Showing posts with label art as healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art as healing. Show all posts

Friday, October 24, 2014

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!!

Sunday, December 15, 2013

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





Sunday, January 30, 2011

Ho'oponopono and the Kane Moon

Ho'oponopono is the ancient Hawaiian practice of setting things right.  Literally the word could be looked at as "ho'o" to make or the act of "ponopono" setting right or regaining harmony (pono).  The link included in this paragraph will take the reader to one kumu (teacher) of Hawiian healing practices, Maka'ala Yates.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

New Year ... shorts only ( if only we could be wearing 'em now!)

JOTS my blogging pal is watching from the slant board. For the time being I am perched on the kitchen stool under a lot of clothes.  This laptop is groaning so let's just hope it's not its last lap.

The cold snap brought in 2011 up and down the Pacific Coast.  The water hose and drains are frozen and I have a new experience to understand, and though I have reluctantly been initiated into yet another club that I would not choose to join ( I have never been much of a clubber), my friend Leslie helped me limp into the arms of those with MCS AND Migraine headaches.  Nights are the worst for me, frigid, dry air triggered the first pain of a different dimension.  Thanks to many friends I learned to:
  • add humidity to the Vardo to soothe my sinuses; a boiling kettle from the quonset helps, wet towels hung on clothes line adds some relief; bending my bowed head over that steaming kettle got me through the first couple of days.
  • the saline warm water rinse soothed my sinuses; and does so daily
  • a nasal spray called XCLEAR is an overthecounter saline and XYLITOL spray that helps
When the headaches came back with colors and patterned lights I called Leslie, and she helped me into the fold of migraines.  Though ironically comforting, this latest initiation is a heck of a way to begin the new year.  STILL, there is something about these trials that amaze and ring through ... "Those that sustain you while you are in need beyond imagination, they are to be blessed.  Mahalo Honey, Pete"

  • Dark sunglasses (thank you Maui Jim's) help when light sensitivities requires darkness even at night
  • I don't do pain meds, so thank Akua, for now the Southern Remedy and caffeine-endorphin rush from COKE helped me through the night and I was migraine free through my  first night in 4.
22 Degrees outside, and 50 in the quonset.  EMS (electromagnetic sensitivity) is causing problems, and might be aggrevating my old kino (body).  So, this is short, and then there will be more changes coming. It's wonderful how my dreams take me to steaming hot places and clear saltwater and white sandy places at night.  There are so many dimensions of reality. 

Last short

Thank God for the journalists who still keep the news we need to know coming ... JOAN Conrow that would be you.

Joan Conrow thank you for keeping us posted about one of our Kuliouou Valley heroes, Henry Noa.  When I'm able I will  tell you readers about Kuliouou Valley, and among the people of that place there is Henry Noa and the Correa-Reeves 'Ohana.

Never say never to anything.  I'm gonna sip on the second can of coke in two days, after what ... 15, 20 years?  Yup, never say never.

Hauoli Makahiki Hou,
Mokihana, Pete and JOTS

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Artistic Tangents: A Hidden Gift From MCS by Liberty


Thank you Mokihana for providing such a wonderful diversity of categories for this Canary Caravan!

The category that I felt most drawn to was 'Tangents' - in your words, "Tangents are the unexpected and often unplanned paths or off-shoots of a life planned; places and experiences that spontaneously happen because we are human and because MCS might have had something to add to the old 'normal.'"


Having MCS has led to a number of positive tangents in my life and my favourite is the way it has effected my art.
Prior to having severe MCS, I used acrylic paints and a number of other mixed medias - many of which were high in VOCs and contributed to me developing MCS.
When severe MCS hit, I became unable to use those mediums without becoming very sick.  I experienced deep grief over the loss of my ability to paint with the mediums that felt natural to me and with which I was comfortable.


In time, however, this 'limitation' led me to try different artistic mediums/methods such as watercolour painting, drawing, colouring, art journalling as well as learning to make my own non-toxic glue.
At first, my attempts in these directions were very disappointing and I gave up for a few years.


Eventually, however, my need to create made me try again - and persist until I became more comfortable with these mediums.
After getting over the learning hurdle, I am now in love with watercolour as a medium and I don't feel the least bit 'deprived'!  I am also growing to love many of the other art forms I've explored that I wouldn't have if not for MCS.


Even severe chronic health problems or disabilities can bring gifts if we look for them.  I am very grateful to MCS for providing the 'tangent' that led to the evolution of my art!  I now spend time being creative almost every day and it is a very healing part of my journey through life.





About this Canary Caravan Contributor:

Liberty is a 30-something Canadian who is passionate about the healing power of creative expression (in any form) and blogs at Divinity Withinity - art, creativity, fun as well as sharing her MCS improvements at Moving Beyond MCS.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

If there is any doubt

"No wound does heal, but by degrees"
I am ever humbled by the quick change in the direct and pace of life.  It speeds up as one ages -- the pace that is.  Even though from the outside the eyes of youth might see my life as something less than rapid, time passes so differently today than when I was half this age. 

Since my last post I have been engaged in the work of attending to life, recouping and regaining equilibrium.  To update and also to chronicle (for myself, because without it I forget my successes) this very special heroic journey of R & R here I am at the keys and in the basement to make these notes.  For if there is any doubt that there is courage working through us this may help to bring it front and center.

Here is what we have done in the last days since posting:

1.  Continued to heal and mend a fracture to my arm and elbow. 
There is very little pain now, I am conscious of the daily ease with which I can use my dear old right arm.  I spend time soothing her my very used and recently injured dominant arm and hand.  The sesame seed milk has done its job of aiding in the rebuilding of calcium where needed.  Gentle massage and attention to how I use this right arm brings me back to mindfulness.  How much I do take bodily function for granted.

2.  I can do more cooking and have begun to drive again.
When I am unable to do the daily bits, Pete must take them on.  His is already a loaded share, so the increase is more than enough.  He does it and all else.  I feel guilty for it and on the best of days, I am able to forgive myself the weigh of guilt and it pases. 

3.  Pete is involved with this community in ways he has wished, and that gives us more diversity.
The community garden patch is growing nicely with Pete's help and the help of neighborhood folks who contribute their skills and their time.  It's a resourceful group there in Lowell by the river; I'm grateful Pete has that outlet and we have a garden planted with peas, onions, carrots and beets so far.

4.  The Canary Caravan Carnival is in the making.
Bloggers and allies have thrown their hats into our 3 ring circus as the May MCS Awareness Event here at VardoForTwo is planted.  There's still plenty of time to join in.  Consider contributing and being part of the sharing on May 14,15 and 16th.

5.  Pollen season is in full bloom here.
Last Friday I joined our friends for a dinner (a very big thing for us with MCS at this level of severity).  It takes a lot of effort to be vigilant about the exposures when I am with 'others'.  I made a choice to take myself inside the house for a Friday night dinner with 7 friends.  There were precautions made to get me to the table:  the gas stove and oven were used for dinner so the room was aired before I came in.  Usually I try for 15 minutes inside as my limit.  I stuck to that.  I made it through a dinner.  Sat at the table in a 'proper chair' and chatted while I ate fresh-caught salmon and potato dinner across from three friends.  That is a huge thing!  I asked for an open window to blow fresh air in ... that is usually a good thing.  Friday night that proved to be the wrong decision.  A bank of broad leaf maples and a lilac bush are in full pollination or just about to bloom and that combined with the contruction site next door combined to set out allergies and reactivity. 

I have been recovering from the episode using all method of R & R including NAET treatments, saline solution nasal rinses, Lomi lomi treatments, high levels of Vitamin C, increased drinking of fresh young coconut water, cleaning the vardo and basement(thank you Pete) of dusts and pollens, 18 hours of watching the Brit film series "The House of Elliot", asking our friend Doug to cut the lilac blooms and stowing them away to take to work and finally yesterday I ordered a tank of oxygen to have as needed. 

6.  This morning, I am back to the basement for the first sit down at the keys since Thursday, and the chronicle is laid down.  Doing whatever it takes to take the next breath, and make my way through the relationships that I have with people is a full-time job.  If there is any doubt life is full, I have only to look again at the words strung together here or look at the reality of life's character etched in my face, the face of my dear Pete.  Getting through the rough times of getting through an exposure is process ... messy and progressive.  I hope my healing is building on a foundation that needed reinforcing and humility may be my reward for learning compromise and cooperation. 

Is compromise and cooperation easy for you; are you good at it?  

Friday, January 8, 2010

A nest of a home: Chiron in the house


The 'Ole Days and Night of the Moon have been full.  Though no new projects is the practice we have learned  there are many kinds of weeding and tending/patching and follow-up on the things already in the works. Different things need tending during the winter then in the spring.  What has captured my attention during the three nights of the 'Ole Moon is the effect of the asteroid CHIRON ... the mythological wounded healer that has been making its way through the zodiac in very close company with the planets NEPTUNE and JUPITER.

The link above will take you to a beautifully crafted article by astrology and writer Joyce Mason.  Discovering her work (thanks to Donna Cunningham, again for the navigational tip!) is a perfect example of the sort of nesting work that is perfect for 'Ole Moon weeding and winter time internal restoration.
 
Now, back to the combined effect of the Planet NEPTUNE (one who among other things dissolves boundaries) with the JUPITER (the quick change artist/bringer of lucky breaks) and tiny yet powerfully influential CHIRON (the wounded healer) in my life. After more than sixty cycles of life revolving around the Sun, a very deeply seeded wound is being given a chance to be healed.  The ingredient of awareness comes at different times in a life-time, sometimes we're too young to recognize the nudge.  As we age, the habit of avoiding or denying digs in hiding because like any familiar bit like dust, a virus, a habit simply becomes part of the fabric of the nest.  Months ago, while Pete and I lived in the woods we began telling the story of our life 'On the Ledge.'  Through the real-life experience of finally having a safe haven a.k.a. our VardoForTwo, my Muse came to find comfort in that safe haven.  The Muse is my most powerful ally in the healing of wounds and has been for most of my later adults years.  This Muse is CHIRON manifest ... my internal midwwife, healer and storyteller and wound-mender transforming a life of flight into something magic.  The Muse fed me the story WOODCRAFTING, and I applied discipline and wrote.  (Jupiter governs publishing I have learned)  The fairy tale WOODCRAFTING is a dense thicket of plots and characters including the thread born from a tiny barnacle that becomes part of a larger beings beginning.  Small, over-looked and unheralded, the barnacle transmits its characteristics into a grand species of creation causing unexpected thought forms, leading to boundary breaking actions and ultimately revolutionary changes to the status quo.

Winter has definitely made room for CHIRON, beginning shortly before the Solstice when the walls of a faulty foundation of old beliefs about "responsibility to others" just would not and could not sustain my world any longer.  My undoing is leading me slowly forward, nest building for a spring to come.  No longer keeping secrets about my vulnerability, I have a choice to heal old patterns of coping with the fear of never being safe, or never being able to make the 'right' choices.  The season of in-dwelling and finding comfort can be just the thing I need to heal these old wounds more deeply.  Pausing to think of my next sentence, aware that I might have simply rambled on the page and gotten nowhere, I find this:  "this ain't no whine baby, who could know your real life if not you."

To be continued ...

Do you know where Chiron is in your chart?  To find out go to free astrological chart sites like Astro.com , click on the side bar "FREE HOROSCOPE" and provide the birth information asked for.

Clipart Credit:  The vintage Clipart is from Fairyclipart.blogspot.com.  This free clipart site is yet another of those discoveries and yummy places to go when needing things to refresh and enchant.

Friday, January 1, 2010

New Year ... more stories ... Book II of Wood Crafting


A new year begins, refreshed by the winds that rocked our vardo (I was asleep to it!) and the accompanying rains 2010 is here with ions new and what a blessing!

There is a new book begun in installments at Wood Crafting the Tale. This one, a second of maybe a trilogy, or more the muse will keep me posted. Inspired by the natural course of events in our VardoForTwo life, the fairy tales and full-length stories on Wood Crafting the tale are my stitchery, cross-stitching and knitting equivalents. I find comfort and solace in seeing the story unfold knowing only a bit of the plot to begin. Much like the recipes (or lack of one) that I use to cook the thousands of meals over the past sixty years, there is a general taste I'm after and then there is the rest of it.

It's a fun way to begin the new year. Tandalori the crone is quite the character, hybrid of many characters in and not of my own life. Click here to read the first installment of the chapter "The Nectar of Place."

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Healing through the crafting of story ... WOOD CRAFTING's final installment

Dear Whirl,

In the dear well of goodness there is a light that shares itself with all. The likelihood of that light being shared between a human egg and sperm is as unlikely as balancing a single grain of raw rice on the head of a needle ... or so I've heard tell when I have listened to stories told by old wizen grandmothers answering a child's questions.

My own life is closing in on the tale end of a human's existence now and when one lives with a dark night of the soul, or worse even, a string of dark nights the end seems a blessing with the pressure to keep that precarious balance. There is no doubt a transcendent quality within the soul that draws the mortal angst toward the light. Challenged as so many women, men and children are on the Planet with illness and imbalances concocted by ill-placed motivations and an addiction to hording, Sensitives such as I seek to use Art as a vehicle ... a way to ride through the daunting losses. When Art is not enough, loving support from compassionate and skilled guides, healers and loved ones shore me while my inner fire is re-kindled. For that assistance I offer this story as a thank you.

My Art is story, and Wood Crafting the Tale is a piece of other-worldly telling for me to heal my way through the losses and grief of living with MCS. The Art speaks of voices unspoken yet more powerful than utterance; cosmic connection that is the thread of soul's food and the Everlasting; Nature's beauty and her unquestionably enduring quality. Though I never consciously planned the final installment to coincide with the release of a calendar of nearly naked women telling their truth after MCS; never planned to share the final installment of my healing fairy tale as a tonic for my very real and painful bout of depression and suicidal angst this is what is happening.

In time for the new moon that rises tomorrow morning (Wednesday, December 16th) I share the final installment of Wood Crafting the tale here at VardoForTwo where the story began in the Spring of 2009 when a golden wagon rolled onto a ledge in the woods. Through the sharing I embrace the dark and light of mortal existence balanced with the grounded NATURE of life from the Ever.

And now the final installment of WOOD CRAFTING the Tale

WOOD CRAFTING

Written by Mokihana Calizar
Copyright, 2009

Please enjoy the tale for your own pleasure,
but do not reprint it or copy it for any other purpose without permission from the author.

(see the sidebar for my contact info)



Shelela and Shenia … She the little and the small

Our story draws closer to its destiny, dear ones. The journey broad, the telling savory, the lessons wrapped in filigree and sennit, bundled in cedar boughs and hidden on bits of driftwood from islands far south of the high mountains. The tale cannot be finished without knowing more about my own dear birthing, and that of my twin Shelela. If ever you will need the nectar of the place to taste the truth, it will be here as I braid the final hank into place. Have you kept the kettle hot for tea? If you have neglected the small ritual it would be a fine time to raise yourself to the burner and bring the spring water to a boil. A story always tastes the nectar of the place with tea.

We must return to the beginning and listen as my own dear mother and father consider the choice Kaimalama Noa has made.

Shemaladia of Osprey listened as her mate to be recounted Kaimalama’s disclosure. Both my parents were full-size Grey Wood Crafters. To see them now, their heights would surprise mortals for they were Giant in your vocabulary. Perhaps as large as twelve feet from ground to head feathers, Shemaladia and Freeilll were among the last of the Giants with coil of stardust and bird nearer fairy than human in spite of their size. My mother waited for my father’s final word, looked deeply with her eyes closed and sought any unspoken thought that might linger in his telling. When she found none there Shemaladia asked, “Are these mortals long in coming? Will it be within our cycles they be here on The Planet?” Freeilll Noa felt certain the mortals would come only when his name and that of Shemaladia of Osprey were as fairy tales or make-believe. “Do you see the lesson in our mating as a birth-place for our future coveys, a warming of a different sort to prepare our twins for change?” My father simply nodded, affirming Shemaladia’s intuition. “Kaimalama has opened a channel to the Ever of the future through his choice. What has been is reassembling, and though you and I have enjoyed the Grace of Grey and crossed the Cosmos with our gifts there comes a time for loving the small, birthing the value of reserve and it continues with our mating. We have been asked to value a concentrated version of ourselves, leaving behind that which no longer serves, embracing all that will likely flourish forward. My brother’s choice will reveal the nature of small when nurtured. He has lived one hundred cycles with a secret kept. Hording polyps, fish and the moving winds examples of secrecy and a grace ill-founded.”

Shemaladia of Osprey remembered the moment she first saw Freeilll Noa. “What will our twins be like from our mating?” She had thought that then, and now she knew the answer was “different.” The lid of stars that poured stardust from the constellation of The Big Dipper would open within three moon rising. Time was still on the side of destiny. My mother had received many gifts of gratitude and thanks over her long life. Souls lost and found often gifted Shemaladia with tokens of their appreciation. Thinking of her pouch of brocade that held those gifts my mother conned in my father’s direction, “I believe a clue has been with me all these many cycles. A gift from a sister lost to herself gave me a circle of silver with stone of pink quartz. The ring was too small for my claw. Pink quartz is for the healing heart, perhaps the perfect size for reassembling the size of a Wood Crafter’s egg.”
In the end the ring crafted of silver with stone of pink quartz was indeed the perfect size for twin eggs birthed by Freeilll Noa and his mate Shemaladia of Osprey. The lid of stars poured their stardust as it had for times back into memory, and as it has been for all those times, mates of destiny embraced their dance of bliss. One of those paired is said to have embraced with a small circle of silver held tight between their breasts. The ring of silver split between my mother and father. Each half was absorbed into their hearts creating two halves the size of perfectly reassembled eggs, twin girls named Shenia and Shelela Wood. In the scheme of destiny we were the first of the covey to be She the Little. My mother and father viewed the future knowing the new race called Mortals would grow with the spell of hording in their coil. Like my uncle the spell would be like a mask unconsciously worn unexpectedly risky business. My parents chose to value the small concentrated good that had until that point lived grand, large, and Giant. We sustain our Grace through that choice and look from our coveys and warrens at the mortals who are called Sensitives and Spell-binders and watch for one woman in particular who has memory of kin and kind. That mortal carriers the gift of Fantasy … a willingness to forget all and then, she will make room for us to join in. From the Ledge near the Pond of Ever a woman fitting that description has moved herself and her mate into a wee wheeled home. The fairies are keeping close watch on things on the Ledge, and warming on a branch is a pair of violet eggs the size of a mortal woman’s earrings.

This story is braided complete for the while. Mortal destiny lies tentatively on the balance between grand and small. Sensitive kin with dreams falling down around them are the clue to a reassembled beginning. Will the race who has been spell-bound by greed begin anew, release what no longer serves the original Creators’ song and step gently back where the nectar of place is sipped, shared and for goodness sake, never horded? Cross your fingers and make room in your dreams for fairies and Gypsy Frog kings to join in. Until the next wind gathers the dust of story ~ be gentle with your stepping and kind in your encounters.