22 78% 33% 0mph SSW bar29.74 windchill21 Winter
Waxing Crescent of the Winter Moon
(Moon names this year from American Colonists)
Wide awake at 5AM this morning. Oh, man. I really love that.
Why? Three things rolling around. First, I want to improve my use of the inquiry method, so I’m focusing on the questions I’ve created for the Asia tours today. At 5AM my inquiring mind wanted to know: what are they? Oh, brother. Then, as these things go, another, bigger task, more fun, but more work trundled itself forward: What ever happened to the influence of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in modern and contemporary art? In March I have to present a discussion on this topic to the Docent Book Club. What will I say, my mind wondered? As if I could think clearly enough at 5AM to solve this riddle. As I pushed it down to later in the day, when I can read and take notes, the third item leaped up to be noticed: Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Transcendent Unitarian. This is also a for March project, capsulizing transcendentalism, Emerson’s role relative to it and his influence on early Unitarianism.
You might reasonably wonder why these other two projects were on my mind (in my mind? on top of my mind?) on January 11th, 2008. On February 6th, I leave for a retreat with my fellow Woolly Mammoths at the Dwelling in the Woods in northern Minnesota. I leave from there for Hawai’i where I will stay until February 29th. In my mental world that means I have a choice between finishing the Art and the Emerson projects before I leave for Hawai’i or trying to finish them as I return.
My mind keeps a project manager running at all times. Most of the time it works in the background, following my work, assigning priorities and evaluating progress. Some times it moves into the foreground, like at 5AM on January 11th.
OK. OK. I sleepily ran through the objects: Jade Mountain, Shiva Nataraja, Gandhara Buddha, Mandala, Ceremonial Gate, Studio of Gratifying Discourse, Korean bronze Buddha, Amitbha Buddha. What were the questions for each one? I dutiful recalled them. When I finished, the project manager let go and slipped beneath the surface again, content to work in the background. I went back to sleep.
