Four Full Moons, not just one ... the overflowing blessings of Mahina

HOKU

• The third day of the four Hawaiian full moons was believed to be the fullest moon.
• Fishing is good at sea, not onshore.
• Watch for high waves. - Kohala Center

The elegant and inspired Full Moon in Virgo according to astrological calculations happens at midday tomorrow, March 16, 2014. The Hawaiian Moon Calendar includes four full moon phases to account for the subtle yet powerful influence of the brightness or darkness of the moon's reflective light. So today's moon would be Hoku, the third day of the four Hawaiian full moons believed to be the fullest. My ancestors' observations and implications for a sustaining and reciprocal (give and take) relationship between human-earth-water-ocean-sky and spirit accounted for the keen attending to nuance. The gift of the present moment was life. Simple. Isn't it? With so many demands on a human beings attention, the daily or nightly watching or attending to the moon doesn't show up on many do-lists. I overheard a man talking with a clerk in our local market a few days ago. He said "And, it's the full moon. That would account for a lot of this nonsense." What preceded his comment I had no idea. It was no way near being full moon when we were in the same place in that market. It was one of the quarter moon phases (times of rest and reflection and no new projects). But, it makes no never mind for whether we attend to the moon or now, the moon does attend to us. Perhaps the man was having a frustrated moment, a bad day and was picking on the full moon.

In connection to the creative nature of being alive, the cycle of birthing -- bringing a seed through the process of development in the dark womb, nurturing in the protective sea is reflected in the regular cycles of reflected light from our companion moon, Earth's one moon. What I have been doing with the writing and sharing of The Joy Weed Journal is to align myself and the a story with the natural, painful and joyous process of a natural birth. Through the birth canal, the medicine of creating prepares this story-creation for life on Earth. The process of bringing a baby: an egg, a calf, kitten, lamb or human involves pain and the igniting of emotions, hormones, receptors and memories of birthing as Woman has always known. It IS the great mystery, and the great gift. 

The medicine, magic and mystery in the stories I write gives birth to my power. Long in coming, these stories and this medicine chants the chants of formlessness. Time? Timeless. The feedback I have received over the last two moon cycles have been the mid-wife I needed. The Universe, The Goddess, my ancestors celebrate the birth and I give thanks to all our readers and audience members for their invaluable part in the delivery.

Difficult, multiple meanings, ethereal, laced with tangents, inspiring, whimsical, possibly confusing? Yes, all of that. Life is like that!

::::::

The last segment-entry of the medicine story The Joy Weed Journal pushes through that metaphoric birth canal on this Hoku Moon. Tomorrow you can meet it/read it here. 

Who DO I write for? (look for updates to this post as more comments arrive)

"I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool -- and I'm not any of those -- to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

... Every human being has paid the earth to grow up. Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs—anybody can have that—I mean in truth. That’s what I write. What it really is like. I’m just telling a very simple story."   - Maya Angelou

The neap tides have turned, the moon's globe is fattening up on her way to becoming full in Virgo on Sunday, March 16th. The 'old people' those who lived and felt the turning of tides and the fattening or leanness of the moon kept in sync with everything around them so what was inside became in sync with the outside. The full moon means the sun will be directly opposite the moon, and in the sign of Pisces. My astrologer says:

"The full moon takes place on March 16th, midday, at 26 degrees Virgo.  I like the look of this. It’s elegant.  You may be able to ground a good idea at this time."

The magic and the medicine of stories flows or is stopped at the border for another time, or for some other. I write because that's part of the remedy that keeps me fluid rather than brittle, tickled rather than tortured or torturous and I keep learning something through the process. With practice I gain some confidence with the ups and downs of the creating and loosen my grip on perfection. The magic and medicine remains lively and ownership is not part of the prescription. I write for the younger me who didn't have the words to speak in language forbidden by laws made up by missionaries with a bible and paper to take and bury the protocol and practices of common magic -- elemental wisdom. I write for my mother and my father, my aunties, my mango trees. I write to make space for Grace.

Now that the neap tides have turned the process of showing The Joy Weed Journal to an audience is nearly over. I have received valuable feedback and information that I will horde like a greedy bear cub hungry for a taste of something yummy. A second group of audience members read the story at their pace. On the inspiring and elegant Full Moon I will ask them "How is/was the medicine/magic/tale is for them?" With that feedback we head more fully toward the Spring Equinox on Thursday, March 20th!

Today, the first two salmon berry blossoms are smiling at me through the Quonset window, day by day the Spring sun partners with them and the promise of plump fruit.  With the horde of feedback I'll go back to the creative cave when the moon is new at the end of March; and muck around with the story(ies) editing, licking, and floating in the rewrites preparing for storytelling under the moveable umbrellas of The Safety Pin Cafe.

This post is a summary of the feedback our readers and audience have given over the past several weeks. A huge, sloppy and slurpy hug and thank you to all of you for your feedback and attentiveness you have written this border witch. Your honesty, love and support is such a gift. Thank you very much. Mahalo nui loa a pau.

Audience Feedback

The following quotes are posted with permission from our audience members who emailed me their  communications. In addition, there as comments posted on the individual segments of The Joy Weed Journal.

" I have been delighted to see you opening up in such a beautiful way.  And that you are asking for feedback, which in your old reincarnation, would have been forbidden as attention seeking.  I'm assuming too much,
but it's a thought I had, how you seemed to shun direct attention or affirmation in those old days.
I love that you are seeking feedback, and enjoy the dialogue, and of course, the stories,
which are so unique, as they are you.

I also wanted to say that I love writing, which has me in awe of what you are doing,
actually putting your writing into a cohesive story with so much of your cultural soul in it,
and so much playing with the elements.  It comes from your core, and takes great honesty,
so you have a fan!

It is so interesting to have known each other as young women, and now meet again in our mid sixties (well, I'm in my mid sixties)...as one phrase you used summed up for me why I always wanted to know more of you when we were young mothers, it was
"..not too many words to 'explain' ... enough to plant seeds or stir up primal roots for the committed explorer." - TW, Whidbey Island, WA

"Like S.P.C (safety pin cafe), old memories, old friends, a meta world & healings- so broth does for me.

I spend 85% of my waking life cooking, the other 15 if a cross between, hiking, working out, cleaning, and nature.

Fantasy--of memories- did i live them or are they a collective memoir of things past& almost forgotten--RESURRECTED.

through the labor of broth making the gift is more than the product- if you use protocol.

protocol.--- asking, waiting, listening, thankful and thankful again.

in my edge of the world, there is much excited! great food! great music, great style/fashion, cool stuff-BAM BAM BAM!!

i touch all that-- i walk through it, sometimes matching the energy, sometimes creating my own,  but mostly we walk through it all, like a fish in a fish tank, observing through a window. its a bit better now for me. i need to keep my energy clean and bright to have the stamina for all the cooking and walking i do.
 

i am thinking a lot about Raven and guardianship role, as well as other roles, he provides.

what about those twins...got lots of questions on that." - R.J.A., San Francisco, CA

" [in response to New Segment to The Journal] another fab read; lots of culture and history and wanting to read more"- jt, Lacy, Washington

" ... So that is what I need right now - sleep, rest, and taking care of myself.  I know you are familiar with that space.  I will dip and sip and savor The Joy Weed Journal again soon, I hope.  I know it would likely be healing."- K.A. Port Townsend, Washington


" I'm not sure I'm going to be a good reader for your story, but I will go back to it again.  Just not sure when.  Nothing to do with the story, really, just with me... It's almost like I have a fence around myself... Anyway, I may not be able to take in your story at all, just because of that fence.  But I do think what you're doing is wonderful and hope you continue!"- M.G. Langley, WA

" I feel surrounded by the love and warmth of Pale's magical life, a much needed remedy for these cold winter days and colder nights. The story guided me into a realm of the limitless possibilities that truly exist and are always within our grasp only slightly obscured by interference of common life. Following the advice of any reflection I experience to "go outside" and embrace the wonderment of life giving birth, I thank you Pale for the encouragement to breath deeply, allow for the awareness to grow and hold dear to your precious tale." - P.L. Langley, WA

And this feedback just added today, Thursday, 313/14

"I am only part way through the story and what I notice is that I must read it with a "different mind"--shoooo away the all too left brain of form and instead dance it with my right 5th dimensional formless self.  I let the words wash over me and take the essence of what you write, Moki, and that is most likely the "magic" of medicine story.

Raven has come prominently in my life while on Whidbey ... where I thought only eagle sat holding royal court over the world....as you can see, your whimsy and Hawaiian mind softens me and has me speak and see differently.  I am a fan and only hope I am back to Whidbey for the early fall story telling of the Joy Weed Journal--it is your voice and face that the story animates coming most alive for me."  -M.M. Clinton, WA

Piece-meal or piecemeal?

"There were things about being wife that were most definitely piece-meal.  She was a woman with memory of independence and near fearsome solitary ways.  Becoming wife was something she had had to learn episode by episode.  They told her somethings would be learned only through the doing.  Payment for the learning of things like being wife would not be in gold pieces.  Instead, the value of her lessons as wife would be defined as she learned them.  It would be part of patience.  The waiting part of becoming.  Madeleine was glad that her husband was away for long periods at a time.  She needed the separate life as mother and home-maker to prime her for the things she was getting incrementally, and seemingly in no organized fashion.  Within the next ten moons, her husband would be home.  She would know then how well she had done at her piece work, to date." - Something written piece-meal years ago, now being pinned into The Joy Weed Journal

Journaling is writing out loud. Where and how will this piece fit? Who do I write for? Why is Max telling me, or telling Pale these stories?

Yet another new segment: Sugar and salt

Note to the reader: This is another New Segment to The Joy Weed Journal. If you have not read the original journal entries, you might like to do that first. Click here for those original entries.



The hot sugar water had me prickling like a sparkler. Like the sparklers we used to light up on New Year's Eve. The smell of the burnt sulphur made my nose wince. The bright light illuminated the brown faces -- my brother's, the neighbor friends-- the old valley absent of fences, bold with innocence.

Max's drum of a voice began with this "In another place ... " 
P.S. Readers: March 6, 2014 late AM. 
I am pinning stories together like a whirling dervish so you might have missed the recent connection that continues the story Max is telling. Click on the link above, and see what I mean by reading through ...

More new segments: Skeletons on the outside

The Safety Pin Cafe is a place where magic pins itself to time and story in unexpected order ... This is a new segment from the border witch's journal. It surprises me, too. 

Once again, a note to the reader: If you have not yet read the original entries from The Joy Weed Journal, this one may put you into the crack between times. Read the originals by starting here.

"Skeletons on the outside," I said. "Barnacles wear their hard shell on the outside, humans and many others had their bones on the inside. By the time Max had finished the story I wasn't positive, but pretty sure he was telling our story. The one that connected him with me over the Long Time. I missed that last time around or left the remnant memory for now.
The twins born from eggs and Raven blood stretched the grace of things. But now I was hearing how Grace with a capital was not limited by a skeleton.
"You do see?" Max finally asked. "You are the young girl, the girl born kapu, sacred and timeless."
"Lokahi is me?" I knew the answer to that, but needed something tangible. An elder's answer would do that for me.
"You are."
"What does that mean then. How can I be both the young Wailuku girl, and me here in the woods on an island in the middle of the Salish Sea?" I was trying too hard becoming brittle with the fencing of habit. Protecting me from being fluid.
"Eighty is a good time to become more comfortable with flow. I remember when I was that young." Max was laughing, and I saw his mouth was filled with teeth top and bottom. "In many ways the girl Lokahi remained a girl, living in Wailuku, on the island of Maui to be present long enough to remember the Long Time. She was able to call across to the past that began with me and your Spiritual Mother." He waited for me to catch up with him. I felt my legs buckling, braced myself with my hands against the kitchen chair and sat down.
"I think I'd like some tea with a lot of sweet. Sugar!" As if the story of Lokahi weren't enough, "sugar" seemed to be some sort of pass word. I saw that look in Max's eyes. The one that sparkles when he's about to tell a new tale.
"Is there no stopping these stories?" I asked hopeful I could plug the portal. Wasn't I old enough to do that!
"Not now Pale. These stories have waited long enough. There is at least one more splinter of a story you need. And when you know them your children will find them easier when they need them." Max spoke over his large shoulders. His hands were pulling the bowl of white sugar from the shelf. The kettle chirped from the hot burner. It wasn't often I drank hot water and spoon-fulls of sugar.
"Keep it coming," three spoon-fulls wasn't enough.
"Lemon?"
"No thanks." I stirred till the white crystals disappeared, sipped and then closed my eyes ready for the next story. I exhaled and felt this.

A NEW SEGMENT from The Journal: Living in a crack

Note to the reader: If you have not yet read the original entries of The Joy Weed Journal, this segment will put you 'in a crack' before you're ready. Perhaps you're facile and comfortable with hopping in and out of cracks join me then. Or. Stop here and follow the original story that starts over here.


Some years later ...

The six saimin bowls were stacked as they always are in an upright pillar one bowl nestled into the other. With time the nicks had grown but I never replaced them. My company, and family, never minded. As a living philosophy I kept to Ma's original spell, "People don't come to visit my things; they come to visit me." I think it a spell because in her lifetime those sorts of people were the only ones to visit her. My thick tea mug was emptied of the strong sweet chai, morning was bright with a spring sun and only the hum of my computer broke the quiet. I'd been up for hours stitching the small pouches that would hold a bit of magic and a few words. There was a birthday party later today but something needed to be stirred together for dinner first.

Soup? Rising to consider what I could fill the bowls with I ran my small hands along the side of the pillar remembering most of the occasions which left the nicks or chips. Lifting the top bowl a thin but growing crack etched from the lip to about midway. "Can you live from a cracked bowl?"I thought aloud. The image of Max, godfather, rose from the bowl like the genie of Aladdin. He said, "I know a story that might answer that. Care to hear it?" I smiled at the question then laughed at how stories come to a storyteller. "Let me fill my tea cup, Uncle. And you?" Max nodded. He was always ready for tea with a story. "I would love to hear that story."

A funny thing happens when you step through a door you once shut with determination, intending to leave it shut for all time. Perhaps it's particularly funny if you are blessed with the genes of drama which the Gods and Goddesses chuckle at and say things my mother once told me, "Wait until you have children of your own. Then. Then, you'll know what I mean." The thing about the way the Ancestors work is they don't tell me off so much as put me into the in between places where I experience all options at the same time. Like one of the nicks or cracks in my saimin bowls some of the soup seeped into the fissures. But the soup didn't taste any different because there were imperfections. Or did it? Six saimin bowls were plenty, I remember the Costas twelve children. Dinner was from the pot. You had a spoon, hunger and the laughter. Bowls or plates? They never used 'em.

Ever live from a crack in a bowl?  One option: create magic, common magic. Rub on a memory from the past ... a safety pin shows up. Grow a few more gray hairs, and feel the humanity of aching bones that creak under the pressure of history and your ancestors will show you a way through time. The cracks like Pele's gaping holes are making room for something yet to be. I was mixing metaphors and time with no regard for logic. "Pele is messing with all those faulty foundations ... mix those metaphors Pale. It's a necessary activity!" Max and I both knew the slow moving planet was better named "Pele" as our Island ancestors reckoned the goddess of fire and earth-making was truly offering--no demanding-- everyone alive get back to basics.

I sipped my tea and waited for Max to take a good slurp of his. He was not so much a sipper as a man of gusto. I was now nearly 80, and still the kahuna showed up as if I were his young god-child. The birthday was less than four hours away. Company and family would show up soon. What story would come to fill the cracked bowl I wondered.


This is the story Max had for me. It wanders, may be familiar to at least one of you, it is the great arc. Time travels.

When you have read that story link here for another journal entry.

Making broth, simmering a story, serving the muse

"Entering the world of ancestral memory requires a certain mindset. Take time to enjoy and understand each phrase or line before going on. Remember, this gift took many lifetimes to wrap. Don't be in a hurry to unwrap it and become frustrated in doing so. The meaning and force of the ancestral knowledge will unfold precept upon precept, and each has a code to inspire you on to the next level." - from the Preface of Ka Honua Ola by Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele

"Bone broth.  The name alone sounds medieval, something that modern folks simply don’t eat. But more and more, people are turning to stock made with the bones of chicken, beef, fish, etc, for both superior culinary flavors and old-fashioned healing properties..." - Bone broth

Simmering the parts of a soup for broth

Serving the muse

Just over a year ago I began gathering the story that is The Joy Weed Journal. There were parts of the story already alive and well: the characters and the flavor of a mythic journey had begun in The Safety Pin Cafe. The medicine and magic that connected old memories and timeless practices were at work and partnering with the Muse. There was no stopping the process, but at the same time, there was no rushing it. Like making an old-fashioned bone broth for a nourishing soup the story would need to be simmered to render its goodness. 

A month ago this blog-story was posted and opened as 'a showing' designed to be read by a small audience of friends who willingly signed on to participate in giving me feedback and comments about the sound, feel and effect of the medicine story as it is so far. The audience participation has been a wonderful process both satisfying me as I had hoped, and challenging me with individual feedback I could never have anticipated. (Comments from readers in our audience can be read at the end of each of the segments of The Joy Weed Journal.) In addition to these comments, private email conversations discussing and clarifying characters, metaphors and the flow of the mythic tale add to the quality of the story's value as a medicine story.

I learn to be open to participation, practice listening without judgment and give thanks for lessons that come from the give-and-take involved in art. Like learning and practicing to make a tasty and hearty soup the simmering of a story is work over time; and patience is a necessary element. Rushing to unwrap the gift of a good soup/story? The results are sometimes quickly forgettable. 

Today this rendering of words is intended to give thanks to the friends and family who are my audience, the readers and participants who have thus far added to the value of the story. Writing can be a lonely process sometimes, done alone, the art for me is honestly rarely a lonely one. The story, character and my sense for the adventure are wonderful company. Yet at this point the audience is giving me another rich layer of experiences as a teller of story and I relish in it!

The New Moon in Pisces, this Saturday new audience members will come to read and add to the quality of the tale. The New Moon is a perfect time to make intentions for the coming moon cycle. I bless the company and the cycle Mahina -- the moon -- offers me as a woman writer living and aging on this ka honua ola this place of life. We make broth, adjust the flavor as necessary and then give thanks for the process thus far. Life is like that. Story is like that. 

If you've come to read, I hope you enjoy the magic. If you've come as part of the audience thank you for your valuable participation.

Bon Appetit.