The Art of Spell-Casting: Intermission
In which I give myself the space to really commit
Dear Readers,
Between taking my day job as a massage therapist to the next level as a solo entrepreneur, working on the edits and layout of Piko: A Return To The Dreaming, managing my autoimmune condition on physical and magical levels, clearing my lineage, and unraveling more than a few curses I’ve detected have been hampering my health and material well-being (I’ve called in some troops on that one in case anyone is concerned), completing a ceremony with my 7th generation maternal ancestor, Carolina Speiser, first of that line to leave Wurtemberg and cross the Atlantic and make her home in the New World in order to discover more about my kiakahi in this current incarnation and assist her in moving on from the perceived failure of hers (the ceremony concluded under the stars drinking Gewürztraminer together listening to Schubert arias and I haven’t heard from her since. Bless you, Carolina for giving birth to Emerentia out of wedlock, quite a thing in 1860, for crossing on a creaking ship, for making a new life in a foreign city, for giving me blood and bones—), and for staying up last night till 4:30AM, past Rico the Rooster’s 3:30 crow to finally write the Mauna Revelations, a poem that’s been tracking me for the past 6 months, I have not had time to properly still myself in the whirlwind to contemplate the 3rd property of light and the 4th principle of the oscillation of magic in Heka, DIFFRACTION, although perhaps I am writing about it right now without knowing it, something that happens to me all the time when I open up the channels and throw myself into the wind with spinnaker raised to catch every gust.
I could keep spinning and see what sticks to the walls, but my massage table is calling, and to be honest I would like to be a little more conscious because this world depends on the administration of much needed spells of remembering through oscillation. As far as I can tell, it’s not going to end today, the world, so I think it’s ok to call this week an intermission. Perhaps you need one, too, to gather your energy for your sacrifices and invocations.
Instead, I’m sharing a few outtakes from Piko, bits and pieces of writing I liked that didn’t serve the final cut of the book. I’m hoping for an August 15th, 2023, release date. The Whale Road Press website should be up soon. Here’s the logo designed by my brilliant editor and book designer Norman Minnick, himself a poet, author, and publisher.
Gorgeous, right! Here’s a peak at Norman’s latest design published by Kinchafoonie Creek Press, a wonderful press featuring poetry and memoir founded by my friend Chris Jansen.
I’m about 50 pages in to this wonderful poetic memoir about the love story of two great American poets who were/are part of my beloved Great Mother Conference Community. Etheridge Knight was gone by the time I joined the Conference close to 20 years ago, but Elizabeth McKim, known as the Jazz Poet of Lynn, Massachusetts to the public, and to Ma Mere/La Mer to me has been a profound influence on my poetic soul since the moment I sat and watched her sway to her own incantations on the shores of Lake Damariscotta at my first Mother Conference. It’s good to know there are still witches in the world. Makes me feel less alone.
At this point in this narrative you probably don't need an outtake from Piko, but I did promise one, and I like to finish the tapestry I begin weaving at these keyboard sessions, leaving a gap sometimes for light to come through. If you find yourself in that gap, I suggest you go off and get yourself a copy of Elizabetheridge and read it to whoever shows up at the door. You never know who’s been waiting for a great love story, or a poem or two.
And because I promised, I leave you now with a scrap from the cutting room floor, a scene that may speak to you like a shooting star before flaring out, changing your cellular make-up in ways you’ll never be able to predict. Jump in the water, friends.
A few feet away from me is a reconstructed thatched hut, guarded by ki’i of Lono, Kane and Ku. (You may know them in a debased form as tikis in Polynesian themed restaurants where their grimacing faces often adorn scorpion bowls nobody should really drink.)
Right here, the bones of Hawaiian kings were worshipped. They still are. Recently, I watched a young man who was a descendant of Kamehameha the Great prepare ceremonial gourds right here for ceremony. The Hawaiians say, the mana, the spiritual force of a person, is in the bones. Back then being a King really meant something and people listened to the stories bones told. They fed them with praise and offerings so they’d keep the people strong.
That young man I saw washing the gourds—he probably knew stories the land told his ancestors when humans first climbed or fell into this world. When I met him I was too shy to say anything, or ask him a question that could have opened up a conversation between us. As a haole, I felt like I was intruding and unworthy.
Maybe I’m a coward and I shouldn’t be on this sacred ground in the first place, but the fact is I exist and I’m here. Would it be better for me to remain silent or offer what I can, even if it’s inadequate and could anger the spirits? I’ve been wrestling with this for 27 years.
I will speak. I will tell the land a story, and I will tell my story, the one the land lived through me. Maybe I was part of something I can’t see yet. All I know is I’m back, 27 years later, where I first began on this island. In the exact same place, in fact.
27 years ago, newly turned 26, a friend of a friend picked me up at the Kona airport and drove me south and up a steep hill to the sketchy hospitality of a coffee shack. I say sketchy because there were a lot of men living in rickety structures all over the mountain. (One of them showed up in my room in the middle of the night right before an earthquake, prompting my dawn departure with my thumb out on the highway the next morning.)
That first evening one of the less sketchy invited me on a motorcycle ride. I clung on like a terrified possum down the steep winding road to the water. When we stopped I slid forward in what seemed like slow motion, burning my right calf on the tail pipe. Even though the burn was so bad my skin instantly blistered, I said nothing. I pretended nothing had happened as the guy enjoyed showing me the view I couldn’t see.
We were right here. The Place of Refuge. I still have the scar on my right calf. I think it’s time to tell the story.
What happened next was not part of the story that I was told all those years ago when I climbed up moss-slick rocks behind a young man of Waipi’o who I imagine looked much like Nanaue—long black hair, rippling muscles, broad feet. When we reached the waterfall pool he told me this story I’ve told you, and of how when they were kids, he and his brothers used to hide in the greenery to watch hippie girls slide naked down the waterfall into the pool. This pool. This waterfall.
Maybe I should have taken this story as a warning, but I was young and foolish in my beauty. I took off my clothes without comment and slipped off the moss ledge into the milky green water, swimming to the other side of the pool without looking back. Only when I heard him knife the water did I turn around and watch as he swam toward me without a ripple, black eyes fixed on my blue-green. When he was just a few inches away he said, “The shark’s my aumakua.”
I didn’t care who his ancestor was. I wanted the beast, not the monster.
I thought there was a difference.
I’ll never know if what happened after that night occurred because I’d angered the spirits of that place. I was innocent-I didn’t know the big stones sunk in lush moss were the ruins of the island’s other Place of Refuge, Paka’alana heiau, where kapu violators could seek sanctuary and have their sins forgiven if they made it there in one piece. I didn’t know about The Night Marchers, or that the Hawaiians had sacrificed humans, or even that kapu was a thing. I was your typical entitled white girl with no clue and good intentions thinking everything was going to be all right because Bob Marley said so. If I had known I wouldn’t have slept there. I wasn’t that stupid of a haole.
Or was I? Maybe I would have slept in the ruins daring the spirits to fuck with me. Maybe I wanted to go into the mystic so bad I was willing to die. Maybe it was fate and there was no avoiding it. Whatever the case, for the first time in my life I was claimed by a story, pulled down into the Underworld like Persephone, a local boy my demon lover Hades. I ate the offered prawns and fiddlebacks. I drank from his spring. I slept in the ruined temple. The price? I became the offering.
Hope you enjoy this and are excited for the next installment of The Art of Spell-Casting, Diffraction Edition coming at you next week!
Until then,
Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light