" 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."
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 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!
"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
"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!
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."
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?
