Monthly Archives: January 2014

Great Wheel, Great Work, MOOCS, Weather +Climate, Writing

And Things Were New

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                  Seed Catalog Moon

So much new.  There’s always a lot of energy at first, Loki’s Children and the Great Wheel, a new workout regimen, getting back on the low carb horse, Climate Change MOOC, then there’s the slog, the keeping at it when the slump hits, a plateau and another push, then more.  Right now I’m mostly in the energy phase, lots of excitement and eagerness.

There will come a time though when the effort seems too much, when the energy has gone from positive to negative, becomes a drain, exhausting.  That’s when past experience helps.

Learning new tools for the Great Wheel.  Diving into the difficulty of reading graphs, percentages, equations, maps, pushing my body in a different way.  Listening to the ideas, the splinters of ideas, the ways forward as research and writing open up a new world.

In it now and glad of it.

GeekWorld, Great Work, Politics, Tea

This and That

Leave a comment

Winter                                                              Seed Catalog Moon

Started another MOOC, see more on Great Wheel.  It’s gonna be work.  Note, Great Wheel is still undergoing development.  It won’t roll out officially until February 1st, but there are several posts up already.

Found some white tea I liked that is unavailable on the market.  So, I wrote the guy, who grows in his tea in Kurtistown, HI.  On Oahu.  He wrote back and offered to sell it to me wholesale.  Good deal.  Still expensive but it’s the best white tea I’ve had so far.  A low bar I’ll admit.

(not Maui Wowee.  Bob Jacobson’s white tea.)

The NYT has redesigned its webpage and I like the new look.  Cleaner.  But.  The types pretty small for these presbyopic eyes.

I see there that the Republicans plan to claim poverty as an issue, to make them look more compassionate and inclusive.  Wonder if they know they actually have to reduce it?

Family, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Log Entry

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                       Seed Catalog Moon

Warmer today.  We reached 2.  Not so cold tonight, only -5 right now.

More Latin.  Jupiter is drowning the world.

More Loki’s Children.  I’ve finished the first scene.  A big revelation is set up.

A solid workout.  Time with Kate.  Another good day.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Weather +Climate, Writing

The Inner Journey

Leave a comment

Winter                                                            Seed Catalog Moon

At Michaelmas the soul turns inward, following the darker path occasioned by the rising length of the night and the dwindling of the day.  By Samhain that turn is well underway and the work of the study gains dominance as the outdoor work diminishes like the sunlight.  At the Winter Solstice the deep center of the interior work has been reached. The work of the interior fully alive.

Now in the New Year that darkness nourishes writing, translating, creation of new projects.  And, too, a portion of the soul begins to move outward, gathering in the seed catalogs, plotting the garden yet to be.

These two movements, inward and outward, reinforce or provoke our natural tendencies. Those of us on the introverted side welcome the coming of the dark, the movement down the corridors leading away from the light.  The extroverts gladly follow the sun up those same corridors, headed toward the day.

The turning of the Great Wheel does not allow us to become too comfortable in either spot, reminding us throughout the year that both the interior and the exterior are important; that both have their nuances and richness.

Some of us will continue to wander those labyrinths within even as the Summer Solstice dawns, while others even now see the rays of sun bouncing off the labyrinth’s walls.

(hades and persephone)

General
Aside Leave a comment

Winter                                                         Seed Catalog Moon

Left the stove on all night by mistake.  It was 91 here in the study while -15 outside this morning.  Over 100 degrees difference.  Like a mini-trip to the Southwest without leaving home.

 

Great Wheel, Great Work, Weather +Climate, Writing

In the Zone

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                Seed Catalog Moon

We skated through the day never getting warmer than -14 by my weather station.  That’s a chilly day by any standard.

Got some news on Missing.  It will be back in a bit.  Bob said it had a lot of capitalization and formatting errors.  Oops.  Plus a lot of pesky 1st person remainders from an early experiment in first person story telling.  Sorta makes me chagrined, but, hey, that’s why I hired the guy in the first place.  Better him finding them than an agent reading my manuscript cold.

Also got a ways into Loki’s Children today.  I have a pretty clear idea about the way forward with it and I’m excited.  Decided to just get at it, write away so to speak.  It was fun to get in that space.  Lost track of time.

So, with the work on Great Wheel and Loki’s Children, I’ve been in a creative space most of this very cold, good to be inside, day.  Feels good.

Then a good workout.  Plus news that my PSA was normal.  All in all, a good day.

Great Wheel, Great Work, Weather +Climate

A New Site Begins

Leave a comment

Winter                                                             Seed Catalog Moon

If you want to take a peak, www.ancientrailsgreatwheel.com is live.  I’m still pondering the look, the content and I don’t plan to get at it methodically until late January, so it’s very early days.

It’s easy to get obsessed with a project like this and do nothing else for a good while, but I want to let this percolate before I decide on a look and while I get the idea of content refined.  I’m very open to input right now about either look or content.  What’s up right now will change as the year goes on, as it does here on Ancientrails.

In other news it’s -14 now at almost 3:00 o’clock.  We’ve probably hit our high for the day.

Time feels oddly, well, frozen.  As if life goes on here, but has come to a stop outside.  That may not be too far from the truth.

Cinema and Television, Politics, World History

Hope

Leave a comment

Winter                                                            Seed Catalog Moon

Saw a Masterpiece theatre movie last night: Endgame.  The beginning of the end of apartheid.  Michael Young, head of communications for Consolidated Goldfields, was the unlikely and successful convenor of talks between the African National Congress and the South African elite.  You could read a bit about him here.  His role was crucial and yet he managed, as one of the delegates to the talks said, “To keep himself invisible.”

This was a movie with little overt action, a modest movie for the most part, but it moved me.  There is something deep in my soul that gets touched when people struggle in an authentic way for justice.  It is not easy.  It has many traps.  But the results are so powerful.

The main characters, the ANC representative in the talks, Thabo Mbeki, (top) and an Afrikaner Professor of Philosophy, Willie Esterhuyser, (bottom) were played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and William Hurt.  Their understated acting made the change they wrought in their country, and in themselves, more poignant.  Mbeki replaced Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa and Esterhuyser became one of his principal advisers.

A squib at the end of the movie noted that a similar process used in these talks had been pushed forward in Irish-British talks about the troubles and in the instance of Hammas and Israel.

Dogs

English Dog Feeds Self

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                         Seed Catalog Moon

This is Freddy.  He lives in northern England with a friend of my sister.  He’s a smart boy. And a pleased one.

english dog opens own food

Weather +Climate

Yes, Virginia. There Is A North Pole and The Next Few Days Will Prove It.

1 Comment

Winter                                                                 Seed Catalog Moon

OK.  It’s gonna be cold.  I get it.  The weather folks and the news folks, even me, have been breathlessly anticipating this onrushing arctic air.  We do live here.  This is a state which borders Canada and has no mountains to break the winds from the north pole.  It’s gonna be cold.

Not always, not with global warming, but at times it is going to get chilly.  This is one of those times.  It feels oversold to me, too much huffing and puffing.  Yes, it’s important that every one know the life threatening nature of the weather, I agree with that.

But. Hey, we’re all mammals here, right?  Which means warm-blooded.  And we’re essentially hairless mammals.  Right?  So. When it’s really cold, don’t go outside naked. We know cold for too long, with too little clothing is bad for us.  Our bodies let us know. Pay attention to your body.