"Have you had any adventures?" she asked me as I craddled the foil-wrapped bundles of medicinal herbs against my breasts. I am not a tall woman but as I looked to answer my neighbor I peered down to answer.
"Oh yes, everyday!" A twinkle started behind her glasses, I answered knowing that would spark more conversation. Right there at the meat counter we did indeed continue with a delightfully magic-laden exchange of the everyday-ness of life in my Salish Sea community. Of course, this sort of conversation is the kind (my) Uranus influenced Mars simply delights in. "Uranus" as Elizabeth Rose Campbell wrote, "is in charge of your authenticity. It trembles like thunder in the psyche when it catches you giving rote answers about you are and where you are going." Stimulating and enlivened the tiredness brought on by gravity or precautions bred without sufficient imagination can wait until there's time for a cup of tea and a nap with boots toed off and feet wiggling to free up the clings.
For a few minutes my neighbor and I chatted and exchanged the gifts of reciprocity in the form of stories. Stories told in the commons where we could choose to buy the plastic wrapped orange salmon, or not. Stories shared like these in the aisle of a market, small by many standards, the aisle of the story that it, the space is plenty enough to set spark to the wildness pulsing just between our shoulder blades; that place where our wings are.
Wings
Skins
Swimming those seas is not an easy task the learner is advised straight out. Surrounded by the dominant culture of the west, and not having other Hawaiian speakers and thinkers, the practice of writing the small index cards gave me company. The penciled script is personal, I remember where the message has been -- taped to the window of our bath house in the woods, in the Quonset during the first weeks of study -- I was eager to understand the thinking behind the language my mother spoke fluently.
But life distracted me from my resolve: our faithful computer crashed; the mice invaded the Quonset, we had to vacate; my body and our routines were up-ended; the index cards and textbook got stored in a cardboard box. My ocean of connection dried up. No, the tide went out, a long receding tide and my skin began drying up. While the tide moved we began to dream up another possibility: we could move ourselves from here to there. "She had another body in the form of a net extremely difficult to tear, with which she captured all alien sharks who entered her harbor." Could we capture those alien sharks (distractions) and safeguard our selves, our souls?
Masks
I am at the keys in the early morning woken from sleep after a brief dream with my brother. We -- my brother, his son and I -- are in a warm place. I know that because we are all dressed in shorts, short-sleeved shirts and I am wearing a broad-brimmed reddish hat. I notice how I look. I almost always notice how I look in dreams. In this one I am middle weight, with chin length hair. What my brother notices is my posture. He tells me (or is that my father he's representing?) to pull my shoulders back. He says it lovingly. I take it personally, and wake with a sense of unsettledness. I am so far away. In the last bit of the dream I see my brother collecting bottles to recycle. He was thrifty: bottles and aluminum cans were worth 5 cents a piece.
My masks don't fit. I'm not sure of my place. There are no Hawaiians in the area to tell me to 'pull my shoulders back.' Isn't it enough to see my own hand-written messages? I need to tally up those this, not thats and consider the names I've answered to and which ones I answer to now.
Names
Yesterday, Thursday, was a rainy day. Many Thursdays here at the Tilth are also work party Thursdays. For a few hours mid day a group of people show up to do outside chores like: cutting blackberries, work on the garden shed, stake up trees in the orchard, tending to the compost bins. But yesterday the consensus was to postpone the work. I have begun to make lunch and brew coffee for break-time on these days. So rather than shop and prepare lunch I set to work on writing this post instead.
Over the top of the screen and through the window in front of me I spotted two people coming around the edge of the pavilion. They were unfamiliar to me, I waved from the keyboard and within seconds I heard a knock on the kitchen door.
"Hi!" I said after opening the door. The young man introduced himself and told me his story. The young couple were new to the neighborhood just bought some land up Thompson Road and were following up on a lead. Was there a building that needed to be moved off the Tilth land, and if so, could they help move it and maybe use it? You know how some stories have bits and snips of truths but aren't exactly the truth? Well, this story seemed to be one of those. I didn't know of any building fitting that description, but maybe there was something I didn't know.
I introduced myself, "I'm Mokihana. My husband and I are winter caretakers here. We live in that Gypsy wagon up there." I walked around the kitchen wall and pointed up the hill. My information was met with comely presence, "Cool," they both replied. I offered to take his name and information and check with other people to see if there was indeed a building that needed to be moved. The young man had a card to give me with his trade described: a fixer of machines. In this engagement with our new neighbors being winter caretakers was a name I was trying on. There were things to share with new comers: the market would start up in late April and we'll have a nettle festival; there's a work party here to do stuff most Thursdays; they were most welcome to come by.
The knock on the door and conversation gave me a break from writing; reality nudged wanting to fold into the mix of this creation. My shoulder blades pulled back as my wings spread out my back. My dried skin plumped even as it sags a bit here and there. The masks worn at other times -- fearful, isolated, environmentally sensitive -- they hang on pins over there. They served. I was once a woodsman, and now ...
"Oh yes, everyday!" A twinkle started behind her glasses, I answered knowing that would spark more conversation. Right there at the meat counter we did indeed continue with a delightfully magic-laden exchange of the everyday-ness of life in my Salish Sea community. Of course, this sort of conversation is the kind (my) Uranus influenced Mars simply delights in. "Uranus" as Elizabeth Rose Campbell wrote, "is in charge of your authenticity. It trembles like thunder in the psyche when it catches you giving rote answers about you are and where you are going." Stimulating and enlivened the tiredness brought on by gravity or precautions bred without sufficient imagination can wait until there's time for a cup of tea and a nap with boots toed off and feet wiggling to free up the clings.
For a few minutes my neighbor and I chatted and exchanged the gifts of reciprocity in the form of stories. Stories told in the commons where we could choose to buy the plastic wrapped orange salmon, or not. Stories shared like these in the aisle of a market, small by many standards, the aisle of the story that it, the space is plenty enough to set spark to the wildness pulsing just between our shoulder blades; that place where our wings are.
Wings
"No matter how compliant a swan maiden may appear as a wife, there remains an unspoken anxiety and tension beneath the surface of her marriage. Her husband can never be certain of her affection, for it has been held hostage by her stolen skin. He offers her his cloak, but it is an exchange of unequal goods. Her feathered robe is the sign of her wild nature, of her freedom, and of her power, while his cloak becomes the instrument of her domestication, of her submission in human society. He steals her identity, the very thing that attracted him, and then turns her into his most precious prize, a pale version of the original creature of magic..." - "Swan Maiden's Feathered Robe" by Midori Snyder
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| Illustrator Jane Ray's cover art of Swan Maiden captured my eye |
"The guardian sharks of Pu'uloa were Ka'ahupahau and her brother Kahi'uka. Such guardian sharks, which inhabited the coastlines of all the islands, were benevelont gods who were cared for and worshiped by the people and who aided fishermen, protected the life of the seas, and drove off man-eating sharks. Ka'ahupahau may mean "Well-cared for Feather Cloak" (the feather cloak was a symbol of royalty). Kahi'uka means "Smiting Tail"; his shark tail was used to strike at enemy sharks; he also used his tail to strike fishermen as a warning that unfriendly sharks had entered Pu'uloa. Ka'ahupahau lived in an underwater cave in Honouliuli lagoon (West Loch). Kahi'uka lived in an underwater cave off Moku'ume'ume (Ford Island) near Keanapua'a Point at the entrance of East Loch; he also had the form of an underwater stone. (Sterling and Summers 54, 56).The following story by Pa'ahana Wiggin, published in 1926 (Pukui and Green), tells of Ka'ahupahau's defense of her waters against Mikololou, a man-eating shark from the Big Island:
"Mikololou was a shark from Ka'u district on the island of Hawai'i (a). One day he and his shark friends, Kua, Keli'ikaua o Ka'u, Pakaiea, and Kalani, set out on a visit to O'ahu. On the way they fell in with other sharks all going in the same direction.
Arriving at Pu'uloa ("Long-Hill," Pearl Harbor), they encountered Ka'ahupahau, the female shark who guarded the entrance of Pearl Harbor. She had another body in the form of a net extremely difficult to tear, with which she captured all alien sharks who entered her harbor. Her brother Kahi'uka, "The-smiting-tail," struck at intruders with his tail, one side of which was larger than the other and very sharp (b). These two with their followers were not man-eating sharks and the people on land guarded them well, bringing them food and scraping their backs free of the barnacles that attached themselves there (c).
When the visitors arrived, one of them remarked, "Ah! what delicious-looking crabs you have here!" Now man-eating sharks speak of men as "crabs," and Ka'ahupahau knew at once that some of the strangers were man-eaters. But she could not distinguish between the good and the bad sharks, hence she changed into the form of a great net and hemmed in her visitors while the fishermen who answered her signal came to destroy them (d)
Keli'ikaua o Ka'u changed himself into a pao'o (a fish capable of leaping from one shoreline pool to another) and leaped out of the net. Kua changed into a lupe, or spotted sting-ray, and, weighing down the net on one side, helped his son Kalani and his nephew Pakaiea, who were half-human, to escape. But before anything more could be done, the fishermen hauled in the nets to shore and poor Mikololou was cast upon the shore with the evil doers, where they were left to die of the intense heat.
All were soon dead but Mikololou; though his body died his head lived on and as the fishermen passed to and from their work, his eyes followed them and tears rolled down his face. At last his tongue fell out. Some children playing nearby found it. They picked it up and cast it into the sea.
Now Mikololou's spirit had passed out of his head into his tongue and as soon as he felt the water again he became a whole shark (e). With a triumphant flop of his tail, he headed for home to join his friends again. When Ka'ahupahau saw him, it was too late to prevent his departure.
"Mikololou lived through his tongue," or, as the Hawaiians say, "I ola o Mikololou i ka alelo." This saying implies that however much trouble one may have, there is always a way of escape.
Ka'ahupahau no longer lives at Pu'uloa, coming and going with her twin sons Kupipi and Kumaninini. But when the United States government built a dry-dock for the navy just over the old home of Ka'ahupahau, the natives regarded the proceedings with superstitious fear. Scarcely was it completed after years of labor when the structure fell with a crash (f). Today a floating dock is employed. Engineers say that there seem to be tremors of the earth at this point which prevent any structure from resting upon the bottom, but Hawaiians believe that "The-smiting-tail" still guards the blue lagoon at Pearl Harbor."
- "Ka'ahupahau," Ancient stories of Ewa, O'ahuHe mano wahine kela. That is a shark woman. The sentence is written on an index card taped to the wall. Every time I wash my hands I see it. Last winter I began an online Hawaiian language class. The course is called Na Kai Ewalu and in Hawaiian it literally means "the eight seas." The kaona or metaphor refers to the eight seas that connect the eight major islands of the Hawaiian archipelago. For several months I diligently engaged in self-study of a language that through no fault of my own I (and thousands of others in my generation) were forbidden access to.
Swimming those seas is not an easy task the learner is advised straight out. Surrounded by the dominant culture of the west, and not having other Hawaiian speakers and thinkers, the practice of writing the small index cards gave me company. The penciled script is personal, I remember where the message has been -- taped to the window of our bath house in the woods, in the Quonset during the first weeks of study -- I was eager to understand the thinking behind the language my mother spoke fluently.
But life distracted me from my resolve: our faithful computer crashed; the mice invaded the Quonset, we had to vacate; my body and our routines were up-ended; the index cards and textbook got stored in a cardboard box. My ocean of connection dried up. No, the tide went out, a long receding tide and my skin began drying up. While the tide moved we began to dream up another possibility: we could move ourselves from here to there. "She had another body in the form of a net extremely difficult to tear, with which she captured all alien sharks who entered her harbor." Could we capture those alien sharks (distractions) and safeguard our selves, our souls?
 |
| The plaque describing the statue of Ka'ahupahau on the Ewa plain, O'ahu. |
"...[O]ver time the masks we show the world tend to be only the ones with clean and smiling faces. Without our complex and full rootedness, we lose the power we need for mastery. We need some rooted, shadow dirt to get the job done. We need to get real about what is part of our whole self if we’re going to embody the power we need to succeed fully. We need a realistic tally of this, not that which includes the tools we need for mastery. That means seeing things as they are, not prettied up for a sterile picture...
The right tools for the job include all the genuine parts of you that you may have dismissed as not pretty. Whatever is real about you is what you’re going to need. It’s time to figure that out." - Satori Harris
I am at the keys in the early morning woken from sleep after a brief dream with my brother. We -- my brother, his son and I -- are in a warm place. I know that because we are all dressed in shorts, short-sleeved shirts and I am wearing a broad-brimmed reddish hat. I notice how I look. I almost always notice how I look in dreams. In this one I am middle weight, with chin length hair. What my brother notices is my posture. He tells me (or is that my father he's representing?) to pull my shoulders back. He says it lovingly. I take it personally, and wake with a sense of unsettledness. I am so far away. In the last bit of the dream I see my brother collecting bottles to recycle. He was thrifty: bottles and aluminum cans were worth 5 cents a piece.
My masks don't fit. I'm not sure of my place. There are no Hawaiians in the area to tell me to 'pull my shoulders back.' Isn't it enough to see my own hand-written messages? I need to tally up those this, not thats and consider the names I've answered to and which ones I answer to now.
Names
"Six minutes before midnight, Winston Aidan Murray is born.
Seven minutes after midnight, his sister, Penelope Aislin Murray, follows... They are tiny things, each with a rather surprising amount of bright ed hair. They barely cry, staying awake and alert, with matching pairs of wide blue eyes. They are wrapped in spare bits of silk and satin, white for her and black for him...No one recalls afterward exactly who it was that dubbed them Poppet and Widget...no one takes credit for it.
But the nicknames stick, as nicknames do." - from The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
"...Ambriana wrote with her left hand in beautifully floppy script. Floppy Script being one of those Dream phrases she heard when Miss McBride so earnestly attempted training Ambriana to use her right hand. "In the long run," Miss McBride coaxed through her pencil-thin lips, "using your right-hand will present less conflict." The words were fuzzy as she spoke them. Fuzzy like cotton balls pulled ferociously by her cat. The well-meaning teacher's fuzzy words collected at Ambriana's right ear but never found entrance into her brain nor her spacious cave of imagination where the Dreams were already mapping the girl's destiny... from the Introduction of "Black leather lace-ups"
Yesterday, Thursday, was a rainy day. Many Thursdays here at the Tilth are also work party Thursdays. For a few hours mid day a group of people show up to do outside chores like: cutting blackberries, work on the garden shed, stake up trees in the orchard, tending to the compost bins. But yesterday the consensus was to postpone the work. I have begun to make lunch and brew coffee for break-time on these days. So rather than shop and prepare lunch I set to work on writing this post instead.
Over the top of the screen and through the window in front of me I spotted two people coming around the edge of the pavilion. They were unfamiliar to me, I waved from the keyboard and within seconds I heard a knock on the kitchen door.
"Hi!" I said after opening the door. The young man introduced himself and told me his story. The young couple were new to the neighborhood just bought some land up Thompson Road and were following up on a lead. Was there a building that needed to be moved off the Tilth land, and if so, could they help move it and maybe use it? You know how some stories have bits and snips of truths but aren't exactly the truth? Well, this story seemed to be one of those. I didn't know of any building fitting that description, but maybe there was something I didn't know.
I introduced myself, "I'm Mokihana. My husband and I are winter caretakers here. We live in that Gypsy wagon up there." I walked around the kitchen wall and pointed up the hill. My information was met with comely presence, "Cool," they both replied. I offered to take his name and information and check with other people to see if there was indeed a building that needed to be moved. The young man had a card to give me with his trade described: a fixer of machines. In this engagement with our new neighbors being winter caretakers was a name I was trying on. There were things to share with new comers: the market would start up in late April and we'll have a nettle festival; there's a work party here to do stuff most Thursdays; they were most welcome to come by.
The knock on the door and conversation gave me a break from writing; reality nudged wanting to fold into the mix of this creation. My shoulder blades pulled back as my wings spread out my back. My dried skin plumped even as it sags a bit here and there. The masks worn at other times -- fearful, isolated, environmentally sensitive -- they hang on pins over there. They served. I was once a woodsman, and now ...
Once a woodswoman *
On a prairie now
the change does
Do me good.
... Wild skies
Out of the deep wood
Darkness
Did me good
... Then
In the open
Fields and sky
Dose me with
... Wings
The new moon approaches in the morning, January 18, 2018. A good time to tally up and gather the right tools, the better fitting skin and expressions of personal wing-power.
What do you think? I would love stimulating conversation here, or in email replies.
What do you think? I would love stimulating conversation here, or in email replies.
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