A Magic Trick of the Highest Order

Yerba Bruja, Kalanchoe pinnata, Air Plant

Today, Sunday, February 23, 2020 is the New Moon in Pisces. A big dense rain squall has passed and the morning is quiet. The tent campers who arrived late last night have packed up and moved on. While I lay under the quilts I heard Robin singing in the downpour. The winter has been as dense with elemental forces as the short but squat rain storm. We have been saturated with the effects, humbled by the requirements to adjust to viruses, cold and damp cooking conditions; swamped by emotional overload and sobered by hard reality checks.

But, New Moon is a time to release the old and commit to the new.

"The new moon in Pisces takes place in the morning on February 23rd.  If you can deal with some fog, this can be an unusual, sweet situation.  I may be the only astrologer who thinks this, so I’ll explain!

The sun and moon will be conjunct Mercury which is retrograde. If you need to cry about that, go ahead.  Neptune is also in Pisces. When you’re under this much water, you really ought to come to terms with it. Learn to float!

If you’re still with me, here’s the cool part. The sun and moon are profoundly supported by Mars, exalted in Capricorn.  On top of that and to it keep it interesting, Uranus in Taurus is also fully engaged with the sun and moon. I don’t think you can deny, this changes things.

By the way, this new moon will be exceptionally good for Scorpio… and Cancer too, if they can deal with Mars in Capricorn.  The whole set up looks to be a magic trick of the highest order.  The kind of trick that frees a person and advances them, rather than makes them look like a fool..."An excerpt, New Moon in Pisces: February 23, 2020, Elsaelsa

That last paragraph in Elsa's narrative leads me forward, encouraging me to take heart and partake in "the kind of trick that frees a person and advances them, rather than makes them look like a fool." This has been a difficult winter, but in a couple weeks we will have been on the Langley Fairground Campground for a year; each new place we live challenges us to be creative and time challenges us to be resilient in old age. Here on a public campground the rules of RV life include "no clotheslines." When did hanging laundry become "bad"? Or maybe bigger definitions of being at home in a home on wheels need more open discussion.

At first we simply pushed on the edges of that envelope of rules and enclosed our vardo/wagon at one end to serve as our kitchen and a more private space to hang our hand-wrung laundry to dry. This solution worked the magic we need for a season, until winter moved in with wet and cold. Most of the winter we have lived with fewer laundry days, once again retooling the need. That's the thing about living at the edges. Washing one, two or three small articles of clothes at a time it is possible to find space over our heater: clean in a day, or two.

What we do have is a warm, dependable shelter with a roof, windows, a cozy bed (that will be even better when we are able to wash and dry the bedding), and electrical connection to run our heat, lamps and laptop.

We do live in a setting that is in-between. It is a campground not (yet) gentrified and expectant of the large gig culture. We have situated our vardo on a small knoll separate from the smells and chemicals used by the fragranced folks who are our neighbors. There are no chemicals and pesticides used to maintain the land; the rabbits do that work! We are able to live as long-term campers, paying $25 a night.

What we also have are relationships with people that matter in meaningful ways.

• I am enfolded by an old red flannel robe, the vardo wall is lined with the old red storm coat, a small lizard-shaped light serves as a tiny beacon when I wake up in the middle of the night and don't want to disturb Pete. 
• The small, hand-me-down iphone given us by our son opened us to the current of texting and messages to keep in touch with family; a mixed blessing for sure but so necessary in our version of being in the world.
• A friend continually gives us access to clean, chemical-free water from her well for washing; and is an ally for discussions about how else we might improve our circumstances.
•  An astrologer we have come to trust, literally with our lives, operates an online business that serves as a model of real people offering service at affordable prices, regularly. We have come to depend upon Elsaelsa.com to teach us via her blog to learn astrology, apply the study to our lives, and support her business by sending small checks as tips, and buy affordable charts when life challenges call for more insight.
•  Two women writers have become part of our circle of solidarity thanks to the quirky and imperfect Internet. Terri Windling and Aurora Levins Morales have influenced me both as artists in the wildcraft of words and sources of resilience and adaptability as women living with chronic illnesses.  
• This blog, Myth For My Tale Bone, and the process of writing 'posts-for-pay' has slowly created a flow of interdependence between you, our readers, and the stories that come from living an unconventional life. We appreciate your readership and the financial contributions you make!

With each year, month, and new moon that comes and goes while Pete and I live from this vardo for two, we experience and come to understand what Aurora Levins Morales means when she wrote her essay, "Class, Privilege, and Loss" from the book Medicine Stories.

 "Privilege is both real and unreal. Certainly people live and die because of differences in access to real resources. At the same time, most of what the privileged think they are getting is illusory. Much of the pursuit of privilege is based on a misconception about what constitutes security. It is based on acquiring material and cultural resources that are denied to others while surrendering integrity, awareness, and most of our potential relationships. Ultimately privilege is a raw deal, and conquest isn't all it's cracked up to be."

I began researching medical, dental services that might be available to us. With help from my nurse practitioner and two friends I found we receive too much from our combined monthly Social Security income to qualify for any Medicaid benefits. We are in that precarious 'not poor enough' definition. Astrologically, Uranus in both our Natal Charts opens up other windows, revolutionizes the status quo, and we look for a bigger picture.

My research continues with other options to explore, but, the reality of 'Privilege' blared loudly in my mind and body as the dark moon in Pisces saturates me with other options to survive, and thrive.

Aurora continues her essay:

"The benefits of privilege do include more reliable access to the basic necessities of life, but most of the so-called benefits are liabilities when it comes to the survival of the human species. I've never met anyone who was transformed by guilt. What transforms is the recognition of humanity in those we were taught to diminish and the realization that in denying them, our own humanity is at stake."

Sunshine brightens the window of the wagon's door. That intense rainstorm has passed and I hear Pete rattling jars and lids. I know he is making Nourishing Herbal Infusions. People's Medicine. Medicine influences and practiced by the Traveling People -- Gypsy, Nomads, Romani -- we find the Wise Woman Traditions, and can afford to access them. Later today we'll climb into the Subaru and drive to one of our sweet Chickweed gathering spot and fill a jar with the tiny star plants.

The income we live on pays the $700 a month rent here on the campground, pays our bills, allows us gas in the Subaru and truck, and leaves us with a food budget that will get creatively tightened now. With the strength that comes having weathered one more winter we recommit to gathering and eating more weeds, stay alert to 'Privilege' in all its seductions, and dedicate ourselves to living a life designed to make human contact a necessary, to ask for help, and to have relationships of mutual support.

And to close this new moon post, the reason for the beautiful drawing of Yerba Bruja, or, as we used to call the plant as children in Hawaii, the Air Plant. Yesterday, first thing in the morning, I opened my email to find a Patreon post from Aurora Levins Morales. We contribute to Aurora with a small monthly contribution, and her most recent post was entitled, "Planting Yerba Bruja." I read Aurora's words, the images of her battered tiny home arriving on the island of her birth (Puerto Rico) lean against the curved roof of our vardo. I relate. Aurora is a disabled, chronicall-ill, elder who writes wildcrafted medicine stories.

"My job," writes Levins Morales on her website, "is to change the stories we tell and help us imagine a world where greed has no power, the earth is cherished and all people get to live safe and satisfying lives." 

Aurora built her tiny house "Vehicle for Change" over five years, using resources from her global community because she, like me and Pete, lives with environmental illness or MCS. When her tiny home finally made the journey to Puerto Rico in late December, 2019, the truck pulling it up the hill where she now lives, almost went off a cliff. Much damage has been sustained to her home, and then the earthquakes began.

To quote an excerpt from her Patreon post, "Planting Yerba Bruja":

"So a week after my battered house landed in the red mud of Indiera I was immersed in emergency relief efforts. Not only raising funds, in which many of you generously helped, and receiving care packages of natural medicines and other donations from allies in the US, but also walking around the neighborhood every day, checking on people's mental health, listening to their fears, building friendships, and handing out herbal remedies for people too scared to sleep.

 That work has shifted now toward long term support for the unhoused, and back toward the work I came here to do--to build a story farm, a place the generates food and possibility and shifts the narratives of daily life toward a real recovery--"

... but the very first thing I planted was Yerba Bruja, a magical member of the Kalinchoe family that sprouts new life from the notches edging its fallen leaves.

  ...So every morning, first thing, I go an look at my pot of Yerba Bruja, a thicket of survival springing up from the edges of three plucked leaves. And someday pretty soon, these plants will send up stalks decorated with cream and purple bells with red tips, and will move from their traditional symbolism, that of the inextinguishable will to live, into the blossoming that come from a will to thrive."

If you would like to support Aurora, join her Patreon Community.
Or, if you would like to contribute to her work and recovery in Puerto Rico, leave us a comment or email us and we will let you know how to use your PayPal account to become part of the blossoming of Yerba Bruja.

See the puckered edges of each leaf? "A thicket of survival and that inexhaustible will to live, and thrive!"

If this post inspires you to join us in living as real interdependent people? Empower yourself, and us with a check to keep us going! I like to look at these challenges as opportunities to RIPEN. There are so many of us in these in-between places, united and empowered we can tell a different story.

If you're new to posts-for-pay read more here.

Mahalo nui loa. Thanks so much. And take care of each other!
Mokihana and Pete