Our lived experience is a long, slow growing symphony
Leptastrea purpurea coral polyps budding. Kewalo Marine Laboratory, on O'ahu, Hawaii - Wikimedia Commons
He puko'a kani 'aina
... a coral reef grows into an island
... a person grows slowly until firmly grounded
My kupuna tell us we carry the original coral polyp in our na'au. We carry the first coral polyp described to us in the Kumulipo. Slowly and with time that process of grounding keep me connected with the reef, and the island. More than beautiful poetry, the Kumulipo is the creation chant that reminds me who I am; no matter where I am.
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| At home in the woods and Eileen and Mary, our vardo porch light is lit, 2016 |
"My house has chicken legs. Two or three times a year, without warning, it stands up in the middle of the night and walks away from where we've been living. It might walk a hundred miles or it might walk a thousand, but where it lands is always the same. A lonely bleak place at the edge of civilization." - The House With Chicken Legs, Sophie Anderson
We are in the betweens, mawaena, again. A not unfamiliar place for us, mawaena, are places much like being between the living and the dead. Not so much a morose definition, it is a holding place that can be unsettling or overwhelming if we grip too tightly to what is no longer ours. Neither here, nor there. We are nomads, wanderers; like coral polyps.
The definition: nomad, takes on a negative judgement when roaming on Earth or her waters is seen as a bad thing; they have no home, no roots, no value to their community. Therefore, they roam. Shiftless and unsettled. But, no we are instead on a long, slow growing symphony with life making music with the rhythms of our internal magnetic draws.
Where we are now, is at the edge of being part of this little community at Camp Bamboo, knots unraveling, giving thanks to this land, place and the people who have shared with us; our wagon's chicken legs yet to stretch to their full and sturdy walking stretch with a new destination of welcome in place. There is plenty of work yet to be done. Details and ceremonies are in process: we need electricity and we need to introduce ourselves to the place known by the maoli au honua (the first peoples of the land). Our lived experience is a long, slow growing symphony like coral polyps growing into a reef, and then an island. Pete entangles himself with the people and the details that will connect a power source with our wagon home on two rubber wheels, a different yet similar form of movement to the chicken legs. I have set in motion the calls, kahea, the prayers and the dream-interpretations to introduce ourselves to the land that is known by people who know the land from the ground up, rather than from the sky down.
This morning, I received my weekly dose of Sunday Emergence Magazine: the essay and film called Counter Mapping.
"Modern maps don't have a memory." I knew just what he was saying. I opened the email, and listened to Jim Enote tell of his connection with the land that he has farmed since a baby on a cradle board. Sixty consecutive years of planting seed on the same land.
"Jim Enote, a traditional Zuni farmer and director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center, is working with Zuni artists to create maps that bring an indigenous voice and perspective back to the land, countering Western notions of place and geography and challenging the arbitrary borders imposed on the Zuni world."
"The Zuni maps are an effort to orient the Zuni people, not just to their place within the landscape, but to their identity, history, and culture. The maps contain a powerful message: you have a place here, we have long traveled here, here is why this place is important. Through color, relationship, and story, the maps provide directions on how to return home."
"Storytellers ought not to be too tame." So said storyteller Ben Okri. "They ought to be wild creatures who function adequately in society.They are best in disguise. If they lose all of their wildness, they cannot give us the truest joys."
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I have just finished reading two books by the Lake District author, Sophie Anderson. A young writer, mother and re-imaginer of old tales and stories I wish I'd read when I was thirteen but am so grateful to have read at seventy-three. The two books are The Girl Who Speaks Bear and The House With Chicken Legs. Both books are filled with timeless stories and lessons about being in the intimate company with a house that walks on chicken legs.
Last night after I turned the final page of The House With Chicken Legs, tears run from my old eyes as I felt the story hold me as kelp to a a stone, or coral polyp with a small but steadily growing reef. I tucked the book beneath the two pillows I sleep on, pat the cover gently and asked for good dreams to feed my soul in this time of mawaena.
If you are familiar with the stories of Baba Yaga,or Howl's Castle, a house with chicken legs will be familiar to you. But if you have NOT read Sophie Anderson's books you are in for a treat of a surprise when you are drawn into Anderson's adventures of a walking house. (I won't spoil it for you, if you think you'd want to read them ... fingers crossed:) Go here to the author's website to discover her wild and wandering way with story.
Though wandering is not new to me, there is always a churning element of chaos that comes from not knowing. Hawaiians call it the hulihia, the great turnings that come again and again. We are always churning, birthing, and dying and re-birthing again.
We are tutu now, grandparents, separated by the ocean we depend on the ocean of the internet to bring images of our newest ancestor. I want to tell my mo'opuna so many stories, stories he will remember when there are between times in his life ... searching times that huli him. And at other times, the stories will be common, everyday ones that simply say, "Your tutu lives here, or here." And then some day the story may be one that we share eye to eye makamaka and we can laugh and point to the moon together. Counting on the moon in her many forms of holoku.
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| In 2011, I began teaching an online series of classes via the blog Count on the Moon. The beautiful woodcut 'Hawaiian Fisherman' by Charles W Bartlett in 1919, is the masthead for that blog. |
The other night we drove down the steep driveway that leads from Camp Bamboo to make a phone call to one of our teachers, Susun Weed. Every Tuesday night for many, many years Susun Weed has answered questions from callers on a free radio show, Ask Herbal Health Expert Susun Weed.
I called to have a conversation with someone I respect and am ever surprised by. I needed to tell my story, and be heard, and ask for a version of an answer about being vaccinated for the Covid-19 virus. We needed more than what is in the mainstream. At one point in the conversation, as I described our wagon-centric life, Susun said, "I was thinking about Baba Yaga when you were talking." I laughed and said, "Yes, we are the yaga!"
Wandering as we do with memories and body stories unique with beliefs as well as very different responses to adaptation, it was important for me to consult the Wise Woman, and Green Witch who has self-described her journey as one of a backwards pioneer. While other health care practitioners looked to the Scientific Tradition of 'fix the measurable machine/body" Heroic Tradition that "cleanse the spirit's dirty temple", Weed looked to the oldest of practices the Wise Woman Tradition with "ways to nourish spiraling transformations. " - Healing Wise, Part I, Wise Woman Herbal, Susun Weed
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