CLOTHES PINS and the journey back to innocence

We are living our second summer from our wheelie home VardoForTwo.  Together Pete and I have learned, and continue to learn what it takes to make "home."  For those who have followed the journey, the process of building a chemically-safe haven filled this blog for many months.  My other blogs, Sam and Sally, Makua O'o and the fairy tale Woodcrafting helped me sort through the tangle and jumble to make some sense of the losses/dead-ends and challenges.  Blogs sprouted to satisfy my writing calls and for that time because I had the help of my Ruby the laptop and access to the internet I did write and write and write.  The blog world was a godsend and I used that world to explain and interact with others who are and were unsure of the affects of environmental triggers on the reality of life as they'd known it. 

Now I live with a different sort of writer's deadline, working at the local public library for 59 minutes at a time, I prioritize my hour and decide how to spend it.  Do I search?  Do I write?  Can I do both?  Sometimes the answers are No. Yes. No.  Other mornings, I Search a little to get answers I need then move to my write something here mode.  So, the third answer is Yes.  I have 41 minutes left here at my favorite window computer seat.  And with some luck I will be able to spread the thoughts I came with onto to post:  Stages of growth and the journey back to innocence.  Working backwards from now, 'INNOCENCE'  is the first stage --- the beginning in a soul's journey, as in the innocence of babes, there is only the joy of possibility and the openness of all possibile good.  The runes have influenced me with their oracular insights.  I pulled the rune of Innocence yesterday and how light that insight felt to me.  Light, as in it's been a long-time since I've felt innocent.  Ahhhh, the sensation.  I took time as I fondled the stone in my hand, first the right and then the left-hand, and recalled other times when I did feel that innoncence.  A time of clothes-pinned tents hung from the clothes-line in my neighbor's yard came.  Aunty Lilly embraced my innocence, and fed it with her view of life.  Under sheets and blankets strung from those clothes-lines, I felt freed up from the heaviness than stewed in my own home just the other side of the hedge.  How long back was that?  Fifty and more years yet there there were.

The journey in VardoForTwo has included clothespins at many, many stops along our nomadic way.  That childhood innocence did bubble up within me when I needed to create safe-sense while we slept many places in our car.  Clothespins and curtains, like the tents created by Aunty Lilly in that old backyard, were the basics for transforming a nomad's car into a home for the night.  Clothespin ( bag full of them) are part of our early day essentials today.  We use them to peg laundry that is wet from a simple wash, and use them to peg bedding or clothes that must be washed and washed and hung with Nature's cycle for months or years to ready them for a safe-wear.  If you were to peek into the vardo you're likely to see the wooden clothespin clicked somewhere ... just because, or just in case.

A year ago, we finished building and investing in a dream of faith:  most of the money we had we used to build a stainless steel interior walled, white oak exterior, milk-painted single axle trailer home that is used mostly for sleeping.  We had many other needs to address a year ago, and yet the priority of safe sleeping place was met.  We are grateful every night and every morning to be inside VardoForTwo.  That dream built with hard work and faith is now the foundation for building the rest of our life on the Planet.  Once a safe wheelie home like ours is built, the challenges of growth from the kernel of goodness show up.  Rebuilding a life at any age includes being with the flow of Nature's stages of death and rebirth.  Without compost, a new seed will grow differently and at the other extreme, will die, to become part of the compost for another seed another opportunity. 

Today, mid-July, 2010 we are learning to live on our different resources of income and community-exchange.  A monthly social security check gives us money enough to pay a regular rent.  The rest of that check needs supplementation and resourcefully creative approaches.  Pete's diverse talents for work work are being tapped.  He is Pete the Tinker and the Care-giver and the whatever else needs to do sort of guy in town.  Together we talk through the ways we can make what we have into what we need.  We drive the vehicles less, and are working on a plan to create that sheltered kitchen and living space for the winter that we know we need.  The exact nature of that shelter is in the hands of Faith, and our footwork sometimes needs to include a bit of standing still while all the facts come to where we are.

That journey back to innoncence has seemed impossibly inaccessible for many moons.  Driving with Crisis will do that to a soul, and it must be part of the process of denying that something has died that keeps innocence at bay.  Whidbey Island and the friends who rent space to us as vardo dwellers offers us space to tap into innocence again.  It takes practice to feel innocence and that's the truth.  With a little imagination, I see how a clothespin might be just the tool to hold me to the moment of new beginnings.

Try to make a dollar out of 15 cents/Saturn in Virgo; Disciple to make a dream real

When I was a girl, I remember a rhyme we used to say that included the phrase about a Chinaman.  In those days, politican correctness had no meaning and in our neighborhood our own family was part of the Chinese.  The rhyme included "Chinaman, Chinaman sitting on a fence, try to make a dollar out of 15 cents."  Many times over in my life I've seen or heard the dictum of my Chinese ancestors being thrifty with their shackles and wise with their money and able to save pennies to make a dollar out of 15 cents. 

Today, there are few things you put your fingers on which are not made in China and that is an issue I'm not going to tackle with this string of words.  What is on my mind and in the foreground is the hard work involved in finding a place for us to live from our VardoForTwo.  A recent photo series chronicled our journey of building the tiny wheelie home and the places we have been since.  Last night Pete and I sat and discussed the details of our reality.  We will need to be on the move again, soon.  Through our discussion the missing details, the ones that I thought were clear showed no so clearly in Pete's thinking.  Pete came up with new information and together we stirred the emotions of fear that can come up when you're woken from a dream that is not grounded or not yet firm.

Molly Hall from About.com offers this angle on dreams not yet firm or not grounded with her article on

Saturn in Virgo:

Saturn is transiting in Virgo from September 2nd, 2007 to October 29th, 2009. After going into Libra, it will retrograde back into Virgo from April 7th to July 21st 2010.

Saturn in Virgo Themes: Discipline to make a dream real; going back to nature; discovering limitations of basic necessities; purification of body, mind, spirit; awareness of toxins in the environment, food, air; getting rid of non-essentials; establishing Cause & Effect in nature, business, work plans; becoming self-sufficient; being cautious about spending on extras; considering the needs of the community; thorough research that leaves no stone unturned; refinements to the fields of healing and medicine.

Further along in Hall's article she writes:

..."Saturn in Virgo is an ally for projects that call for precision, endurance and responsibility. It allows you to roll up the shirt sleeves, dig your hands in the mud, and create a self-sustaining system you can be proud of in the end. This might mean an actual garden, as in the nourishment of life. But it also means "cultivating your own garden" of talents through discipline. Saturn here helps you find a rhythm in the day that leads to a sense of productivity."

..."Saturn tends to bring out the fearful aspect of a sign, when not channeled in a way that feels stabilizing. That means we'll need to guard against nervous OCD-type worry that feeds on itself. It's helpful to find new outlets for the jittery physical energy of Virgo, such as crafts, gardening, martial arts, penning snail mail, book binding, yoga, tending to animals, volunteering, tree-hugging, giving and receiving massage, independent research, purifying in a sauna or hot tub, visiting a sacred place, creating an altar, researching enviro-toxins, home re-organizing, restorative nature projects, regular exercise, ritual cleansing, detoxing mind, body and spirit, and reaching for a new level of well-being...

Click here to read the entire article

VardoForTwo was a dream two years ago.  Two years ago last March, we lived from the Subaru and went from place to place with that "nervous OCD-type worry that feeds on itself" a constant condition.  Life in crisis is obsessive compulsion if not paralysis.  Each step of the way since that point in time in March Pete and I have moved gradually through the hard work Hall describes as a "call for precision, endurance and responsibility..."cultivating your own garden" of talents through discipline."  Life from VardoForTwo is a social and economic experiment.  When we are able to detach from worry and despair, it's possible to see and appreciate -- accept, what we cannot change.  Yes!  We will need to move from the yard where we have parked here in the Mill Town.  No, we do not yet know whether the next place will "work" or how long we can be there.

We can take small steps.

1. we can visit that next place early next week.
2. we know the painting next door will happen next week or not long after.
3. we know painting is toxic for me.
4. we know the vardo will need to be fit with running lights.
5. we know I can wear an ankle brace to support my recently discovered injury/break.
6. we know the Vardo keeps us safe.
7. we know we are committed to each other.
8. we try to live one day at a time.
9. we do the work of tending to our 'inner gardens' (Pete back at yoga, planting a garden, facilitating projects, learning to create a business; and me writing messages via the blog and communications-supporting wonderful people/friends new and long-term and healing old wounds and both of us learning to live creatively with MCS)
10. we know we have 15 cents. 
11. Is that enough? 

For now that will have to be enough to build on. 

Can you relate to the disciple and hard work of making a dream real?

Fresh Air Cleaning

We've been busy getting the idea of an eco-home cleaning business into a working plan. Lots of collaboration with other MCS friends, small business owners and long-time friends helped craft our mission for a service that leaves fresh air and peace of mind behind.
Thank you all, very much for your help and support.  Pete's new business is now open!

The graphic here is the ad that appears in our local community newspapers

THE MULILTEO BEACON AND THE EDMONDS BEACON. 

I'm proud to be the first to make it official on-line.  FRESH AIR CLEANING is available to clean your home in the Snohomish and North King Counties of Northern Puget Sound in Washington state.  Only fragrance free and toxic free simple cleaning recipes and processes are used in this home cleaning business. 

Our regular readers know the journey of Vardo For Two ... Pete and I have had to reassemble the way we live in every sort of way.  The way we live with the envirnoment has humbled us.  Like the Earth herself, we know first-hand how debilitating even miniscule amounts of toxics can be. The old ways of making a living need to change. The construction industry long the source of Pete's work is a no-go for him.  The toxic processes and products aren't healthy for the environment or Pete.  The years of moving from place to place seeking a safe home challenges us to look for solutions that will begin to really clean things up, and sustain us. 

Pete's new blog FRESH AIR CLEANING

includes lots of information about this "Canary Safe" eco-biz and links to the community locally and globally who have served us when we have been in need.  This quote from Rachel Carson inspires us to keep on ...

“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road / the one less traveled by / offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”

Rachel Carson

If you're a Washington state resident who is concerned and committed to create a habitat that will sustain you and the planet Earth ... FRESH AIR CLEANING can help with your spring cleaning. 
Congratulations Pete on your new venture!

'OLE DAYS ... Sunday through Wednesday

The next 'ole cycle of the Hawaiian Moon Calendar starts Sunday, March 1st and lasts through Wednesday. We'll see you after these refresh days. Take a look at some of the newer Life Savers and Safety Net Sites AND the "Hawaiian Moon Calendar ...secrets for sustainable living" link over to the right for some interesting things going on:

• This Tiny House and the Tiny House Village are getting serious about making community real for tiny home folk.

• Liberty over at Moving Beyond MCS shares a hopeful journey of noticing and attending to the improvements in her life with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.

• Susie Collins at The Canary Report is in the process of making changes and wider services, so although she is one of our long-time valuable links there may be new views on The Canary Report during the next four days ... you never know.
  

'Ole days give us a chance to pause a bit, slow down and let life gentle up a little. Happy March.

Cheers. Mokihana

INSPIRATION from Pasadena Urban Pioneers

I've used this clip photo from an old folder saved long ago, used many times, and always find one more reason to use it ... again!

There are folks who just DO IT ~ step by step these people know the way to keep connected to the earth is to know where their food is coming from, and become the people who grow it.

Thanks Susie Collins over at The Canary Report for this story and video that has enlivened our journey. Since we VARDOFORTWO folks are unable to do YOU TUBE, I've linked to Susie's post about the PATH TO FREEDOM folks in Pasadena, California. So many ways to be inspired to be pono (in harmony).

Here's the link:
http://www.thecanaryreport.org/2009/02/04/urban-homesteading/