How many fingers?

Yesterday I felt an interesting new sort of feeling.

I think I can respect myself.

Eggs in a Basket

Back in the early days,
sometime before 5th grade,
when the chickens still lived in the shack by the burning barrels,

I'd gone to collect eggs. And, while I was gathering the last few out of the straw in the opposite corner, the one with the lean neck - the one I'd dubbed 'Black Beauty' overturned the basket I'd left carefully at the top of the few cement stairs at the entrance. She'd leaped up to perch on the handle and in a few wingbeats, toppled the basket and eggs out onto the cold stairs -- I saw it begin, but couldn't stop it in time. The eggs cracked and spilled. Only the few in my hand were saved. The chickens rushed to eat the others. I felt terrible.

Not only would I return to the house with a paltry few eggs, but the others were wasted and it was my fault. Normally, we collected eggs in rust-dented Maxwell coffee cans which 1) the chickens rarely took interest in and 2) are more stable and solidly cylindrical. But this day, I'd been showing off to myself. I'd passed up the cans for a basket - the woven kind with a shallow basin and handle arched over top. I'd been feeling fancy, quaintly colloquial, and was playing my imaginarily scripted role of deftly-intentioned child egg collector and with a properly aesthetic basket.

It was the basket handle which attracted the chicken, the shallow basin which rolled and tipped, and my selfish game and subsequent carelessness which broke the eggs. I was afraid of what Mom would say to how I'd failed.


Trembling slightly, I walked back to the porch to turn myself in in early twilight. My mother was already standing there. I climbed each stair. Beginning to cry, I told how I'd lost the eggs.

The voice that came in reply lifted my head in surprise. She seemed unconcerned with the eggs lost and quietly stated that it wasn't my fault that the chicken had tipped the basket over. I don't remember the words, but I remember her even voice and comforting presence through sob-strained and blurred hearing. I hadn't expected that. I'm not sure if she was even looking at me when she said it. In my memory, her height and stature exceed my range of vision and she seems to speak mostly to the hill in the north, fading as the twilight moved in on the tails of sunset to borrow the hill, fields and forests, saving them for later.

She suggested we go for a walk then, she and I. We walked toward the cooling sunset and she told me about her dreams for the forest and trails around the house, how she wanted to plan places to sit and take in the view. We talked about which overlooks could be best taken advantage of, and I described to her the ones I liked. In her gift of descriptions, she let me come in close to things close to her. Perhaps, I only remember walking because of how she described her visions for the land and trees - in my memory I am transported in the same gray evening air from the porch to the site on the hill where she wants to put a bench.


This is one of the closest memories of I have to my mother. Now, it seems well worth the eggs, and that whole thing is so insignificant except in what it led to.

How

(From the Introduction to Steinbeck's Cannery Row)

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for the break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the best way to write this book - to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Dear Rossy,

I think it's safe to tell you that the light is back in my eyes and the smile is back on my face.

I don't know what's going to happen next,
but it'll be good.


Thank you for your hope and your note all this time.

onward, into the Future!

I'm taking this moment to remind myself

that with the future and the whole unknown thing and all...

a major perk is that it is prime space for making adventures and for trying things that are different than the part of the future that's already happened (it used to be the future).

There's so much of it to fill with new and different things. Or old and deeper things. This is very exciting.

Sometimes I forget.

Lifted

Reading through an old journal today,
I discovered this message to myself.



**
I already know what's important. We all do.

Our lives depend on remembering.
**


I think I hope it's true.
And I hope that I can act on it.

Kelvin's Fair to Middlin' List of Things YOU Can Do to Help

Passing through LA on my way to Cairo, I met this guy on his way to Lima. We were both heading to our Global Urban Trek cities. We might never pass the same way again, but at least there are the internets. He's done a much more efficient job of directing his energy on the behalf of people in need than I have, and his blog Notes from the Overground has a lot of his interesting thoughts as he actually tries to practice his beliefs. He recently made this post of things that members of the general public can do to contribute. I like it, so I'm posting it here too.
Thanks.

Mango'd

Today I shared 2 mangoes with a housemate.

After unsuccessfully cutting most of the the fruit away, I tried the soft yellow around the seed with my teeth.

And I found myself again in Cairo. I felt it before I recognized it. I felt it before my mind filled in the nighttime, people, traffic, and dust.

There are not juice stands here, on every other corner, the way they are in Cairo. The sense Mango filling my mouth and the memories that filled my brain took me back to buying glasses of fresh mango juice from the juice stands - a tall glass filled with liquid fruit - we competed with each other to find the best and cheapest stands.

I maintain that Tiff and I won.
I don't remember the exact price, but I remember it was less than anything else we knew of, and the juice was first rate - eating mangoes that you didn't even have to chew. The place is in Arbaa-Wa-Noos - I think it's in the Northeast. Hop in a mini bus that goes to Seleb! Seleb! Seleb! and get off when you see the sign for the textile factory: 'ال سلاب,' if I remember right. There was construction here, a few years ago, so it probably looks different now. But find the school - ask someone to take you to Central, school for displaced Sudanese. Stop at the school and play jumprope with the kids and drink tea with the teachers. Ask them if they ever got the pictures we took with them. Ask them whose gone back to Sudan and if there are new teachers. Ask them if Bafi is still there, or if he and his family have made it out. Then keep going down the direction you were headed in. I think you'll come to a fork in the path between sand and abandoned buildings. They're not abandoned - most buildings are not falling apart but rather are unfinished, so as to avoid the tax that applies to completed buildings. Take the right fork. In that direction, I think, and not too much farther, is the best mango juice stand I know of.

It's past Gheda's house and near the restaurant where we took her out to dinner. Gheda, who spoke a little more of our language than we knew of hers, who was engaged to be married, who invited us into her home, and whose friendship with us consisted mostly of smiles, nods, and laughter to replace the words, but none of it ingenuine.

I am going against Pascal's musings.
I am trying to be everything
Is this why I unravel?

Is anything correlated?

I think I cast the thread of these stories in the partial hope that someone will recognize the spool that spins them or the fabric they might be trying to weave.


I hardly dare ask for causes,
but is anything correlated?

Fishbowl

At one time, I'd asked for a sign
to help me identify a person

A friend asked me once, what I would do if I got it.
'I think I'd cry'

A year later, my ideas of fate and signs had changed, but I knew when I found its equivalent, and

I was right.

I cry at things I don't understand
and things that are true
and I'd just found something all of good, longed-for, unexpected, and real.

However, the near future contained sudden modifications to the situation I thought I'd found, and the side-effects from it which I'd accepted on temporary conditions swelled like ice until entire paths turned to rubble. The maw between what could and what was yawned until one gray morning I woke for the last time for the next year beneath my bed, unusually confused by my surroundings and feeling like a seasick sailor. My first task was to understand that I'd never before understood what being homesick really felt like.

For a year, I lived with experiences and colors at once too subdued and too brilliant to be continuously real. I looked out windows as if they were closed eyelids. When I awoke suddenly this January, my memory of the time preceding seemed to fade more quickly. My inclination is to explain this in terms of a lived dream, but this is probably not useful as I'll only confuse myself with attempted justifications for uncorrelations resulting from a poor organizing metaphor. It is poetic though.

The hope I'd let dissolve revived in the real world, and I searched for a phrase to describe how I felt. I wanted to say it felt surreal or felt like I was dreaming except that those sentiments are both cliché and false. If anything, I felt like I'd finally woken up.

But further complications continuously submerge me into an underwater realm of subconscious. At times I find myself free of this fishbowl, but eventually my sense of the vitality of reality fades. I don't know if I'm exaggerating or getting complacent.

I sometimes find a distinction between waking and sleeping useful because knowing that the reality I exist in will not stay helps me get through dreams. I had a sign above my pillow saying 'Reality' with an arrow pointing towards the rest of my room. But,
I probably do not help my situation by dividing time between dreaming and awake. It might all be one tangled string of possible correlations and attempted explanations.

.

I heard that there was a study done on rats in which the rats received random shocks regardless of what levers they pressed or what actions they did or didn't perform. I heard the rats ceased to function.



The ability to function is an extremely important one to me. Perhaps this is why I feel like I have so much trouble with it. Perhaps I want the wrong kinds of explanations - the kinds that use words and begin with 'because'.


I think I will never get out of the fishbowl by specifically trying.



(further thoughts might unroll, I feel them curled like ferns around these images)

Dear Curious Psychiatrist,

Sometimes I write to help my present or future self
sometimes I write in the hope that others might benefit
sometimes I write because I hope that a curious psychiatrist will someday find my written ramblings and piece myself together from a more objective vantage point.

The more I understand though,
the more I realize that I must be that psychiatrist.

Odd tools that they are

I am here,

still -

I lack the words to say in what manner -
There are either too many or too few.

What I need, I think,
are some good stories.

A Note on Recent Incorporations

A properly cultivated human, I think, has amazing perceptive and interactive powers within his or her environment. Human capacities for improvisation and re-evaluation while working towards goals are extremely valuable traits, and to suppress or detract from them seems vitally hazardous.

We are capable of programming robots to follow models and make approximations.

I must not expect this of myself.

I often set models for myself to follow. Recently, I am trying to stop this. I am trying not to let established structures influence the way I move. I am trying to live kinetically - in the motion itself.

(This seems to result in writing less)

SOA

He told me that Lloyd J. Reynolds used to write it in huge sweeping motions on the chalkboard at the start of every class:


S.erene
O.pen
A.wareness

Reminder

My brother's post reminded me...

I forgot a second anniversary: Tres De Mayo.
This post comes 10 days and some odd hours late. I completely forgot about it this year.


My, the things we can forget...

changes

Question: Mirror in the sky, what is love?

Answer: (repeat)

April rivers - only young once

I can feel the time running like liquid through my fingers. Like a river, it keeps the same shape, but always moving.

A few days back I read myself the stories I read my archive from last April. I was impressed by the efforts of my then-self to record and collect the pieces of the world I thought I saw shattering around me for my future self, or for anyone who'd come wondering where I'd been. When the world shatters, the light catches the edges.

Perhaps things are more beautiful when one is aware of expending life. Or perhaps an awareness of dying makes one try more vitally at living, and this trying is more keenly observant.
Perhaps in a pit, one tries harder to see, and is more grateful to find, the stars.


People told me then that the images were beautiful. I could see then where they might be coming from. Reading back now, I see it more. But I remember writing them. I see the titles paired with each post and read from their doublespeak the messages I left for myself. It reads now almost as two separate narrations.
My impression of it now is like the dancing lights that come with a blow to the head. Reeling at the time, now I hardly remember. But, the lights were beautiful. I described the lights.

I am glad to have moved on (I cannot adequately describe the difference between these last two aprils). I recall thinking to myself a few weeks ago, walking under the cushion-like light surrounding Elliot circle at night, that I felt sane, and it felt nice.
But I haven't felt the knife-edge of the world in the balls of my feet as sharply or as frequently. Perhaps I am no longer trying so well or intently to lean out beyond the present. Through the kaleidoscope of images, there runs a thread of trying, which I find myself admiring now, though at the time I remember feeling only that I was unable to tighten my fists enough around the thread, feeling it run through my raw hands.

I still have too many pieces.
I need to let these concepts roll back into a ball. I want to be able to feel and understand without feeling like having to consciously enumerate the components of an experience. Some dissections are not useful or meaningful.

Earlier this month, I re-visited a river briefly. Over a year since I'd been there.

My brother sent me a hope. We lend hopes to each other, trading them back when they are needed elsewhere.
I hope that you can live like a river and continue to flow while coming to a swirling equilibrium with your contents and incoming silt deposits and runoff, sorting and smoothing them into soft pebbles and sandy shores.

****

My favorite time of day lately has been near-sunset. My favorite season is fall. I'm becoming more convinced these things are more beautiful, the colors richer, because inevitable change makes them seem dearer.

When I was young, my father gave me wine to taste and I was overwhelmed by the odor filling my mouth. I did not understand how he could enjoy the taste. He said in his father-to-child voice that he can appreciate wine probably be cause he's killed off enough tastebuds.

Whenever my Chinese professor tells a story, the moral is usually about the best uses of youthfulness: "Play Hard while you can!" (despite the fact that playing hard probably contributes to its vanishing.

Recently,
I began to wonder - though I we may mourn the loss of youthfulness and of tastebuds and many other things that, like candles, expend themselves by their intended use, what are the things that one can only really appreciate, having first lost something else? Shall these also be celebrated? Or prevented?

the bird of time has but a little way
to flutter,
and the bird is on the wing

Experience

It is not enough to have an experience.

You must interact with it, to whatever extent you can.

seam

so much of everything,
it seems,

is based on the quality of the dialogue through the seambetween the world of one's perceptions and the world they come from


a process working out an equilibrium of perceptions


since our world must live within the larger one until our presence is removed

The Perennial Pedagogy

(Imagine this written in the italic hand of Lloyd J. Reynolds. Maybe I can get a picture sometime.)


The Perennial Pedagogy

1. Get the idea. (Formative image.)
2. Concentrate.
3. Get the feel.
4. Practice, practice, practice.
5. Take it easy. (Easy does it.)
6. Get the swing of it.
7. Be in good form.
8. Get lost in the work.
9. Let IT do it.
10. Work for the work's sake.
11. Don't sell out.
12. Do it the right way.
13. Keep to your calling.
14. Teach. (Share your skill.)

New Leaves

spring's new-bloss'ming leaves

unfolding from buds slowly, shy

confident green butterflies

Mirror

Recently,







everything is a mirror








I can only see other things, in other people, in nature,
to the extent that I know myself.
I look to my thoughts on others to learn about what they are reflecting.

This means something

[picture pending]

white blossom
cradled in both hands
against my stomach

cradled in both hands
against my stomach
from the cold

against my stomach
from the cold
fallen open

from the cold
fallen open
star inside

fallen open
star inside
a cool white flame

star inside
a cool white flame
cradled in both hands

a cool white flame
cradled in both hands
white blossom

I don't know what, but
this means something
cradled against my stomach
the flower is special because of a star you can't see

3.30.08

I
perched on a couch in the SU

the setting sun
leaving gleaming fingerprints on the warm grid-of-windows-wall,
reaching like a sheet across wood-paneled floors

listening
to the figure at the piano fill the room with

notes like
rain falling through fog, as seen from below and slowly turning.

Intently Attentive to
enjoying the physical processes and perceptions of my
environment and very temporary body

before moving on.

Well-timed

This was a well-timed post relative to my general condition.
- more factors to add to the equilibrium process.

Serendipitous

I went to the Special Collections office today to scan copies of this beautiful work of reproduced 18th-century English publishing:



"Lexicon Technicum. Or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts
and Sciences." By John Harris. Volume 2 (London 1710).
Article: "Curves, by Sir Isaac Newton."

as printed in

The Mathematical Works of Isaac Newton,
Volume 2
Assembled with an Introduction by
Dr. Derek T. Whiteside,
Research Assistant,
Whipple Science Museum,
Cambridge, England

The Sources of Science
1967
Johnson Reprint Corporation
New York and London


This book isn't kept in the Special Collections. I just wanted to use their scanner.
While we were waiting for files to download though, I was talking with the Special Collections Manager about my thesis and he mentioned that, on an unrelated topic, there happened to be an original copy of Newton's Opticks in the Rare Book Collection.

Holy Cow.

It was a much more related topic than he expected. I happened to know that the article I'd just been scanning was an Appendix to Newton's publication of Opticks


Old Books are so beautiful,
perhaps because publishing was a much greater feat.

...Though it was typeset,
I think I found on the titles for pages of figures the horizontal pencil lines I'd expect to see under handwritten calligraphy...

One of the figures pages from an original, First-Edition printing of
Enumeratio linearum tertii ordinis,
the first Appendix to
Opticks

怎么走？

“怎么说，怎么作，才真正是自己
怎么歌，怎么唱，这心中才得意？”
(－崔健)

(可是，这是不是问对的办法？)

RCCR: the 4th year

Every year, I've submitted writing and photography to my school's Creative Review. Every year, none of my writing gets in, but photos do. This year breaks my 2-photos record though.
Just this one got in:


"Seal" (It was part of this post)



I'll have to track down the others that have gotten in over the years and put them here, too.

Back from New Orleans

He told me about how
the ground was covered in shells.


they volunteered in
A section of the city which,
after 3 years of natural growth looked like broad farmland
but
smack in the middle of
the should-be city, there was just
something wrong about
the emptiness

And the houses, each remaining set of roof and walls marked
with the date it was searched
and the number of bodies removed

Brand-new houses and condominiums,
destroyed by flooding from the
inside out,
the watermark on the walls,
evidence of the flood levels;
boarded-up, useless
shells

You'd only get the ground covered in shells like that he said
from being under so much water for so long,

He told me about a man
walking into a bar in a deserted sector to find
others, company, and music inside

proving that
even if you kill New Orleans,

You haven't killed New Orleans.

Self-Contained

(Have you ever considered that your physical shape is the result of an incredible magnitude of gas molecules bouncing against you and holding you in your usual mold of air?)


A younger version of myself poked through my dad's old bookcases, reading snippets and stories of Greek myth and history. Milo, I read, was a man of immense strength and size. He would entirely conceal a pomegranate in one fist and dare others to retrieve it. No matter how many pushed or pried at his fingers, not only did they never extract the pomegranate, but after all had given up, Milo would unroll his fist and reveal the pomegranate, not even bruised.

Whether pushing or pulling, he met strength with equal strength and held his ground precisely.


I found and read Heart of Darkness sometime during my high school years because it was a book that everyone spoke highly and mysteriously of. It may have been a bit above my level, but, especially when I left for college, I took the image with me of one man, left to his own devices, in an environment with none of his familiar external controls or pressures. Embedded in an unfamiliar (or lack of) external structure, how does one choose to conduct oneself?

Not only what is chosen, but how?


Recently, I found a comic book in the MLLL called Mouse Guard. In a Winter issue, the most senior guard is talking with the newest guard recruit. He describes two of their fellow guardsmice (I think the names are Saxon and Kenzie), a great pair since in handling situations, Saxon's aggressive and impulsive nature is balanced by Kenzie's more wise and reserved intellectual assessment. This is not ideal, says the Old Guard, -- Saxon lets himself go since he trusts that Kenzie will delay or correct him if he acts too rashly. And, Kenzie dwells and deliberates too reservedly because he knows that Saxon will spur him on.

They each depend on the other, but, the Old Guard recommends, be self-contained, and cultivate balanced aspects within yourself.

to accurately reflect

These days always seem to be heavy with other events.

It so happens that today is also Good Friday
and has the descending integer date 3.21
Also, Vernal Equinox
a year ago today


It occurs to me that perhaps I should not push a summary posting tonight, since unsettled waters aren't so good for reflection, and I haven't given myself the leisure to let myself settle and wade slowly through past stories/posts. But, what's attempted discipline without a little pushing?
Cultivation is a chronic practice"

At the time of this posting, a huge proportion of recent posts are still in draft mode - titles or ideas jotted down where I hope to go back and fill in.

some of this material comes from those yet-absent posts.




The title comes partly from a line ...I think I found in a thesis in NCNM's library. It was written on the topic of depression from a classical Chinese medicine approach. One of the interpretations of depression I remember as the inability of the heart to accurately reflect external reality.

At that same school, a posted quote:

...For this is wrong, if anything is wrong: not to enlarge the freedom of a love with all the inner freedom one can summon. We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it....

But I take some issue from this since it sometimes seems that the art of losing just takes a little practice while the art of holding on may be difficult to realize. But, perhaps the art of losing and the art of holding are not so different in their pure and mastered forms. I imagine they meet on some level like holding a small bird freely in your hand.

other things...

love, growth, change, death

I must remember that I have a person to be

If any of you sees an evil, let him change it by his hand, and if he is unable to do that, then let him change it by his words, and if he is still unable to do that, then let him denounce it in his heart, but this is the weakest form of belief.

And yet, I think it's only belief once its worked its way into the heart, the overflow of which brings words and actions consistent with their source.

And, the heart must be carefully allowed to reflect internal reality as well,

and is a good indicator, but can also be guided.

Sometimes the best way to help things is to just not interfere too much. A relax of focus can bring into view all of the flowers coming up all over.
Serene Open Awareness
The Perennial Pedagogy
Sunlight under dark soil comes up dandelions
'Flower' can be a verb.... Flower!
-Lloyd J Reynolds


And I feel like I ought to say something for Good Friday,
but I'm afraid I'm rather empty on the subject.





***

This has been another installment in the continuing but oft-forgotten project of letting my heart reflect both internal and external realities, ... and hopefully this makes them the same.

Locker at NCNM

Stopping by The National College of Natural Medicine, I found a locker with the following notes attached -

I know what the great cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.
-Henry Miller



Love and death are the greatest gifts given to us, but mostly they are passed on unopened.

...For this is wrong, if anything is wrong: not to enlarge the freedom of a love with all the inner freedom one can summon. We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it....

-Rainer Maria Rilke



He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

-William Blake

Cultivate

Men are admitted to Heaven not because they have curbed and govern'd their passions or have no passions but because they have cultivated their understandings
- William Blake

(to Edit:
include:
2/24
special archives
LJR)

"Flower can be a verb - Flower!"

Who looks out with these eyes?

I have just been trying to look in the mirror as though I were not myself, and trying to understand what I would see.

***

He told us about how,
himself 19,
he'd cleaned house for the Master in his last year of life,
and listened to one who'd ever-pondered consciousness
confounded:
"I just don't get it!" He would say, "the light comes in through my eyes, and it goes out! ...I just don't get it!"
and thought, if after so long this man doesn't, how can I ever expect to?

***

He was so glad to find out it was me who'd put up the Olde LJR around Reed
so that he could ask for the copy of the Perennial Pedagogy and Macbeth's Give sorrow words/ the grief that does not speak/ whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” that he'd nearly taken off the wall before.

***

He told us how,
at the Master's memorial service, Macbeth's 'Give Sorrow Words' was displayed, and
Calligraphers came from all over the Northwest to pay their respects and to write a weathergram. The quadrangle was feathered with hundreds of fluttering weathergrams.

***

Weathergrams are meant to be transient and brief,
meant to leave the artists hands
meant to be a fleeting thought, attracted into words for a time,
not belabored in the writing
hung in kraft paper and twine from trees
part of the scene
submitted for revision by the elements of nature.

You can read the poem
But that is not the poem.
Watch the white paper
Between the lines.
Look through that white
As through white snow
To see what buttercups and lilies
Are pushing up from below.

from “How to Read a Poem”
by Lloyd Reynolds

***

At lunch with Zeb Raft during his candidacy visit for tenure track in the Chinese Department, we'd asked him a number of tough questions including expectations for students, plans for classes, opinions of the Humanities program,... his answers to all of which I thought demonstrated his being made of the right material. After finishing his answers however, he turned a question around to us:

What is your ideal class?

stunned, it occurred to me I'd never thought of the question before. Here I am, claiming to be a student, and I've never formed a picture of what I think the ideal class ought to look like.

After some thought, I responded something to the effect of,
"I suppose I would want to find someone doing something I respected, and follow them."

"Like Jesus!" a friend piped up

Yeah. I guess so.

"Well, Confucius says wherever you find 3 men walking, one of them can teach you something," said Zeb.

***

A student, writing about Lloyd J Reynolds, said that he was born at just the right time.

Too early for me, I thought. Or perhaps I was born too late.
My timing trades the man himself for the benefit of reflections and biographies, able to see his life by looking down from the end, the time between making effects of his life on this world more visible. Then again, would I have thought a yet-living Master fit to follow?

forward, March

February never ended better

Weiter, Weiter

no love without growth
No growth without change
no change without death


It's back



I invited it.
I know its Master.
I will not ask him to call off his dog.

I will not roll around on this ship like a cannon ball.

I will sail with this direction all the way,
whether it seers us to treasure and glory
or destruction.

So hound,
which will it be?


***



From The Alchemist


Every blessing ignored becomes a curse

We are afraid of losing what we have...
but this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand



Yes,
that's what love is. It's what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It's what turns lead into gold and makes the gold return to the earth.

This is why alchemy exists, So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life.

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

It's not love to be static or to see from a distance... Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.



*****


loving is labor
labor's life
life's forever

Alchemy

Quotes from The Alchemist


Every blessing ignored becomes a curse

We are afraid of losing what we have...
but this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.



Yes,
that's what love is. It's what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It's what turns lead into gold and makes the gold return to the earth.

This is why alchemy exists, "So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life.

When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

It's not love to be static or to see from a distance... Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.

Slam Newton: a Paleography

(with apologies to the imcomparable Sir Isaac Newton, but he should've thought about that before he wrote his articles so difficult to parse)

CURVES.    The incomparable Sir Ifaac Newton 
gives this following Ennumeration of Geometri-
cal Lines of the Third or Cubick Order; in which 
you have an admirable account of many Species of 
Curves which exceed the Conick-Sections, 
for they go no higher than the Quadratick or Se-
Second Order.


The Orders of Geometrick Lines.
   
1: GEOMETRICK-LINES, are beft diftinguifh'd into 

  Claffes, Genders, or Orders, 
        according
        to the Number of the Dimenfions 
        of an Equation, 
  expreffing the relation 
  between Ordinates and the Abfiffae;

OR, which is much at one, 
     according to the Number of Points in which they may 
      be cut by a Right Line.


Wherefore,
a Line of the Firft Order will be only a Right Line:

Thefe of the Second or Quadratick Order, will be 
   the Circle and the Conick-Sections;

and thefe of the Third or Cubick Order, will be 
   the Cubical and Nelian Parabola's,
   the Ciffoid of the Antients, and 
   the reft as belew ennumerated.

But a Curve of the Firft Gender 
   (becaufe a Right Line can't be reckoned among the Curves)
   is the fame with a Line of the Second Order, 
and a Curve of the Second Gender; 
   the fame with a Line of the Third Order,
and a Line of an Infinitefimal Order, is 
   that which a Right Line may cut in infinite Points, 
   as the Spiral, 
                Cycloid, the 
            Quadratrix, 
        and every Line generated by the Infinite Revolutions 
         of a Radius or
                            Rota.

(this concludes part 1:)

yellow-orange blue-green

Soco Amaretto Lime
these words look yellow, orange, green sherbet colors to me.

Thanks to imeem and YouTube, I've found a song, the guitar-string-pulse of which has followed me in pockets, around corners, and on dark ledges since the night we plucked it out on guitar and base in our own voices in the night-curtained room at my best friends' house, insulated now by memory.

I have since passed through the age of 18.


We said the end was somewhat reminiscent of Caulfield's Wake up, ya morons!
I listen to the guitar heartbeat of this whole song, partly waiting for the ending.




青春舞曲

Qingchun Wuqu
A Uighur folk song

blue-green 青 and spring　春　: youthfulness


This version is for a Chinese equivalent of American Idol.

太阳下山明早依旧爬上来
花儿谢了明天还是一样的开
美丽的小鸟飞去无影踪
我的青春小鸟一去不回来
我的青春小鸟一去不回来
别的那样呦别的那样呦
我的青春小鸟一去不回来

My experience with Chinese is very little, but here's my impression of the lyrics:

The sun descends behind the mountains, but climbs up in the morning.
Flowers wilt, but tomorrow again open.
A beautiful bird flies, leaving not even a trace of a shadow.
The years of my youth fly like that bird, never returning.





From The Rubaiyat
by Omar Khayyam

VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time bas but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

Still Alive

today is many things.
among them:

3 years ago today,

St. Max and I were baptized in the swimming pool by a friend of ours.

I like considering 2.21 a personal holiday -
this year, as a birthday.

It's a reminder of how very possible it is for things to feel new, light, and agile.

I have been trying to remember what it felt like to die and wake up again,
free and able to move life in response toward anything,
free to spend it on anything,
no sense of expectations to suggest otherwise.


I have a ritual to perform later tonight.
Rituals are for our own good.


The days seem to repeat quickly, but it seems like such a long time between years.
So very much happens in between.
But, here I am again,
remembering an unknown love that has been my unseen guardian.

I don't feel like I know or understand God.
But if he's there, I've seen Him work,
and if he's not there,
I still need a word for the depth of the fabric of this existence that has at least kept me together this long.

I'm trying to remember what my decision three years ago was.
I have not been very faithful to this baptism dye job.

Porcupines

The philosopher Schopenhauer gave an often-quoted example of porcupines trying to get through a cold winter. They huddle together for warmth, but their sharp quills prick each other, so they pull away. But then they get cold. The have to keep adjusting their closeness and distance to keep from freezing and from getting pricked by their fellow porcupines-the source of both comfort and pain.

We need to et close to each other to have a sense of community , to feel we're not alone in the world. But we need to keep our distance from each other to preserve our independence, so others don't impose on or engulf us. This duality reflects the human condition. We are individual and social creatures. We need other people to survive, but we want to survive as individuals.
-The Workings of Conversational style
-Deborah Tannen, Ph. D.


A dilemma: learning to function as both social beings and discrete individuals.



Because of the way our eyes are set up, our peripheral vision is more suited to detecting differences in light/darkness, sometimes to the extent that we can see more detail from the side than when viewing the object straight on. For example, if you cannot count all seven stars of the Pleiadies, try not looking directly at it.
Some things are most themselves when not directly so.



A good seed does not preserve itself but becomes something else.

Don't be afraid - no growth without change, no change without death.


a candle must not fear fire
books were meant to be deshelved, read, and shared
tents were made to be weathered outdoors

You've got yourself two good hands,

put yourself and your resources to work responsibly.

Stay honest with yourself

and integrate your components so that you can experience more completely, and so

words and actions don't stretch too far apart and lose each other.

Having a direction to grow with,

Explore the future, for the sake of curiosity and process.

Stay open and impressionable,

but keep your agency.

Even waiting can be an active process.


There is much living to do.

Lunar Eclipse

Do What You Can

With What You Have
Where You Are
-Teddy Roosevelt




I had always looked at this as a sort of consolation quote. It was the sort of quote I thought would be spoken so someone who'd applied for some aspiration and been denied, the quote that consoles you with the reminder that even the little you have right around you can be put to use. It was the quote to pull out when you couldn't manage to accomplish something greater.

but really,

Not only are those probably both your most powerful tools and your most direct responsibilities,

but anything further (...perhaps without due attention to every thing having its season and a time to every purpose... ) may overextend your abilities, drain your resources, and detach you,
draining your energy inefficiently and leaving you oddly displaced.



I would do well in the midst of large systems to remember both my limits and the words of a friend,
- to do what I can
and then be done with it.


A vital thing to learn,
responsible management of resources
and it reminds me a bit of this post.

Sx - check the engine

I listened to a professor from the National College of Natural Medicine speaking about Traditional Chinese Medicine tonight.

He reminded me:

Don't suppress symptoms.
They are there for a reason.


I know this for handling myself physically.


The analogy they always use is the 'check engine' light.

Let's say you're driving your car along and the 'check engine' light comes on. You know that it shouldn't be on. If you can see it, something is wrong. You know it's not good to drive your car while you can see it. What do you do?
Of course, you find a thick piece of tape and cover the check engine light, right?

No.
that won't make the problem go away.

Consider the engine being in some condition and the light being a symptom of that condition. Finding a system that dismisses the symptoms is just asking for worse trouble later on.

I know this for handling myself physically.

I avoid taking pain or cold medication unless I really need it to function. I want my body to be able to tell me what's going on truthfully and uninhibited by chemicals.

I have not been applying this mentally or psychologically.

For all the times that Jesus scolded the pharisees for their concern over shows of righteousness, I guess medical analogies are easier for my mind to digest than references to the inside and outside of ritual cups.


I thought I could control and direct my internal order by manipulating, encouraging, or cloaking the manifestations according to how I thought they should appear. I thought this was being 'responsible'. Don't be confused. It's deception.
This process will only leave you scrambled, with unreliable indication, and unable to trust yourself.

I have to be willing to feel, and to feel the whole spectrum, including the edges.

More from the Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss

In relevant situations, a collection of phrases from high school writing classes streamline themselves through a voice in my head like a mantra:

No growth without change, no change without death

I've been tempted to post it as a stand-alone quote.
Today though,
I found a similar bundle of words in a quote from the beginning of the Journal:



When we think of loss we think of the loss, through death, of people we love. But loss is a far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our... losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety - and the loss of our own younger self. (Viorst, 1986 p.2)


(I can't find it now,
but I remember recently seeing a quote about the irresponsibility of setting expectations too high.)

Jealous Kind

I get into iTunes playlist circuits,
sometimes forgetting other songs that I have.

I rediscovered some Jars of Clay tonight.



This was good because it reminded me of some thought pathways that used to feel familiar.

It also made me think of this post - especially the wind part.

There are so many good ideas that I cannot internalize, incorporate, and integrate fast enough. And then remember...

Ideals and projective nostalgia

In Chinese Humanities Lecture today,
Prof. Hyong Rhew lectured on
Song Poetry: Appetite for Olives and Nostalgia for Litchi

The title gets its name from this passage from Lun Song shi (On Song Poetry) by Miao Yue:

Tang poetry is superior in resonance, and thus is exalted. It prizes suggestive charms and nimbleness. Song poetry is superior in ideas, and thus is shrewd and intense. It prizes deep twists and penetrating thoroughness. The beauty of Tang poetry lies in words of emotion, and thus it is voluptuously rich; the beauty of Song petry lies in its forceful bones, and thus it is lean and vigorous. Tang poetry is like peonies and wild roses, flowers of lushness and rich colors; Song poetry is like plum blossoms in winter and Chrysanthemums in autumn, flowers of hidden elegance and cilled fragrance. Tang poetry is like eating litchi. With one in the mouth, the sweetness and fragrance fill between the cheeks. Song poetry is like chewing olives. Astringent at the beginning, but its aftertaste is deep and long-lasting. ...


Hyong began the lecture with a question,

"Have you ever been nostalgic about something? What is nostalgia?"

---longing for something based on a memory-- we cautiously agreed

"Memory?" He asked again, "Or SELECTIVE memory?
Partial? Incorrect? maybe a distorted form of memory...

So maybe
it's more about the present than the past."


The Tang poetic tradition preceded the Song, and, the way Hyong spoke, shadowed it in the similar way that a son aspiring to be a young man might feel overshadowed by the great name of his father. The Song tradition was a very different style, but nonetheless, Hyong argued that the Song poets were "influenced by the nostalgic memory of what SHOULD be the poetic ideal"


I thought it a curious tool to think with -
that the scribes of a different style of poetry would look back upon the previous as the ideal of what poetry should, or could, be. It's not so odd - looking back on the past as the 'good old days' is a familiar idea. I am reminded of a comment made by a friend of mine who took the class the previous year regarding how the old days are always better since it is the good which is more easily remembered and contrasted with the way things are now.


If I may project my thoughts of this lecture to a more general scale, asking an old question with some new terminology,

Are our ideals and hopes for how the future could be based only on a selectively recalled past? ... we cannot "go back" ...


I did some more thinking on paper later:
(edited)

"I'm still thinking about this idea of our ideals just being idealized selective nostalgia,
about how we can't understand or describe anything that isn't in terms of what we already know, how new experiences can only remind us of previous experiences, how our dreams of utopia will never stop becoming distopian because all we know how to do is take an old setting and push it to the limit of what we think is best. We'll never think of how to jump that gap ahead of time.

In the meantime, we'll fume over watching all our alchemy crumble heavily because we tried to label our imagined toys with the shining lie of something true and real.

All we know how to do is polish lead and try to call it a gold we've never seen.

If we ever get there,
it will be by nothing that we could have planned ahead of time."

Spring

When the hope we forgot about begins growing back,
regardless of our observation or preferences.

imeem

imeem is an online community where millions of fans and artists discover new music, videos, and photos, and share their tastes with friends.

A website my brother found,
members can upload songs, videos, or pictures from their own computers to share.
imeem allows playlist file sharing in a variety of manners, even providing embedding code for posting songs on blogs... which I have been making use of recently.

All imeem songs in this blog were added on this day at the latest.

All posts with music or strong enough connections to music are listed under the 'music box' label.

Music added to posts before this date was added as an afterthought - the text or image can stand alone without the music.
If I remember alluding to, or having a particular song in mind while writing the post, then I will embed the song with the post.


Future posts my integrate music more completely into their presentation. We'll see.

from The Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss

I found it in the psych lounge

an interesting article, though worthwhile to consider how the writers interpret and evaluate their subjects.
The main purpose of the article was to examine the differences in how older vs. younger people deal with 'major losses' and the grieving process.

Vol 1 #4
Oct-Dec 1996

"Relativity of Grief"
M.K. Barnes et. al

(not necessarily in the order the passages appear in the article)

These are apparently the vital steps for effective mourning:


a) recognize and acknowledge that the loss has occurred,
b) react to the separation by being willing to experience the pain, to feel, identify, & accept the loss,
c) recollect and re-experience the deceased and the relationship and attempt to plan times to review and remember realistically,
d) relinquish the old attachments to the deceased and the old assumptive world, giving up the ways of viewing the world that were idiosyncratic to the lost relationship
e) readjust to move adaptively into the new world without forgetting the old; and
f) reinvest in new relationships and acts of meaning

...

When a major loss occurs, this analysis posits, people may first begin developing a private understanding of their loss. Then, later, when they feel comfortable confiding in others, they often disclose parts of their understandings to close others (Harvey Orbuch, Chwalisz, & Garwool,1991).

... The analysis also suggests that account-making and confiding activities are vital to recovery, in terms both of psychological and physical health.

...When a person attempts to deal with loss by long-term avoidance of or distraction from the cognitive-emotional work involved in the meaning-making process and from the social interaction in the form of confiding, our analysis and past research (eg Pennebaker, 1990) suggest, relatively negative psychological and physical reactions will occur. "Stonewalling" of feelings and thinking about his or her loss does not help the individual relieve him or herself of sorrow, guilt, or other crippling emotions, nor does it stimulate or facilitate the type of helpful interaction with others that will contribute to healing (eg Harvey, Orbuch, Weber, Merback, & Alt. 1992).

...define wisdom-related knowledge and skill in terms of a person's awareness of both the factual and procedural knowledge associated with a problem and with more general related issues of living in this scheme,
knowledge of the issues surrounding a problem,
of relativism of values and life goals,
of life's uncertainties,
and of strategic ways of getting things done
are accorded high weight in coding responses for wisdom

... To deal with traumatic events, Herman (1992) suggested an approach that involves
a) helping the survivor feel safe
b) facilitating the survivor's remembrance of the traumatic event and mourning of the loss involved, and
c) helping the survivor reconnect with the world and create a new future


... we anticipated that the more unexpected the loss, the more complicated the grief because the individual had not the opportunity to prepare him or herself for the impact - by preparatory searching for meaning or account-making, anticipating what life would be like in the absence of the other, and confiding to close others parts of one's thinkings and feelings (Sanders, 1989)

Can't catch this one

Whatever the Weather

Raleigh

She sang the song on her guitar,

"you got to know what you want before you get it"

an elegant voice spun by the reel of humming strings

In Origins of Western Morality class, we read some Epicurean philosophy, part of which postulated that our thoughts and motions actions come about by images swirling in the air around us. Our mind, having an intention, prepares itself to receive the desired image, and since there are so many images of all sorts around us, it is not long before that image takes falls into the place prepared for it.

"you just got to make up your mind, and what you need will come to you and you know it"

Since my bicycle disappeared, I've been looking for a different one, reading a bit about different varieties, brands, models, years of bicycles, sorting out what aspects are necessary, what things I would like, what things I can fix myself, and what to avoid. I didn't just want something that moves - I wanted one that I could depend on as a touring bike and that I could really feel good about. At first, I didn't really know what this would mean beyond a loose collection of preferences I'd picked up here and there, but with some reading, consideration, and a little experimentation, I realized that I could list out all of those preferences and good reasons for them into a big picture of what I wanted to find. I'd begun sketching it during math class the previous day.

The same evening that I heard her singing that song,
I expected to go look at a bike I'd found on craigslist. It was a 12-speed Raleigh road bike, red-orange, ~23 pounds, and looking for the most part just the right shape, size, and color to go with the word Raleigh. The seller suggested it might be too large for me, but I figured I might as well go see it. For the price he was asking, I had decided not to buy it unless it was somehow the perfect bike. The price was not unreasonable by any means - I just knew that I could probably find one for cheaper that, with a little tuning, would work just fine.

I had been deciding that green or black and white would be my ideal bike colors, but Raleighs are oddly significant to me, most likely due to how the one word references both bicycles and Wagon Wheel and all of the myriad meanings that come with those. I was on a biking trip with a friend, a good escape, and seeing the occasional Raleigh along the bike path was like a fresh fluttering banner of cold, free air.

Raleigh is the hope at the end of the tunnel,
the light of morning on the shore you hope to wash up on,
the blur where the train tracks converge between the land and sky.

So I thought I'd give it a shot.

I borrowed a bike for the trip after arranging to meet the mechanic and warning him that for what I was looking for, I did not plan on buying his bike unless I really really liked it. He agreed easily in a voice that reminded me of one of my Chem Lab professors in that it seemed as though nothing would ever make it react out of surprise. With a voice both rough like a mechanic's hands and smooth with amiability, he invited me to try it out. His name is Gino. He types emails mostly in CAPS. His card says 'Old School Bikes.' He finds things, buys them, and fixes them. He's only bought one new bike in his life, and hasn't ridden it much - it was a model he just had to have.

I got there and tried the bike.
The short story is,
I got along with the bike far better than I expected to, and though I hadn't been planning on buying anything, I realized that it had everything that I wanted, plus or minus a few easily modifiable conveniences. I was faced with the sudden and unexpected prospect of ending my bicycle search right there.

Once when I was younger, maybe 5 or 8 or so and during the summer, my Dad was helping me write and send a letter. A muggy week had sealed all of our envelopes, so we had to go in search of letter materials. I had finished writing the letter and voiced some frustration at how much work it was to send it even after the letter itself had been written. Driving away with me and new envelopes in a blue pickup truck, my Dad told me that the hardest part of a job is finishing it. I thought this was silly, since all we should've had to do was stick it in an envelope and walk with it to the mailbox. But his words stayed in my head all these years, and I gradually understand them more and more.

I was walking with a friend to buy calligraphy supplies for a class we were teaching together. I mentioned the memory to her and she told me of a similar discussion she'd had on the topic of figuring out what the 'right thing' was to do and then doing it. She'd thought - and kind of wanted - it to be more difficult to decide what the 'right thing' was, because if you knew something was right, wouldn't that make it easy to actually do? Often it seems the other way around. The 'right thing' is really not so mysterious, and even with certainty, it's often difficult to actually accomplish.

Even with lots of good information, actually making decisions sometimes feels so uncertain.

I bought the bike.

Gino offered to give me a ride back to campus since he was headed downtown and I would have to find an ATM to pay him.

On the way, he talked about his kids and being concerned about his girls entering the 'boy-crazy' stage of life. I said I'd never really done that stage, and wasn't sure how I would handle it if I became the mother of girls who did. He said that was good - I was in college, I had a life and a career to prepare myself for and this was a good thing to focus on at this point in my life. Oh of course he said that didn't mean I shouldn't date people or have a little fun and find what's right for me, but there's no reason to get myself into a relationship, and certainly not to think that the first person I find is going to be it.

Boys are like cereal, he said. You have to try different kinds. If all you eat is cocoa puffs, then how do you know - maybe you really like froot loops! Or new shoes, he said. You have to make sure you find a pair that fits.
Just
whatever you do,
don't get pregnant.

I thought the cereal comparison was funny.

Freshmen year,
my quasi-roommates cornered me while hanging out in their room and interrogated me as to what sort of person was 'my type'. What sort of person could I see myself with? I didn't have a coherent picture or any solid ideas. It wasn't a label, list, or category that I wanted to set ahead of time. I didn't want to exclude something I didn't understand.

Sophomore year,
a friend tried to convince me to date people for the experience of seeing what worked for me. But I was not in much condition to give what I would expect of myself into a dating relationship. I didn't feel 'old enough' to date, anyway. And I can't treat people like bicycles.

Junior year,
I thought I could handle it. But, it turns out that handling something yourself and handling it as part of a pair are very different things. I was right, but only about myself, and just barely. maybe.

Now,


I am reminded of a question from one of Tom Weiting's 211 problem sets:
Do we call a thing what it is because it does what it does? Or does it do what it does because it is what it is?

(but then, many things are easier to describe in retrospect,
and partly because they are no longer present to defend themselves)




And, I want things - not just bike or boy things - to have the freedom to be what they are without being confused by the strings and wires of associations and expectations and interpretations that we try to understand them with.

But I also ought to take to wielding these - associations, expectations, interpretations, - conscientiously and responsibly so that I can prepare myself to recognize the things I really want when I see them, and with enough confidence to feel for the right thing, and, recognizing, act on it.



(pictures of bike to appear sometime)

Live Joyfully

A very good friend of mine brought this quote to my attention. I am sharing it.




"Romance is just an operatic form of friendship, a conversation between two people that keeps rolling on. There are all sorts of ways that two people can fall into that, but I don't think you should be looking for a fall: I think you should go about enjoying your life to the fullest, which is what we should all do, live joyfully and cut our losses, dump as much baggage as we can, give up regrets, take long walks, get our hearts pounding, seek out the people who make us unaccountably happy and steer clear of self-pity and—well, you know what I mean. This all applies to me as much as to you. You could find a disastrous marriage tomorrow if you wanted that, but you don't. What you want is to be brave and funny and good, so do we all, and tomorrow, my dear, is a new day."

Garrison Keillor

Everything

I want to know who God is
and not just what the philosophies of those who talk about Him are.

Thoreau says,

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

How do you know?

I don't recall the date on the page of the notebook this was lifted from



How do you know? I asked

It's like when someone writes something on the bottom of your shoe
she replied
You don't know what they wrote, but you can kind of feel it and you know it's there.

Loneliness, Ecstacy, Desire, Greed

I have been wading through old notebooks.
2 years ago to the day, a younger version of myself wrote definitions for a poetry class:


Loneliness

The net
which once held crowded fish
withdraws
its sinews
unimpeded by the water
the mesh slides through
and strand by strand
the drips fall back
with no way to grasp
and no way to see beyond the waves
And the abruptly gutted sea
longs for the shadows of fishes



Ecstacy

flying past the Blue Bridge
THE SUN
is multiplied by
dynamic mosaic ripples
into thousands
of multicolored
blinding diamonds


Desire

The quivering nose
of a dog
at the end
of a leash
pulled taut


Greed

a sickness
for which the desired cure
makes plain the diagnosis
a sickness
which is, in itself,
a side effect
when the cure is ineffective
a sickness
for which there are never
enough spoonfulls of sugar
to keep the medicine
down

try to define - ("Drinking Wine, No. 5")

Zeb Raft's handout
"The Pageant of the Thundering Prince - Poetry at a Medieval Chinese Ceremony"

contained this five-syllable poem


Tao Yanming (365-427), "Drinking Wine, No. 5"



I built my hut in a place where people live,
and yet there's no clatter of carriage or horse.
You ask me how that could be?
With a mind remote, the region too grows distant.
I pick chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge,
see the southern mountain, calm and still.
The mountain air is beautiful at close of day,
birds on the wing coming home together.
In all this there's some principle of truth,
but try to define it and you forget the words.

(trans. Burton Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, p. 135).

Go

(A friend of mine is an avid Go player. He went once to a weekend Go conference, and played against the instructor. My heavily paraphrased illustration of what he told me:)




He placed his stone on the board.

"Why did you go there?" she asked

"It felt like a good move." he replied
he was telling me this story as a response to my decent beginning intuition

"But why," she pressed. "You should have a reason."




I suppose intuition and reason are at their best when tempered with each other.

Turtles and 氣

I am not going to get this story quite right. Forgive my paraphrasing.

In my Tai Chi class, the instructor had been introducing a set of exercises called the "Animal Play" series. The animals of interest that I remember were mostly the tiger, dragon, and turtle (which, now that I come to think of it, represent 3 of the 4 cardinal directions). They have names like "Turtle Looking" and "Turtle Swimming" (the English names, of course).


One day during class, he demonstrated an exercise by which one roots one's feet and plants one's palms on one's hips, then moves the waist through ever-widening circles while trying to keep the head level. At some point, the circles become too great for the rest of the body to compensate for and the person falls off-balance and must take a step.

The first step catches and prevents the fall, the second step follows less urgently in the direction that the body is naturally moving in, and the third step places itself in a shoulder-width, stable position alongside the other foot.

Our faces displayed a mix of amusement, confusion, and skepticism.


He explained,

There was a man, a practitioner of Tai Chi who fell ill for a long time and though his family cared for him, nothing seemed to aid his recovery. While the man rested at home, he noticed that every day a turtle would crawl up near his house and he observed it performing strange actions, falling over, stumbling, and then righting itself. He decided that the turtle was trying to show him what to do and he patterned himself after its actions. After taking up this practice, he recovered his health.

The relation of the body to the flow of qi (氣 or chi) can become disrupted, disordered, and misaligned. The purpose of this exercise is to lose control of the body and allow the qi to realign it to its natural direction regarding the cardinal points.

By the time the third step is taken, the body should be standing comfortably, facing the new direction that the qi naturally aligns with, when release of other controls allows it to do so.

siwei

It has been said: "A sense of rites, righteousness, integrity, and shame constitute the 'four covenants' of the country. If these four covenants do not thrive, then the country will perish." Excellent indeed is the gift of Guan Sheng [Guan Zhong] for words! Rites and righteousness are the premier methods for ruling others; integrity and shame are the premier maxims for anchoring the self. Without integrity, everything is acceptable. Without shame, anything is done. When ordinary men are so disposed, anything can occur, including disasters and riots. But when high officials willfully accept or do anything, the coming of chaos to the world and peril to the empire is a virtual certainty!

From Ouyang Xiu's preface to the biography of Feng Dao (882-954) in The Historical Records of the Five Dynasties, quoted in "Chaste & Filial Women in Chinese Historical Writings of the 11th Century" by Richard Davis (Journal for the American Oriental Society, April/June 2001).

BELIEVING IN THE ABSURD

(the end of this poem is my favorite part)

Harold Norse

writing a poem
& feeling absurd
about this useless activity
I went to the window
& saw a scraggy nut
beret mothy beard
groucho moustache
grinning
muttering
to himself
staring
at greeting cards
in the window
of the imprimerie
gît-le-coeur
suddenly
in a swift
handwriting on the wall
laughing secretly
& shaking his old head
(lonely weirdo
in priestly garb
ratty & black) he
wrote
& I had to see
& ran downstairs
& read

WE ARE SEARCHING
FOR RATIONAL REASONS
FOR BELIEVING
IN THE ABSURD

Knowledge and Fish

I saw a quote somewhere recently... I think it was at the Mirador shop where I was looking for henna. One of those quote magnets so that you too can have profound thoughts on your refrigerator for only $1.25 or whatever.

Knowledge keeps as well as fish

And it's true.
The periodic cycles by which we perceive our process of living shift around the different facets of experience. We constantly change approaches, each time sure that the next is better, only to end up where we've been before.

A friend of mine was looking at the filled bookshelves he'd moved into his new room, musing that he'd read most of all of those books, and yet did not consider himself nearly as smart as the contents of all of those books.

If I remembered half the things I've discovered and scribbled to myself on scraps of paper (or even on this blog) in fear of forgetting....
It's so hard to hold them all at once.

This is the beginning of a new project. Every few months or so, I ought to gather up the things which I really can't afford to forget. The things which will be true no matter which perceptive cycle I've chosen at the time.

Here are just a few that I want to remember right now:

Crazy Path + Head up
With this in mind
I have decided
that the best path to take
is the crazy one
the one that you might slip or fall in, but invites a try.

But only if you keep your head up
and keep the sun in mind
otherwise, for all you'll learn, you might as well have taken the easy way home.


Tango

It seems that this requires
sharing weight
imposing oneself
taking another's space (ask first)
and trusting that such actions will be received and returned.


Awareness
Do not be passively boiled

The Wind
The wind knows where it's from and where it's going to. The leaves have to wait to find out.

Don't Limit Yourself, and don't adhere too closely to prior learning or decisions as to obstruct further understanding.

Fear stymies creativity


and if Devdas asks you to leave with him,
go.

Amphibious

A frog
ought to pay close attention to the temperature of the water he's in.
ought to extrapolate from trends
ought to have a good memory and an eye for detail

and a prepared decision of when to use his ability to leave the water.

Awake,

Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.
-Invisible Man, Ralph Ellis

No more red balloons,
no more incubation,
I'm awake.


No more rolling about like a cannonball on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's ship.
I've done enough damage by passivity.
No more eating truth off of the ground like a stingray.
I've spent enough time in the mud.
Blindness and bottomfeeding can inhibit the ability to look up.

I find myself feeling suddenly capable,
having a sense of direction and a measure of endurance.
With this knowledge, I have some responsibilities to take.
I've got a person to be.

Someone has pulled back a curtain on a big picture that I've been oblivious to.
Keep to the small, see the big picture, don't drop the oil in the spoon.

I have let myself be taken captive for too long by tasks in dreams that, after 30 seconds of consciousness, are clearly not real.
I think I am at last awake.


Every day, I will go to bed happy because I have worked and lived

Have you noticed that the air often seems clearer after a storm?

The cure for passion is eternity

up that Hill

We biked back home after dinner.
I was the taillight, he was the headlight.
But we'd gotten reversed coming around a corner and I was the one who knew how to get back home.

(conversation, my paraphrase)

That was a good ride

Yeah, I liked it

I didn't know if I was going to make it up that hill

Oh, sorry (I led the venture up the hill)

No, no, that's what makes it a good ride - when you don't know if you're going to make it


I think he's right,
even though it never feels like that at the time.

"Lessons in the Kitchen are Life Lessons,"

he said during his Classic Deserts American Club Demonstration Kitchen class.

Speaking partly of Baked Bananas Foster, Chocolate Gooey Cake, and Rosemary-Honey Créme Brûlée and partly of life in general, he phrased it slightly better than I'd worked out in my own head:

"If you are so afraid to make mistakes, you'll never do what it takes to risk innovative things and you'll stymie creativity."
-Richard Palm
Pastry Chef

yes.

Some things are more difficult to experiment with than Créme Brûlée, but still.
yes.

Beetle

I don't remember exactly when I found this. It was months ago.
But, I thought this was a very interesting beetle.

High School Plays

In high school,
my involvements with plays were
1) painting the set
2) making the shirt art
3) playing person #4

shirt art:

Indoor Birdhouses

A continuation from "Unfinished Business":

I did a lot of set painting/design/management for plays in high school, often with very little time before the performance. I like making large walls look like something else and if someone gives me a wall, a general idea, and some paint, I can really take off from there.

I only get chances to work on this mural here and there when I go home on breaks.
There are still things to add, but ... it's getting there. My grandma keeps remarking how 'precious' the hummingbird is.

..If I could do this for a living...
well. I'd still want to do other stuff too. But, this wouldn't be bad at all.