Inspiration for that refreshed view of life has come from the farmers. It's newly in the making. Click to read what's starting. The Harvest Moon, coming up October 2 ought to bring fall recipes to delight. Come share one at A One Apple Pie Life.
See you there,
Mokihana
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
This blog of ours has served its purpose I think. It feels like time to move from it and make changes that refresh our lives. Posts have slowed down for all number of reasons ... and perhaps most of all, this blog has filled with the seasons of crisises and awareness. We will keep Vardo For Two here as it is with all our discoveries, healing moments and makings of a tiny home built to be safe for us as we learn about MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITIES. In the future, a new blog may grow. What? I am not yet sure of that.
There's a lot to discover if you are new to the journey of discovery with environment illness and new choices and new values. Hope there is something to enrich, comfort and support you when you need it.
Much Aloha, Mokihana and Pete
There's a lot to discover if you are new to the journey of discovery with environment illness and new choices and new values. Hope there is something to enrich, comfort and support you when you need it.
Much Aloha, Mokihana and Pete
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Serenity
"...Without it wounds are slow to heal. With it all things are possible."
-From the Healing Runes
I commit to more practice, daily, every day, of serenity. The first pair of new boots I've bought in several years enclose my feet and ankles to aid the restoration of weakened ankles. I'm getting used to them.
A douser from the Island comes to help me with energies affecting me where we live in the forest. We wish to stay here. Gods willing the serenity I need to accept comes as part of that 'all things are possible.'
I'm stitching up a sweet Penny Pouch for the Vardo's Abundance Corner. A meditative hand-stitching project that keeps me in the practice a stitch at a time. Once the dousing cures have been set, the Penny Pouch will hang in the Fortune Corner.
(...for more information about Feng Shui, Abundance, Fortune Corner there are many books to glean meaning for you. I have enjoyed The Feng Shui of Abundance by Hilton for many years, and it's from that resource that the idea of the Penny Pouch did spring.)
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Acceptance
More than enough real life is happening here in the forrest. My need to get to the blog to describe it is ebbing. Summer seems to be filling me with acceptance for the life that is mine. The clotheslines are filled with routine washings, a tub full of pillow cases and night clothes is soaking in fresh water as I plunk away at the keys here. We have a kitchen table inside our outdoor kitchen ... the first table we've had in years. It's a treasure we've not had place to put. How fine an experience it is to sit at it with tea and tablet.
Our routines are hard work, or time-consuming. When I am able to keep it simple and let what I am doing be good enough, the work is exactly right. The awarenesses are many, and calming the urge to fix the discomfort of some of those awarenesses just make the work difficult, and conflicted. Without blogging as often, I live the awareness and am faced with choice: fix it too soon and I have to sit with the premature mend and start again. It's a journey, a process. I meet my impatience and my irritation and finally wear out my control-button to the point of acceptance.
My ankle break is wrapped in an ACE bandage that has been soaking to de-stink it from microbial doo-daa junk for weeks. I can use it now with some precaution. I wrap and ice the ankle to keep the injury calmed, keep it as stable as I can and then accept ... it's as good as I can do for now.
The VardoForTwo is a gem. We live from it and it continues to teach me lessons small and grand. Change takes time, it is hard work and today I accept that.
Our routines are hard work, or time-consuming. When I am able to keep it simple and let what I am doing be good enough, the work is exactly right. The awarenesses are many, and calming the urge to fix the discomfort of some of those awarenesses just make the work difficult, and conflicted. Without blogging as often, I live the awareness and am faced with choice: fix it too soon and I have to sit with the premature mend and start again. It's a journey, a process. I meet my impatience and my irritation and finally wear out my control-button to the point of acceptance.
My ankle break is wrapped in an ACE bandage that has been soaking to de-stink it from microbial doo-daa junk for weeks. I can use it now with some precaution. I wrap and ice the ankle to keep the injury calmed, keep it as stable as I can and then accept ... it's as good as I can do for now.
The VardoForTwo is a gem. We live from it and it continues to teach me lessons small and grand. Change takes time, it is hard work and today I accept that.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
What now my love?
Summer sky fills the view from Computer Station #9 here in the Langley Library. JOTS is curled into the old beach towel in her porch bed-box on the vardo, Pete is off to Everett and I enjoy another hour at the boards. Staying in the moment to experience time now, the needs that will come when summer turns to winter can be put on 'pause' and fear is calmed if not replaced with prayers of gratitude. "Thank God!" for the now I imagined was possible. Faith needs a respite from the planning, so that is what happened this morning. As I woke from sleep, still tagged with the remnants of the dreams I thought of a new writing project that could be very fun to cobble together. Those unedited inspirations are always fun to entertain and like those prayers of gratitude the unedited first thoughts that are free from fear are such precious things. The writing project has something to do with creating a kind of guide that Nomads such as Pete, JOTS and I would pass along to those who might take up this sort of road -- less traveled, yet as the world spins, might become part of the collective imaginings.
A year ago Julie Genser creator of the blog and internet community PLANET THRIVE did a interview with us. The link is here. That link and onversation we had with Julie continues to be a truthful foundation. The interview also includes a very useful addition link to another of our blogs that is a place where others thinking of building a mobile safe haven might find practice questions to ask and answer BEFORE striking out on the venture. The interview is where we began, and now there are things to add. When I heard my brother describe my life to an old friend as "she's nomadic" a chill washed through me. It's still difficult to describe ... the feeling. That writing project comes from my brother's description both because of how he said it, and more importantly because of who he is. We have long history and the past has etched itself into our lives with common and uncommon threads.
What now my lovely life? How can we share the journey in yet another fashion that could aid another Nomad? We shall see said the blind-one. We shall see.
A year ago Julie Genser creator of the blog and internet community PLANET THRIVE did a interview with us. The link is here. That link and onversation we had with Julie continues to be a truthful foundation. The interview also includes a very useful addition link to another of our blogs that is a place where others thinking of building a mobile safe haven might find practice questions to ask and answer BEFORE striking out on the venture. The interview is where we began, and now there are things to add. When I heard my brother describe my life to an old friend as "she's nomadic" a chill washed through me. It's still difficult to describe ... the feeling. That writing project comes from my brother's description both because of how he said it, and more importantly because of who he is. We have long history and the past has etched itself into our lives with common and uncommon threads.
What now my lovely life? How can we share the journey in yet another fashion that could aid another Nomad? We shall see said the blind-one. We shall see.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Munching on the day
The library is filled with young voices, the corner just beyond my right eye entertains a gaggle of pre-schoolers dressed in summer garb and the excitement of fresh life. In a lifetime so long ago, these young sprouts were my world and my first experience with life as a teacher. Life continues to teach and teach and teach.
Pete is off island for the day, back in Everett creating a new look to the small patch of lawn where once we parked the VardoForTwo. Today he will lay in some sod to make a comfy place for feet and paws. The summer sun will make his work the sort he enjoys, those old muscles fill with energy-memory of how to do those tasks. I have been to the beach for a morning walk at low-tide, but first JOTS and I spent the earlier hours quietly muching on the beauty of a summer morning in the forrest. The cathedral ceiling forrest kitchen serves us fully. The old table toted hether and yond is now raised so we are no longer bent to use the hotplate. Pete's sink works perfectly with a tiny drip from the reclaimed faucet, I am able to fill a bowl, kettle or sink with running water. This morning, the warmth of the summer sun called me to the wonderful wee deck on the other side of the futon. New gifts are out on the deck thanks to our island friends: a set of colorful pottery in the hues of Tuscany invite us to sit. A large square platter that will fill will pasta some summer evening, a tall vase at least a foot and a half tall waits for something to come, and a narrow trough of a dish long enough for a loaf of crunchy bread are the trio of raffle ticket rewards thanks to the Transition Whidbey potluck we were at earlier this week. While we wait for the pasta, flowers and crunchy bread to fill the Tuscan crockery, we have gifts of the oracle doing the serving-up. Our first set of runes (the stones not the cards) came to us yesterday. Ralph Blum has passed sets of the rune stones on to our friend Eileen, and she in turn passed The Runes of Healing on to us. If food is medicine for the physical body, the runes are the direction finders for the body, mind and soul. We have runes facing up from the large square platter, and a bag of runes and the book The Runes of Healing stand-ins for that crunchy bread yet to come.
Soon after Pete came to give me a kiss and tell me he was off for Everett, I pulled myself from the futon and walked to the deck to munch on the day beginning with moments to call on the divine for inspiration. I sat with the gifts on that deck and in the early hour of this day did pull four runes. From memory, they were WISDOM, GUILT, DENIAL, SURRENDER. Today is all. It is what I own just for the moment. No doubt there is the old guilt that weighs too heavy, and with the brightness of summer sun the secrets come un-covered. Will all be well tomorrow, next month, this winter? Wisdom says 'Surrender.' What a menu for munching on the day. Thank you.
How have the runes offered you a menu for the day?
Pete is off island for the day, back in Everett creating a new look to the small patch of lawn where once we parked the VardoForTwo. Today he will lay in some sod to make a comfy place for feet and paws. The summer sun will make his work the sort he enjoys, those old muscles fill with energy-memory of how to do those tasks. I have been to the beach for a morning walk at low-tide, but first JOTS and I spent the earlier hours quietly muching on the beauty of a summer morning in the forrest. The cathedral ceiling forrest kitchen serves us fully. The old table toted hether and yond is now raised so we are no longer bent to use the hotplate. Pete's sink works perfectly with a tiny drip from the reclaimed faucet, I am able to fill a bowl, kettle or sink with running water. This morning, the warmth of the summer sun called me to the wonderful wee deck on the other side of the futon. New gifts are out on the deck thanks to our island friends: a set of colorful pottery in the hues of Tuscany invite us to sit. A large square platter that will fill will pasta some summer evening, a tall vase at least a foot and a half tall waits for something to come, and a narrow trough of a dish long enough for a loaf of crunchy bread are the trio of raffle ticket rewards thanks to the Transition Whidbey potluck we were at earlier this week. While we wait for the pasta, flowers and crunchy bread to fill the Tuscan crockery, we have gifts of the oracle doing the serving-up. Our first set of runes (the stones not the cards) came to us yesterday. Ralph Blum has passed sets of the rune stones on to our friend Eileen, and she in turn passed The Runes of Healing on to us. If food is medicine for the physical body, the runes are the direction finders for the body, mind and soul. We have runes facing up from the large square platter, and a bag of runes and the book The Runes of Healing stand-ins for that crunchy bread yet to come.
Soon after Pete came to give me a kiss and tell me he was off for Everett, I pulled myself from the futon and walked to the deck to munch on the day beginning with moments to call on the divine for inspiration. I sat with the gifts on that deck and in the early hour of this day did pull four runes. From memory, they were WISDOM, GUILT, DENIAL, SURRENDER. Today is all. It is what I own just for the moment. No doubt there is the old guilt that weighs too heavy, and with the brightness of summer sun the secrets come un-covered. Will all be well tomorrow, next month, this winter? Wisdom says 'Surrender.' What a menu for munching on the day. Thank you.
How have the runes offered you a menu for the day?
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