Metamorphosis: the call to respond

'"Did you know humans are the only animals who deny their own metamorphosis?" I was ill-prepared for the question ..." - The Safety Pin Cafe

What seems like a very very long time ago, is not so long ago. The photo above was taken so I'd remember the bits and pieces that make my work fun. The collection of talismans and color covered a small table under a tent in the orchard where we lived. A new story was out in the world at that time. Now, I wind my way back there to that story where a character whose name sounded like 'pale' (in English) but was really pronounced pah-lay, a Hawaiian name (with the accent on the pah) found a magical place in the town she had come to know as home.

Inspired to find magic in the place I had come to know as home, The Safety Pin Cafe helped me see with eyes primed for magic in the everyday. The characters and the plot suggested a broader way through the woods.

''To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide - a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere.'' - Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust)

When I wrote The Safety Pin Cafe unanswered questions and obstacles threatened: I was lonely and homesick. Where were my people? My body was worn from the environment and isolation . What could fill the puka (holes)? Current solutions to the problems weren't working.

Myths, storytelling and the unfolding reality of a writer includes the journey of living with and through the 'forests' of our lives; the dark places hiding insight, another angle, an ally. By nature I am curious and drawn to the dark. Tradition and integrity play big parts in what I value. And yet? Yet, I have lived more than half of my seventy plus years away from the place and culture of my birth. That's the seeker in the 11th House (Sagittarius) occupied by the planets Venus (what one wants) and Jupiter (exploration, expansion). Uranus (unexpected revolutionary) tweaks my tradition-bound character, requiring change when life becomes too 'normal.'

Creating mythic settings, and characters who are other-than-human makes room for ... the unexpected.

'a tall silver-haired Raven with splendid garb and lovely hands appeared.'

 "My hat drooped, rain puddled into miniature ponds. I laughed out loud to see the ducks swimming at my feet. They so love my company, but really. "They don't usually come in doors." The smells were divine and before my laughter settled a tall silver-haired Raven with splendid garb and lovely hands appeared. He wore glasses and spoke with a cultured tone. Obviously schooled in etiquette for tea he said sweetly, "This way, please," and with no further protocol I felt his one gloved hand on my elbow. "The Lady has ordered for you."'- more from The Safety Pin Cafe

The sun plays with us, ducking and peeking behind clouds filled with moisture. Another kind of cloud rains down a yellow powder of pollens thick and sticky. The wind has gathered outside, I hear the plastic roof outside rattle and settle, and Pete has returned from a drive to the drinking water machine not far from the campground. Between one story and another, from this reality to that possibility the potential to see magic is in the space between.

While writing and choreographing an image, a string of words once written, another string wanting to be added, a message comes through (on the iphone). A distraction! A bit of magic? It is magic, and I watch and listen to my son singing a Hawaiian tune and playing his guitar in his backyard. Across the ocean, and through the possibilities, I hear language that shifts me loosening my grip, serving me a piece of home.

Without losing my way with the story I text back to my son, thank him for the mele (song) and ask how they're doing, and give a bit of news on our end. Like in jazz, the call-and-response is integral in the composition. I acknowledge the 'interruption' as call.

I began this post with a hankering to view the experiences of symptoms, challenges and obstacles during the pandemic of 2020 as a metamorphosis. Re-visiting the scenes in The Safety Pin Cafe, the words and the inspiration behind them remind my immune system of the story medicine that has so often been the path through an unpredictable plot. When I was writing that story I was living with my first flock of chickens. They taught me hens crow. (Every time they laid an egg) They also taught me that when they molt, they don't lay eggs. (One birth, or re-birth at a time)

When I was a girl I watched the thick caterpillar chomping on the leaves of the Crown-flower in Auntie Lily's backyard until all the leaves were gone, and then ... the caterpillar was gone. But, not really gone. Instead it stuck itself to one of the branches, and became a cocoon. If I came back through the hibiscus hedge between my yard and Auntie Lily's once a day for a few days, I could watch the cocoon change. And, if I was lucky I would be in Auntie Lily's yard on the day when the cocoon broke and out from the paper shell a wing unfolded, then another wing, then skinny legs and bent antennae. A Monarch Butterfly. Magic.

My curious and fixed character ... a complex and contradictory nature, looks for a story that nourishes me with love rather than judgment. The Border Witch in me knows there is room to be faceless in one moment, and something else in another moment. Like the characters in that medicine story a Border Witch with a name that wrote like 'pale' in English, but sounded like pah-lay in Hawaiian meets a silver-haired Raven who talks in language they both understand ... a faceless woman is fed magic, loved by a group of strangers and eats pie. The plot crosses cultures, involves a Hawaiian goddess and safety pins left by a Hawaiian mother.

Real. Metaphoric. Story allows for a this-and-that rather than an either-or experience.

The wind brought rain. I heard the splatters on the wagon roof. Time has moved, and now blue sky and roasted yams and a tuna salad feed me. The story feeds me.

The plot does thicken then thin. Through the night the process of transformation heats me: I am the cauldron. Inside a cocoon I bet there is plenty of heat going on for the caterpillar. My mind goes wild with imagining 'why' but then a Grandmother appears, a Hawaiian goddess with her magic cape; another Grandmother, a Yellow Dragon of an ancient clan. They come to remind me where to step ... through. 


What are your experiences with dreaming up something as wonderful as a butterfly, or powerful as a dragon?



The watercolor drawing of "The Silver-haired Raven" is one of mine.

RELATED LINKS:
'My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 years Does the World Need it Anymore' Gabrielle Hamilton, New York Times Magazine 
The Painted Boy, Charles deLint
White Chocolate and a Yama Bell