Myth For My Tale Bone

"It was a day a duck could love. For that matter the week was a duck's paradise. Dressed for the season in my long skirt, paisley wool shawl, and tea cozy hat with the red hibiscus over my left ear my feet splashed in puddles... The wind began to dance with me as I lifted my nose and sniffed from beneath the felt hat now much soaked through with rain. No fairies. But, a large copper pin about the size of a butterfly dropped from the cherry red awning above me and landed on my right shoe. A pin. A safety pin. "My Ma, "I said to myself. Besides being famous for carrying a flashlight my mother always wore at least one but more often a couple safety pins. Just in case. Long before it was punk fashion, safety pins are a talisman of security hard-wired in my DNA like knowing how to make something out of nothing. I fondled the pin and felt the distance of time between us compress... The Safety Pin Cafe Years ago, and not far away, we lived in the woods at t...

There was no ease to following sleep, the drowsiness escaped me, replaced with rewinding every fleeting worry from the day, the week, the month. My Worry Warts grew and nothing would calm them. When I finally tired of not being tired I feel asleep and into a nightmare that rattled me to the precipice of crazy. I needed to dissolve the boundaries of crazy, and called to Pete. "Gotta turn the light on, honey." Counting a few beats, I waited long enough for him to shield his eyes. Looking down at my tray of small brown bottles filled with tinctures, I hunted for the one that would cut through the cosmic nuttiness. Stellaria Media . Chickweed. More often than not, I fill the dropper full, squeeze the tincture into my thin-skinned ceramic sake cup, pour filtered water to the top and sip. But this time I asked for a count. "How many drops?" I really needed to get as close to 'right' as possible. The Wise Woman Tradition says, there are no rules and no r...

It's one of those beautiful days  One of those days perfect for washing and drying clothes, dangling from the doorway, our colors fly free. A sweet Southern Breeze blows through the campground while the Sun warms the late February afternoon, giving us his radiant glow of a Pisces Transformation ... fish swim in both directs at once . Water buckets emptied after wash day Solar-powered clothes drier Bunnies roam in both directions The weather is already shifting, a gauzy layer of cloud-cover settles above us. We knew the change would come, but when the sun and wind are in accommodating positions, we do the same. The sun has arched across the sky, and will tuck himself behind the Alder tips. With a bit of luck there will be enough warmth to get our clothes mostly dry, and more easily 'topped off' with a few minutes on the pole inside the kitchen, or over the heater. Fish and Bunnies roam in both directions. On Wash Day we do too. Mahalo K...

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...

Otter drawn by Jackie Morris I wish I'd listened harder © Yvonne Mokihana Calizar, 2020 To the gravel-deep voice and the tall tales so true. I wish I'd listened harder When you called to Blue or set the table with odd plates and good food. I wish I'd listened harder For the laughter, sharp and tender glints in those Welsh eyes that knew true reckoning. I wish I'd listened harder Maybe then the pain of heart-break would have stitched together real and simple like a grouse whistle. I wish I'd listened harder But you did. Sleek otter at the Clinton shore. I saw you. -For Raymond North , a dear old friend RELATED "For World Otter Day: the Blessings of Otter" on Myth & Moor. Terri Windling

"The more I understand about the way that internalized oppression distorts my thoughts, feelings, and actions, the better able I am to compensate for its effects and develop specific strategies to undo them. Knowing, for example, that the Ashkenazi Jewish history of cyclical expulsions, massacres, and attempted genocide has left us jumpy, urgent, inclines to leap into action too fast and talk a lot helps me monitor my own urgency and disbelieve it. Knowing my ancestors survived by trying to be indispensable helps me rein in my tendency to take on way too much." - "Bigger is Better" from Medicine Stories , Aurora Levins Morales We needed to get ourselves out of the wagon, into Scout the Subaru and make a move/slide into appreciation. With all those inconvenient, oppressive and too often overwhelming sensations and thoughts that would convince us -- it will never be any better, we could have cemented ourselves into self-inflicted oppression. But then, the contr...

"We’re riding out big winds, power outages and wetness here in the PNW. Your perspective: 'The mood is grounded and pleasurable, if a bit charged with big issues and the natural wobble they convey. The Moon sextiles Venus. The earth cup fills with delicious, intangible whimsy and affecting treats. Drink deep' fits well as I drink the last of my strong hot tea. Big issues(home, security and redemption) wobble in my life. The earth cup is oddly flavored whimsy. In spite of the challenges there is pleasure. Real pleasure." -Weekend Love Forecast from Satori Between the forceful gusts of wind from the south, a small moment of clearing allowed us a view of the moon. Mahina. In her brightness the bare limbs of the Alders created an eerie glow, not so much scary just different; shaken up but in a good way. I believe we were experiencing the moon's wobble. A photograph of two beautiful pieces of wrapped wire and sea glass jewelry, early designed created by ...