'Ono

'Ono. Delicious, tasty, savory

"Laulau is a Native Hawaiian cuisine dish. The traditional preparation consisted of pork wrapped in taro or luau leaf. In old Hawaii laulau was assembled by taking a few luau leaves and placing a few pieces of fish and pork in the center." Wikipedia

Some Hawaiian words find the place inside your na'au your guts and play the chords like tricky music, and memories of past living you continue to love harmonize with glimpses of a potent future. 'Ono is one of those words. Christopher hunts, and he makes laulau ... wrapped his garlic-powerful laulau made with one of his piggy, pieces of fish, luau leaf in ti leaves. The evidence of both talents -- hunting and cooking-- and the word for it? That's what Pete's talk'n about.

IN THE DAYTIME: Walking the .25 mile loop trail at South Whidbey State Park. 'Ono.

IN THE NIGHT-TIME: Playing music, hanging out in the kitchen. 'Ono.

P.S. You gotta remember that leading glottal stop ... the ' ... the 'okina ... or what? Or you would be talking about an ono, a large mackerel type fish, to five or six feet in length. Tricky. Oh so very tricky!!

Snow and our family came for Christmas

Big magic, little magic

The sky is brilliant with the stuff of big magic, dark and filled with lights. If it weren't for the red storm coat that covers me head to ankle the magic would be just cold. For a woman born to tropical temperatures, cold is "not my jam" as writer Elizabeth Gilbert writes. I'm reading Gilbert's book Big Magic, so what naturally happens with me can only be called spillover. Writing this in the very early morning hour the big red coat and my red rubber boots keep me warm enough to keep ahead of the spill. The spill of inspiration is edging out the heavy sour feeling of miserliness that is going around. I woke up to that Scrooge Itch because it had rubbed off on me ...

There are big pohaku, rocks, boiling in a copper bottom pot outside on the hotplate. Those rocks will go into an old wool sock bound at one end with a thick rubber band so the hot rocks don't slip out. Where I'm sitting and writing with my big red coat on is inside the almost-cozy kitchen. Outside is where the rocks boil, I can hear them, and know. It's time to go out there and spoon them out of the water and ladle them into the sock and get them up the hill to a sleeping White Knight who has a need to be rescued a little. That's the big magic.

Many years ago I was in a big bad way, wounded and broken and not at all ready to just keep feeling miserable. I was reading Clarissa Pinkola Estees' Women Who Run With the Wolves and one night I dreamed up a solution and he came floating in my window in a Carhartt coat. Little did I know what that book and that dream would do to the broken pieces of me. I think it good I knew very little about what might happen. There are more than one way to tell the story of being put back together and I have written those stories because as a friend told me while we exchanged good cheer at the meat counter, "We're all myth makers." And that's the big magic.

Who would have known that down the road a piece after a left turn here and another left turn and only an occasional right, that white knight in the Carhartt coat would help build me a wagon to face the trials and adventures of life unpredictable? That's a long sentence but not so long a sentence that it ain't the honest truth, da honest true fac. That's the way my Dad would of said it. In all the days and nights since Pete and I have been together, our relationship has grown in many respects because we take turns being the knight. The idea for this shared role of white-knight-ship came from Elsa who was responding to a man's question. The man signed himself "Left holding the bag". Elsa begins:

"So you heal your partner and you wind up wounded, huh? Well, I hate to tell you, but this “White Knight” thing is one of your jobs out there, so I think you’re going to have real trouble getting out of it..." Elsa continues, "Instead, embrace the idea that sacrificing yourself and “White Knighting” is in your nature. If you can do this, I bet you will find yourself feeling empowered and simply more aligned with everything around you. At that point – Stage Two..." Elsa's parting sentence to "Left holding the bag" is:  "Try a personal ad: “White Knight seeks same…”- to read the whole post link here.

Back to the big dark sky filled with lights. The sky and the stars and planets are so much a part of the big magic that inspires me: that's astrology. There's long been astrology for me to configure the pattern beyond the confusion; but not so much that it leaves no room for the Mystery. I need to swallow life with at least a little bit of magic.

The sky and the moon conspired during the myth making of the life I live with Pete. We learned, together, the value of being homeless while living on the island of my birth. From the car we set up our home for the night and watched the moon, Mahina, rise from the horizon. We had the gift of beginner's mind -- something that happens when you are homeless, or broken, or otherwise bereft of all former sureties, and with those first moon risings we because to count time differently.

To count time differently translates differently for everybody for who can know how the other was taught to count in the first place?  Since I began writing, trying to stay ahead of that spillover of inspiration now three hours in its flow, I hear the sound of traffic outside. The beginning of ferry traffic means time has passed and people in vehicles head off island. When you live on an island and dwell near the only main road connecting the mainland with a large boat that hauls people and wheeled vehicles, you count time by the flow or no-flow of commuter traffic. If you use a Gregorian Calendar (most people do) you mark time according to the tracking of the sun and the numbering of seven days in a week.

If you use a Gregorian Calendar and a Hawaiian Moon Calendar and study astrology and write, the big and little magic of trading off being the knight (black or white or brown or some shade in between) makes for the interesting and creative versions of  life where definitions cross borders and the spill of inspiration ... keeps you vibrant in all seasons. To end this ramble I turn to "Umbilicaria: The Belly Button of the World" where Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about lichen,

"The forest the lichens inhabit is a richly textured plantscape, but they are not plants. They blur the definition of what it means to be an individual, as a lichen is not one being, but two: a fungus and an alga. These partners are as different as could be and yet are joined in a symbiosis so close that their union becomes a whole new organism."

"I once heard a Navajo herbalist explain how she understands certain kinds of plants to be "married," due to their enduring partnership and unquestioning reliance on one another. Lichens are a couple in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts."

That's big magic.

Gift-givers and makers of sweets and stories

"Fairytale of New York"

This is a followup to our Saturday in the city adventure ... enjoying the flavor of a truly gift-giving season. Thank you to Terri Windling for introducing me to this wonderful piece(and many others link here to listen to them) for Christmas. The fairytale, a classic to many but new to me and now I love it, too.

One version of the song's history is here with a bit from its creator "... the song itself is quite depressing in the end, it's about these old Irish-American Broadway stars who are sitting round at Christmas talking about whether things are going okay." The thing about music and life is the texture of all the good and bad and the lumpy in between that makes a song like this, well, a fairytale and a lovely gift. Not Disney, but Art.

The second big storm of rain and winds is upon us here. We are not seasoned to this environment, but are not so unsure of what can happen that we are not prepared somewhat. Yesterday Pete re-did the awning on the vardo's porch and secured the red strap to keep things more stout against the promise of the storm. And it did come the storm.

All through the day today and yesterday flocks of birds have been everywhere feasting on the worms who are surfacing from the soggy earth. Starlings. Robins. Sparrows. Chickadees. Not close by near enough to see them in the upper levels of wind: Raven. 

Thanks to the amazing channels of social media, I got word from Kalei Nu'uhiwa kumu kilo extraordinaire teacher and disseminator of all things kilo; she shares time from the Hawaiian point of view with a focus on ceremony and 'olelo language for the masses. 

Today she tells us: "Hau'oli wā Ala Polohiwa a Kanaloa. May you reignite your personal fire and honor those that have passed. We are on the sun's southern apex today and the next 3 days for those in the northern hemisphere. Happy summer to those in the southern hemisphere. Go get your oomshakalaka on."

A very good day for ceremony, and celebrating the personal fire in whatever form it takes for each of us, and honor those who have passed to become our guardians. As part of that ceremony, a new bit of story about makers of sweets is here for those following Ambriana Chu.


xoxo Hope you enjoy the gifts,
Mokihana

Saturday in Seattle: finding the inner braid

"I've lived in this place too long." The comment rolled off my tongue from some place of dissatisfaction as if where I live or don't live is the saving grace to living life well. Pete was driving the stretch of highway we both used to call the Mukilteo Speedway a place that has changed a thousandfold since I first lived in Washington in 1971. Then the road was a two lane barely highway with no lights and very steep ditches on either side. To be native to that place meant you and the car or truck you drove were intimate with the curves and the edges. The drive then might not have been intuitive but it felt that way as I recall it. Dark country road in a timeless space. Pete showed up from the Midwestern America a decade later on his way to Wenatchee; we would meet briefly during the 80's but our stories remained separate until 1994.

To be on this road that connects Whidbey with Seattle on a Saturday in winter, the comment just needed to be uttered like an owl working out a pellet or a cat spitting out a hair ball.

First stop: Pike's Street Market. We're outside Left Bank Books. Sorry for the slight decap, Pete. To do this selfie on the sidewalk I (holding the camera) needed to go up and he being tall needed to come down. 

Transition to Pioneer Square: after a wild and wonderful Pike's Street Morning seeing the old places that are still there, and awing at the expansion and changes we left our very convenient first parking space but not before turning it over to a beautiful Poly (Polynesian) woman who asked, "You leaving?" We were. Pete said, "We'll wait for you." I handsignaled her to turn around. Her face lit up with glee. 

We were hunting for a gallery in Pioneer Square where a review in the Seattle Stranger describing wood engravings of ravens had caught Pete's eye. Fate had something else in mind for us; we never found the gallery but did run into a very friendly man who worked another gallery (Stonington Gallery). We ended up spending a few minutes of uplifting company with Northwest art created by both Native and non-native arists depicting The Red Moon; the story of why Sun loved the Moon so much he died each day ...; Puffin Woman; three being in a canoe a piece entitled "Journey"; totems huge and powerful... Very friendly staff and inspiring art reminded us of Story's vital role in the way we relate ... "As Gary Nabhan has written, we can't meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without "re-story-ation." In other words, our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories. But who will tell them?" -
Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass

The photograph above and the two below are of the same tree (lovely bark and texture with such punctuation in curves and bumps) growing in the city...

this one I love because of the colors other than All Weather-Black people in Seattle donned for the Season. (check out the bare feet in the shoes; it's temperate for December)

the brickwork is lovely

Next stop: China Town the International District. We had to go to Uwajimaya for the sounds, faces and foods that we both miss. The languages, the many nations represented in faces and the food. We sat to eat with chopsticks: huli huli chicken with brown rice and shredded cabbage and lettuce. Gobbling like we were eating plate lunch at one of our favorite Hawaii hang-outs, the food court in Uwajimaya resets the inner clockworks. Pete shopped for holiday cards to mail to folks, we bought mochi with red bean paste for dessert, bought two bags of poi to remember Uncle Jerry Konanui who just passed away. I mahalo Uncle Jerry for reminding so many of us how to care for kalo, taro, so kalo can care for us.

The Inner Braid: the search for something no longer there. When Pete and I did meet again in 1994, we were driving together much like we did yesterday. I was driving rather than Pete in 1994 and we were doing a Seattle tourist day while  he visited me. I was in between places, preparing to return to Hawaii. There's that inner braid, a deja vu repeating again, and again. So often I have been 'preparing to return to Hawaii."
In 1994 and yesterday we were looking for Red and Black Books.

 Like looking for the gallery we didn't find, we didn't find Red and Black Books yesterday. In July of 1994 we circled Capital Hill again and again trying to find the bookstore that fed the activist and broad seeking genetics in both of us. It was there, we just needed to persist! Yesterday, we couldn't find it; but I knew who would know. I called our friend Jude on the cellphone (twice). While I stood at the corner of Madison and some numbered street in Seattle I left a message something like this:

"Hi, I'm on the corner of Madison and ... looking for Red and Black Books. Where IS that book store? Call me back if you get this message."

Later, while I was standing in line in Elliott Bay Books my friend called me back. The reception wasn't very strong but the message was clear. "Red and Black closed back in the 90's." Silence. Serious silence. Somehow I already knew that, we had already had this conversation.

"Hope you find something else fun to do," she said. I told her I was in Elliott Bay books and yes, we were having a wonderful and fun Seattle day.

Last stop: Ballard. The day was rapidly turning to dusk. We headed to Ballard for a last hit of eat treats. Totem Drive-Inn for a vanilla milkshake. For $4.00 plus change we split a delicious cold milkshake in the funky and friendly old school drive-inn staffed by young and chatty Seattleites while listening to Tina Turner, the Doors, and a version of Blue Bayou that might have been Roy Orbison. This was a time travelers' excursion for two makua o'o elders in training. 

Waiting for the ferry: back in Mukilteo

This morning: surrounded by the goodness of memories, and memories being made

"Those who’ve logged more than a decade of residence on the Hill may remember Red and Black Books on 15th Avenue East, where Shoprite currently plies its trade. The store featured a huge variety of publications simply not found in other stores. Leftist political treatises, obscure poetry, multicultural children’s books – the store’s mission was to sell non-mainstream titles. Logically located on the Hill and run as a collective of devoted members, its model worked for years. And then did not: the store closed in early 1999." - "The ghosts of hill's indie bookstores past"

That inner braid of a model that worked for years -- a bookstore, a way of life, a belief system, a cosmology -- and then did not. Back on the prairie front the thought of a model that worked, and then didn't, lingers in me as I eat my breakfast of warm oatmeal between the thoughts braiding themselves into a plait. Being in the city where successes linger and evolve: the long line of customers waiting to go into the first Starbucks on 1st and Pike; the bronze pig everyone still loves to rub. But, old buildings and small business once vibrant are torn down, even on a Saturday morning. New something will replace it. The tents of homeless moved from town to Ballard has people up in arms. So much for shared resources. Ah, but there are shared bikes slowly rolling out on the Seattle sidewalks. Seattle Department of Transportation has recently approved two permits for two private bikeshare companies: Spin and Limbike. As we drove down Denny Avenue on the way to Ballard a trio of young Santas on bright yellow bikes navigated the sidewalks beside us. We saw the newest version of Seattle streetcars and trolley cars while in Seattle; buses as well as the many personal vehicles like the one Pete and I occupied moved people from one destination to another.

Rain has returned to Whidbey after several days of sunshine. When we returned from Seattle last night I climbed from my navigator's seat to close the wooden gate behind us. "Go ahead, honey. I'll walk back." It helps to ground yourself, myself, between the many transitions that take place on journeys. In a few hours we drove, walked, observed and ate our way through the present while braiding the past into a single thick plait. With the flashlight in hand I saw that puddles filled the dirt and gravel road. We had been lucky to experience Seattle without rain. We found things we weren't looking for, and didn't find others we were looking for. Life is like that.

Before going to sleep last night I read the opening essay in Braiding Sweetgrass. It was Robin Wall Kimmerer's collection of essays and stories that we were after on our adventure; it was the last copy on the shelf at Elliott Bay Bookstore. How lucky we were in our exploration and journey to Seattle. Then later in the night I re-read the essay/story when Pete came back to bed, this time I read the essay/story Skywoman Falling aloud. He fell asleep as he often does if I read to him. He says he just likes the sound of my voice; I remember that he would fall asleep when we talked long distance during our early courtship times; he in Wisconsin and I in Mukilteo. "There was a time difference," he defends. No defend needed really. To read to someone you love is like braiding their hair.

Kimmerer is a gentle and powerful storyteller. I love her work and her life for the example it provides me and any who seek her service as teacher, scientist, Native keeper of story. When I forget what is most important she reweaves the plait for me. She begins Braiding Sweetgrass with a Preface that should in my opinion be read again and again both silently and aloud in its entirety. The words are personal and timeless, precious and tender, strong and enduring. Here is a sampling of the Preface.

"Hold out your hands and let me lay upon them a sheaf of freshly picked sweetgrass, loose and flowing, like newly washed hair.. A sheaf of sweetgrass, bound at the end and divided into thirds, is ready to braid ... Will you hold the end of the bundle while I braid? Hands joined by grass can we bend our heads together and make a braid to honor the earth? And then I'll hold it for you, while you braid, too...I could hand you a braid of sweetgrass, as thick and shining as the plaiting that hung down my grandmother's back. But it is not mine to give, nor yours to take. Wingaashk belongs to herself. So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with the world...It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and story --old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth ... healing stories that allow us to imagine a different relationship, in which people and land are good medicine for each other." 

What are the inner braids of story that sustain you over time? I would love to hear about them in the comments or in an email.

December

George Winston's "December" ... thanks to Michelle in NYC 

for reminding me of this old favorite album and suggesting I play the album as I read the post she wrote. I pass that suggestion along to you as you read this, too. 

I began this post on a Sunday morning which has this astrological flavor to it:

"Sunday the Moon moves through the rest of Virgo, opposing Chiron, squaring retro Mercury as Mercury trines Uranus. There is an aha moment (or more) that upgrades consciousness. When faced with an old trigger (Chiron), we finally see something new (Uranus): OH! Grow and change as old and new morph and burn off the pain. Uranus in Aries refers back to Mars in Scorpio, the phoenix. Learning is an emotional and intellectual challenge, but this time it’s also leveling up. You get to keep this one once it solidifies in time..." - Satori

Every Saturday throughout December Tilth Elves (volunteers from South Whidbey Tilth) set up a get your own Christmas tree (growing along the highway ... as part of a we-take-care-of-the-roadside-so-you-don't spray or otherwise get carried away agreement with Island County) gig. Here's Elf Pete on the first of those Saturday Trees for the Holidays.

Elf Art Work (thank you Jake and Pete) including evidence of the very wet, but not frosty/icy first Saturday in December

A Christmas Elf Jig done when you send people off in their trucks to hunt the perfect road-side holiday tree ... part of the protection dance to keep them safe from drivers who might be texting while driving.

A December redux ... an image of red apples and pearl-sized crab apples left on her fruit bearing  limbs. Out of reach from the humans harvest, these lingering bright lights of Nature are the gifts. The gifts we too often forget are part of the 'agreement' between us domesticated humans and the Wild; the agreement that was made to re-tool our ancient memory: ask permission to eat the seed fruit and if the answer is 'yes' leave gifts.

See the hallowed out apple? We watch over the days of December thus far and quietly give thanks that we notice the gifts being pecked at by the Resident Winged Ones(Towhee and Chickadees among others) who depend on the reciprocity.

Yesterday Pete and I took a short road trip north to visit our friends Teri and Martin. There was a pan once filled with pork and wild rice to retrieve and in exchange stories and a check for red boots were on our Saturday menu. Our visits are short, spent shooting the December breeze while standing on the deck looking out at the cargo barge, and the big sea with a hazy inversion in the sky. We talked of sweet and sad reality, laughed at the prospects of a tattoo or how about turning a remodel into making room for 'our ship's come in.' Silliness and woven histories do make for good company.

Between us, we two pairs concoct deliciously Neapolitan flavor in these brief visits. Complex flavors or simply old magic? Like listening to George Winston's 'December' on a December morning in 2017 while remembering that once upon a time in a valley on a Hawaiian island in the middle of the Pacific I listened to that music longing for the winters that I once knew or were coming ... later, again. A fortune teller is primed to hear in color; synesthesia translates futures through a deck of cards, a clutter of tea leaves. A teller who has never forgotten the 'agreement' with Nature knows which gig and what jig matter most. The teller initiated in the inseparable has the vision, auditory pathways, patterns for stitchery and feel for dancing wildly. She is a complex conduit.

What does this hallowed apple have to do with Elves doing holiday tree jigs and old friends concocting memories in December? Only this. A gift came through the mail, a belated birthday present came this book from The Dark Mountain Project Issue 12: SANCTUM (Sacred). "What, if anything, is sacred?" starts the Editorial first piece. The gift I received is filled with contributions from widely diverse writers. In our small space of the world, here on the Prairie Front, I stored the book on a shelf in the luxuriously heated bathroom we used for the obvious purposes plus it serves as our bathing and laundry drying place as well.

In its combined service, the heated bathroom provides a place to sit and read.

In truly oracular fashion I began reading my birthday gift by opening to the first page that 'wished' to be read. Here is what I, then, we, are reading: "The Marriage Contract with the Wild" by Martin Prechtel (extracted from The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive by Martin Prechtel, published by North Atlantic books, copyright (c) 2012 by Martin Prechtel.

Prechtel describes "The Agreement' What is here called the 'marriage contract' between domesticating humans and the betrayed Wild is a worldwise presence and the root of all indigenous motives for how people maintain their cultures. Its principle is the same throughout but is known by as many distinct designations as there are tribes..." Over the week of reading Martin Prechtel's essay both Pete and I seem to be re-member-ing the parts of this agreement as domesticated humans living on land that was once place to the indigenous of this Salish Island. We have inklings of the agreement as we make our way here on the prairie. The resident bird people go about their ways working at remaining alive in this place they know.

I, living my hybridized journey as displaced Hawaiian woman, living on a frosty prairie my dreams are scrambled versions of culture. Maybe too much lived in my head the daily survival gig makes it harder to grow and change. The longing distracts me. But another version of ancient agreements feel like home to me, to us. The warm bathroom and gifts sent to keep the value of story intact turns chaos into connection. The red fruit on winter limbs count from a dozen to a handful. The gifts are being eaten. I count ours too and December is good. Complex.

Story grows. The astrologer says, "You get to keep this one once it solidifies over time." I have faith it will and keep writing.

What is your December like?

Moon Garden

We share 

the place

And tamper just a little.

Awake 

at night

before the roar.

The herbs,

the moon

tilt.

As if to say 

conspiratorially 

A moon garden 

casts just

a little light.

Moon lit garden and a porch light

Street lamps

La'au Po, one of the healing moons with talismans of Ancestors who have gone before us

Tall lace of Rosemary and cups of Dill

Ferry traffic begins