Leah,
Its amazing to hear your light and seemingly joyful take on life at this particular moment. You keep after yourself, the positives, and that there is a huge world ready to receive anything you have to give. Your the blazer of a path im strolling down, and others are looking at in wonder and curiosity, especially our little sis. Lets keep going and we'll try to take along as many as we can.

Tons of love


Mom,

I really hope to see you...NEXT WEEK!!! Cant believe how fast this trip has crept up.

"Grazing: Cultural Exploration" Samoan Ava

Ava or Kava is a root that is ground into power and dissolved into a large wooden bowl of water to create a drink that is used for ceremonial occasions, meetings mostly. It has some mouth numbing properties and is great as a center piece for just sitting around, relaxing and having good conversation. Its grown and drank all over the Pacific, and some islands have stronger stuff than others (I think Fiji is known to have the strongest). Matais and man drink it mostly, women can but arent known to. We drink a lot of it in the village, and when i go into the market will sit and hangout with oldtimers and drink a few epu (cups). There are only a few families who are traditionally known for having the ability to carve the bowls, and they are made from a special type of wood that is found in one region of Samoa, its on Savai'i north of my village. This is something im excited to bring back to share with everyone, its definitely a Pacific experience.

Sorry i just looked for some pictures..no luck. I think the next "Grazing: Cultural Exploration" should be of Taro. Get excited.

My Goodness be gracioubees! What a wild world!!
Am sitting on the couch in my suite, listening to the tireless rain. The floor is covered with dried leaves that we have decided to use for carpeting! I haven't been here to read your thoughts for a long while, but I have been thinking of you always. It is so exciting to read your updates, and to try to coreograph my own....
Things are changing to quickly to say much for sure, but I am feeling really present, sometimes that means strong, sometimes so soft and weak, sometimes blazing with joy, sometimes breaking with sobbs, but the thing that is consistent is that I am. I am all of those things whenever and wherever they come, I am learning how to just be with myself, to be powerful as who I am. It is strange how these things come to us, this growth is not what I expected to burst out of the sad sorry ground. But I have been ready to flower for eons, and now I beleive with newly present might. I beleive in all of us and I beleive in you vik, I am so glad to see your smiling face in the sunshine with new friends. I am so glad that you are being available to this world
to sit with her rocking tears and bounce on his leaping laughter.
There are volumes and volumes of pages to read,
but it was warm flesh hands that wrote them,
it is from the sky and the skin that the prophet
speaks and you must be him to be with him.
Love
Leah

This is the Mayor (Pulenu'u Office), 1st in the country and outfitted with the essentials, a teapot and the Ava Bowl.
















Emral would be jealous of this kitchen set-up.














Fully furnished and packed full of random colors!!!

Grazing the Corners
There are many ways to tell that the glory of summer is over and here in the western mountains of maine one of those ways is that the large and imposing leaves of the backyard pumpkin plants appear black, rackish and spent. They curl on themselves and become brittle, all life juices gone. They resist the urge to fall on the ground, they insist on posturing tall and protective over the small orange orbs at their base. The thrill of pulling the fruit from the vines is never quite the thrill I expect. I want to leave them intact, together, whatever their fate they have come along this far. I know full well that the reason is just not to leave them be but to extract one from another so that the joy of the harvest can be shared and know its fullness. I struggle to seperate them, I creep out in the dark thinking the leaves, giving their last bit of life, will forgive me or maybe even not notice that I have taken their reason to live away. But I do it and share the pumpkins with whomever I see, hoping they know the past, love the present gift and plant a seed for a new spring. Fall A mom knowing that children grow up.