BRAIDING: a metaphor used again and again

www.mrsstitch.com/images/StitchGuide/Braid.jpg

Pete and I have spent the last couple of hours in comfortable companionship in the basement space that is our homespace away from the vardo.  "Nice morning," he said.  "Yes, a new normal ha?"  I said.  Pete continued reading the comics in the one slightly risky wooden chair that is part of our minally accomodating seating choices.  JOTS has not moved from the nest she finds most pleasant, a nest made from the organic cotton sheet that serves as lots of things in our life.  So far, JOTS nest is the most purposeful use thus far.  When we made the choice to build a tiny home on wheels we included the awareness of an extension cord life as essential; the vardo would not provide all the basic needs.  In less than a year we have lived in three different communities/with three different families-friends.  We have learned through those experiences to value the progress we have made and to re-evaluate what else we need to add back into our lives now that the intense spin of a life fueled on adenalin is slowing down.  The metaphor of a braided or unbraided life is one I have used to explain the process, and the metaphor has found its way into the tales I've written:  Sam and Sally was the first, and Wood Crafting came during the year just passed.  Blogs have been the venue of braiding the different voices or views of our lives, and to that process I am grateful.  Written braids have served my healing journey over and over again.

Through the access of keyboards and internet I watch the changing look of information as websites, community networks and blogs change:  a reflection of the authors' evolution.  Self-publishing becomes an organic function that all comers get to experience.  In particular, I observe how The Canary Report and Planet Thrive evolved during the past two years and less.  Both sites focus on the community of MCS and EI (multiple chemical sensitivities and environmental illness).  Both authors live with MCS and each braids their individual personality and focus with different styles.  Each of those community networks has given me and hundreds (thousands more likely) of people with MCS the support, forum for voice, and resources to make informed decisions to aid in a healing journey that fits the unique need of the individual.  Many other resources for the environmentally affected population are now available, among them HEAL, MCS America and CIIN (Chemical Injury Information Network) have served over the longer period of time.  I include these three among the many because I have used the information found there in my own life. 

Astrology and MCS: more about boundaries

Personality

personal beliefs, expectations, desires, values, and behaviors that derive from the interaction between culture and the individual. Personality is the behaviors and techniques for solving problems that are used by an individual. Personality is to the individual as culture is to the group.

Source:  oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth370/gloss.html

The building crew next door -- three guys, have dug out a deep hole for a new basement, created a french-drain of sorts that channels the persistent appearance of the old stream beds that retain the character of Everett's wetland history; and now as I peak through the slated window blinds, I see those guys walking on stout beams at a height way above my head.  There is progress going on and the noise to boot.  Tucked as we are on the other side of D and L's home, most of the noise and an option to avoid the potential toxicity of treated material are mine.  In a similar way my progress has risen like the framing next door.  Two years ago, any construction would have catapulted me into flight, mattering not the reality that I had no other place to be.  Things in my life are progressing at turtle like speed ... plodding would be accurate.  Three months now, we are parked here in the Mill Town of Everett, Washington a place I had placed on my "I'll never live there again list."  Here I be, in a basement living space within a weak stone's throw from a major building project and we're living here.

Two years of progress shows itself in subtle ways, invisible to the others bloggers like me and scores of others now, mark the progress of life with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, Environmental Illness and associated maladies that either came before or after diagnosis.  Having access to the internet opens up the community of Sensitives or Canaries to the diverse ways we live with the illnesses.  Earlier this week Pete and I joined more than a dozen friends who live with MCS at our annual Holiday party.  This is an event of great significance to people who have MCS in its varied states of severity or ease.  It is not easy to find one place that is comfortable for a dozen humans with multiple chemical sensitivities.  Fortunately, our friend G has a home that fits that description, and so the party was wonderful.  More at ease and relaxed with folks who not only 'get' the issue ... we all have 'it'... the practice of social interaction becomes one more source of evidence that life is progressing in the right direction.  Each of our friends comes with his or her unique personality and circumstances.  A hand-ful of these folks are still part of the working class.  Funny, I find that phrase strange.  It means there are people with MCS, that I know, who function, either as a result of improved and recovered health, or have a different level of sensitivities and can go to a job/maintain an in-home business.  Nearly all the friends in this group live and own their homes or apartments. One friend rents a very long time rental.  Pete and I are the only wandering wheelie home folks.  We gather to share food, enjoy each others company and share in a circle of telling, one of the highlights (a positive) from the year just finished.  This time, the sharing included examples of many different sorts of plodding positive work:  a longer walk this year than last, excellent results with monthly EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) treatments, time spent during the final days of a loved ones life, a first time plane ride in 12 years, a poet grows stronger in voice and on the page, another witnesses things just working out, a storyteller reads her fairy tale aloud.  The night was special and though tiring, the effort was rewarded in spades.

In another life, groups were a regular part of my experience.  I facilitated groups for a living, organized them for all sorts of reasons and joined a couple when it was necessary to have the support of others who could understand what it was like to believe you could stop someone from drinking themselves to death.  I reflect on those decades and see how my social network worked for me then.  Now, that network needs to be rebuilt.  In the most positive of ways I am learning to recreate my network of support with healthier boundaries.  The demanding limits of a life which will stop you short with a whiff of someone else's heavily scented laundry soap or perfume switches up the way you care for yourself.  When you can no longer live/rent/own the cute house down the block because it makes you sick, something very primal kicks in and that's where the personality after diagnosis becomes important.  I am learning to stick up for me in all the right ways; and in big and small ways.

Social Stamina ... or, how would Emily Dickinson feel at the soiree?

Yesterday I wrote an old friend about the work that I get done or gets done to me, during the 'Ole Moon Cycles-- the review times just passed. I told her how the emotions or feelings that are not attended during the rest of the month just demand attention.  Since Pete and I have committed to living more intune with the nature of sun and moon during the passed two years, several things have become the focus of my energy and MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivities) has become a hard-edged shovel digging away at some very old habits and issues surrounding power and personal boundaries. Often, this work requires everything I've got ... there's little left over for things like -- being social.  I become awkward and unsure of my boundaries with people and what happens when a visitor like chronic illness or environmentally induced sensitivities become a lodger with a mission? 

Living with multiple chemical sensitivities is often a solitary life.  Many of us live a housebound life because it is nearly impossible to interact with others during times of low energy, toxic-overload and a conscious awareness that the only way to regain health is to coocoon. That 'lodger' comes and influences my daily habits, my predispositions and threatens to reassemble the beliefs I have.  My tiny home, the old vardo built to assure me a safe haven when all else seemed in conspiracy has become a healing coocoon. Fleeing as the Roma have fled with history of persecution ever a companion, I find that part of the diaspora is entangled with my own sense of self-worth; and time and access to signs/signals and astrological insight are opening me to the miracles.  The title of this article includes a reference to one of my favorite characters in literary history -- Emily Dickinson.  She was a writer of deep feelings, and nature-bound insight who penned these intimate thoughts onto paper that would be read only after she died.  Her history revealed, to me, a woman who chose to live her true self unamended.  I found two of Emily's poems included here ... random gems from the collection of hand-written poetry copied into self-bound installments to be discovered by her sister.  This poet, considered today as one of the world's great poets chose to live a solitary life at age 34, when dead upon dead weighed her perhaps not unlike those self-bound, hand-written poems.  Speculation, that sport of humankind that is bred I think from the lack of a fully formed inner life, has included many theories about why she lived as recluse from a world of socialization.  What impresses me as I nibble at the essays and writings written about Emily on online libraries, are these Emily Dickinson's choices:

• she did not write tranditionally ... The extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in Dickinson's manuscripts, and the idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery, combine to create a body of work that is "far more various in its styles and forms than is commonly supposed". - from Wiki-pedia
• she was better known as a gardener than a poet during her lifetime ... tending and planting her family's homestead gardens with flowers that were loved both by the poet and all who were near them (both the poet and the flowers)
• she was a self-publisher long before blogging was a collective thought ; she wrote to connect through her letters, yet her poetry and deepest observation of life she tucked into 'fascicles' unseen until after her death.
  

'OLE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF THE HAWAIIAN MOON CALENDAR

The Anahulu (the week) named Ho'onui  refers to the week of ten nights when the moon is waxing or becoming full.  Using the New Moon or "Hilo" Moon to count as "1" or the first night of the Ho'onui, today is 'OLEKUKAHI, night "7" and the first night of the unproductive times.  The link that follows will explain a bit more.
http://makuaoo.blogspot.com/2010/01/ole-days-and-nights-of-hawaiian-moon.html

Pete and I observe the 'ole nights and days as times to reflect, review and weed through the activities and decisions already begun; planting nothing new, posting nothing new.  We'll be back sometime after the four 'ole moons.

A hui hou,
Mokihana and Pete

Time for thank you: Mahalo kakou

Many earth people, and traditions which value the connection of humans to all that is recognize the power of  prayer.  Beautifully crafted, embellished and enriched with song, drumming, dance or simply stated aloud or silently there is power in the word.  One of the most powerful prayers is simply "Thank you." All around us we see the evidence of structures being restructured/disassembled both on the collective and large-scale as well as on the personal and intimate levels.  The cosmic reordering can be explained (if that is a fit word) by seeing how the planets (Pluto and Saturn in particular, though other personal planets will play a role as well.  In our world, Pete and I are being reassembled at very basic levels.  I received my first Social Security Check today:  good news!  The check however, is made out to someone I 'once was' (a former married name); and though I worked on getting this change made to the federal government system my efforts and the 'system' still need to connect at the right place.  Short story:  I will need to keep working at it.  This process of being 'reassembled' is the theme of my fairy tale WOOD CRAFTING.  The characters and the setting are a blend of other-worldliness and our world.  In our real world though, the only way to be reassembled is to be DIS-assembled first.  That means, you gotta forget a lot of what you thought/did/believed before the new can be rebuilt.  I heard something on the radio yesterday while driving south from a special day in Skagit County.  In gently supportive context one woman said to the other, "Things are hard in the beginning."  It clicked a switch inside me and I felt the message at a deeply relevant place.  Things are hard in the beginning of most things whether it's learning to tie your first shoes or learning to live without gasoline or money to pay a mortgage.  It helps me to remember to take time to pray, and today it helps for me to say "Thank you."  It's a habit I have let slide, so today I pick it up again.

I'm closing in on my physical limit at the computer and the temptation to keeping spilling onto the page is a strong urge.  Still, I know it's better that I stop soon.  This is a post of thanks, mahalo kakou (a collective thank you) before the 'Ole Cycles (a time of no new posts for one thing) begin tomorrow.  Wonderful people and situations do surround me and my heart is filled with gratitude.  Here are my thank yous.

1.  Thank you to all the Followers and readers (newly come, and long-time readers) who stop to read our blog.
2.  Thank you JT and Lana for the beautiful prints created by Rima Staines.  They are off-gassing nicely here in the basement and we get to see them every day.
3.  Thank you D and L for the friendship and space here in Everett.
4.  Thank you 'B' for letting us camp on the strip of lawn between the two settled houses.
5.  Thank you folks from Transitional Everett for welcoming us into your circle; especially Hal for playing his harmonica in our basement what a treat!
6.  Thank you K for your support through the uncertainty of life with MCS.
7.  Thank you Christopher for the Wonder Wash.  It's making a difference in my clothes washing routines.
8.  Thank you to the folks at our Sno-Isle Cooperative for being there and being friendly and relatively 'stink-free.'
9.  Thank you JOTS for the furry feline love you share simply being a kitty.
10.  Thank you Pete for being part of my journey.

Our friend Linda Sepp ... environmental refugee in Toronto, CA

Man at his best, like water,
Serves as he goes along:
Like water he seeks his own level,
The common level of life,
Loves living close to the earth,
Lving clear down in his heart,
Loves kinship with his neighbors,
The pick of words that tell the truth,
The even tenor of a well-run state,
The fair profit of able dealing,
The right timing of useful deeds,
And for blocking no one's way
No one blames him.
-The Way of Life According to LAO TZU (transl. Witter Bynner)

Pete and I began writing these blogs to make sense of the circumstances of life on Earth that was not at all making sense.  When the first words of VardoForTwo filled this blogspot we had landed in a place safe enough to feel an attachment to something more than fear.  RELIEF?  That would describe it to a degree.  We were and continue to a lesser degree at the moment, fleeing an environment that would not allow a deep clear breath of air, a safe and non-toxic next moment, and to explain our reactions or our decisions to others was futile.  Our resources financial, physical and emotional were as Lao Tzu wrote were at a 'common level of life' ... a place uncommon to the society of consumption and chemical produce use ... only the essentials for a functional life allowed us to rest enough to build a new life.  That life is growing from the seventy square feet of safe haven on wheels.  Through the connectivity of the internet people found there way to our blog and we began to know about the common level of life that is life with MCS or Environmentally induced illness.  One of those early connections via the internet was "Linda."  Slowly, her comments and our interactions through the society network of The Canary Report, sketched a real people living with severe chemical sensitivities.  During the year and more of my awareness of Linda's situation, I often forgot how desperate her daily reality is:  her writing and her articles about MCS Safe Housing and her vision for a collaboration between governmental, community and personal needs reflected a woman of deeply passionate and widely researched insight.  Linda sought a big picture and solution. 

Today on The Canary Report, Susie Collins' posted an article that caught my eye.  "Linda Sepp has published her own blog."  That signified a major next step for our friend.   Publishing a blog meant something major was changing.  And so it has, Linda Sepp will be evicted from her Toronto apartment in April of this year and needs a safe place to go. My heart goes out to our friend, and as Lao Tzu wrote, I put words here to serve as healing water, right words to tell the truth.  Our friend is in need, and we post a link to her blog here with the hope that among our readers there will be help: an advocate to assist her in her search for safe housing and/or donations to provide her safe clothing. 

Mahalo,
Mokihana and Pete

Life without a laptop

It's not so bad.  Okay, I miss the automatic rituals of setting up and logging onto the old keyboard.  It's a loss of my favorite distraction and primary connectivity.  What have I done to replace the hours at the keys and time searching, researching and reading other blogs?  Here's the shortlist:

1.  I share the basement PC.  JOTS is fully occupied on this computer chair ... I lean up against her warm paws.  She doesn't mind.  Pete is done for awhile, and L won't be down until much later.  Shared living expands its definition for the folks in VardoForTwo.

2.  I meditate a lot.  I own a very well-used portable cd player and headphones from one of our last plane rides between the Islands the Pacific Northwest.  Thanks to rechargeable batteries and that cd set-up I play two of my favorite meditation tapes at least twice (and sometimes more) each day for the past seven days since Ruby was washed-out. 

The cds are:  Deepak Chopra's Soul of Healing Meditations and "4 Route Relaxation Qi Gong"  I'm not sure where to lead you to get the "4 Route Relaxation Qi Gong".  It was a gift from a friend who practices the ancient movements.  Chopra's Soul of Meditation can be purchased through Amazon.com or at your local music center.  I totally love the "Soul of Meditation" cd.  I have been meditating with that man's voice for nearly two years and he has made such a positive impact on my sense of well-being.  The tape is approximately 45 and includes several segments beginning with a 5 minute focus on 'simply witnessing your breath."  The musical background is awesome Indian, melodic and mood-inducing.  If you are new to meditation the 45 minutes might seem very long.  What I found early on is I just drift away into sleep (I lie down while I'm meditating).  Some people would cluck their tongues at falling asleep while meditating, I say, if it's that relaxing, and I sleep then there you go! 

3.  There's time for new messages.  I found a very timely message from one of my favorite fairy messengers, Rainbow Tree.  Here site is on our blogroll on the side bar.  I've also credited Rainbow Tree with the entire post from her fairies, over at Makua O'o.  For now, the important message I got from the fairies through Rainbow Tree during my week without a laptop is written on a post-it-note that is not affecting me ill.  I'm thrilled.  The affirmation and positive message is posted at my eye level just as I face the front door.  It reads:

"I know wonderful people and situations surround me now.  My heart is filled with gratitude."

I tell myself exactly that, several times during a day and during the night; and each time I go out of the vardo; along with the excerpt a "Course in Miracles" included on the Soul of Healing Meditations that goes:

"Every decision I make is a choice between a grievance and a miracle.  I relinquish all regrets, grievances and resentments and choose the miracle."

4.  There's still time to write at the keyboard (witness this post) though I am at the keys much less, and I suspect my body and the EMF that course through my system appreciate the break. 

Life in Everett goes on and I'm filled with gratitude.  What happens to your life without a laptop or computer? 

It's Aloha Friday

Back on the Islands (the Hawaiian chain) it is "Aloha Friday."  Or at least, that's what the old Don Ho song reminds us.  Thanks to our local community public radio KSER, Pete and I enjoyed an hour of island music including the nahenahe (oh, so delightful) sounds of Darlene Ahuna and Keali`i Reichel.  An hour of music like that can calm and soothe even while it makes us homesick for white sandy beaches, warm water and family and friends. 

Ruby the old fav Sony laptop will not revive.  I have posted discussion on both The Canary Report and Planet Thrive asking for replacement feedback, suggestions and experiences from other folks with MCS.  A few people are saying a conversion from a PC to MAC made a positive difference for them; others have been very creative about designing their computing set-up to accomodate their sensitivities.  If you are interested in reading the threads of commentary, I've linked them:

Here:  The Canary Report Forum
Here:  Planet Thrive Forum

I'm standing in front of L's computer in our basement space, while Pete runs a hot shower.  The rain is thick here in Everett slanting in from the harbor while the remote controlled conveyor belt next door shoots gravel into the building site where once the old 1920's home once sat.  Life continues just as it is, Mercury is slowing moving from its retrograde, the New Moon in Capricorn is now in "Muku" phase, JOTS is nestled onto a stack of Pete's clean clothes and the Westies upstairs are making their presence know ... 'bark, bark.'

We are slowly adjusting to life just as it is, and that is a very big thing. 

Happy Aloha Friday where EVER you find yourself.
Mokihana, Pete and JOTS

Our Ruby (the laptop) has died

Ruby, our trusted old laptop is washed-out.  I did tip my morning cup of tea water all over her, and our twenty-four hours of first-aid hasn't brought her back.  Talk about your Mercury in retrograde episode.  Things will slow up here at VardoForTwo and the other flock of blogs as we figure out what's next.  Borrowing my pal L's computer to let you all know the scoops.

Pete's shopping around for new, and the possibilities of a used might work though fragranced fingertips and smelly former environments are usually a deal buster.  We'd love to know what you experiences with shopping and finding a laptop are.

Any ideas about:

• what laptops work well for you with MCS
• what has worked well for out-gassing new computers
• any sources for a good laptop
• any feedback on the screen clarity and experiences with emissions

Our wishlist for a 'Ruby II':

1.  includes a DVD for watching movies
2.  upgraded software so loading photos is possible on the blogs
3.  as large a screen as laptops can get
4.  off-gassed parts
5.  a P.C. rather than a MAC
6.  a quiet operating machine (Ruby is a Vaio by Sony, and has been such a quiet machine for 10 yrs!)
7.  a laptop that doesn't get hot when operating (that just adds to the off-gassing issues and inside a tiny space ie. our VardoForTwo ... that is trouble.)


We'd love to hear from you with ideas and experiences with your laptops; and what you did to replace it when it was time.

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.

'OLE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF THE MOON

'Ole Ku Kahi, 'Ole Ku Lua
'Ole Pau
(Twenty-first to twenty-third nights)

First, second and last `Ole nights. This is a time that is not recommended for planting or fishing. It is windy and tides will run high. Farmers use this time for weeding. `Ole pau and Kaloa kukahi are the kapu periods of the akua Kanaloa and Kaloa and offering are made with pule(prayer).

From the website Hunt and Fish Maui, a very useful visual description of the Hawaiian Moon Calendar.

We observe and practice "No new projects during the 'ole cycles'" and refrain from new posts here and on our other blogs. We'll use these three days to review our progress since the 'ole cycle (of four nights) that ended on Christmas Day, 2009.

A hui hou,

Mokihana and Pete

Once again with the Moon

The lunar nodes are the orbital nodes of the Moon, that is, the points where the orbit of the Moon crosses the ecliptic (which is the apparent path of the Sun across the heavens against the background stars). The ascending node (the north node) is where the moon crosses to the north of the ecliptic. The descending node is where it crosses to the south (south node).

-graphics and definition from Wikipedia

Neptune had been opposing Mars in my chart for two years, and now the opposition is over. I know this doesn't sound very 'astrology right'. I'm not sure when that opposition ended I just know I feel the difference and when I look back at my chart reading(s) the opposition either ended just before Christmas or is ending real soon. Okay, so I have some grace period here maybe. I wrote about that opposition a while back, noting how the opposition began when Pete and I were without a settled home, wanderers bedded in our car, parked 'in Paradise' living a nightmare, poisoned by pesticides, eating plate lunches and feeling desperately out of control.
Where is she going with this? I ask myself that same question, and that's exactly the question Pete and I have been asking since (and before that) the planet of illusions and watery reality/ever shifting (Neptune) began challenging the flow of Mars the planet of action. Throughout the year, as I try to understand my place in the universe, it's been the Moon that offered consolation and comfort when all else failed. With the new year begun, the Blue Moon passed, my kinship with Mahina grows stronger. She offers such accessibility, changing nightly, I feel less vulnerable knowing she goes through phases, too.

NODES OF THE MOON (as in astrology the North Node and South Node) has captured my attention, and I'm discovering new ways to look at the nodes in an astrological chart. The graphic above and the brief explanation from Wikipedia give a scientific view of what the nodes are. I spent hours clicking and reading, reading and chewing on the astrological interpretations of the North and South Nodes. Elizabeth Spring has another treasure chest of moon study and node revelations that can be found here. Donna Cunningham has been visiting and commenting generously on VardoForTwo, sharing awesome bits and gems with me (us!) Lucky us. Donna recommended the work of Dane Rudhyar as a place for me to explore and learn more about la luna. I'm tossing a snip from an article written about Dane Rudhyar, an astrology who has greatly influenced the study and understanding of this earth-school navigational tool. The entire article is readable by clicking here, and it's some fascinating stuff. My mining adventures with astrology continue. This line from the article cinched my love for Mahina (the moon).

The Moon is the intermediary between Earth and Sun, humanity and Spirit. Recognizing that the lunation cycle reflects the soli-lunar relationship as seen from Earth, the Moon through her phases reflects the Sun’s light in a digestible way that won’t blind us.

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."