Part Two May Day & a Virus: Following The Knotted Cord

Well-preserved rope was discovered at an archaeological site in Egypt dating to almost 4,000 years ago. Photo courtesy of the Joint Expedition to Mersa/Wadi Gawasis of the Università “L’Orientale,” Naples and Boston University

"Scorpio Sun and Rising – Biding Time

This month, while others are jumping and jolting around, trying desperately to find their path forward, you are preparing. You are lying in wait, observing the subtle energies that are pulling the strings. You benefit from deep intuition as you prepare to move forward. You know that soon you’ll be able to pounce and make your move. Until then, enjoy the deep knowledge swirling around you. There is so much to learn." - Midara's Monthly Horoscope

I'm a Scorpio stacked with the many layers of my love for depth, the challenge (one of them) has always been how to relish it without getting seduced by the darkness; never surfacing for sunshine presents different challenges. Fortunately, the Ancestors lined my 'iewe (my Ma's womb) 
with curiosity and sunshine from other angles. Curiosity and drama for sun later in life has knotted me along a thick and flexible rope.

"... Precisely when people began to twine, loop, and knot is unknowable, but we can say with reasonable confidence that string and rope are some of the most ancient materials used by humankind. At first, our ancestors likely harvested nature’s ready-made threads and cordage, such as vines, reeds, grass, and roots. If traditional medicine and existing Indigenous cultures are any clue, early humans may have even used spider silk to catch fish and bandage wounds. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of years ago, people realized they could extract fibers from the hair and tissues of animals, as well as from the husks, leaves, and innards of certain sinewy, pulpy, or pliant plants, such as agave, cannabis, coconut, cotton, and jute. By twisting these natural fibers around one another again and again, they formed a material of superb resilience and versatility..." - 'The Long, Knotty, World-Spanning Story of String," Ferris Jabr

I was searching for an image that would pull this story through what feels very much like birthing, and found the cave in Egypt and the story Ferris Jabr has written. Perhaps it is my umbilicus, my piko cord, that tugged at my gut. Awake or a sleep? asked my piko. Am I awake enough to follow the story in the darkness that I love with an intuitive feel for the light? Feeling for the knots this story calls.

 "There is so much to learn."

In Part One of "May Day & a Virus" I introduced Auntie Ruby Kawena Johnson. Rubellite Kawena Johnson was the first, and only, Native Hawaiian instructor in my college education. This was 1969. The resurgence of Hawaiian Culture and language would follow ... later. Ruby Kawena Johnson was instrumental in the development of the Department of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii.

This series of 'May Day & a Virus' posts venerate her seeding capacity as kumu (teacher) and proponent for knowing the virus. "The virus comes first ... taking possession when you not looking." The virus comes before evolution.

More than fifty years ago, this teacher provoked me with questions and left comments on one of  the first essays that challenged my place in the scheme of 'the whole'. What I wrote barely skimmed the surface of an exploration because at that time my willingness to dive deeper was missing. I would need knots (hand and foot holds) to descend. That would take time.

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See the net and the long stretch of ropes running along the ground ? Our home, moveable should the need arise, is safety pinned with the metaphor and ancestral memory of the big eyes of knotted net and woven cords. It is that netting and the ropes that figure so magically into this story.


Ruby speaks of the Molokai Island Kahuna of The Knotted Cord in Part Two late in her presentation (30:35) "Hawaiian Perspective and the Environment and Kumulipo." But those powerful keepers of secrets have been woven into the whole story. Slowly and skillfully laid out in her conversation she and the audience are 'eye-to-eye.' In Hawaiian, we say makamaka.

"It's interesting isn't it," she says. Her first pass is to make connections between the meaning of maka as "eye" as well as the first point on a ruler used to measure. "Maka" is also a place to begin. From that personalized introduction we the audience, if this is our first time with Ruby, get a feel for the storyteller-scientist's methods of engagement. She will provoke, laugh, give you rope before she winds forward in her conversation of how all things are measured.

The Kumulipo is the Hawaiian creation chant composed of more than 2,000 lines and begins by calling attention to time, and the recording begins by focusing on the sky at night. At night the sky fills with the vertical movement of stars.

In the first words of the first line, "Ka huli" something is caused to turn vertically in the night.

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Life is a journey and the story to describe it happens as we live it, and also happens because we are fed an understanding of our beginnings. Slowly and deliberately the kahuna chanted, and orally recorded the emerging life that began in the deep water, in the dark water. For seven wa, life forms are described and named. The first to be named? The coral.

A worm (a soft-bodied creature) pushes. A skeleton is created outside its body.

 He puko'a kani 'aina A coral reef that grows into an island. A person beginning in a small way gains steadily until she becomes firmly established.

We feel the sense of who we are while growing in our mother's womb. Floating in water, connected with our first cord, all we need is contained in our personal earth. The placenta comes with her own personal earth. Earth is the placenta because it has water and nutrients to grow seed...

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Following the knotted cord in the chant, listening and watching my old teacher weave a mat upon which I can stand ... Myself an old woman, listening and watching as language crosses over and under paths of understanding ... I hear kumu tell us (Part Two 26:38)

"It's the Bat. Why? Because the Bat is the god that comes at the time of birth. Why do the Hawaiians venerate the Bat? ...."

When baby is ready to be born, the placenta heat causes the huli, the vertical inversion, just as the Bat hangs vertically upside-down ... so does the baby ready herself for birth in that same way.

"Why you do this?" asked Mrs. Cupchoy when she watched me try to do the dance. So foreign to my nature, Paranku was never the less such a wonderful way to be with new friends. I was not good at the movements or steady at my balance, but I said, "I like it." And it was true. Pete and I were freshly a couple living in the back of Iao Valley on Maui. Starting our life together, living on Maui was new to me. Pete was returning to Maui where once he lived with his brother. But this time, we were weaving a rope ... together.

We were too old to make a human baby, but there would be and still are, creations made from our ventures of exploring creating. Twenty-five years later, the knotted cord has brought us to a sandy knoll on a place where rabbits, bunnies and hares are free-range wild folk. They are deeply pro-creative, flagrant in their ways, and wear their scars to distinguish and identify themselves.

Purpza of the Notched Ear

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The Virus brought me over and under in my weaving pattern. Most, if not all, humanity alive in 2020 deal with the affects of the Coronavirus brought to us by The Bat. Some defile the Bat, looking for a way to 'blame' it for bringing such chaos. Never mind we destroyed the Bat's native home, so came looking for another. I note the connection and followed the knots of the cord back to my old kumu, and her translation of an ancient creation chant.

The message seems clear to me. "Why you do this?" Same answer, Mrs. Cupchoy. The Virus came and activated the huli in me. I was heated up with fever and rash. Metamorphosis is like that. If in the process of living, we find ways to make a flexible and strong pathway -- a birth canal -- why not take it with curiosity, not fear. I leave this mat of knotted cord as a welcome mat. If you are still here ... may there be a gift for you. Feel it? Or huli the mat and turn what's inside, out.

"...Everything is in place for success; but even with all this good stuff, metamorphosis takes intense energy and shakes us to the core. Go with it. Don’t fight the tide. Lean in to the change and download the new plan..." - from Satori's Weekly Forecast: May 4-8, 2020

RELATED POSTS & LINKS

"Part One May Day & a Virus"
"Metamorphosis: the call to respond"
Puana Ka 'Ike 2009-2009 Ruby Kawena Johnson
A Talk with Rubellite "Ruby" Kawena Johnson, Mark Coleman Honolulu Star-Bulletin 
FREE Course with Susun Weed 'Healthy Immune System/Coronavirus Help'