Catching glimpses, Part 1

 

In November swinging with Tutu on one island

looking back at May in a swing on another island ... 

The rain continues to fall here on Whidbey. Pete has hauled and shoveled loads of gravel onto the wettest of pockets: between the Quonset and the Vardo steps, at the edge of the gravel road and the dip that is our driveway. We'll need more.

Our first winter on this pond has a lot to teach us; we get to be learners, again.

The Quonset's transition to make it a warm and cozy space is in the making. As I write, Pete is rearranging things and re-drilling the makeshift table that holds our new 'big ass' oven. A Breville Smart Oven. Oven big enough to roast a whole chicken at one time! A surprise gift from good friends. Wow, what an upgrade to our teeny tiny toaster oven (which we still love use from the ledge on the porch). 

The years of learning to live from teeny tiny spaces is a great experience with transitions. Moving from one place or space to another can be a small (and significant) one or a giant move like crossing an ocean in a voyaging canoe or boarding a plane while your stuff is packed in cardboard boxes or carted in a cargo ship (to wait in line in the harbor). It's a small but meaningful choice to say, "live from" and not "live in" teeny tiny spaces. In our case, the difference is that the small spaces we do live in are part of the whole spaces we live with and that means? That means, we live a lot of the time outside. Pete in particular is outside most of the time in spring and summer; and his goal is to make the Quonset cozy and warm so he can be in there (with his long legs up on the heater and his hands on good books). 

Mending and patches things are activities and valued skills we have gotten good at over time. As much if not more than engaging in mending and patching things, I have come to value mending and patching the relationships in my life. Teacher, hula and oli kumu Taupouri Tangaro reminds me of the difference between the Nature (personality, birth signature) of my being and the Nurturing of those qualities. Nature vs. Nurture. I've been noticing and reflecting or diving deeply into the differences and find it a timely exercise. I'll be 74 in a week. I was born with the tenacity of the he'e the embodiment of Kanaloa, the octopus with eight tentacles. There is a will within me to stick with things, to the point of exhausting the thing(or person/place). That is part of my Nature. 

What I've had to nurture -- my love of art, creativity, family-- Nature has taught me. Perhaps the many moves during the past twenty years has been my gods aligning me to the evolution that could only happen through mending, patches and making a new line or lineage. Drawing on my Kanaloa nature of attending over the long haul, the parts of myself that were not strong in me, I learned to become better at. My ancestors, and their cohorts caught glimpses of my undeveloped nature and left me clues; I would remember them at key moments of my life. 

With the eight tentacles of my he'e self, I have created lines, circles, spirals -- virtual art forms-- using these blogspots. Drawing up the clues and experimenting with images and words temporary, yet effective as safety pins, there are dozens of glimpses of a ripening life in the cloud that is the internet. A life that did not start out to be one of a traveler, dreamer, schemer and explorer became one. Imaging what it might be like to be a grandmother, I created lives that were ... and then? I became a real tutu.

I guess that is what I've become good at at my ripening age. I have gotten good at catching glimpses of what could be; searched for and found a partner with similar motives though much different ways of nurturing; and accepted the long-haul view of living while being impatient with imperfection. Contradictions exist. 

Graduations and uniki are seasonal and cyclical like weather. Weather is variable though cyclical. The elemental expressions of Nature take many forms. Rain is not always a drizzle, is sometimes a squall, dependent on where on the island Earth the water might be ice or snow. We get glimpses of the many ways Rain, ua, Lono kulani, Lono i ka wai is. Our relationship with the elementals changes to the extent we pay attention, and practice interacting. 

"Hula & oli teaches that we are reflections of every big & little being in the world. If we dance, they dance. When we sing to them, they sing back.  And when we chant the vibrations of the cosmos, guess what?  They chant BACK!" - "About Hawai'i Life Ways"

Resident Alders and a bowl of stone eggs in May. 

And then November.