Wounds bared

"Just," the wind and clouds considered the sound and meaning of the human utterance. Against a blue sky in the middle of the rain season, the gentle wind and ambling clouds had time for a bit of philosophy.

"Does it mean there are better circumstances to embrace then. If a human says 'Just this much more, or just one minute there' does it mean something's missing?" The clouds weren't used to minutia.

The wind was in a tolerant mood and enjoyed the spaciousness of the questions. Having no particular destination at the moment Wind offered this, "Just" seems to be a human place holder.

"Place holder?" This would take some doing to make sense.

The golden wagon's location was just that sort of place holder. Though it wasn't much of a move to most human eyes, to the beings who have watched the two aging humans the move was far enough yet still within reach. They could be sniffed with little trouble. With a bit of effort climbing up a tree would give Squirrel or Chipmunk a familiar site. From the sky, the Stars and especially The Milky Way could see that all wounds were now bared, the gaping holes and shadows not so hidden from themselves. The new neighbors, Cedar and Hemlock felt the shadows reflect those wounds giving Old Sal and Old Sam substance, character, something.

"The move was just enough then?" Cloud was getting the picture.

"Yes, just so," nodded Wind as the two companions hovered in the air stream before being swept up for somewhere else.

Owls Song

Last night Owls reminded Sal which conversation matters mainly: the one where she did speak of them, or the one where she did speak and be hear directly.

Owls Song
Yvonne Mokihana Calizar

They chortled
Just beyond
The lit wagon
Close enough
To stir us
Properly.

Not much
Past dusk
I chimed
Pushed open
a cloister
"Don't hunt
those bunnies."
He said,
"They came
to thank me."
The strings downed
Mean they will
hunt.

There are no hens across the orchard, Sam had secreted them away; without telling any of the women who have not tended them, or closed them into coop at night, nor witnessed the generations of rats who fed on the grains. 

That afternoon Sal did watch Sam pushing the garden cart through the orchard. But only while the owls sang did she know it was the net of strings that criss crossed the sky above the hen house and the once- filled duck pens Sam hauled away. 

They do watch, and do talk to us directly. It is our ears for hearing their song that must be re-tuned. 

Pine Needle Dancers

Three storms have shaken the forest, soaking people and attitudes, leaving pine needles and cedar braids to cushion the floor. The ritual suggested in the astrology sent by the Taurus led Sal to dig up the medicine story written for Pine. The old gal Sal has recorded the story, sent it to family and friends before the storms clambered through. On the wings of wind the story remedies of clearing and cleaning sailed through taking the old within and without.

Mahalo nui, Pine Needle Dancers.

Limu Hula

"We left the woods for a walk at the Muliwai," it was a message Sal wrote to her son. "We were in luck, and in awe. The ocean was doing hula with the limu. Beautiful."

"I think the hula was as well a deep lomi to the guts, gently but powerfully setting up release," Raven watched the car pull into the empty lot at the water's edge. He knew before they knew, but it was not a race to be correct. The black bird was simply noticing.

Notes from the cloud, and sunshine in the parking lot

Sal found some astrology from the Taurus in her cloud box. It read:

 " During the final ten weeks of 2016, your
physical and mental health will flourish in direct proportion to how much
outworn and unnecessary stuff you flush out of your life between now
and October 25th. Here are some suggested tasks:

1. Perform a homemade
ritual that will enable you to magically shed at least half of your guilt,
remorse, and regret. Sal loves homemade rituals.

2. Put on a festive party hat, gather up all the clutter and junk from your home, and drop it off at a thrift store or the dump. Now that's a great tweak to the cleaning up around the place that's already in progress. 'A festive party hat.'

3. Take a vow that you will do everything in your power to kick your attachment to an influence that's no damn good for you. Sal discovered this great way to look at those Nodes of the Moon interpretation. It fits right here!

4. Scream nonsense curses at the night sky for as long as it takes to purge your
sadness and anger about pain that no longer matters. Wow, that will take some coaxing. Scream at the night sky?*# But yes, that's a purge long over due!!"

"What a terrific list," Sal said to herself as she read the astrology to Sam. She, the round gal, is so ready to bask in the sunshine, and relax. 

"The sunshine that now floods the bed in the golden wagon parked on the gravel lot."

"All winter long," Sam chimed. The potential for a glorious viewpoint to this small and powerful move ... such a welcomed change to drama. The sunshine is exposing all those dark shadowy places.

Small, simple, grounded self-regard. How nice!!

Wind II, Squirrel Medicine

Yesterday before the wind and rain moved through their Salish Sea environment, Squirrel visited Sal. From the small window in the door of the golden wagon Sal looked out. The view now changed after six nights was that of Cedar and Salal, lots of the later and one many armed lacy aromatic branch. Cedar is turning burnished orange-red in places.

The same burnished orange is the color of Squirrel's tail and back. Sal heard Squirrel's voice from inside the wagon as she looked out from behind the glass. She tapped a similar rhythmic pattern with the pointing finger of her left hand, and spoke, "Squirrely, you looking for us? We're here now." Squirrel clung to the trunk of Fir in that yoga position Sal could only imagine possible; a horizontal angle parallel to the ground. Through her actions, the question of a balanced life messaged the round woman. Sharp unblinking eyes and a pointed snout locked with Sal's.

Squirrel had come to check: "Are you being resourceful?" Not only did Sal's neighbor Squirrel come to ask the question, he or she was voicing concern.

The beauty of living in the woods for six years has been the inter-woven communication between Those-Who-Have-Lived-Here-Long and the two in the golden wagon. Moving onto the gravel and out from under the Pines was as much a decision influenced because Sam and Sal had no wish to 'down' the crooked topped Pine tree.

Coming round to the conditions in Haiti again, the story folds one of the do's and don'ts from the Seattle Slog article entitled, "As Hurricane Mathew Tops 100, Do's and Don'ts for Americans Who Want to Help"

[...] 6) Whatever you do, don't donate to appease your own conscience and stop there. This is primarily a man-made disaster, not a natural one. Haiti is poor and especially vulnerable to hurricanes for human (read: political) reasons, not physical ones. Hurricanes hit Taiwan, another small island nation, all the time, but they don't cause this kind of devastation.
The causes of Haiti's poverty are deep. They have to do with racism and capitalism and empire, and they date back to the Haitian revolution of 1804. This is a good introduction:

 Medicinal history. Medicine story.

Wind

A note showed up via the cloud, "wind" was its subject. The message

i am glad you got out from under the tree just in time for the wind tonight. stay safe.

Sal wrote back, "Thank you for your concern, and affirmation for the move!"

Sam has been readying the homestead cleaning things that might be thrown about when the winds come through. Sal said a prayer to the forest and the trees asking for protection, and giving thanks for everything they are all the time ... big wind, small wind, no wind.

The golden wagon is leveled on blocks so Sam and Sal walk a steadier pace across the small aisle delineated by throw rugs and old favorite blanket; a few steps from door to bed. Adjusting to the small and powerful move from the woods, the two old dears are being fed a new mentorship with a woman named Aurora. It is very likely much of what Sal is learning will appear in this medicine.

This woman Aurora is a woman born from the Caribbean, a Puerto Rican-Jewish woman. As Haiti reels from the devastation of big wind, this poem serves as tether of solidarity worthy of the power of connection, voice, women, and concern.

V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales

Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning
and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:
Another world is possible.
 
Thus spoke the prophet Roque Dalton:
All together they have more death than we,
but all together, we have more life than they. 
There is more bloody death in their hands
than we could ever wield, unless
we lay down our souls to become them,
and then we will lose everything.  So instead,
 
imagine winning.  This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and the woman
wrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.
 
Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child.
It is your child.
Defend it as if it were your lover.
It is your lover.
 
When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.  
 
Imagine rape is unimaginable. Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor
That the crimes of our age, the grotesque inhumanities of greed,
the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it, the vast fortunes
made by stealing lives, the horrible normalcy it came to have,
is unimaginable to our heirs, the generations of the free.
 
Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing.  Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.
 
Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children’s children
may live
 
This poem is here with the permission of the author, Aurora Levins Morales with the promise that this link appears to take you to her blog. Mahalo nui loa Aurora Levins Morales for your inspiration, your voice.

Working the angles, a caper

See that Grand Trine in the Air signs? The fully formed Warrior Woman Pallas Athena in Aquarius trines a retrograde Uranus, which trines the MC the Midheaven. A Mercury, Chiron and Sun in Scorpio conjoins the Midheaven and squares Pluto, Saturn and Mars ... What's that all about? 

"[] a good way to tap a grand trine’s latent energy is to have at least one planet square or opposed to a planet in the grand trine. This planet in hard aspect can often produce enough stimulus to mobilize the grand trine’s otherwise latent energy. If you have such a planet in your chart, get to know it so that you can develop a habit of using its energy to break free of your inertia.- Grand Trine Planetary Pattern

[] Such "medicinal" histories seek to re-establish the connections between peoples and their histories; to reveal the mechanisms of power, the steps by which their current condition of oppression was achieved, through a series of decisions made by real people in order to dispossess them; but also to reveal the multiplicity, creativity and persistence of resistance among the oppressed." - Aurora Levins Morales

"How was the move?" 

"Like a caper," Sal answered.

She continued, "small and potent."

Remembering what it took for them to build the golden wagon, Sal watched Sam over the two days. After six years of rooting themselves into the forest the same incremental and deliberate process was being repeated as the fully matured life was being transplanted. In the quiet and darkened hours following the move Sam would remind his round woman "We did it, never forget that."

"How did I help?" Focused on the physical work of the process, Sal left herself out of the equation.

"By instigating the move. I knew we needed to do it, but I've known for years. Danced around it, distracting myself with ... this and that." It was true, Sal did push for a specific date. New Moon in Libra, a chance for new beginnings in the sign of relationships. The potential was there. She set the intention.

"And by being there, with me every inch of the way." Except to go into town to get sandwiches, Sal stayed, watched, encouraged and photographed the process. At the same time, her mind tried to remember the name of the small, pickled powerful green berry that packed a punch. The name escaped her, literally hovering over her tongue. The salty green thing that flavored the olive tapenade Sal loved. When she let it go, the name, the name? Finally, CAPERS. 

What is a caper? A caper is the name of an immature blossom from a Mediterranean shrub that is pickled. A caper is also a slang for a romp, an escapade an often clandestine operation. 

Use the word in a sentence. "Sal put the two meanings together to work the angles in her generous imagination to make sense of the feelings of disorientation she was feeling from the small but powerful caper."

"Ah, she gets it," said T.F.

"Even when you are unable to fill in the blanks"

Evidence of a bridge to cross from ground zero, simple tools being used effectively. 

Above, as below, the margin for error was slim, intelligent application of practical geometry essential.
Hidden, part of the whole, but not dead, Spider waits.

"Make absences visible. The next three points deal with the nature and availability of historical evidence. When you are investigating and telling the history of disenfranchised people, you can't always find the kind and amount of written material you want. But in medicinal history the goal is as much to generate questions and show inconsistencies as it is to document people's lives. For example, tracing absences 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, talking about the existence of women about whom we know only general information, can be a powerful way of correcting imperial history."  from the essay 'The Historian as Curandera' Medicine Stories, Aurora Levins Morales

 ~***~

"The Moon and Venus are conjunct in Scorpio today.  Both bodies trine Neptune in Pisces. They also catch support from Pluto in Capricorn. I don't think many would see it this way, but it seems a good day for sorting things out.

I say that because instinct, sensitivity and practicality mesh together today, in a way that doesn't jolt a person.

This does not mean you won't feel disturbed at some point.  But if you've got some kind of chasm to bridge or cross, this would be the day to do it." - October 3, 2016 ElsaElsa Newsletter

Care and feeding of the roots

 There she is. Out from beneath the trees, unearthed from the protection of a cloister, the golden wagon is exposed. "Pirates in the public," Sal said. She felt an echo saw a blank stare Sal recognized from too many other times. Invisible, and worse 'disappeared.' She promised herself she would never tolerate that in herself, or from others.

"Roots uncovered need to be tended gently. A soft moist bit of familiar. Such effort to get from here to there, just here to there ... ha." T.F. greeted Sal in the morning with his soft croak, and the woman always returned the call. If she noticed it might be enough to keep her, tend to her.

Six years had not made the pair immune to vulnerability. Sal and Sam deal with upheaval differently. Sam escalates. Sal withdraws.

 No hiding, no turning back? More will be revealed. Rather than restful sleep the remedy is still the story expressed like a pimple or goat's milk from a teat? Sam sleeps. Sal writes. Body and mind are mumbling and tumbling.

The answer is there, like Jack's magic bean stock. Sal did mark the spot with beans now rooted giving her a role model. Even closer than the Puerto Rican-Jewess activist who wrote the book entitled Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals, the beans, the beans know how to grow even in gravel.

Sal, remember to water.

Up high, down low the signatures mark us

The pitch dropped unnoticed into her hair. Like a nest, an unintentional dread lock a mass of tangles grew. "Is she preparing to dance with the pine needles?" Some one asked, I'm guessing it was Raven, as Sal began her day by the heater her fingers caught in her hair.

"I'll be here for awhile, making adjustments." It was a suitable reply to the tall old man who was already committed to help a friend bury her goat. No sign of a backhoe to dig the hole, Sam would be the hoe substitute.

"It's what you do," a typical Sam Tall reply. Conscientious and neighborly, he helps out.

"I've got to make peace with Cedar," Sal explained. Making adjustments meant resetting the red lights within her, the nervous system that reacts to the aromatics of the Long Fingered Waterproof living within inches of the porch's new location.

But the funny part was still what the Round Gal Sal was doing now. Working her little fingers through the signature of Pine Pitch that had fallen from up high to mark her down low. What is the message? "Grow down, acorn. Grow down. It's where your soul needs to go. Earthling." Funny how things happen.

The old wooden steps marked the place where Sam and Sally climbed up and down from the golden wagon. The space taken up by their vardo left barely a footprint. Salal will grow there easily now they have moved. Room to move.

Pause, pray, and pull

To get here (eight hours later), a lot of preparation and protocol was necessary

Moving with the Kaulana Mahina, the Hawaiian Moon Calendar meant pausing first. While Sam gathered up his tools, Sally set a pot of water to boil, stirred in a pinch of alaea red salt from Kauai and a pinch of golden 'olena turmeric from Kalihi Valley. Everyone watched and listened as the tall one and the round one said their thank yous to the Firs, the Cedars, the Pines, the Hemlocks, the Alders, the Salal, the Huckleberries, the Blueberries, the ferns, the Wind, the Clouds, Raven, Squirrel, Chipmunk, the forest floor, Towhee, T.F. , the human neighbors, Mahina, Ka La. When the water cooled Sal cleaned and cleared -- pikai -- sprinkling land, steps, themselves, and the directions.

Only then did Sam begin the slow and steady hitch, crank, readjust, shovel, o'o, shove ... repeat activity. 

The first anchor point was Cherry with help from St. Francis and the Chimes

Detaching the steps was first step

Uprooting the wheels was next

Patient alignment, hookup and readjustments and hand cranking over the next eight hours inched the golden wagon from her six years of rootedness

There is more.

Half-way there

Moving had to be done inch-by-inch. It started here.

Eight hours later the golden wagon was half-way there.

More.

Other messages: "Land crab on the defense"

From the Photo Gallery of The Spice Necklace 

Hover over the image for the message.

Another set of images.

Dream for practice

Just because she comes with 'so much fixed' don't mean she can't be coaxed to change. In the dreams the night of Mauli Sal saw the animation of thought. Lines of pale lavender changed direction as she watched. To an unidentified teacher she narrated what she observed: her thoughts changed. There was a nod.

Face down in the bed her shifting jiggled the kaleidoscope. She woke, tweaked and discomforted. Was the dream enough practice? Just in case, a new book waited. The Spice Necklace. It smelled her. she smelled it. Sal began to read.

Sam and Sally: Here, not there

Little adjustments were being made on the Mauli Moon, Po Mauli. A good time for health and adjusting thinking while doing. Sam was no less facile with his hands though it had been more than eight years since he began building the golden wagon on a trailer. "He has less teeth today, but his face wears an increasing realness." Frog spoke about the tall man as if his mate were still with him. He knew Bernadette would be listening, and hearing him, wherever she was. This plane, another plane.

Pieces of the trailer had been stowed away. Mold painted the license plate once new when the trailer was first registered. To move the golden wagon from the woods to the gravel lot the license plate could be obscured, who would check? What mattered was that the wheels moved. Sam was attending to that on the Mauli Moon. Clank, clank.

Sally spent a few minutes at her sewing machine, peacefully busy stitching lengths of cloth to replace a favorite curtain she'd brought when the poisonous apple disease moved them across an ocean. A few safety pins held a hem in place, a temporary fix? Well, maybe or a fix for as long as it was needed. Sometimes a pin was better than more permanent stitches.

"Sal has begun a relationship with the Warrior Woman aspects of herself via the asteroid Pallas Athena. It's a new application of star study for her, and seems to be buoying her spirits," Brother Wind felt the lightness in the woman he would always consider Sister, an older sister at that. From his place in the atmosphere during this Season of Lono, Brother Wind visited sending gentle breezes and more gusty nudges encouraging Sal to believe she was flexible enough to move with more ease this time.

There is more.

Pele and Frog: Heredity and reputation

"Ka pahu kapu" [] refers to the boundary markers that demarcate forbidden areas. To "kukulu", or erect such stakes would provide a sanctuary for "ka leo," the voice. "Pahu" also means drum, and so figuratively, the voice refers to the sound of the sacred drum, in this case, Pele's crater. To hear an eruption is to hear the sacred and also to have been warned that Pele is ready to exit." - "Mele Komo" Ka Honua Ola, Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele

Frog arrived early. He was often early for parties when it came to climatic change. When pushed to explain his predilection Frog was easy with it, "We have very thin skins, very little separates us from whatever is tampering with World. Good or bad? The grandmothers put it this way: it makes no never mind. It will come." 

Traveling Frog was a name the old storyteller had once given him when the golden wagon on a trailer was very young. As a nickname Frog was called T.F. Even before Raven returned showing himself to the storyteller as a shadow, the amphibian made himself known with his croaks. Invisible, yet as the voice of the Fire Goddess warns of her presence, so too did Frog. 

Next.

Raven: Something to say

"They say that do they?" The line was a subtle question coming from his long black beak. Raven knew exactly where he was headed with both the question and his flight. There was just the right balance of sunlight and shade to create shadow. The woman looked up from her walk to see his wings.

She, the woman, did not hear Raven's question exactly. But his shadow was pronounced, a daytime tattoo and a reminder. He was always aware, how could she not know that. The storyteller had fed stories to the land called the prairie front. For weeks throughout the summer talk and tales massaged the possibility of great and different journeys. The Black Shadow Animal watched, listened, and never once interfered. Now though the medicine story which first poured his spirit into the magic had been dispensed... he might.

A season of turns approached and not only did the people have something to say. He would keep his golden eyes on the golden wagon and the old pair. If they forgot the protocol, or conversely stepped too rigidly out of habit? Well, that's what this story is all about.

What else, who else?