Friday Unrelated Information

1. As a work field trip, the creative team went to The Leonardo museum yesterday afternoon. Did you know they have a huge collection of photos from the civil rights era? It was really moving to read about something that changed so monumentally less than 50 years ago.

2. Another thing that moved me (to tears) yesterday was this video, the title of which sums it up: "Blind Dog Rescued from Trash, Regains Sight."



You may also be moved to donate to the rescue organization.

Trying Times

I have felt off for the last few weeks, and I can't tell if it's because of the unsettled weather, having less time to myself, professional issues, or just not going to enough yoga classes with my awesome teacher.

For times like this, there are hippie platitudes--I mean, quotes from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature.

Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation.

Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing.

And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

(From here, via said awesome yoga teacher. Yes, I visit that site nearly every day.)

Grammar Wednesday #4

(Today's tip was a request from a friend, which made me feel absurdly gratified. Grammar matters to more than just me!)

Probably because of their visual similarity to "chose" and "choose," people tend to confuse "lose" and "loose" as different tenses of the same word (the way "chose" is the past tense of "choose").

My friends, they are NOT the same word. They are not related in any way. Lose is, of course, "to cease to have" something--a verb; something that is loose (an adjective) "is not firmly fixed in place."

So how do you keep it straight? You can think of the adjective/verb difference, or you can use this tip: If you mean "to cease to have something," use lose with one O. You can remember it by thinking that it has ceased to have the second O.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Almost

So yet again, a leopard-print knit dress has not turned out the way I pictured it. But on the bright side, I think I can fix it.

Here it is with the skirt attached. See how the top part blouses out above the waistband and the skirt a little?

Yeah, that effect is being accomplished with pins right now.

Since my fabric is a knit, I didn't take into consideration the fact that a knit waistband would stretch. Without pins, the waistband slides down and pulls the top down with it, giving the whole thing a much straighter, drop-waisted effect:

But as I said, I think I have a fix for this: I'll add some elastic in a channel behind the waistband to keep things where they should be...just not this week. You can only struggle so much with something, right?

"The wind. The wind."

It's a dramatically stormy Monday morning here (but at least it's rain, not snow) and it made me think of parts of a Neruda poem:

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

(The whole thing is worth a read, because it's Neruda, obviously, and because of that famous last line.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I took the day off today. So far I have slept in and received a gift of cognac-fig ice cream made from goat milk (thanks, Amber!). If these things have happened before 10:00, what greatness will the rest of the day hold?

2. Actually, I think the "greatness" will be working on house projects and professional projects and maybe even sewing. I will think of this Isak Dineson quote:
When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.

Space News

Another new supernova has been found as of March 16. This one in barred spiral galaxy M95, which is roughly the size of our own Milky Way galaxy and about 37 million light years away. Supernova SN 2012aw is the really bright point at the end of the spiral arm that goes down and to the right--see it?
Oh, space. You provide such good perspective.

(Picture from APOD; you can read more about the supernova on Bad Astronomy.)

Happy Birthday, Johann Sebastian

It's Bach's birthday today, in 1685. Here's a happy little piece from the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin: the Prelude from the E Major Partita.



I love the ending, starting about 2:40.

The E Major Partita has always sounded like spring to me, which is appropriate since yesterday was the equinox.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Half A Roar

Well, all my hopes for more time to work on this leopard knit kind of got blown out of the water last week and into the weekend, but I did manage to make some progress before then:

The pattern I'm using is for a woven, not a knit, but I the only modification I'm making for the knit is I'm leaving off the side zipper, as a knit should stretch enough to pull it over my head. I'm happy to report "so far, so good" on the fit.

Now it just needs the skirt. Surely I can find time to attach two rectangles to this top, right?*

(*This is where you say, "I don't know. And don't call me Shirley!")

Reassurance From The Beatles

Oh yes, I'm still getting my hippie on with late Beatles tunes. I never cared much for this one until I listened to the lyrics (past the "love, love, love" part); now, I like hearing that there's "Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time" and there's "Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be."



Bonus Ringo at the end. Mr. Conductor!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Adding cat heads to something makes it funny. (It's a law, I'm sure of it.) That's why Cat Scientists of the 1960s is so great:

There's even a Cat Carl Sagan!!


2. I don't really have anything else this week. But come on--there are cat heads AND Carl Sagan. I think that's enough, don't you?

Hippie Quote Thursday

“Quietly go to work on your own self-awareness. If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.”

- Lao Tzu

3.14

Happy Pi Day and happy birthday to Albert Einstein. (How perfect is that?)

Tuesday Poem

I've been able to get some sewing in this week but not very much, so I don't have anything to show today. Instead, how about this poem? It's a good one for spring, for being sad, for navigating tricky times.

Horses At Midnight Without A Moon

by Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Happy Birthday, Ti-Jean

It's Jack Kerouac's birthday today, in 1922 (his parents were French Canadian, so "Ti Jean" was the family nickname for him).

I blame Kerouac (and Salinger) for nurturing my hippie tendencies--open any page of The Dharma Bums at an impressionable age, read about hitchhiking and backpacking and mountain climbing, and then throw in something like this? No surprise there.

There were now early spring mornings with the happy dogs, me forgetting the Path of Buddhism and just being glad; looking around at new little birds not yet summer fat; the dogs yawning and almost swallowing my Dharma; the grass waving, hens chuckling. Spring nights, practicing Dhyana under the cloudy moon, I'd see the truth: "Here, this, is It. The world as it is, is Heaven, I'm looking for a Heaven outside what there is, it's only this poor pitiful world that's Heaven."

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I'm going to see this little guy tonight:
Yes, he's sitting in a pot, and he looks so unsure about it, he needs a hug from his auntie.

2. How about a little MST3K for Friday? I feel like Gypsy all the time when I deal with people:

No Thaw

The 2-4 inches of snow we got Monday night disappeared by Wednesday. It made me think of the part in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe where spring comes to Narnia in about four hours:

And now the snow was really melting in earnest and patches of green grass were beginning to appear in every direction...Every moment the patches of green grew bigger and the patches of snow grew smaller. Every moment more and more of the trees shook off their robes of snow. [...]

"This is no thaw," said the Dwarf [to the White Witch], suddenly stopping. "This is spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan's doing."

Birthdays

It's the sixth "birthday" of this blog today, which took me by surprise. (I have big plans in the works to give the blog a facelift and get a new portfolio site up, and I wanted to have it done by the blog birthday. Obviously, I thought it was later in the month.) But 1,565 posts, 3 jobs, several relationships, and one cat later, here we are.

It's also the birthday of my oldest friend, who I think has been reading for all six years and has helped with the technical end of things for the same amount of time. Happy birthday, Amber!

Tuesday Project Roundup: Cat Lady Goals

I cut out the next sewing project Sunday and it's another attempt at a leopard-print dress in knit fabric. You may recall I tried the same thing last spring, but I am undaunted: I will look like Toby in a wrinkle free, easy-to-wear style!


I'm not working so late these days and the time changes on Sunday, so I'm feeling cautiously hopeful I may get this one done in under two months.

"Morning Poem"

Oh Mary Oliver, you are a hippie poet extraordinaire. I love how you put this: "there is still/ somewhere deep within you/ a beast shouting that the earth/ is exactly what it wanted".

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead--
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging--

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted--

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. If being creative makes me distrustful, as yesterday's science news said, what can I blame on this study of personality changes and the single-celled parasite--found in cat poop!--that causes toxoplasmosis? "How Your Cat is Making You Crazy"

2. My nephew has discovered the piano. If you listen carefully to the video my brother posted, you can hear Skyler tell the piano "hi" before he plays it.

3. This llama has something to tell you:


More delightful drawings here.

Come To The Dark Side

As you know, I'm working on trusting the universe in my personal life, and I've been thinking about being creative in the context of my work. Now I have an article that unites the two: "The Dark Side of Creativity," which presents research that shows us being creative apparently isn't all right brain and Steve Jobs quotes--and maybe it's the reason I have a hard time taking good things at face value:

Consider this: being distrustful means being more likely to distrust surface appearances and have a desire to work out what is really going on. In other words distrust breeds a sort of 'what-if' mindset: exactly the sort of mindset associated with creativity.

Distrust may also breed flexibility in thinking. Instead of taking things at face value, people with suspicious minds try to see things from different angles. That's yet another marker of creativity.

I like it. I'm not neurotic; I'm creative.