13 August 10
The Small Red Triangle
It came upon me while I wasn’t looking, this thing. Someone I know knows someone who does therapy and by the way she also teaches qigong. What I knew about qigong was that it’s a great Scrabble word and is somehow related to, but not the same as, tai chi, which I’d seen someone’s Shanghaiese mother doing outside Dryden House in Cambridge. It looked strange and flowing and mesmerizing and sure, I’ll go.
Breathing. The medical set. Hitting (it our case it’s a lot more like tapping). Sequences I still haven’t memorized but that become familiar as C. describes the pathways, the flow. The end of our session often — always? — consists of sitting, of meditation. We are an unruly lot of women who’d mostly prefer to be moving about rather than facing whatever it is that sitting still for five minutes will reveal; C. knows this and she just works it in at the end, when we’re all pliable, when there’s no ducking out.
Picture a small red triangle, smaller than a pea, she says. Draw a line from your cranium through your center to three fingers below your navel. The triangle sits there. Red and luminous. Focus on the triangle. (She knows unruly minds will race and she is trying to keep us here, rather than thinking about what we will have for dinner or the laundry or the paintings we want to paint or the words we want to write. Think about the triangle. Here. Be present.)
The dreaded five minutes come and go and still we sit, moving the energy up into our hearts and back into the circle where it is offered back out to the suffering world…
11 July 10
Gané,
Ganaste, ganó, ganamos, ganasteis, ganaron.
(I’m still in shock but we are back from Oregon where we saw Rana Rachel and Dan get married in the most gorgeous spot, had a lovely Thai lunch with Dale prior to a focused expedition to Powells, met the Knitting Rabbi as Numenius mentioned, and watched two football matches. One of which was very, very key. It involved my wearing a red shirt and I’m afraid I made a bit of a spectacle of myself in a bar at the Portland airport, but I may well get over it.)
7 July 10
Superstition
Spain face Germany in a few hours. Like Maradona and his rosary beads, elaborate wardrobe shifts, and no doubt favorite drawers, I am filled with the irrational urge to don a red shirt, but wonder whether that will jinx the team.
Many athletes have elaborate superstitious rituals some of which border, like Maradona’s, on the theatrically absurd. Fans do as well. I’m trying to resist, trying to talk myself out of it. But what I’ve noticed for sure is that my syntax has become more British in the fast three weeks. It’s something to do with the language of football and I don’t think it’s a superstition, it’s more elemental.
So do I believe Paul the Octopus in his prognostications? do I believe they are always flawed when he is pitching Spain against Germany? Sigh. To any non-soccer types reading the blog, at least it will all be over soon, one way or the other.
23 May 10
Maker Faire
This year we split up to cover the areas we wanted to see independently. Numenius spent time at a couple of panel discussions — including open source hardware — and looking at electronics. I spent time with the fiber folks and paper people. We both liked the robotic gamelan. I wanted to buy a geeky sketching canvas kilt you could ride a bike with. I learned how to knit a klein bottle (3 dimensions only, not 4). We bought this amazing stuff called Sugru (a silicone-based substance you can use to repair or enhance things, like ergonomically sculpting handles — it dries overnight with exposure to air).
A long day. Now we find a bee swarm in one of the guava bushes, which are flowering copiously…
19 May 10
A Visit to Sacramento
Racing off to the station this morning on my bike, I got on the train to Sacramento to represent the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at State Scientist Day, an event where 3,000 children come to the State Capitol to see scientific initiatives by California.
Water, pollution, lead, of course oil, endangered species, geology — I wasn’t able to visit all the booths but it was a good sampling and there was lots of enthusiasm.
Interacting with kids doesn’t come easily to me (there’s a reason I never had any) but this was an oft-repeated schtick, what happens to animals that get caught in oil, what we can do to help… the parents and teachers engaged more closely in the conversation because, I’m assuming, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is present on their minds. It’s on ours, too: my colleague Mike’s been there for three weeks, trying to set up the marine mammal and turtle response (well cataloged on the owcn blog ).
People: people who were short, people who were dressed up as bears (Smokey and Warden Grizzly were two I spotted), and this one guy dressed in 500 plastic bags.
We had a smattering of rain and it was, at length, over. I sketched. I took the train back to Davis, biked back to the office into a headwind with the miraculously recovered OWCN banner on my back. (It’s heavier than you’d think.)
7 May 10
Into The Merry Month of May
The Whole Earth Festival is this weekend on the Quad on campus. This is the 41st year it’s been run, and we’ve attended a good many of them in the 11 years we’ve been in Davis. By now the Whole Earth aesthetic is quite ingrained in us, and we were able to satisfy the annual need for it with a brief session this evening. (I may have to return on Sunday for the annual chocolate-covered banana however).
May has turned into quite a hectic month for us. The Whole Earth Festival starts off the events of the month. Tomorrow we are headed to Berkeley to meet friends and then in the evening we are going to West Sacramento to catch a River Cats game. A week from tomorrow is the Davis Double Century for which we are scheduled to provide radio support. The following weekend is the Maker Faire in San Mateo; we will be going down on the Saturday, and expect to be overwhelmed as we were last year.
No wonder I need a vacation. Which I am taking this upcoming week! Time to catch up on projects before I get to the Maker Faire…
1 April 10
The Rescued Shoe
When I was visiting my sister’s 1902 house in Maine last week, they showed me a child’s shoe that had been found in a wall they were taking down between the kitchen and the living room. I love these kinds of hidden treasures and wonder how it got there. I drew the shoe right before my nephew’s land shark hamster, Obi-wan Kenobi, bit me. The shoe, not the hamster, is my contribution to Illustration Friday’s theme, Rescue. Maybe I should have been rescued from the hamster.
27 March 10
Feathers of Hope Turns Seven
Hard to believe, but seven years ago Numenius posted his first entry here.
A lot has happened since. We don’t post as religiously often as we used to, and I don’t like the way my online time has become so fractured. (Numenius was better at making sure he has kept well away from the likes of Facebook.) Bird by Bird has become a further delicious distraction. (I have a common eider to post when I get near a scanner.)
To those of you who still follow our rambles on here, thank you. As our have interests shifted, so has the blog. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
25 January 10
The Year 1282 in Computer Time
“Can I borrow Hermione?”[the ibook]
“Sure.”
…
“Are you done?”
“Not yet. Do you want to borrow this”
[A look of horror at the black thing running Ubuntu]
…
“Okay. Why doesn’t it work?”
“The concept of a three-button mouse is anathema to mac users, I know.”
“Why is it so slow?”
“This is why we need broadband.”
“Microsoft, begone.”
“Apple, begone.”
Grrr.
25 December 09
Long Walk into Town
We walked into Davis this afternoon, looking for somewhere to have lunch. We’d been to Kathmandu Kitchen yesterday and they said they’d be open today. In the event, it was the only place we found open. Indian two days in a row: not a problem for me.
On the way home we stopped at Lake Spafford so I could draw a common merganser.
Quaere: How many photographs of mallards — of the millions and millions that have doubtless been taken — were taken by default, because no other ducks would come close? Numenius thinks one day when I have access to divine wisdom I’ll know the answer to things like this.