought I knew for sure didn't fit, rules for 'success' no longer worked nor made any sense. I booked my first email consultation with Elsa sometime in 2008. She wrote to me with this recommendation, "Sounds like a Neptune thing. (watery). The tide comes in. The tide goes out. You don't have any friends. (tide's out) People don't understand you ... so, you might as well float!" Ha?

The kitchenette in White Center

Pete working inside the vardo in the winter, 2008

At the time that advice offered my deep water Scorpio sensibilities a transcendent solution. It was not specific, but, I understood how important it is to float in water where you can't just stand up! While we made our way through the learning curve of understanding Environmental Illness, and researched how to build something never quite done before, Elsa's advice has sustained me ... I understand more than ever how important remembering to float is. The small wagon life requires a lot of floating as structures and boundaries keep changing. We envisioned being in a warm climate for winter -- Hawaii was our goal. Instead of Hawaii, we're living on a prairie on Whidbey Island where it's not warm but we are warm enough because we are exchanging resources with people who see the value of our 'currency.'

Two weeks ago tonight, we secured what travels in Vardo for Two and headed onto the Prairie Front. Just minutes ago Pete and I had a bowl of red cabbage with mushrooms and rice with chicken drumsticks for dinner. We ate that meal seated on chairs in what I have begun to call The Spider Web Kitchen. A transformed version of the South Whidbey Tilth's Dancing Cat Cafe is now being shared with us.

Here are a few pics of the shared resource of a space. We are warming things up, making it cozy, and finding ways to respect the faith people have in our currency.

A violet towel and a length of fabric double up to keep a draft blowing through the French door from chilling the kitchen.

Pete hung a length of conduit across the space the creates two spaces in the whole kitchen. From that conduit we have hung the blanket and woolen fabric used again and again in other spaces/kitchens from White Center to the woods of Langley

A second violet blanket covers one of the kitchen windows for warmth and privacy. We have cleared and begun to occupy the counter tops with our kitchen chattel, tucking the Tilth's kitchen into corners or in cubbies that can easily be pulled from their nooks.

Window looking south

This is the entry into the Spider Web Kitchen with a few mats to cushion your steps on the cold hard cement and the cotton rug we have used in our old Quonset left for Eileen and Mary in the woods of Forest Lane.

A closeup of the bells, beads and dancing cat dangling from the center of the spider web in the kitchen

Exit ... evidence of rain that has been coming from the south

I've learned a lot by reframing the meaning of 'currency.' Coming to value my quirky brand of currency, it makes life so much more interesting to find places and people attracted to this sort of community-economy. Just enough. In the nick of time. Use things up. Share. Work in trade. Again and again. Give and take.

What currency attracts you?

'Aha Update: Like Spider (Stringing a copper web)

"As we enter the White Picket Gate, we must shift our allegiances from fear to curiosity, from attachment to letting go, from control to trust, and from entitlement to humility." 

- The Second Half of Life, Angeles Arrien

We have been on the Prairie Front for one week. In twenty-four hours the winds shift often; the weather patterns are more dramatic because a full sky and its reciprocal 'aina land below it is perceivable. Wide vistas, open space. From the vardo we kilo observe, and record, what we see and experience; that's part of the excitement of this move. Applying our practices we are kept childlike in our approaches to the challenges.

When we started the Front Porch 'Aha in July there was a dream wanting to be made real. The hope was to go back to Hawaii before another winter season began; we gave it our all for five months and shared the dream and the process with you. What a process. The possibility that we do go back is being tempered with reality. Maybe we need to allow more time? Maybe the goal needs to be adapted?

Instead of a warmer winter in the tropics, we are making use of our spider senses. Literally pulling strong lengths of copper passed to Pete from a very special friend, Loretta, who got the copper coil from her father, to create a web for warming up the South Whidbey Tilth kitchen.

Pete worked the high ground and I stood below him for several hours yesterday afternoon. In between the stringing of copper, documenting the project and imagining how to reuse the lengths of cloth and old cotton pique shower curtains I chopped and filled the big soup pot with broccoli, celery, carrots, mushrooms and mushroom broth and wild rice (thank you Margaret!); seasoned three chicken thighs with Italian seasoning, and added a hand's length sprig of fresh rosemary for dinner. As soup simmer outside, we played spider!

Moving INTO the kitchen was a major bit of progress after a week of cooking outside during the strong south wind and rain storms. We were able to ferret out the lingering smell that stopped us from believing we could occupy the kitchen: it was coming from the drains; accumulated buildup leaving an 'essential oil' smell that we worked clear by filling the sinks with water, baking soda and distilled white vinegar in many repeated 'flushes.'

Being inside the kitchen with spider senses activated, the years and experience of creating the original Safety Pin Cafe aka the Quonset were being triggered. In a good way. Since we built Vardo for Two, we have made many adjustments with the help of our animal senses and our imaginations.

April, 2008 Our first landing spot in Tahuya, WA ... first outdoor kitchen setup

A birthday in The Quonset one year in the woods of Langley
(the Quonset is the real-life inspiration for the medicine story The Safety Pin Cafe)

As I write from the vardo, I know that it's possible I will lose the internet connection here and make the best of the time that things do connect. Pete is down in the kitchen making adjustments to how we can proceed or amend our plan to insulate the ceiling and attend to the smells that might harm.

We run into neighbors and friends while we are out and about on shopping errands and they ask: "Are you all moved in? Saw you parked up the road. Gonna stay there? Let me know when you go to Hawaii ... want your truck." (some know we have moved onto the Prairie); others say, "I'm glad to see you. Thought you might have moved?" We say we have been trying, but haven't. They wish us well and say they're glad we're still here and are we open to invitations for tea?

The short video catches Pete stuffing the web with our many times used cotton pique shower curtains into a billow of a lowered ceiling. We aren't sure the cotton sails will stay, but, we love the feel of the spider web tent. We'll check with our Prairie Peeps about the tent... and keep you posted.

xoxo Mokihana and Pete