Hau'oli La Hanau, Vardo for Two ... 12 Years a home

 La Posada: The Welcoming Inn at the Side of the Road

A prayer from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her book Untie the Strong Woman

 

"Since time out of mind, 

forces rise up from the dark

spewing black sand everywhere

trying to douse The Light of the World ...

try to destroy the sons

and the daughters of the Light.

Sometimes, begging from door to door

is the only way

to find shelter for the Holy.

Even when doors slam shut,

one will open eventually,

And the firelight inside

Will jump through the dark,

So that light meets Light.

Like steel sharpens Steel.

Yet, even if no one comes,

Even if no one opens the door,

no one human, that is ...

Hold tight, for

angels will come then...

and using the key of Love,

all doors will fall open 

or else be locked securely

protecting all within ...

All this for you.

rather than against you.

for you who persisted,

you yourself now, and every day

being born as the i

at the beginning of the word 

miracle ...

In this way, you yourself,

in your own human and soulful ways,

are forever Mary's miracle child."

The Moon, Mahina, hides behind the shadows of the Alders as I chant to her, a chant that asks for the understanding hidden in the mele of the chant. With an intent to understand and give thanks to the home and the life she gives us, I called across the ravine and into the heavens.

In 2008 Pete and I lived in a kitchen. The basement of a friend's home was our launch pad. Pete built the home we know today in the backyard in a White Center, Washington (U.S.) neighborhood.

We were sick from environmental illness triggered by other peoples'  use of pesticides, and chemicals used every day.  From those times in that kitchen we would commit to building a home that would be gentle and caring of us which would also ask little from Honua; she has been extracted far too much already. There were few examples or plans to do that, so between us we imagined (dreamed), researched, prayed and found allies to create a small home and a world where we could live and thrive.

On April Fool's Day, 2009 Pete hitched up our home on wheels for the first time. Attached to a rented truck we headed for Tahuya on the Olympic Peninsula. We had friends willing and welcoming this very new life. It was a dream come true (with lots of hard work, and much more of that to come).

We have lived, learned and moved to many places on this Honua since that first night on a ledge over looking a pond filled with frogs in the springtime. The efforts to be who we are, different than many, and misunderstood or judged by most, continue to challenge us. That does not stop us. And it is sweetly fitting that on this April Fool's Day, twelve years later, we are preparing to move to a pond again. 

We are old, weathered by the work of believing we have a place, just as we are, and grateful to be enjoying life concentrated within the small space of this loving and giving home. She is plenty enough space to find who we really are: both individually and as a pair of very unlikely lovers. 

The network of stories that have grown from my discovery of 'the blog' are all over the Internet mycellium underground, overground, safety pinned as moveable and common. What a journey it has been! Myth or memoir the two entwine and I share it for that is my work: storyteller.

We began our day with a big bowl (two apiece) of oatmeal, seaweed, astragalus root and butter. And listened to the roots of Hawaii that sustain us with that special SWEET AND POWERFUL  taste of honey, called ALOHA.

If you're interested in catching up with our most recent storytelling? It's over here.  Once there, you could explore the newsletter blog and discover more.

Big aloha to you who have come to this blog over the years. Below? That's just the other day:)

"Carta Lanakila and Company" in the video means Pete and me are Tutus now ... the greatest adventure yet, we are grandparents.

Mokihana and Pete

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VARDO FOR TWO!

I know, I know. I said 'Never more!' But I was wrong, and that's the truth of it. There's a new blog, a new spring and a birthday to celebrate.

Nana ke'ia ... Look here for a brand new blog ... At Home Over Time.

The grand experiment

The calendar year wraps itself into close, 2016 ends in a few days. The Lunar Calendar and Chinese New Year of the Rooster begin January 28, 2017. There is a season and reason for everything and for me the grand experiment of writing blogs is over for me. Hundreds of blog posts and dozens of medicine stories have helped me sort life on this planet. Setting up the many different versions of my stories, and observations have been as much healing salve a any prescription and probably much more effective. Blogs have been a blank palette to fill in so many different ways. I am tired now.

Makua o'o and my other blogs will now be places to find archive posts, and links to other resources (found on the sidebars). Thank you for coming to read the meandering tales and observations of time and circumstances over the past years.

I have created a website Yvonne Mokihana Calizar where all the blogs and medicine stories collect in one place. The grand experiment with blogging is pau, but still the coral polp grows.



A hui hou,
Mokihana 

Moving

Our golden wagon life rooted in the woods of Langley six summers ago. Today Pete hitched up Vardo for Two and began the inch-by-inch process of gently, very gently uprooted the sweet Gypsy style wagon. Like rubbing a precious genie's lamp for wishes and good fortune, that's what we did. The night photo about shows that the come along and Pete's cranking and prodding has our home half-way to there.

The wooden steps in the lower right hand corner will give you an idea of how far the vardo was moved. We'll sleep in the new space over night. In the next day or so I will be loading detailed maneuverings of Pete and his practical magic as we continue to journey a safety pin life.

Applied Astrology: Pluto Transits across the Angles

" First, this disclaimer: I use EQUAL houses, so when I say “angles of your chart”, that is exactly what I mean. I am referring to Pluto transits over the angles of your chart, where the angles are the same degree as your ascendant.

Pluto transits over the angles of your chart are invariably drastic and life-changing. For example, when Pluto crossed my midheaven,  my life took such a turn, I had to live underground for close to 10 year. Me! A person so social and outspoken. I was a person listed in the phone book by the time I was 17 years old, and all the sudden I ceased to exist in public (10th house) life and lie dormant for nearly a decade..." Elsa Elsa

Building a (new) home 

Vardo For Two on the ledge in Tahuya, WA. Our first stop, 2009

Eight years ago (2008) we began building a tiny home on wheels the one we would eventually call Vardo For Two. The process and the unfolding journey became a venture into both a new way of life, and the beginning of my blogging life. Intimately affecting this rebuilding was the study and application of astrology as a way to navigate and prepare, and if not prepare, at least learn to accept more readily life as it REALLY is.

Elsa Panizzon has and continues to be one of the foremost teachers in my astrological studies. From her daily blog, forum, workshops, and newsletters I have grown; she is my foundation from her teaching I makawalu (unfold) and create anew. I discovered ElsaElsa the same year we began building our tiny home on wheels.

I am a believer in the quality and value of place, and home. The chart for Vardo For Two is a living and breathing one, for a living and breathing life-giving Home with a capital 'H.'

NOW ...

I believe it's time to pull back in from my wanderings (writing of many words, stories, blogs) to assess the worthiness and strength of the foundations of my beliefs, motivations. Why now in particular? It has to do with Pluto transiting (moving over) the angles of my astrological chart.

I've posted the chart for Vardo For Two as a place to illustrate Pluto's movement. The chart shows that Pluto (indicated with a capital P in black) in the light blue circle within the chart, was closing in on my Midheaven (indicated with the capital letters MC). Keep in mind these positions indicated in black print are for 2008. Pluto crossed the angle of the Midheaven during this time.

The Midheaven is the place in a chart that is your public life. In the chart above Vardo For Two's MC is in the sign of Capricorn, and in the 9th House. The 9th House writes Elizabeth Rose Campbell "asks you to explore the truth that is so big it is written on our inner parts. It asks you to integrate those truths, to act upon your knowledge until it deepens and becomes wisdom. Yet wisdom has no shelf life. You must live it, internalizing this wisdom so deeply it encodes your very character. And then ask for more." Pluto transits over the angles are "invariably drastic and life-changing" as Elsa puts it.

The design, building and recreating a life in, and from, a tiny home less than 80 square feet in size has been a profoundly life-changing experience. We are six years into the living from it stage and the thing that strikes me most is something Elizabeth Rose Campbell writes about the activity that takes place in the 9th House. "Explore the truth that is so big it is written on our inner parts...integrate ... act upon knowledge ... until it becomes wisdom." And then she goes on to remind me that wisdom must be lived to become known. In 2008 we were beginning to explore the truth, more would be revealed; that is where we are now. More has been revealed and how well are those safety pins holding? Do they need to be moved? Replaced? Reinforced?

The people in the home

In 2008 when Pluto was approaching the MC and still in Vardo For Two's Ninth House in Capricorn, the small and mighty planet was half-way through the Fourth House for Pete my husband, and half-way through the Twelfth House for me. Our newly built lifestyle, and home on wheels was our foundation or Papaku from which we would unfurl or makawalu.

Again quoting from Elizabeth Rose Campbell, "The Fourth House; Home. The fourth-house ... encourages self-care from the root level up and describes your answers to the questions: Where is my home? Who is my family? Like the sign of Cancer and the Moon (which is Pete's Sun sign and ruling planet ... the Moon) which rule the fourth house, this life arena encourages profound sensitivity...The goal of the fourth-house arena is to create a well-made nest for any of these purposes: raising a family; self-care; nurturance from the root level up."

"Like the sign of Pisces, which encourages letting go, and the planet Neptune, which expresses soul, the twelfth house describes the homeland of intuition--the flow...It originates in the heart, not the head. It is connected to both your source and your destination... One of the biggest challenges of the twelfth house, ruled by Pisces and the planet Neptune, is understanding the difference between giving up and surrendering. Giving up is the abandonment of one's center and the capacity to respond. With that abandonment comes a loss of instinct. To surrender to a circumstance, even a difficult one, is a different dance entirely. You must retain self-love and self-respect through the surrender...Giving yourself up to the wrong habit or atmosphere is usually the result of a haphazard or nonexistent relationship with inner guidance...It becomes vitally important to have a method of picking up your guidance from the twelfth-house flow in a fully functional state so that you can implement it."

 Pluto's slow and steady forward movement

"Wherever Pluto is in your chart," writes Campbell, "it unveils your potential. It teaches you to claim your power and choose to change, even if you can't control every facet of the outcome. Your Pluto potential has been composting, building for centuries through your genes and ancestry. Now that compost is ripe and ready to fertilize your life, as an old self dies and a new one is born through Pluto."

In our case Pluto will cross my ASC, my ascendent during the next week and will move into Pete's Fifth House. The New Moon coming up Monday, February 8, 2016 marks the beginning of the Year of the Fire Monkey according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar. There are many key moments to be awake to. Applying astrology to my life with Pluto as a focus, there are questions and answers to be asked and considered as this new lunar year begins.

I use Vardo For Two as a foundation to launch new beginnings, but, also appreciate that some old attitudes and practices need to be surrendered to make a truly fresh start. When Pluto finishes moving through Capricorn in 2023, it will move into my First House (fresh). That's still seven years away. But, Pluto's movement over my Ascendent, and my natal Capricorn Moon (emotions) is a current event.

Pluto's transit through my twelfth house has been difficult. Writing about it today is helping me to wrestle with the hard truths and the hidden (also a twelfth house character) struggles. Do I recognize the difference between 'giving up' and 'surrender' as a process, with Pluto half-way through the twelfth house? What about giving myself up to the wrong habit?

Enough for now, maybe more tomorrow.

Where is Pluto transiting in your life? Can you relate to this ramble?


Intuitive Astrology Follow Your Best Instincts to Become Who You Always Intended to Be by Elizabeth Rose Campbell is the source for the quotes used in this blog post. It's one of my most used books, and part of the small cache of books that have made the crisscross journey of life before and after building Vardo For Two.

Late afternoon, Purple Hibiscus

Summer draws to a close by some measures, Bracken ferns fade into brown. Vardo windows are shaded like loaves of silver-wrapped packages to keep the inside cool. The potted Purple Hibiscus are a late summer honey pot for a happy bee. I revel in the blessing of Nature.

Summer Seven living in Vardo For Two a cozy safety pin of a nest where I learn the advantages of living small through observing the Beings who are small. 

He Inoa Na Jots

E'elekule

Hey old friend

nou e ko'u hoaloha

For you my friend ... 

We built Vardo For Two in the industrial town of White Center, Seattle. The life we'd known before was in need a major restoration. We needed magic. From the woods came a Forest Magician with life to share with us. Life unexpectedly wild, and upending. 

She lived and died wild, and wondrous. Adaptive and then in the last, most ready to run and fly wild.

To read the whole Name Song for Jots, written in 'Olelelo Hawaii (the Hawaiian language) by our son Christopher Kawika Brown 

click here.

Grounding dreams, celebrating community, welcoming the New Lunar Year

Gung Hee Fat Choy, Happy New Lunar New Year of the Green Goat/Sheep/Ram.

"When the world was new the Jade Emperor created a calendar. Twelve animals were chosen for each of the twelve years...Ram was chosen for his courage." - from The Rooster's Antler's a tale of the Chinese Zodiac

Our computer is once again occupied by a bug that creates chaos with software; I cannot load photos using Blogger (it works this post). But, there are ways around that and in my primitive way I pin together methods on the border and offer you a way to see how Pete and I continue to ground our dreams, celebrate community and welcome the Year of the Goat/Sheep/Ram.


If you're curious LINK HERE to see our friends and community telling stories, making rattles, and dancing the Blessing Dance to feed the hungry ghosts and make space for joy, Grace and respect for place.

Vardo first ... then the community Part 2

When market season ended, and harvest season began Pete and I began to dream again
... of community and a place to gather

Dreamers have a pre-disposition to see magic in the most unexpected places, or see the multiple universes potent in the everyday. Here we are day dreaming of a winter home for The Safety Pin Café. A space and place where Sensitives can gather to tell stories, sip hot teas and laugh at the unpredictably weird words that come from between the borders and out the cracks.

Our South Whidbey Tilth community has given us the nod, and is receptive to our vision to enclose the existing Pavilion (the space pictured above) as a fragrance-free and chemical-free space for us to continue to share the medicine of story! Using the years of experience we have gleaned from a life that we thought at first might do us in, we will grow the fairy tale and share what we have learned because we built a Vardo for Two. To read the process of collaborating to involve our local Tilth ...
GO HERE.

Vardo first ... then the community

I juggle writing content between the three blogs The Safety Pin Café, Makua o'o and Vardo for Two like I walk between the three separate tiny houses that make up home; wake up in Vardo for Two, walk to the Quonset and have a cup of hot tea, walk to the Hale for a hot shower or wash the dishes. Not unlike walking from one end of a house, or through a hallway except that our hallway is the forest floor and our ceiling the canopies of pine and fir up a hundred feet tucked beneath Earth's sky, the stars, Hina and the Sun. Today, the Sun is just beginning his brighten through the trees. The Quonset's heater is working overtime to keep the kitchen-writing room-kitty space warm. What it will really need is for me to start cooking something to get the heat going. But. For now I munch at an apple crisp and cold from being stored in a box outside. It's probably in the high twenties now. Cold for a Hawaiian. The rest of this post will lead you to a piece of writing that expands upon this juggling experiment we began when we first dreamed up Vardo for Two. It is truly an experiment in living and deeply digging into the potential that so often appears as a knot or cluster of knots with no solution but to abandon the mess -- leave it for someone else to sort out, or cut the tangle and if you're lucky there's still enough left over to start again.

Kalei Nu'uhiwa one of my favorite Hawaiian scientists and teachers is fond of saying (well she's fond of saying quite a few things but for now ... ) "I don't know about you all but I love chaos." In this video, and presentation at the 2012 'Aha Wahine (Womens' Gathering) Kalei expounds on the process of creating sacred space. Specifically she describes the rituals and foundations for women's role in creating sacred space. We Hawaiian have a huge capacity for embracing multiplicity: we see the connectivity of seemingly dis-similar events. What Hawaiians, a people bred on making sense of life with what is (through keen observation and documentation) practice is a highly evolved sense of community. Nothing and no one is an orphan, what happens here will and does affect something there. Our creation story, the Kumulipo begins in darkness with the coral naming the seeds and the birthing from the seed polyps. From the sea, to the land. From darkness into light. From Po to Ao. Over time. Every thing is named. Every birth is recorded. From chaos comes order. From the knot of potential everything is possible.


From The Safety Pin Café ...
"Five years ago (2010) my husband Pete Little and I found the South Whidbey Island community. Our former life was being rebuilt; we had to dig deeper for people, place and values to thrive in spite of a medical diagnosis with one basic 'cure': "avoid almost everything!" That's a bit of a stretch but not much of one. The short story is I was diagnosed with MCS Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, or Environmental Illness in 2007, pesticides, chemicals and common products of the everyday 21st century are the primary sources of harsh and often debilitating reactions. My immune system was unable to cope, or restore health. A house or public spaces? For years those were "no-can-dos". In 2008 we learned what materials were less toxic and lessened the body's burden brought on by exposures; we experimented and tested how to build a tiny movable space to live in and regain wellness. Then began the journey to become part of a community.



Above: Pieces of cloth from an earlier time are being reworked,
and become something beautiful in a new life freshly in the making.
Below: The sign says it all. We learn to live with Peace in our loyal 'Scout' the Subarus and discover how much is enough while remembering who and what is really important

We lived from this faithful Subaru and from it, we learned how little was necessary, and how much could be had with what was at hand. The photo below is an early stage Vardo for Two porch when we were parked on a ledge in the woods
 in early summer, 2009.

 

 

In the summer of 2010 we found a place in the woods of Langley to park our Vardo for Two. Life began to re-fresh knowing we had a home. That same summer we found the South Whidbey Tilth and Farmers' Market. At first, it was the companionship and laid-back atmosphere that made us feel at home. Then, we discovered Tilth's history as a place unsprayed with pesticides for three decades. Our shoulders relaxed, my immune system calmed for the first time in three years, we began to root, volunteer, share what we have learned about fragrance-free and chemical free practices and become part of the community. Link here to read the full post, and see how the untangling of potential and the belief that everything is connected just keeps happening. Like the man said, "If you build it they will come."
 

Feed the wolf, feed the dream



HEDGESPOKEN
CLICK!

A very special pair of dreamers and weavers of magic are growing an off-grid Theatre for the Imagination. Artist and sister traveler Rima Staines, one of the early supporters of my life in Vardo For Two, and her poet-mask maker-storyteller husband Tom are conjuring up their life dream. A big, beautiful, fully-lived artist and storyteller family is imagining Hedgespoken. Though I am not very actively updating this blog, it seems many curious and imaginative souls with their hearts bred with similar stirrings as Rima and Tom, and me and Pete come here for inspiration. Thank you, and I do so hope Vardo for Two feeds the wolf -- the wild god -- who makes life full for you. Read Tom as he feeds the wolf, the Wild God for a taste of who this storyteller is.

Rima and Tom have set up a grand stage calling on all who speak the language of that wild and magical, uncompromising, Earth Mother and Sky Father connected spirit. They have an INDIGOGO project to help raise $ and support for the home and circus of wheels pictured below. Click on the link below the beautifully rendered Rima drawing, and see what they have tossed into the Global Jet Stream of imagining life on the planet. Support them how you are able, and follow the path of dreamers who live their talk.

Good luck and just the right amount of copper, and pennies, and pounds, and love
to Rima and Tom!!

"What is a very long time?"

"Geeeeooo is the Gnome of Slow Process. How long is it going to take for that water to wear that rock away? How much has that mountain grown (or eroded) in the last millennium? Geeeeeooo is there watching attentively, making certain that things don't happen too fast, resulting in a slip-shod job...Geeeeeooo is also the master of the clarification process whereby we let something sit quietly while the Impurities slowly settle themselves out, allowing the substance to purify itself in time."

-The Faeries' Oracle, Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth

 

The long dry summer has brought with it many cycles, interior ones as well as the seasonal ones. The ones that are visible to us collect at our feet, the alder have loosened their grip on their leaves with more of the brown-edges on the forest floor than on their slender branches. But on the other side of the woods down where the chickens root and scratch for morsels the old peach tree has plumped fruit as big as baseballs. We gather some of them for juicy treats, and the robins save us a few in spite of their greedy appetites for all things sweet. Tendrils of pine and hemlock, cedar and fir parachute slowly in swirls and land in your tea water, or hide in your breakfast if you are munching at the orchard table. Down the hill from us where the community garden and local farmers have things green, and roots red and orange the food from dirt to table feeds us day after day. We give thanks to the many hands that plant, weed, wash and bag vegetables. Pete has firmly planted himself as a volunteer of major proportions in those gardens, and the Food Bank which serves our South Whidbey community. The seasonal change of rootedness is one of those visible ones, and part of the "clarification process whereby we let something sit quietly while the Impurities slowly settle themselves out, allowing the substance to purify itself in time," that Jessica Macbeth writes about in the wonderful book The Faeries' Oracle. It has been a while since I've come to the blank pages of my original blog Vardo For Two. Closed the doors to let things, and life settle themselves the season's change has me on the virtual porch of this dear space once again.

The temperature cools off the woods now, bare feet chill without socks and my hooded sweat shirt no longer hangs on its summer hook. Maybe its that nip of cold at my toes that reminds me of the many worlds that make for a full and de-light-ed life: there are warm hoodies to slip cozy and comfortingly around me. There are magnificent and tiny gratitudes to express as we look at the journey of living in and with small spaces in a grand world, on a globe spinning miraculously in space. Autumn's approach brings with it a quickening alerting us to the needs we must address before the rains come and the season of mold and damp changes our world. We are cleaning and clearing our spaces; we have learned over the past five years what that means for us, and how we must go about things. If there is one lesson that we repeatedly practice it is resourcefulness. We have created a Safety Pin Café born from the pathways to and from the building of the tiny wheeled home we live in today. "Small efficient and moveable" a Safety Pin Café life-style has woven itself into magical stories and a form of art that fuels me, roots me as storyteller and sensitive being. To make sense of loss we human beings learn, among many other things, to let go. When we began building our moveable life we were doing it as a creative solution to the loss of turf (no space was safe), and in metaphorical and literal ways we had become the faceless man, and the faceless woman invisible to the culture because we could no longer fit in the faces we once wore. Much has changed since our first night of blissfully safe and satisfying sleep in our Vardo for Two. We have moved along, stopping and starting up again feeding on the generosity of friends, and the company of guidance we would come to know as most resilient and sustaining. The worlds of 'aumakua (family gods), the animal guardians (Raven, Osprey, squirrel), the Plant World (Pine, Cedar, Fir, Madrone, berry, moss) and the Elementals (the wind, clouds, atmosphere) and the Universe (the sun, moon, planets, stars) have  made themselves palpably present in our everyday. These resilient companions made a space for us to feel safe long enough to pin the goodness of Grace back into the places of loss, teaching us slowly, that permanency is the illusion, and common magic ... a small space ... could be just enough.

Living in small spaces, we learn what is valuable. Literally, we look at where our small spaces are today. The Homestead House Milk Paint has held up beautifully. We've never had to repaint it, but every year since first we painted (Summer 2008) we take a diluted solution of vinegar and water and wipe down the mold from the winter's wet and cold.This year I'm looking at places that are showing wear; milk paint literally wears away like all things natural. There are spots where the milk paint is gone and the oat shows through. I stenciled the back wall of our vardo with a contrasting milk paint. The Hawaiian fern (laua'e) painted shades of green is wearing off. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do about that yet. (Our homepage of Vardo For two shows that stencil. I love how the native ferns in the woods where we have lived for four years show up to be with the laua'e ... sweet diversity!)  We chose beeswax over any other coating option because of its low impact on my health, as well as the environment. We have no regrets! The process of wiping down the mold, inspecting the milk paint and re-waxing the exterior is not difficult but it does require consciously timing the work; if I am doing the work I wear a mask and goggles; and, you need to do this while there is SUN. Milk paint will go on and dry faster with at least two days of sun, and the wax will spread easier in this temperature as well. The waxing is a two-part rub on and wipe off excess process.

Earlier this week we had to remove the four year old put-together-sink in the Quonset (the 'kitchen' and writing house and second space we built three years ago) because over time, the wooden framework became a mold generating unit, and a trigger for asthma. It was not a planned change, but life is an experiment. When I think one solution will be permanent, Nature will show me everything changes. There is a transitional phase going on now. We are back to what we know we can do, and that is to set up a temporary outside cooking and the clothing washing sinks double for dish washing. We have purchased a stainless steel prep-sink to replace the old, but metal is processed with some very nasty and toxic sealant. The sink is being timed-out: Pete will wet sand-paper the surfaces and air the nasty stuff out for as long as it takes for me to tolerate it. As I write, the first raindrops are falling. Our temporary kitchen arrangement will need to morph today -- make that, now! Pop up the umbies. Umbrella Season fast approaches.

I'm back to the keys after moving things from there, to the no-longer-needed places, and finally to the next-best-place for now. The rain is gentle and small. We have a little more time to move the safety pins and hold life together in a common and magical temporary. Pete is racking down the walking paths, laying in more pea gravel for fall and winter. A new arrangement for preparing and washing up dishes will settle in for the time being. Later in this month my husband Pete and I will set up The Safety Pin Café for a Storytelling Sunday. I will tell stories about the guardians of this place; weave the myth and metaphor of my po'e kanaka roots (Hawaii) and invite the audience to help with the application of the healing salve of story. With the years of practice making up classroom setting using this and that, our audience will join in with their 'Gah, gah, gah' voice of Raven; make rattles from bottles and beans and clack sticks to call on the Ancestors for help with the everyday magic of living. I have rooted in this Salish Sea space enough to feel safe in my skin thanks to the oasis of a home Vardo For Two. I am re-infused with the passion for storytelling making sense of the harsh aspects of loss. It's medium to slow this healing process. Our new sink may have to wait, and sit in the orchard through rain and wind letting Nature neutralize the incredible armor of chemicals we humans have concocted. In the mean time, I'll hope to see faery Geeeeeoo the Sloow and his compadre tinker with that toxic armor, making silliness of the process while singing to me to slow down and keep writing and telling those stories about safety pins, and faeries, and journeys that mend or meddle or snap at magic.

History

Please enjoy the history and the resources we're written about, and shared during the years of building and learning to live a simpler life in small spaces. This blog will be mainly an archive of what we've learned, with infrequent new posts. Your comments are welcome and will be moderated and posted. Going forward the writing and blogging I do will fill the pages of my other blogs:

Makua O'o is my primary blog

The Safety Pin Cafe is where storytelling and magic are woven into mythic memoir, cultural adventure and time-traveling

All the best for a great year 2014,
Mokihana and Pete

Happy New Year

Vardo: metaphor and mythic practice

"What I love about your vardo metaphor is it gives people like you and me that emotional outlet to feel connected to a nomadic life, to the Earth, to feel our feet planted on the ground while our soul travels the planet. It allows us to rise up and transcend the prison – or cage as you say – of MCS and create something more powerful for ourselves. Beautiful. This is why reading your blog made me cry! It speaks to that part of me, on a very deep, deep level. This is the power you have – anyone has – by following their truth and putting it out there. You don’t know how many others you will affect, and in what ways.." - Julie Genser

When Julie Genser, creator of the on-line community Planet Thrive interviewed Pete and me in 2009, life in a vardo was a new experience. Years in the making, the fact remains, we were new to what living in a vardo for two would be. I am an artist and writer and count those names as benefits, gifts, that I eat up and give up just as I am learning the trees and I give one another gifts. The Tall and The Small Ones (the forest) fill the island upon which we live with oxygen, lots of it. In turn, we inhale the gift, the oxygen, and give back carbon dioxide. They need it as we need oxygen. Now, the science of that exchange is not something I came up with myself. Research, that is the Tarot that feeds my knowledge. What does happen as we live a day a night, a season, a year in the forest from Vardo For Two is the experience of feeling how interconnected we are with all of it. My culture of Hawaii allows me to believe that in my every where within, and when the logic of the capitalist culture spins me for a loop I hold on to my metaphoric, mythic and real-life digging stick to ground me what I know beyond logic. We are five years in the practice and metaphor of living from a Gypsy-style home. We have grown older and the inconvenience of washing laundry by hand and being sensitive to the many smells of a product-heavy society wear on us, but so do the same product wear on the birds, the bugs, the ground, the water. What happens when the wear happens?

 "In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"  - Gabrielle Roth

Earlier this year my response to the wear-and-tear was to make more magic, and myth of the life Pete and I live.

"Join Mokihana Calizar for the inauguration of the Safety Pin Cafe on October 6 at the South Whidbey Tilth Farmers' Market. This two-hour event begins at 11 a.m. with a haunting and healing Hawaiian chant, followed by sharing stories, art and music--fold an origami cup as a symbol of how we can support one another--enjoy cinnamon toast, a symbol of safety and love. Mokihana has written about journey through illness from chemicals ubiquitous in the modern world using myth, metaphor and ancestral memory to create a tale and medicine story. She has found safety on Whidbey Island and has turned a corner toward regaining her health. She acknowledges the South Whidbey Tilth campus as a safe space--fragrance and chemical free." - from South Whidbey Tilth Newsletter--August/September 2013"

The Medicine Wheel from The Safety Pin Cafe

The ups and downs of life in this human body is learned daily. Some practices are consistent, but not constant. Not even the moon upon which I count on consistently, is not constant; she changes from night to night. Some days I have a worldfull of energy, other days I am without spoons to serve a moth. One of the practices that has kept me grounded and able to travel in and out of spaces that I can't step into in 'the flesh' is the artist's practice suggested and taught by Julia Cameron. I've been reading and writing from her book ARTIST'S WAY  Every Day. Today's reading for December 15th is this:

"As an artist so much of my life is determined by the size of my imagination. If I am making something big, and making it daily. I can perhaps live somewhere small. I can sit at a desk that faces a wall and tap words into space and my world is still large enough. I am more than my circumstances, more than the cage of my environment. There is a dignity inherent in making art, a filament of largesse and generosity, a connection to something better and brighter than myself. "You do not own me," I am able to say to the walls that enclose me. And yet, I must learn to love my walls."

Few people really know how we live here in the tiny spaces of vardo, quonset, and hale (wash house) but some do. I weave the myth, live the metaphor or switch it up and live the myth and weave the metaphor loving the walls and pushing from them sometimes to make something from them.

Preparing for Winter Solstice and the promise of more light

New Moon Shadows

The sun played brightly with the wall of yellow, sending shadows of string, and charms, limbs bare, a forest and trunk slender onto its face. Another ocassion for noticing that the moon can send her message, her tattoos, into the day while others miss it, some have eyes that love that sort of message.

Look here for the door early on.

Let's see how well we are

"The safe oasis room on wheels became the right answer for us when our savings and resources could no longer pay the asking price for renting unsafe space and gravity was working against us as well. We are aging faster than we can continue to recover from Diaspora. The small space we have built is what we could manage and afford to build. If the choices of others affect us, we’ll move our home. What it boils down to is this: the inconvenience that make up our daily kuleana (Hawaiian word for responsibility) today is no less inconvenient than Earth’s endurances. We have admittedly been part of the problem when it comes to living with environmentally triggered illness. Now we have a chance to be part of the solution. Let’s see how well we do." - from the July, 2009 Interview "A Gypsy Life: Notes from the Diaspora" with Julie Genser of Planet Thrive

We found The Egg and Berry Farm in the summer of 2010. Within weeks Pete found gates to build, and places to use his drill and his inimitable humor. This is him and Eileen (1/2 of a pair), and the foundation of the "intentional community" we had imagined. We share 5 acres of woods and 'aina with these women. The relationship we have with them evolves and we all learn to be the best we can be; and practice acceptance and forgiveness when it's a day when we are being human.

Time has been softening the ground of our being allowing Pete and me to root and build other tiny spaces as gently as we possibly can. The Hale (pronounced ha-lay) pictured above is a metal wash house with hot water, a shower and a double stainless steel sink we use to wash our clothes(by hand with a washboard and a hand wringer). My sewing machine has a place of honor in the corner just inside that drain pipe. There's nothing I love better than a space for stitiching!

To the right the Quonset is our cooking and eating hut, and the writing/computer space. It's also JOTS hang-out, sleeping room and all around get your rubs and company place. Like the VFT the Quonset is 12 feet long and 8 feet wide.

We have four chickens who root around the lower half of the orchard, and give us fresh eggs. We used to live with ducks, too. But no longer. The chickens teach us a lot about being, and becoming dependent; and the ducks taught us about dying and loyalty and I wonder about "animal husbandry" now. Domesticating animals, enclosing them (and us). It's a subject that is tickling at my curiosity. I've not yet come to many conclusions. But wonder about domesticating.

JOTS is the real mistress of the tiny spaces. Above, the vardo porch is one of her familiar lookouts. She was sent to keep watch, and we are the lucky ones. Below, it's her first winter (2008). She found us and nestled her way into a box warmed by a wool blanket and Christmas tree lights.

This fall I took a view of the yellow leaves that brighten the woods with their seasonal magic. Taken from the corner of VFT, the Tall One (Grandmother Pine) anchors us When we first arrived it was she I chanted to specifically, asking permission to live among them. She said, "Yes." The garage (with the chimney that does not get used) provides the attachment wall for The Hale, and the rain barrel catches water.

Thank you girls!

The VFT roof and new canvas porch awning gets covered with pine and fir needles, Pete's sweeping and lifting that chin for the Raven to see.

We're grateful and humbled for the life we live. The tiny spaces we live in are small in comparison to the woods and the Nature that allows us to be here. I'm reading a good book that I'm sure to blog about before too long. It's Philip Shepard's book New Self New World. This is one of those books that offers turn-on-your-head redefinitions; like the difference between "being tired" versus "being exhausted; another loop for throwing at Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest"; and a chunk of consideration for domestication of humans and farming and animals. All of it suits my Scorpio curiosity, and my habit of digging around.

Onward on Route 66, a highway I am told by one who has spent much time on it, "Metaphoric or real, it's a great highway."

Can you live from a cracked bowl?

"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 she never replaced them. Her company, and her family never minded. As a living philosophy the witch kept to her mother'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. Pale's thick tea mug was emptied of the strong sweet chai, morning was bright with winter sun and only the hum of her computer broke the quiet. She had 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.
Soup? Rising to consider what she could fill the bowls with Pale ran her 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?" She thought aloud. The image of Max, her godfather rose from the bowl like the genie of Aladdin. He said, "I know a story that might answer that. Care to hear it?" The Border Witch smiled at the question then laughed at how stories come to a storyteller. "Let me fill this tea cup, Uncle. 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 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. You 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. Ever live from a crack in a bowl? Reopening Vardo For Two is much like that. The quote that begins this post comes from a bit of writing done in my on-line, on-going writers' group. We call the group Prime the Pump. I created 'the pump' one February when I wanted somewhere to go with the fullness (and the limitations) of living from Vardo For Two. I could go no where. One definition of that condition might be 'isolation' but I had so much energy that needed out! What can a gal do? One option: create magic, common magic.

The bit above is a continuation of the medicine and mythic journey of Pale Wawae border witch. In many ways she is my mythic self both more vulnerable and more courageous than I am to the whirl that sees me. But the grand reality of it is, we -- she and I, make for a better whirl because the story is put down. I cannot be sure where my stories lead, just as Pete and I could not be sure what would happen once we imagined a curved roof and moveable home on wheels. Seated as I am now at the keyboard in a Quonset Hut that was no where in my imagination when we were building Vardo For Two, I can tell you with some certainty: the magic lies in the crack. 

And, if you need an astrological slant on things. Go here.

Link

Re-opening Vardo For Two

Comings and goings

Many things have happened since I began blogging in 2008: blogs and bloggers have come and gone, I have a lot more gray hair today, and my love affair with blogging has grown to epic proportions. I've learned a lot about blogging and opened and shut dozens of them (really!) Vardo For Two was the first blog I started. It started as a way to chronicle the process of building a two wheeled moveable Gypsy-style home that was 'safe enough for us.' We needed to invest in the belief that we could rebuild our lives after I became increasingly ill from multiple chemical sensitivities and could no longer live, or be, in most enclosed spaces (houses were a no-go!) We, my husband Pete and I were part of the early stages of the Tiny Home enthusiasm thanks in part to Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny Homes fame. We drove to California in the fall of 2007, met and participated in one of Shafer's first workshops and as they say in the Twelve Step Rooms "took what we liked and left the rest." Vardo For Two did become the record-keeping journal of the process and the experiences of two old dears investing in a new beginning.


I closed this blog in 2011 when I felt the details of our lives and the direction of my healing was leading to new ground. I was healing. I was getting better, and at the time I believed it best to close the blog; leave diasposa and struggle behind. If I didn't call myself "ill" and retell the story of being so my brain would be retrained and recovering my health would come. I believed that. I don't believe it all the time today, and so I'm retracing old ground. The details and review of VardoForTwo, so much effort pictured in these blog pages, led me to believe  others could be helped. We offered lots of help, but found that few people would pay for our help even when we asked. Resentment built in. There's really not enough time to live with resentment.

Route 66

I turned 66 a couple weeks ago, and have begun what I'm calling My personal Route 66. The signposts and destinations for this journey aren't on a map, and it seems I need to reopen certain doors in order to move more surely forward. The quirky thing about this door opening thing is in the description to Vardo For Two "Stories Five Years Later ... life on the borders where myth-making and magic are the remedy" What does that mean? It means that sometimes the life you rebuild is one that becomes infused with the magic of myth that space and place that is no longer logical and uni-brain rational. The life rebuilt for me is one that does not re-enter the world at all the same way before I was homeless. It is a life that grows from the medicine of stories that are mythic and metaphors, whimsical and deeply connected with ancient Earth-based practices. Vardo For Two both the blog and the two wheeled moveable Gypsy-style safe place is a border crossing world from which I notice Nature at her unadulterated and live from that place.

Five years later ... myth and magic the remedies

"Stories Five Years Later ..." reopens the blog Vardo For Two so the process of rebuilding two lives might serve as a place for others to do a similar thing. It's very possible many many people will be doing that in this century. The stories that came before 2013 are true for us. The process and materials we used then are still working for us five years later. What has changed are the links to sites and resources on this blog, I'll be cleaning them up as best I can in the days to come.

The stories that I write and link to from this point forward are equally true. They are the mythic memoirs of an old woman who has found her ancestry of birds and storyteller. Both genealogies allow me to live on the borders where truth and lies become myth. Anyone who has rebuilt her life will tell you the process is out of this world. With the reopening of Vardo For Two I feel it's important to share the medicine stories living forward with magic. Maybe the journey and purpose all along was: forget what no longer works and find the magic that does.

Rima Staines, a sister traveller, storyteller and artist says if you don't look for magic you will never find it. I believe her.

Kawika Brown plays music at Bicyclette Cafe, Paris, March 11, 2011

Our son is playing music at the Bicyclette Cafe in Paris

March 11th, 2011

March 11th is his Tutu Lady's (grandmothers) birthday. 

She would have been 93 on 3/11/11.

What a great kani ka pila to be at!

If you're in Paris on Friday the 11th of March, go see Kawika.  We'd love to be there with him.

Hauoli La Hanau, Ma.