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.