More Shapes

As I walked by my office and glanced at the computer monitor in passing, the picture visible, at a fuzzy distance, was the vaulted ceiling from my last post in this blog. The shape that came immediately to mind was a bees nest.

Shapes and Energy

Ellis Peters, in one of her Cadfael mysteries, describes in words what many of us feel but don't know how to express. In my experience, the arched shape of a church, or natural arches, such as I'd see in the trees tend to direct the energy upwards. She writes, "... leave the whole listening vault ready to receive the appeal in its folded hands and channel it aloft."

Chess Moves and Pantries

It occurred to me that muscling that heavy pantry upstairs was a bit like playing chess. I had to think through most of the moves ahead so that each part of the process would bring success to the next. I played chess as a kid and now, just like a kid, I sometimes give up thinking too many moves ahead and leave a bit of the game up to luck.

So, there I was, stuck half way up the stairs, realizing that I might have to lose most of the ground I'd made. I hadn't taken the carpet at the top into consideration. But I was lucky. I rested where I was and gave it a bit of thought and tried an old move in a new way. Sure enough, a bit of luck brought success.

Machines de l'Ile

This elephant is one of many wonderful creatures, half steel, half wood, that are a part of the "Machines de l'Ile," an artistic project situated in the former warehouses of the Nantes shipyard, in Nantes France. I find something very wonderful about it. Perhaps one day ...

link

Busy Mind

Yesterday I woke up with a busy, critical mind. But through the day, after being involved in a lot of physical exertion, all that mental activity simmered down.

Napping is good for us - Yay!

I have been a napper for 25 or 30 years or more - when I can. I find it a very civilized practice to close my eyes for a few minutes or more each day - long enough to feel revitalized but short enough not to trash my day. Turns out it's good for us after all. The BBC reports about a study done at Berkeley in the US that confirms my personal experience. They say, "A nap during the day improves the brain's ability to absorb new information." Yay.

BBC report

Fred

I read a passage in a book yesterday about how pain that doesn't seem to have a solution can often be seen as a dragon that one is fighting. As soon as I read this, I remembered that my own symbol of the angelic presence that accompanies me is a dragon - a large, don't-mess-with-me dragon named Frederick. I haven't thought about Fred for a while. He's not an enemy to be fought, but an ally who watches my back. I wonder if the pain that I have been unable to resolve could be seen like I see Fred - an ally - a good thing? I wonder if I can feel the pain with the same warmth that I feel when I sense Fred at my back? I've never felt comfortable with the "enemy" mind-set when it comes to health. In my experience, the times when we move into love and acceptance instead of aversion and avoidance are the times we are most likely to find the release we'd hoped for. So, here's to Fred.

Circles and Perception

In an article I wrote for a newsletter a year or two ago, I mentioned the concentric circles I often see in the grass when my sight is easy and relaxed. I read an article the other day that may go some way to explaining the phenomenon. In her article, Uncoiling the spiral: Maths and hallucinations, Marianne Freiberger explains the strange convergence of mathematics, hallucinations and neurocognitive science. It even includes material about how Alan Turing, the great computer pioneer, hypothesized about the role of mathematics in the stripes on zebras. I find it all fascinating.

link to article

Celebrating Greatness

What if we didn't have nationalities and could just celebrate the amazing stuff we see at the Olympics? What it is wasn't about beating another country but celebrating greatness? I just saw Simon Ammann, a Swiss ski jumper do something incredible and I was so happy for him. I don't even know if anyone from my country is completing. I just loved what he did.

Ink Calendar

This ink calendar was designed by Spaniard Oscar Diaz. It uses the capillary action of ink spreading across paper to display the date.

link via dezeen

Human Tetris

The Original Human TETRIS Performance by Guillaume Reymond

YouTube Link

Design Links

Interesting design links:

inspire me now
de zeen - design magazine
dustbowl
Likecool

Egg Art

Franc Grom creates these amazing egg art pieces that are inspired by traditional Slovenian designs. 

link from inspire me now

Escher-esque

I've always loved optical illusions.

link via neatorama

Ornate Doorbell Design

I have always liked Art Nouveau design. These ornate doorbell designs were made by Rene Binet, whose work was displayed at the Paris World's Fair in 1900. They seem familiar somehow. Maybe because they remind me of the illuminated letters that started the chapters of books when I was a kid.

When electric doorbells were new via BoingBoing

Chocolate and Competition and Joy

Pema Chodron told a story about how she and her brother used to be very competitive when they were kids. When they each got a chocolate bar, they would compete to see who could make the chocolate bar last the longest. She said that trying to prolong the joy of something isn't what brings us happiness. It might have been better for them to compete to see who enjoyed each bite the most.

Serenity

In the "God grant me serenity" prayer, we make the decision to do what we can to change things and then give the rest up to God. Many of us get stuck in "I still think I can do something about this" thinking and try too hard to make something work that isn't working - for a lot of reasons, I guess: fear of loss, fear of helplessness, fear of hopelessness, that sort of thing. Sometimes we have to be willing to do the whole loss/helpless/hopeless thing in order to even see what we have been unready to give up. I think serenity may be about humility and faith and acceptance.

Setting Boundaries

"Let me make it clear to you..."
"What gives you the right to..."

Give, but not to the point where I'd regret it later.
Help, but not if it diminishes my well-being.

Set boundaries to the individual's capacity, which can be flexible.

1) correct the person
2) tell him/her how I wish to be treated or state what I will or will not do.
3) have real consequences that I would be willing to live with if these boundaries are not honoured.

Winter Blahs

I don't like winter much. I don't do cold well. In the summer I can always cool down. In the winter I can not always warm up. Like everyone else, I can adjust to the fact that after the snows come, everything takes more time and everything takes more space. What I haven't been able to do is adapt to the cold.

I keep trying. I keep thinking that if I just think the right way or do the right activities I'll see winter with the same accepting enthusiasm as I did when I was a kid. Then I criticize myself because that's not how I feel.

But I've changed my mind. Maybe one day I'll love winter. Maybe one day I'll adapt to the cold. But right now, I feel I'm entitled to dislike it. I don't have to like winter. I just have to get through it.

Beginner's Mind and Dreams of Bellies

In a dream the other night, I saw my myself as a little kid. In the dream, I looked down at my child's belly and wondered at the solidness, smoothness and feel of it. Even as I dreamed I was aware that I was not concerned about size or shape. It was simple perception without any opinion, evaluation or thought. In Zen, this is called "Beginner's mind." How refreshing.

Things that Work

My husband rigged a remote control on-off switch to the extension cord I use to plug the block heater in on my Jeep. I got an extension cord with a light so I could see if the extension cord was live or not.

Theoretically, the system should work. But it doesn't. In the daylight it's hard to see the light in the extension cord. Sometimes the remote works as promised. Sometimes you have to hold it at just the right angle from just right right corner of the window, then, well, maybe. I usually have to go out to the car to see if the light is on, and click the remote from there to get it to work properly.

My first computer was a PC running DOS 5.0. It was state of the art at the time. I had no idea about anything about computers. But I knew they would be a part of my future, so I was willing to learn. The book that came with the computer was over 300 pages long and nowhere in it was there any explanation about how to get started or what anything meant. Nowhere. It took me 3 days to figure out how to read the book. And I'm smart. If I hadn't seen a future for this computer thing and if I hadn't been enthralled by the idea of what could be possible as a result, I wouldn't have even tried.

But sometimes I just need things that work.

I don't use a digital calendar for my day to day stuff, because when I am at the dentist's, making my next appointment, I don't want to spend 3 geeky minutes inputting the information into a device that I will have to coordinate with the calendar at home, when it'll take me 10 seconds to write it with a pencil in my daybook. For any woman with a memory of trying to get a whining child home, and a schedule ahead that includes 7 more hours of work before she can go to bed, that 2 minutes and 50 seconds could be the difference between mild irritation and a nervous breakdown.

There are ways to sync digital calendars right now. Ways that work quickly and seamlessly. But they require costly equipment that runs on electricity, monthly internet fees over and above what I can get at home, and annual fees to make the sync easy. If it was easier and I could make more use of the equipment, the fees would be worth it. But not yet. A pencil lasts for ages and my little daybook doesn't need batteries.

We are getting so used to complexity and expense that we sometimes forget that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, not harder, supposed to be less expensive, not more.

So it's a pleasure to see that some new technology just works. I take the card out of my digital camera and shove it into the slot on the side of my iMac and automatically a program asks me if I want to put all those pictures on the computer. Yes. Thank you for working. Then when it's done, a quarter of a second later, I pull out the card and shove it back in the camera. Then I click, and voilà, my pictures!

I'm still geeky enough to love scripting macros to automate things and geeky enough to drool over new technology. Heck, when handheld electronic calculators first came out, I saved my money and ponied up almost $100 bucks to get one of the first models out by Texas Instruments.

I love the idea of a remote control that will turn on the block heater in my car if it means I don't have to run out there in sub-zero weather to do it by hand. But I'm not going to wait until Tom figures out why it doesn't work right. Today, if I need the block heater on, I need it on. I'll go out and plug it in manually, and be thankful for the technology that made cars, block heaters and electricity possible. They are things that work.

Taking Technology for Granted

For those of us who saw the Internet coming and rejoiced in what it would mean, we tend not to take it for granted. On BoingBoing, I saw a link to a YouTube video from PBS Frontline Digital Nation with Patrick Stewart talking about how it makes his life easier. After watching this video, I followed it with one featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. She talked about how the electricity went off one time for more than a day while her family was out in the wintry countryside and how that day without "juice" affected all their interactions. Perhaps it's my age that makes me relate.

Patrick Stewart video via BoingBoing
Jamie Lee Curtis video

Critical Thinking

My Starry Night Ezine is due to come out in a couple of days. One of the topics I have been working on, possibly for this issue, has a lot to do with how many of our theories - even pet theories - eventually fail and how we run into trouble when we hold them without thinking it through. Critical Thinking is a video that ties into the story I'm working on.

UPDATE: Turns out I have already done a pretty good story about this, so I may write about something else in Starry Night this time.
You can find the earlier story here.

link from VideoSift
watch on YouTube

National Wildlife Photo Contest

When I saw the winning photo, I thought it looked more like a Robert Bateman painting than a photo. Follow the link to see all the winning photos. They're beautiful and amazing.

link to National Wildlife Photo Contest
image (part of): Eagles at Brackendale by Robert Bateman

Hummingbirds

I don't see this sort of thing until after May. What a treat to see a hummer nesting in real time on this "nest-cam".

link