Posts for Pay

We've opened the new place for words and rambling, with a wish for an exchange between us.

Myth For My Tale Bone is newly planted with the first of our offerings to nourish your tale bones.Take a look around, sit for a read of poems and rambles.

E Ola Mau,
Mokihana and Pete

Travelling Frog

Real life is keeping us very busy so this will be short. Humor and the toys that show up in perfectly timed episodes? They keep the flow going on the 'high end of good.' Thanks for that descriptor for practicing decorum from ElsaElsa's Newsletter.

Thanks to our friends for name suggestions for the big ass yellow truck. When Pete showed up with the wonderful yellow frog (pictured on the truck's dashboard) the name came like the flick of a frog's tongue after flies.

Travelling Frog "T.F." for short is the name of the magical fairy frog in one of the first medicine stories I wrote when we landed in Tahuya, Washington after the long and transforming months of building Vardo for Two.  If you're interested in reading that story you can poke around to read Woodcrafters. You'll need to be curious and patient with the format of reading the long and winding tale, but I promise you the read will have you traveling.

We send you good cheer, and hope you find yourself flowing on the high end of good.

P.S. A small but important correction. There is a second "l" in our magic, and the name of Travelling Frog. It took my own rereading of the original story to catch the influence of the European ancestors on the name. 

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.

We would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, or reply to the personal email we're sending to many of our regular readers and family and friends.

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

Toy Ponies (Updated)

"You should collect horses (or was it 'ponies'?)," Kamaiya told us. We have been here at the Langley Fairgrounds Campground a month today. Our young friend's voice is starting to fade, and it saddens me that a memory of much importance could do that. Treacherous mind, making room for some thing else?

In the short and amazing first weeks of adjusting to life on the campground, the innocent and truly magical joy of a child's friendship washed the debilitating vampires of doubt, judgment and small-mindedness off our backs. As I sat outside on the bright yellow metal folding chair to dip the washed dishes in boiling water, I was in the company of the toy horses left with us; gifts from a Muse, a child with heart and imagination freed of blood-letting voices.

Toy Ponies you left for us, Kamaiya.

The YouTube from the creativity workshop-musical Die Vampire, Die! was a gift* dropped into my lap after a literal blood-letting morning experience. (I had blood drawn to check the chemistry of the life's flow in me.) My veins are tiny, and an inexperienced blood-taker will not find easy access. "Are you right-handed or left?" the woman asked. "Right-handed." It was the left vein that allowed the let. "Does it usually work that way," I asked. "It does for you!"

*Pull the 'Pygmy vampire swarming around the head' reference out of the lyrics!!

So the irony and the magic of the musical gift was connection. I was whirling and conflicted by a message I received regarding new work I have begun. The YouTube clip was left as a comment by Ellen Kushner on writer-editor-artist Terri Windling's blog Myth & Moor. The post was "On fear of judgement (and pernicious perfectionism).

Windling's post includes practical and tender advice for artists. Here is something that fuels me:

"From the moment that our artwork, so tenderly constructed, leaves the desk/studio/rehearsal space and travels into the world at large I can guarantee you that it will encounter, somewhere, some or all of the things we dread the most: indifference, incomprehension, mockery, hostility, occasionally even downright hatred."

Before, during and after my morning at the clinic for the blood draw, I was dealing with fears of judgement and needed to hear Art and art chant and cant the vampires off my back and out of my head once again. The work I have begun builds on the medicine of fantasy-memoir -- medicine storytelling-- a kind of writing I do to dive into the real life that I live with the skin of a Water Being who is both totally afraid of what comes with the 'splash' of birthing and aware the splash is essential.

My most recent project is complex and tough speaking; but it is not just angry to be shocking. It is tough speaking because the nature of the pains are old and I am committed to letting air through the holes of my psyche and make a story rich with colors. Our/my colors. I am digging deeper, 'Eli 'eli kau mai say my Ancestors. Pualani Kanakaole Kanahele writes in her two hundred percent Hawaiian voice, a powerful edict for us/me, in the Preface of the book Ka Honua Ola (the living Earth) 'Eli'eli Kau Mai (descend, deepen the revelation),

" We as Native Hawaiians, must continue to unveil the knowledge of our ancestors. Let us interpret for ourselves who our ancestors are, how they thought, and why they made certain decisions ..." Entering the world of ancestral memory requires a certain mindset. Take time, to enjoy and understand each phrase or line before going on ... The meaning and force of the ancestral knowledge will unfold precept upon precept, and each has a code to inspire you on to the next level."

I reread and listen to Pualani because she speaks the language of my heart, the one I forget unless I read and hear it with that powerful mix of anger, justice, pono, fierceness. She clarifies me when I am being drawn on my vampires; I remember why my veins will not easily allow access.


Aurora Levins Morales describes herself on her website:

"I'm a writer, an artist, a historian, a teacher and mentor.  I'm also an activist, a healer, a revolutionary.  I tell stories with medicinal powers. Herbalists who collect wild  plants to make medicine call it wildcrafting. I wildcraft the details of the world, of history, of people's lives, and concentrate them through art in order to shift consciousness, to change how e think about ourselves, each other and the world. The stories we tell about our lives shape what we're able to imagine, and what we can imagine determines what we can do. My job is to change the stories we tell and help us imagine a world where greed has no power, the earth is cherished and all people get to live safe and satisfying lives. Because once we truly imagine it, the pull to create it becomes irresistible."

I go to Aurora Levins Morales to help me feel less alone in my beliefs that the life Pete and I are living is valuable, precious, exciting and filled with that "irresistible pull to keep living it." Mentors, artists, and people who know me and love the work I do with the real life I live, are my audience. These are the people I write for, and they are the ones who will not suck my blood.  It is a life-long discerning process to decolonize and ferret out the vampires and judges (both those outside and the ones with my own voice).

Aurora Levins Morales wrote the widely read and inspiring original volume of radical essays Medicine Stories in 1998. I have been eager to read the updated and revised edition, and again, another gift of connection led me to discover the book is soon to be available (April 19, 2019) from Duke University Press..

"In this revised and expanded edition of Medicine Stories, Aurora Levins Morales weaves together insights and lessons learned over a lifetime of activism to offer a new theory of social justice. Calling for a politics of integrity that recognizes the complicated wholeness of individual and collective lives, Levins Morales delves among the interwoven roots of multiple oppressions, exposing connections, crafting strategies, and uncovering the wellsprings of resilience and joy."

One of the most important pieces of activism and literary inspirations for me as an indigenous woman with so much to forget before I can remember who I really am comes from Levins Morales' essay The Historian as Curandera. The essay begins with this South African proverb:

Until lions write books, history will always glorify the hunter.

I have a much penciled in with lines and notes copy of this essay. From time to time I reread it, and draw on it to refuel my "complicated wholeness of individual and collectives lives." I am doing that refueling again as I write today.

"Tracing absences [of voices that speak my story] can balance a picture, even when you are unable to fill in the blanks. Lack of evidence doesn't mean you can't name and describe what is missing. Tracing the outlines of a woman shaped hole in the record ..., can be a powerful way of correcting imperial history."

Imperial History, colonized history, white privilege and other forms of oppression cover so much ground. Where is there 'common ground' or space for me to 'come to ground' with so many holes in my sould?

It matters that I am a diver, and I make my way through the water of potential through the bravery of my 'pen' or fingers on a keyboard; I dive and dig deep. The play and the work become potent gifts that are not meant to stay out of the way. They are meant to be expressed and this is what I do. Not to please, or make peace at any cost but 'so the moments of understandings do not flee without recognition'; it's my kuleana, my responsibility, my destiny.

The gift of expression and voicing truth for me, an indigenous elder in training, must not be frightened into paralytic thinking: 'this life is not being lived 'well enough' or evolved enough.' A'ole! No! My future, or my next life is fed by my Ancestors who chant for me to go deeper; and my Ancestors who offer me remedy in the form of toy ponies and abundant imagination create joyful todays and more tomorrows.

 
Toy Ponies
For Kamaiya


"You should collect horses."


Her beaming face,
Chatty dialogue
Always making room
For answers.
Flowing hair and curious hands
Dug into our past.

Our cardboard boxes
Filled with bits of so much
Seriousness
But also toys.
"I love that!"
"What's this?"

She will be nine in November.
A Scorpio.
Fully formed and richly-spirited.
"I found this," a rusty horseshoe.
"Gonna put this in my new bedroom!"
"It's for luck," she was without doubt.

"You should collect horses."
She offered us the remedy.
Toy ponies lean upon
The rusted wagon wheel-well.
Wild toy ponies for luck.
Luck and remedy from a child.
Leave no room for vampires.

This will be my last post for at least awhile. I've had a significant change of heart, and may need to attend to my heart and soul with more private care. Blogging to understand myself, and share the process, has been a very public expression with very little in return.

Diving in private now I hope to find the peace I need to ride and play with those wild ponies Kamaiya has left with us. Maybe without so much 'trying to fit' I can just fit where I am, inside.

Rain Day Reality

Wisconsin cheese from Minnesota, playing out with a game of Solitaire

The first rain has come to Whidbey after a long stretch of dry. We are tucked up snug in the vardo enjoying the comfort of our twenty five dollars a night campsite here at the Langley Fairgrounds Campground -- more affectionately nicknamed "the Bunny Camp."

A box of goodies arrived from Minnesota yesterday, gifts from Margaret, Pete's sister. The chunk of aged white cheddar sliced and stacked between bread and toasted in the small cast iron skillet was precious and delicious.

One of the things that we're doing -- part of the process of consolidating our living small life -- is to maximize the ways we use the space we do have. In the ten years since we began our vardo/golden wagon life we have kept the vardo a primarily sleeping space. To ensure a pristine and fragrance free space, we have eaten outside the vardo; in the outdoors when it was conducive and in a separate space when we had it or could create it.

Now we "tincture down" as I have begun to say about the consolidating process going on for us. Making our own medicines using the Plants who have made themselves known to us (Plant Allies) I listen as I introduce myself to the Chickweed, Gobo Root, St. Joan's Wort, Echinacea Root; I watch as I harvest and gather, prepare and fill a clean glass jar; and smell the 100 proof alcohol as I fill the jar packed tight with the leaves, flowers and roots. I cap the jar tightly and set it aside.

Over six weeks, or more, I watch the Plants "tincture down" giving their essence to the alcohol and changing the vodka to People's Medicine. I notice how the thick white rooti-ness settles to the bottom of the jar. Though it's not necessary, I turn the jar with root tincture makings upside down on occasion and thank the Plant for her generosity.

A tin once filled with cookies (thanks Joan) is now my tinctures tin, looked after by the Goddess Kwan Yin

Kitchen on the porch, a Pete retrofit

Booties and a Fleece Robe ... gifts that really do the trick! Mahalo nui Jen & JT

We are "tincturing down" the essential nature of our lives. What we thought we could do over the long haul we have to rethink, re-imagine and make room for the magic of a different sort of connectedness.

We have found a way to pay our way, here at the Bunny Camp, with other people many of them with young children. I introduced our readers to the first dose of family with children here, and here. And this week we met other children and a mother. They are Storytellers! We have exchanged stories, and gifted one another with the getting-to-know you thing that is the first step in reciprocity. Oh how good that feels.

We have found what it takes, now, to combine our wishes and dreams into another form of safety pin magic. The same kind of magic that dropped from the sky one winter day and fed me the original story on a day only a duck could love. What I'm getting at is now we are literally adding The Safety Pin Cafe to the front of our wagon! A dream of a scheme like that one, or any other dream with your essence tinctured in it, takes time.

We have bought sheets of red metal siding to begin the process of creating a four foot by eight foot moveable feasting and prepping area off the porch of the Golden Wagon-Vardo for Two. The add-on will allow me to cook and prepare our meals in the shelter of walls that keep us 'private' yet convertible when we have to move from 'camp to camp.

Thank you Teri and Martin for sharing a bit of your unexpected bounty, which is a lot, with us. We're using some of it for those walls of the tiny Safety Pin Cafe. One of the big lessons we have learned from the months of attempting to share space is: there are limits to which others will share and then sometimes gifts come at expected moments. 

We are here at Bunny Camp getting to know what the culture of camp is like; at least this campground. And that is helping us get real making the most of what we have and who we are. The issues of adjusting and adapting to the culture within a culture raise the question of self-worth; the definitions of home and homelessness factor into our lives all the time. There's no pretending the judgements of our way of living isn't happening; entitlement and privileges reign in this consumer culture.


I have begun the other part of adding onto the original medicine of the Safety Pin Cafe to coincide with the physical creation of the tiny space Pete will fabricate. My part of the process is called LUNCH @ THE PIN. You can read about that project here in a post entitled "Samsara", and I hope it will inspire you to join us and support our effort to "focus on tough topics that need to be chewed."

Saṃsāra (/səmˈsɑːrə/) is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" or "world", with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change.^[1][2] It also refers to the concept of rebirth and "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence", a fundamental assumption of most Indian religions.^[3][4] In short, it is the cycle of death and rebirth.^[2][5] Saṃsāra is sometimes referred to with terms or phrases such as transmigration, karmic cycle, reincarnation, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence".[2 - Wikipedia

And a final gift just purchased at our local mercantile, Star Store, set on the kitchen burner. As promised Jennifer, we found a teapot. It works and it whistles!That's the thing about being human and being on a spiritual path. Sometimes things do ... work as well as whistle. Thank you to all our friends and supporters who share what they do.

 xoxo Moki and Pete

New Moon, New Day, New Way

Pete and I left the campground yesterday to be in the audience, a packed house, at Hugo House in Seattle, to listen and watch this woman read her art. This woman is thirty year old Morgan Parker, poet and author of her newest book Magical Negro.

" Los Angeles–based poet Morgan Parker titling her new potent book of poetry Magical Negro is hilarious, because this book doesn't cater to white selfhood or knowledge at all. Instead what we get is a portrait of 21st-century Black womanhood: our complexities, our sadness, our everydayness, our shared ancestral trauma and the violence done against us, our splendor, our humor. My body is an argument I did not start. That's the pitch of Parker's language."  - Jasmyne Keimig

Leaving our usual world of routines is an investment in our well-being (it's good to add something different to the mundane, tho' there is very little about our life that feels mundane). Timing-wise going into the city to listen to a young Black woman read her art? That was a gift for the Moon-in-us for the Dark Moon was coming in the early hours of Friday. Pete drove the light-Thursday-traffic to give us power to our New Moon in Aries Intentions.

Third House New Moon (me):  Mean what you say. Don’t back down.  
Eighth House New Moon (Pete): You’re responsible for and in control of your own psyche.  Don’t be pushed around or misled.

I am reaching a peak of awakening to the life-long ancestral trauma that every non-white woman and man experiences. The problem with that long time trauma is it's difficult to articulate; or more truthfully it's difficult for whites (who are the majority of my friends, associations, and sources of daily contact) to hear (entitlement creates a stout wall) let alone comprehend and apply.

 "My body is an argument I did not start."There. That. As I sat in the darkened theater and listened to Morgan Parker read that line, I felt the answer. Her answer. My answer. Ya, my language has been trying to give my body a better, bitter answer to all the condescension and white entitlement that has and still does keep that argument going.

The oxygen flowed through the purse-carrier sized tank, through the stainless tubing and out of the ceramic mask. At a constant flow poised on "4" I held the life-giving element -- 02 -- up to my seventy-one year old Filipino, Hawaiian, Chinese face. The young Black woman was funny, tired from a book tour that was not even near finished. She read from her newest collection of poetry as well as poems from earlier books. She 'clarified' the title of her book There are More Beautiful Things than Beyonce because the title stirred people (her own) to name the poet blasphemous.  After sips of something clear and icy with a slice of lemon with Tequila in it, Morgan Parker scented the oxygen I sucked up that night with deep truth and reinforcements for this old woman. This old woman who could have used that "My body is an argument I did not start" line decades earlier as an antidote for sucking up to white power, or sucking on white cock.

I'm not sure where this peaking awakening will take me. I know it was no accident this past year of episodes with the white folk of this liberal and sustainably self-identified community. I know the challenges Pete and I face as a couple duking out racial and cultural differences counts for something. What exactly?

I'm not sure. But then the way is not over yet, and this edge-dwelling version of life for us has a message that fuels us to remain curious and wise in our everyday. So many ways to make a different choice. Not so many choices when you are not white, and even fewer choices when the margins of definitions tag you 'Chronically Homeless'; 'Homeless'; 'Temporarily Homeless' ... or the honest but cold shit description we heard as the New Year of the Pig was birthed?

"In the way."

I am planting new seed, digging up new ground, and making connections with the Bunnies and the Children here at the campground in Langley. The way forward is clear, but the how and who are still having that age old argument in my body. "It's an argument I didn't start," the young Black poet sez. She is right, but what an old Brown and Asian writer can do is to pen the bravery of my life and say:

"No. I won't start out-of-the-way." In as many ways as I can, that may make that argument (I didn't start) weigh more on the side of the Colors than in times past.

Read here for more of what's happening for New Moon, New Day, New Way. I mean what I say, and won't back down. Wow, the poet made the perfect argument for why it makes no sense to back down now.

Meet Brown Nose!

" a new site prepares me to take new and bolder steps with my art, my activism, my words and the reality of an indigenous woman living in a very white-is-right and privileged world. Odd and quirky as it might appear ... Brown Nose Bunny and all his Relatives are feeding this Hawaiian elder woman with their spirit energy and here's what I mean."

Click here to read what I'm up to with Brown Nose.

Antidote to shun and straight lines

Once upon a time, a tall lean man named Dean set upon a journey on foot. The time and place are important to some people, but, to others, the time and place bends and changes and somehow those bends and changes make room for people to slip into the costumes of once upon a time.

And then what happens?

 On very special occasions Magic-makers feed an antidote, a potent dose, of this-and-that-and-the other which almost always includes Beings called Children. Time and Place are really never constant, stable or fixed. That is part of the reason Antidotes are so effective, especially when used on adult Human beings who tend to forget what is important.

The man named Dean was an adult human being who went on a journey through lands warm and dry, once upon a time. As the story was related to me, he wore a red stocking cap, a blue shirt that eventually became attached with many patches or badges from fire departments throughout that warm and dry land.

Since this man was journeying on foot, his son, another human being named Dean sent the man a stick for walking. Hickory by family name if memory serves true. But, maybe this is true and maybe this is truth on the bend.

The funny, and delightful thing about the way time and place bends when the Antidote is at work? The funny thing is how work bends into play and old men begin to age sideways like crabs in motion. Or, does that only happen if the old men are really Crabs in human bodies? Yes, well, maybe.

The once upon a time story of a man named Dean came magically alive when the son of Dean, the very same one who sent his father a walking stick from the family Hickory, bent to be with a family of children from the family Stockavitz.

While digging and sorting through years and years of memories and trinkets, the Antidote seeped her/his way into fingertips and nostrils of the son of Dean.  The crippling stickiness of Shun and Straight Lines had begun to work the Forgetting Spell.

Fortunately, the son of Dean had his own special magic. Imbedded in his name, that was an Antidote. It was his magical name ... Pete, that was spoken, repeated, spoken and repeated over and over again for thirteen days and nights.

Pete, oooh, this is beautiful.
Pete, what is this?
Pete, why are you sending that box to Molly?
Pete, who is Molly?
Pete, do you know how to play this? 
Pete, what ya doing?
Pete, can I help you?
Pete. Pete. Pete ...

Too often we Human People forget how precious the Antidote of Curiosity and Play are in the whole walk and talk and bend to time and place.

Too often we Human People shun those People who won't or don't wish to fit into the straight lines or tight boxes of expectations.

But.



The Antidote.

Once upon a time, once again, on a knoll not far from a prairie where the Forgetting Disease tried to wrangle the son of Dean of his own personal Antidote ...

A band of Children from the Family Stockavitz brought the remedy of Child's Play into the story and  then? And then, the magic and the bending of time and place broke the spell of the Forgetting Disease. Shunning and Straight Lines got caught on the tail of a kite. The kite and its tail dragged over bump and lumps of a campground, leaving those Shuns and Straight Lines knocked for a loop.

Silly unsupervised play, and the twitching of Bunny People's noses mixed up dreams of the most wonderful thing of all. The son of Dean and his dumpling round brown woman of a wife who writes stories and sometimes tells them were given reasons to believe, shun and straight lines are just short sighted reasoning and no fun at all!

Thank you Family Stockavitz, we will long, long remember the Antidote to Shun and Straight lines you brought to a pair of old dears when Spring came on a grassy knoll at the Bunny Camp.

The heart and imagination

The largeness of my heart seems directly reflective of how willingly my head accesses my imagination. When I was a girl, maybe the age of the young girl who has befriended us at the Bunny Campground, my imagination was shy of the escape hatches; what if there was no way back. Who would take care of things then. What serious beginnings my young girl had.

But there were inklings that my Imagination would watch, and wait, for the timing of events and people to show up in my life. There were suspicions that made my itchy feet dance at the most unexpected moments.

The forecast of weather promises a day like Summer today. A very clear and crisp morning, and the company of a fine Doodle of a friend makes this day a very new one. We are at a friend's place experimenting with a new setup for wash day. Two coolers for wash and rinsing, and the nylon clothesline for hanging occupy Hopi's deck. Sunshine rises through the tips of the Cedars.

It is Sun that will help make wash day a success. That, and the openness of a friend to find a way to help. A friend with Imagination.

This weekend we sat at the picnic table on the north side of the mobile home that houses our new friends. Pete had promised a day of kite making, and Sunday was that day.

"I've never done this before," Pete admitted. It has never been a reason to not try something. In all the years we have known each other, the stories of Pete at work or Pete being out in the world not having done something has never, well ... rarely, stopped him from trying something that appeared needing to be done.

The kids were excited, impatient in between being necessarily patient, as Pete and I muddled through the kite making process. I felt my old habit of being efficient or purposeful. I watched and listened as our styles of 'doing' clashed. But the thing is, in the company of real life children who were living forward in-the-moment, we were treated to a Sunday of once-more-with-gusto kind of experience. We were in the middle of fun and that is a big, big time imagining in practice.

 The afternoon of kite making stretched longer than the attention of the children, but Pete kept at the cut, tape, wind and measuring. Folding in lots of chewing the fat and sharing stories with Dad to the gaggle of children who have come to love Pete, the mylar bags that held the pounds of herbs we steep for Nourishing Herbal Infusions pulled time and circumstance into legend.

I bet, Pete will become a story in those children's sometime. I know the children are imprinting my heart with a story I could not have made up without them.

Perhaps the marks we make on the ways through and into the story that is ours to live is rich because it fills with broad and prickly memories. The regrets we have only so much dirty laundry left over from decisions that will have another chance at a different ending ... down the way, or around the corner, with a strange yet to become familiar.

It's also possible we judge the peculiarity of our styles and then ... pweff and puffery, we lose the timbre of the heart's beat which is as peculiar and powerful as the Sun. A star burning is peculiar. Sun Shine. Trees leafing out to goggle Sun Shine, human's call photosynthesis.

Leaves just call it yum.

How fortune are we to find drying clothes under the Sun's Shine an act of great imagination!

Landing on our feet and in good hands, and feeling brave

"All week ... Don’t waste resources trying to fix a problem on the fly. Take your time and the problem may resolve on its own. Or you may change what you want out of the situation. You can always buy the thing later if that turns out to be the right course of action. For now, work at figuring out what IS the right tool for the job or the right desired action or outcome. Spend money if you know you’ll enjoy it for its own sake now. There’s no need to spend ahead just in case. Don’t feather a nest you may not ever move into." - Satori

Pete and I have moved the wagon from the Prairie Front; we did that earlier this week. Tuesday evening just before the Sun set the old Dodge truck with the old white man pulled the vardo built for two onto a small knoll next to the only Cedar on the campground. We are parked with many, many mostly mocha-colored bunnies and been befriended by a gaggle children.

The events and the interactions over the past months have been incredible. I have learned so much about my own internal resiliency, come to appreciate the value of being multiply sensitive to all that is; and know a lot more about what it means 'to be brave.'

As I walked back from town the other morning I met a friend who was so surprised to see me.
"What are you doing (in this part of town)?" She asked as she stopped her cart, and pulled her scarf from her face.
"We're camped just up the road." I said. She interpreted that and asked, "You must be cold."
"Oh no, the vardo is very warm. We're just up the road at the campground."
She paused, then said "You are so brave."
"People have no idea how brave we are." I said.
"No. I have no idea," she said.

Later in the week when Pete and I had spent the afternoon clearing out and cleaning up the kitchen we had used for the past year, a young woman came to talk. I was surprised to see her, and I was very tired from the physical work and the weeks of stressful encounters with people and their choices.
I let fly with a barrage of emotional explosives. Pete told me later the young friend was in tears when he pulled away in Bernadette.

I wrote an apology the next night. It was an apology for the explosion.
"I was overly-tired when you came. But, you did come and that was very brave," I wrote in my email.
This is the same young woman, the only member of the Tilth Council, who ever approached Pete or me about her misgivings about voting to ask us to leave.

We are parked in a campground not far from the Langley Library where I sit at a big screen and keyboard look at the peaks of mountain range and listen to the murmur of others behind me. This is a transitional time once again; our vardo and the stuff that filled the Tilth's kitchen are with us in one form or another. There is still more to clear and sort, but, we are as Satori describes, "not trying to fix a problem on the fly...For now, we are figuring out what IS right."

With the time running out on the library computer, I found something to consider. It's about 'courage' and it's something Maya Angelou has said. It comes close to what 'being brave' feels like to me but not quite.

Brave. How often do you think about that quality, and do you recognize bravery in yourself or people you really know?

 “One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”- Maya Angelou

What was south is north; what was east is west

Time has been fiddled.

Daylight Savings Time.

We had not slept.

Time has been fiddled.

The man.

Burned his slash.

Late at night.

When Beings need sleep.

We had not slept.

For three nights.

We were forced to move.

The deputy shined his light on us.

"Oh you're the guy who called," he said.

"You have every reason to be here."
He drove to the burn site.

We slept in 'Scout'

At Holmes Harbor.

Home away from home.

YMC

Pete is tucked under blanket, quilt, Big Red and a Dikka Ballantine original hat. We have worked harder than we're used to in the past few days; and that is saying a lot. Our life is hard work. Good. Hard. Honest. Work. Humbling stuff this hard, survivor instinctive work.

We made the turn though. Literally, our Golden Wagon and we now experience what was south is north; what was east is west. Our minds and our attention are changing. Pete needs some attention now, and two hot stones -- our warming pohaku -- are heating his body after intent exertion.

I'm at work here at the keys and screen; downloaded some of the photos and videos that document this excursion stitching across the borders some would hope were margins that stuck -- keeping us out of the way, down or out. But oh how they misinterpret our tiny wagon and her peoples' medicine.

We got an email from someone who doesn't normally communicate with us. She'd heard about our latest search for home from a mutual friend. An edited version of that email follows:

"I hold the intention of “your place to be, and take sanctuary”

…  I read some of your blog as I heal… and see you as SO WISE and willing to be truthful and full of hope!!

I’m so sorry our culture is so full of fear and smallness." 

That third morning when Pete and I spent road miles and sleepless nights escaping the arrogance of a man who persisted in his burns, even after being 'told to extinguish ...' by governmental agency issuing his $100 permit, we tried going back to the vardo for sleep. A'ole. No. The air was still thick with smoke. So we drove into Langley and were reminded: The Sun. E Ala E. The Sun rises. Les Gabelein's slash burn is minutiae.

Look at the new day born. Happy Birthday!!

In the frost-covered bench along the docks in Langley, I etched a birthday greeting for our nephew, "Wika". The technology of iPhones connected us ... I sent it off to Hawaii. "Beautiful. Thank you Aunty," he replied minutes later.

 

Yesterday, Pete and I had chicken and rice on our front porch. Eating facing west, listening to Hawaiian music that holds such heart and soul medicine for us.  It is so important to remember to find and feel the beauty of every day.

Mahalo Ke Akua e na 'aumakua. As I work to get this new post strung into lei, I do it knowing my Pisces Ma would be 101 years old today. Hauoli La Hanau, Ma. Still loving you!

xoxo Titi, the Tough Tita and Pete, the Dude

Come to ground at the kitchen table

 

Our Subaru got an oil change and a checkup this week. Matt, the car guy likes this car, he has a sweet spot for the old gal that is smaller than most rigs on the road these days, but not as small or ecologically correct as the hybrids some folks own and drive.

While 'Scout' got some attention Pete and I enjoyed the public services of one of our favorite places -- the library. The sunshine is bright as I work at the keyboard held level on a corner table. The hum of some equipment behind a portable screen and the voices of the librarians enjoying ruckus laughter accompany the tap of the keys as I consider the thoughts and feelings of coming to ground; what is the ground of my being right now? This is a library we don't usually frequent, the vibe and the setting is different but somehow common, like being at kitchen tables here or there.

Joy Harjo's poem, "Perhaps the World Ends Here" got me thinking about how many kitchen tables I've known in my life.

 "The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite."

"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.

Yes, I still see my parents' old kitchen table tucked against the wall in the Kuli'ou'ou house. Early mornings when bowls of evaporated milk-diluted coffee floated Saloon Pilot crackers smeared with margarine. Sitting to be with my dad before he went to work. Still dark. So early to work. Before the first beer. Before the loud gouging torment of machinery tore both Island and Daddy's blood vessels. Daddy was a bulldozer man.

Yes, I remember sitting at Josephine Spencer's kitchen table after Ma died. "Such a nice lady, your mother." The neighborhood of my girl time was still intact though with values and practices begun decades ago. I had been gone many years by the time Ma sat on her back porch for the last time. In her pajamas, she might have been looking out across her yard, around the long and low growing Hayden when her heart said, "Enough for now."Nola found Ma on her porch. Nola took care of my mom at the end. Called the ambulance. Called me.

Fifteen years ago this week I left that home, the house that held my mother's kitchen table and the kitchen table that Pete and I brought to that same Island valley home. I sold the old home place. Too many old ghosts with stories and secrets held tight; warning me 'get on with it.'

"At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

"At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks."

We have wandered and juggled the answers and versions for life made anew, different yet the same since that day in March.

 "Our dreams ... laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves ... as we put ourselves back together once again at the table."

Soon we will move from a community kitchen that we hoped could be shared. Wasn't it possible that one big kitchen could house a community -- individually, communally -- at different times, in different ways? Wasn't it possible that sharing -- not the same as owning-- the kitchen, or the table could be okay, if we could come to ground? It was possible, temporarily but I think the saddest part is there could have been so much more sharing if the element of reciprocity had a place at the table.

"Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory."

Yesterday we visited a neighbor who owns many acres of land not far from where we have lived for the past several months. This was a followup visit. I was bringing Pete with me after a fit of confidence saw me climb into Scout, drive to the top of Thompson Road, park the Subaru, wheel open her gate and walk across her field to where the woman and her daughter were working their sheep.

I spoke with her daughter first. We talked about the slash burn happening in the neighborhood, and shared gossip and my activism in response to the hazardous burn; I thought there was some simpatico developing between us. I thought there was a bond of equanimity. We were in agreement that the air was damnably difficult for us all.

"I'm waiting for your mom, " I said when the daughter and I seemed at the end of our conversation that cold morning on the prairie.

"She won't be long." I watched the dogs rustle up the last of the sheep.

I had to introduce myself to her mother, "Didn't recognize you. Familiar, but you were out of context," she said from behind deep sunglasses.

Out of context, I was on her land and with the energy of a common issue of slash burn that not only affects me, but her and her 15 baby lambs that have to breathe that foul air, I dared to find common ground.

I reminded her that last fall she had said if things got rough on the Tilth we might take a breather on her land ... she has a small cottage. But that cottage was not what I was asking after; I was asking for a place for us to pull the vardo, plug in for electricity (we'd pay) and maybe, be welcomed.

I listened as yet another woman said, "I am a very private person, I know myself very well. I sympathize with your situation, but ..." Over the last month Pete and I have heard this "privacy" explanation many times.

"It might just be time for us to be mobile again."

"Oh, that's hard. Have you ever thought about a generator?" she asked when I did not speak.

I was ready. "We have a generator and use it when the power goes out."

"Well, maybe you could pull onto the five acres behind (Milo's) building." That was a stunner, and an opportunity that felt like a sweet drink of hot evaporated milk diluted coffee.  Ah, could that be enough. Could the land owner be open to sharing with the woman out of context?I left feeling the possibility of yes! That night I couldn't sleep, dreams or ghosts kept me up, but I so wanting to believe we might be welcome.

Back to the followup visit ...

"I wouldn't want this (driveway through her farm area) to become a road. You don't go out very often do you?"

"The pond needs to be dredged too, so that might be a problem although there's no one who will come to do the work."

"You'd have to stay out of the way.  Close to the fence line."

"You mean the fence I cleared of all those black berries (for you) last summer so Coyotes wouldn't have cover?" Pete asked.

"Yea, that fence. Well ... maybe not quite that close.This wouldn't be forever. Just temporary." She said from her side of the margin.

We left with the landowner's phone number and a stack of books she loaned me. "I want these back, but they should keep you busy." The books are written about animals, coyote and wolf in particular. I had shared my experiences with Coyote, the same ones that hunt her sheep; the same ones that initiated me on the Lunar Eclipse earlier this year. I thought there was common ground there, too. But only if we stay out of the way.

.........

Cloistered and sheltered in the woods of Forest Lane when Pete and I first came to Whidbey Island we managed to learn to share land, space, and friendship. There were many boundaries and borders to acknowledge and respect and during those years the poetry of coming to ground at the table rewinds: I remember how we did make time to come to those tables.

 Pete and Eileen putting in a gate, 2010

In the orchard
On the deck
A couple times inside the house
In the Quonset
Over coffee at the coffee house


Astrologically, Uranus, the slow-mover planet of revolution and change has begun his seven year plow through the Earth-sign of Taurus. Breaking ground, or ground-breaking experiences will make a big difference in our individual lives and the communities and systems that we hold dear. 'In a rut?' Get ready to be plowed under or rutted out. I see the future and feel it in our lives.

We have to plow under some ideas about being welcome in other people's lives. New forms of being with a wagon-centric life where ownership and property tincture down, distilled to small and essential values are in the making.

"Jupiter and Saturn in their home signs at this time, is another indication that most of what happens at this time will be positive.  You may actually be cementing (Saturn) your future (Jupiter). To see this, you may have to view the big picture and ignore the minutiae." - Elsa

At this point, our experiences with relationships ... old ones and new ones may be the minutiae. Maybe there is a big picture to come as the old big picture is churned up. We have several sketchy options for where to be in the next month; all of them temporary, but perhaps enough to make progress without expecting the past to be our future.

 "Thursday, (March 7, 2019) the Pisces Moon conjoins retrograde Mercury then goes on to Aries and over Chiron. Continue to ride those final waves waves wherever they take you. Take it in. It’s familiar territory but a different perspective. We’re learning something brand new, but we’re still rearranging old information in the short term." - Satori

A mixture of snow and rain came to remind me that winter is not yet done with her part in the cycles. We have work to do to clear out the spaces we have occupied over the temporary span of a year and five months. A distillation of what we take forward is necessary. How much is enough?

More unfolds as I rework this piece, and re-listen to Robin Wall Kimmerer tell the story of Skywoman, and explain what 'The Honorable Harvest' means. To re-listen, I hear something I may need to remember about asking, and listening for permission. (At 13:42 on this YouTube presentation.)

I try to make room for a lesson that is more than  human-centric. I do this to find the element of reciprocity to fuel my dwindling regard for humans who so often muddle wants with needs; so interwoven it's hard to know if there is a difference.

Pete and I haven't slept for two nights leaving the vardo because of the ongoing hazard of the neighbor's slash burn. We're stumbling in our activism, amazed at what it takes to stand our ground. Maybe something will change in the process ... 


 "Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite."


How about your life, your ruts? Is there revolutionary action taking place in your field; and how much room is there at your kitchen table for people unlike yourself?

Singing the Blues: Appropriating my suffering, mirroring my past

"... Settle your debts, not just to "the other person" but to the collective. 

Basically, if you're letting other people do all the heavy lifting, you realize you should pitch in.  Family (the Moon) may be involved with this as well.  Think also in terms of inheritance or your legacy.

...  Standing by, watching another person struggle when you could easily assist is a giant no-no...

Take the weekend to balance your "books", understanding you may have to dig deep to do so (Pluto).  You'll feel better as you get things sorted; but the real payoff is down the road when you don't have to pay the price for the things you failed to do when you knew you should have."

   "Heads Up Newsletter"

We have sunshine. After more than a week of dodging slash burn, (since original posting, the fires continue) filing smoke and fire complaints, keeping a running email thread with government agencies; having conversations to clear the relational air here on the Prairie Front; and searching for a place to live ...  Pete is now hauling out 'stuff.' Piles of tools, bags of framed photographs, oxygen tanks, old mementos,  a cross-cut saw that needs a splint to make it work again.

"There's more here than I thought." There always is.

Earlier today Pete cleared what was stored under the wagon, preparing the vardo to be moved out of her settled-in position of the past many months. Before we can hitch her up there are things to ready her and literally, Pete must dig her out of a hole. To level the trailer on this land, which though a prairie has very little flat ground, Pete dug us in. There's a slip of a metaphor going on with that but we won't dwell too long. The opportunity here is the karmic debts that have come due as we ready ourselves for a new next.

I've been chewing on what Elsa suggested in terms of settling the karmic books. For years now the hundreds of blog posts I've written have been stories of our current events. My comfort with so much disclosure is like a sound wave, not constant in its levels. The posts are as much a way for me to hear-by-heart as much, if not more, than finding the words to translate what's going on in my head.

What debts do I need to settle?

Pete's sister wrote a long and deeply informing email to me after she read the blog post 'Braiding and Making the Appreciation Rounds'. In part she said,

"I enjoyed reading  your thoughtful appreciation tribute to your life and Pete's at this time. I was stunned by the smoke crisis and the attitudes around it  that developed last week and realized how very difficult life can be for you every day. If I can help you more in any way please let me know. I've learned that money is really a form of energy.  It's alive and is always changing even if it's sitting in a bank and gaining interest. Even if it's not being spent money can give the person a feeling of  emotional safety which is essential when situations are hard. I've been there many times. Money can change lives as I have seen with my own family as they moved in  new directions."

Akua, the Creator, and all my Ancestors who light up the night sky give me the tools to dig into and dig up my debts. Watching another struggle when I could have helped? There is one very big regret I have. Rationalizing worked for years. But this winter, I see my past mirrored in the actions of others. Pete came up with the phrase, "appropriating my suffering" to explain the disappointments we've had when offers of help (sharing a place to live) were offered and then withdrawn with the added drama of tears, their tears. Tears because it was so hard to make the decision not to help. But not so hard that they would help.

Hah, Isn't that the stuff the Blues are made of?*

I watched my brother struggle with addiction, and struck an unfair deal with him when he was at a low point. I didn't give him what he wanted; instead I gave him what I could give. It wasn't fair, and in the end the karmic debt has hounded me because it was about money and 'property.' This was about settling on his part of the family inheritance of our family home. He wanted money. I was living in the family home; it was my emotional safety. Money cannot buy everything, but without it or its equivalent it's hard to ever feel safe enough. A rift split us apart for years and when I finally sold our family home, I paid my brother the remainder of what he asked for years earlier.

Before he died, my brother and I reached a point of ho'oponopono, setting things right between us. I asked for the reconciliation; I missed him in my life and asked 'Can we start again?' In a way the last few years of his life allowed us to progress in our relationship becoming more mutually communicative. I was given more time to talk and David did more listening.

What is the debt I feel in that relationship? 

This past weekend as my astrologer Elsa laid out the opportunities of heavenly bodies aligned to clean up a regret that could have longer lasting family legacy, I recognized my actions repeating themselves. Mirrored in the relationships with friends, I saw how betrayals snap trust between bites of warm and savory food.  I saw how unsuspecting set-ups appropriate my suffering. MCS is a tough illness to live with. Sharing and accepting the burden by others takes a special kind of person. Why offer only to be withdrawn?

We make our decisions at the moment and for good or ill we live with the consequences. This experience I'm trying to describe is helping me to see that 'settling the books' is still a matter of interpretation. I've been on both sides of the story when it comes to watching another struggle. The consequences of my choices could easily be disassociated with the current challenges I have/we have to find community who will share their goodies with me/us.

I'm taking the position that my actions of the past have consequences today, and recognize that 'property' and 'money' play big into my progressed evolution. With that awareness I begin to settle my books by not repeating my actions, or silence when I see another struggle when I could easily help; or allowing others to repeat those actions with me.

The clues, the signs, the astrological alignments conspire on my behalf: learn this one they tell me. I, am an old woman with a Progressed Life that is now much, much fuller than it was when I was born 71 years ago. Settling my debts to my brother in both the specific and the collective sense means I can feel my heart's desires because I am more fully who I really am. I can act with decency, and not weigh so heavily on being efficient. There is such a big difference!

My struggles and suffering are many. They aren't just made up, but, then some of them are. The imagination can be a tool of fabrications. But there is a place for fiction especially when they serve a function of escape from the cruelty that is too often real. My brother and I grew in in a family and in a culture torn into shreds by a dominating White Colonizing power. Roots and cultural values laid low in my parents and inelegant but necessary coping techniques tampered with our senses. We survived and carry a legacy that is both powerful because we do survive, and challenged because to thrive we must adapt. Adapting does not mean forgetting; it means remembering. When suffering continues without recognizing systemic de-humanizing and episodes of 'entitlement' the dynamics repeat.

Who could have guessed that Pete and I would build a small wagon home together and I would write these blog posts to describe our lives. Those who read these stories, and those who know us as real folk are attracted (some repulsed) to the grit and repetitive challenges, but keep a distance lest their comforts be disturbed. Lyrics of the blues for our times. Mirroring our pasts we, Pete and I, learn in public. Over and over again this winter we have reached for that welcoming community we have imagined. Activating the change that we wish to see, we become the change, leaving marks for family and strangers to oogle at or cluck their tongues. What good is it? 

"they once told me
'Nah, you can't do that.' they clicked with their tongues & pursed up their lips. but now I really don't care."-from 'Mana'o of a makua o'o a bundle of simple words', by Yvonne Mokihana Calizar, Copyright, 1999

The good is that through our real life and the blogging there is an opportunity for progress in our collective evolution. We, humans, have so much to learn about being Native and of the Earth, not just on the Earth. My brother David continues to be with me, often and in many of my dreams. We have ongoing adventures and when I get messages from his son -- a small video of my brother's granddaughter whacking a baseball into the outfield -- I see the legacy is carried forward in many ways.

She's some kind of wonderful - Grand Funk Railroad

To be continued ...

How about you? Are there debts in your money or love commitments to be paid in your life, and how is that going? 



Singing the Blues:

*Billy Holiday sings it blue ... "Don't Explain."  (Link to an interview about Billy Holiday's rendering and lyrics of this song for insight into the depth of blues -- how "uncomfortable Billy Holiday makes us" for being so honest about her passion; raising the question of 'appropriating suffering' for me. )

Our son, Chris Kawika in the shared kitchen @ Christmas