Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Up through card 08 - Strength - out in the mail today, or tommorow if I miss the post.

so who'm I keeping this blog for?
it's too dark in here. bah.

Saturday, June 01, 2002

a recent response to someone about art swaps and not counting beans about what one is getting (the mails delay and sometimes fail to deliver all postcard art; most on the list are into it for the making and sending of lovelies and the sharing...and some folks get overwhelmed and don't get theirs out on time. while remembering that life trumps work and work trumps your volunteer activities, I'm all for busting guilt in the chops with a broad
backand of grace, and weeding it out by the roots with the fertile rain
of goodies, because goodness and gifties, like all love, are not about
being barter situations...

Kitty has been to the vet and back, for general checkup and lookover.
She's a fine, fit sixteen year old Lady, and loves (a) the untreated-wood sawdust pellet litter and (b) getting a taste of canned food once a day and we love that she only eats half as much and shits half as much of the good dry food as she had of the darned Friskies. That had to be hard on a cat.

Friday, May 17, 2002

Kitty

Lots of happy kitty petting last evening; she likes being stroked and talked to and loved; I think the touch is getting through with the Welcome more than anything else. Isabella's bonding with me, as the one who has taken her out of an unhappy household situation, and how amazing at the age of 16 long years as a kitty to have a New Life!

It's good...

Thursday, May 16, 2002

Well, the kitty came out last night and tasted a mouthful of food, looking up and around for potential predators (I think she's nearly feral, she was booted outside so much) - she'd take a mouthful and retreat to where she could dash for the safety of her UnderCouch Cave if needed; getting a little braver as she went...
She enjoyed more petting, but retreated under the bed again at night-time.
This morning she had used the litterbox (whew!), and the food was clean gone, so I added more to her bowl - somehow I don't think she's going to do the post-starvation glut, which pleases and comforts me...

work is busy days and that's a happy Ruth
I hadn't published how the paper marbling went!
I pulled about 18 sheets of letter sized light-blue paper; using liquitex acrylics thinned with water and oxgall (Dharma had shipped by USPS instead of UPS and had NO tracking info and NO confirmation of shipping, the second of their usual 2-email order processing system. It arrived later the next week...) - clue #1 - the USPS is still SLOW from San Rafael to the City; and it's best to choose UPS from Dharma.
t'other part is that it's best to see if one small goodie can be found in town... too bad Daniel Smith was out of it; I could have gotten all at once and that would have been a Happy Thing.
onward...

The pages turned out well, I liked them all except for the first.

I was playing with the size as it gelled up; that's something that will come with time and practice. Given sizing made ahead of time, this is a two-hour project for what I have room to lay out drying, and requires the whole kitchen table clear.
The baking sheet is a good working 'bin' for the size.

Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Took hoome a new elder kitty last night; things were coming to a head with Norm about Eve's cat; and it was either time to give her away or put her down. Which would be just Not Quite Right. After last year's kitty hospice, I'm ready to try another cat who has a longer life left in her; Isabella at 16 has the issue of shitting under her unliked-human's woodworking bench in the sawdust and wood shavings all around... I'm hoping she takes to the litterbox with us. It would be a major issue if she doesn't; but then there's the dilemna right away - Norm was ready to put her down; what if she doesn't work out with us? We'll give it a good try, anyhow. She's a dear qat.

Kitty clung to me nearly all the way home; (no hands, even) but walked gently over to the passenger seat to let me use both hands to shift, as long as I kept petting her.
She looked up and around as we pulled up in front of the house; and came into the house easily in my arms (no wiggle, no striggule); sat on our laps for a while, and decided to go under the couch while I went to go park the car, where she remains. We set up food and water and showed her those, though she WASN'T about to get out of my arms at that point; and we set up the litterbox in the bathroom, ditto with talking and showing but she was staying in my arms... when we showed her the food and water dish she tucked her head firmly under my chin and got to purring.
After retiring to the safety of UnderCouch CatCave, where she spent the night.

She came close enough to see me and purr a little when I got down to see how she was doing and chat with her a little... I think she's just going to take her time checking out the new place, which is fine...

Saturday, May 04, 2002

look around you, in your little ship. what could you let go of?
What could you let go of knowing for sure?

(dream phrase)

and then I woke up.
It's noon Saturday; I'm ready to try paper marbling, but Dharma didn't ship my ox gall to help spread the paint out on the sizing, so now that Sinopia is open I'm going down there to see if they have any. I bet they do... Kremer pigments, amber varnishes from The Alchemist (good enough to use on a fiddle!), gold leafing supplies, and they're a whole one block from where I live in the Mission District of San Francisco!
I love this town.

Other highlights from the morning: walking down to the Chinese everything store (imports) on Mission Avenue between 22d and 23rd in the old movie house; and got a big bluey-green glazed pot to plant the dwarf blood orange tree in... Lise is curled up with a good book and a bad cough but Finally a day of rest.

The methylcellulose sizing for marbling on, sets up like jello: you pour 4 cups boiling water over 1/4 cup of the powder, stir it gently (trying to avoid bubbles) and then add 4 cups water; with ice if you like. 15 minutes later it was jellyish on the bottom and still sort of watery on the top: next time I'll stir again lightly every five minutes while it sets.
I've stirred it up again and poured it into a baking sheet (half-sheet tray).
Got my Liquitex paints, got straw bundled up into stirring-and-dropping-onto-the-size whisks, and when I get back from Sinopia then I'll try adjusting the mix of paint thinned in water with the ox gall and see how well it spreads out on the surface.
blue paper stroked with alum solution is mainly dry.
The notes from the art supply catalog website are being greatly useful.


Friday, May 03, 2002

the alum has arrived, the methyl cellulose has arrived, from Daniel Smith
the oxgall should be arriving from Dharma trading co today
I'm going to try paper marbling tomorrow, for the first time!
got my pan
got my good ol' acrylics
got a new songe
makin' some combs for pulling patterns
been a studying those websites and advice from friends
remembering the fellow out at Faire who demo'd out of Rosie's booth one year (have a copy of that Buck n Mug that used their papers. WORTHY...
and intend to have an immense good time.

checkin' on ebay to see what's sellable...



I've been singing all the night and nearly half the day-o
and to you all a-reading here, I've brought you a branch of May, oh
Hal an Tow, sing merry, o
Hal an Tow, sing mer-ry!

Happy May Day to you all;
I got up at 4:51 this morning, fit as a fiddler for May Day (to tweak Shakespeare's quote a bit), to bustle into kit (black pants, white shirt with longies under and white longsleeve over, and many ribbons, significant pins on my grey tophat and green frock coat) and bundled out the door with Lise, to pick up Malaika and head up the hill to dance up the Dawn this May Day morning along with Redtail Morris, who I'm playing for this year, and Goat Hill Morris, who I've played with in a previous year...from atop Twin Peaks in San Francisco, one of the most stunning views of the Bay, and the sunrise, one could wish for.

Those of you in English speaking countries might find morris dancers in your town - hankies flashing, sticks clashing, bells jingling at the knees, waking up the earth with these cheery stompful dances, capers and leaps - with the advent of the internet, dancers also weave the stories and are able to relate to one another the weather and the audinece scene where they are, and one is better able to imagine that global wave of hankies aloft in celebratory dancing-up-the-sun starting in Eastern New Zealand and ending in Santa Cruz, CA (where local dawn isn't till 6:21 local time 'cos it has to climb over that coastal range o' mountains...)

Blessings of this New Year to you all, happy summer's-coming-in!
jingling off to work...

Ruth Temple
Fiddler, Redtail Morris, Swords of Gridlock
alumnus: Goat Hill Morris, Ring of Cold Steel Sword Dancers,
Seabright Morris & Sword, Uptown on Calhoun, and
Moonwood Morris & Sword (r.i.p.)
honored to be a regular guest musician for:
Dead Ringers, the Black & White Tour,
the Bridgetown Morris Men
Sent to a journaling group I belong to, so it's sort of conversational. Acgtually a lot of my journaling looks like conversational letters...
-Ruth

...
Subject: Journal entry (long) re Angeles Arrien talk on Monday, April 22, 2002

This is a long post, basically my notes and reactions to a lecture attended this week. Angeles Arrien is a name I first heard from this list (yahoo group artistsjournals2) and our offshoot tarot-making project, so I was intrigued when I learned (a) that she's on faculty where Girlfriend is a librarian now, and (b) would be part of a lecture series...

There is enough inspiration towards journaling and soul-searching material here for years worth of exploration, which is only fair because it comes our of years of exploration. Enjoy!

Monday evening, April 22,2002, I attended a lecture given by Angeles Arrien, one in a series hostessed by Mariana Caplan at the California Institute for Integral Studies, on Spiritual Authority: Surrender, Submission or Conscious Discipleship? Angie spoke on the topic Promises and Pitfalls in the Student-Teacher Relationship: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Additional information is at under the Lifelong Learning section.

I arrived early to help the other volunteers set up chairs and collate flyers for each chair, that I then wrote on as the room filled with students, seekers, and artists in the community. These notes include my impressions of the atmosphere and attendees as well as my notes from the talk.

Apparently some old friends and colleagues of the speaker, from 15- 20 years prior relationship, are here. One of the other volunteers had on a cotton jumper dress printed all over with a dragonfly stamp in purple and green inks.

Angeles Arrien's lecture tonight is on Pitfalls in the student teacher relationship: a cross-cultural perspective -- but at half full this audience really looks mostly white, oh dear ... my experience of CIIS so far is that it's not predominantly white-middle-class, and that cross-culturalism is visibly not just words, so it's a surprise to me.

I love the low-key elegance of this place: the lovely coffee-table onstage is a cardboard box with a cloth drape, water, flowers... one who hadn't seen it set up would not know the humble underpinnings of the graceful element.

Mariana Caplan, who will be speaking in a couple of weeks, introduces Angie; mentioning that the last time lectures on this sort of topic were given at CIIS was in 1971; perhaps we're 30 years overdue for the next!

Angeles is a Cultural Anthropologist specializing in world religions - as an insider, not the outside observer academic form. She has short dark hair, bright green blazer, and she twinkles her eyes. At the start, says 'ah' and 'um' a lot - but works without notes. As she warmed up, the vocal hesitations fell away altogether.

She speaks of spiritual doorways; the archetype of teacher is global to all explorations.

Recommends the book Mentoring to all teachers, counselors, leaders.
Speaks of global cultural models; What is meant by global, when one speaks professionally or academically of a phenomenon? By her definition, over 85% of all cultures of the world must go that way for a cognate or trend or idea to be called "global." So - there are a few global themes found in all cultures: a governance model; a medical model, generally including 'traditional" and folkloric medicine ways; education is a global model. Creative, performing, & athletics communicate a Visionary model.

She is a cross-cultural student, describing herself as one who tracks: what are the common points? What are universals? These root questions, and her life-long exploration around them, allow her to look at diversity from within these Unities.

The Way of the Teacher is what we're looking at tonight.

Wordplay: Intimacy syllabification as "in to me see" - with an overlay of the question: How willing am I to be caught learning?

Whoever and however you learn with and from, make sure a wise person is there. (Advice from her grandmother at an early age (5).
Do I place myself well? Is this right timing?
Time place and person are important factors in choosing a teacher.

There are four fires:
vision, heart, creative, soul

Five conditions for learning:
respect, trust, honesty, openness (Curiosity), and vulnerability. the last includes: can I be just who I am, here, without having to project a persona, or act or perform?

A great learner/teacher has greater curiosity than judgment - leads to adventures and broader explorations.

Three great inhibitors to learning:
fear, pride, judgment

It's not enough to just naval-gaze, or just do stuff; we need both internal and external, both quietude/reflection and movement/activity. Especially true in this time of the world.

She pauses to catch her audience's eyes and judge the impact and sinking-in of her words, as she delivers bons mots and concepts clustered in numbered clusters, and repeats just enough for note-taking, without losing the flow or continuity of her ongoing talk. This is an enviable skill, I can tell she's practiced a LOT.

An important question:
Is my self worth as strong as my self critic?
Another way of saying this is:
Is what is good, true and beautiful in me as strong as the whispers of my monsters?

She continues, "I love cartoons - they tend to be 5 years ahead of the trend." A recent New Yorker cartoon describes fellow in a business suit & tie, with briefcase and a fellow in jeans and vest with ponytail and glasses, pass one another, thinking "Gee, I used to look like that!"

With this image, Angie introduces the idea of the Mandorla - two interlocked circles, with that lens; that stands for active inner and outer study / worlds - the seed of intersection is more powerful than either circle alone - and is the place where both teacher and student grow. A question to bring to learning and teaching is: how can I bring two parts of me together to create a greater whole?

The names she uses for that conjunction are an almond seed; the well - I am taken with the image of the conjunction as a lens, with all the refracting and focusing imagery that comes to my mind with that.

The four taboos that reveal four inherent values in world cultures, whatever one's spirituality is or isn't. She distinguishes a willingness to explore Mystery; distinguishes "innovation" in spirituality as all too often a copout into a conditional willingness; those who create multiple permutations on what has already been successful within their comfort zone ! (sound like all too many "eclectic" spiritual folks I know...) "Exploring" on the other hand, is leaving that comfort zone.
Track: Where am I pushing my edges?

The four taboos reflect their opposite: strong global cultural values.
Murder - reflecting the valuation of Life
Theft - reflecting the value of honoring and respecting what folks have gotten or made for themselves; stuff; possessions or livelihood.
Lying, most especially the lie that does irreparable harm to another's life. - reflecting a value in truth, authenticity, integrity, honesty.
Incest - respect for emotional kinship ties. As a survivor of this last taboo-trampling, I am always fascinated by and looking for the ways people describe the basis of what's going on when that taboo's being broken; and this sums it up succinctly and well. New words to gnaw on...

What to look for in a spiritual teacher is someone who has these positive values; someone who reflects and upholds those values and would not harm those positive connections.

What an amazing way to tell folks what to beware of as well as what goodness to look for!

Every decade in one's life, there is the entry of a new person; the Important Stranger to us - provides a gate/opening for us to grow. Track - who is that?
Who has that been?
Who have been my teachers of heart? Mind? Body? Spirit?
Heart - deep inside, love - what am I learning what do I know, what do I want to pass on to the children?
Human main raisons d'ĂȘtre: to learn about love and to create.

An exercise: (shuffling while folks find pens, paper.)
Write your name.
This is an example of mastery. It's easy, effortless, you never doubt you have mastery - that which we trust.

Opening to new inner work, we apply skills in a new way.
Sign your name with your off-hand. (skritch, skritch.)
Okay, it's doable. Note some things, which are there in everyone's
signatures: We all slow down. Nature moves middle-to-slow; this is why the speaker takes folks out to the Arizona desert every year. Nature moves slowly; we have to learn to come to our own natural rhythms. We can do a lot of things in the fast lane, but in order to integrate and deepen, we have to slow down. We change size - we get larger (expand) or go deeper but don't constrict ourselves. We noted that our signatures were kind of childlike. We need to bring a childlike innocence and curiosity and wonder to our learning. The inner world is vast and turbulent, majestic and awesome - and can also surface a primal terror - this is why it's important to be moving slower.

When I need an opening, feeling stuck, on the brink of something; going past the Well, there comes a breakthrough -
Sign your name a third time, with your eyes closed (dominant hand). (scrawl. huh, not so bad!)
We can do this; it's recognizable.

There comes in every relationship and especially the teacher/student relationship, the necessity of a place of individuation; how to make honorable closure. A lot of folks haven't learned how to do this, and we flail and do it badly; go away mad in order to make the break. How we leave our families at adulthood often makes a pattern we repeat.
Cross-culturally there are ways of graceful separation or individuation.
Giving gratitude, keeps the heart open
Check where I have been positively impacted and give gratitude for that.
Track - where was I stretched beyond knowable and familiar.
Check - is there any forgiveness work or rectification work or reparation I need to do here?
Applying these can make a breakthrough to ending and closing phases and stages clearly and cleanly.

A good teacher never creates dependency. They will have you learn as long as you are willing to engage deeply. At some point you need to individuate and take a step with no guide.

Fourth step: sign your name blind with the off-hand. (skreek, scratch, *laughter*)
Humor and joy are important - any teacher who does not carry these is suspect. Good relationship to surprise and the unexpected is important.
It is important to track where I lose my sense of humor - then I see where my attachments are.

Story on herself requested from members of the crowd, who love to hear it again - at the age of 32 was SERIOUS to a fault, had all her doo-dahs for her spirit practice, her prayer rug, her rosary, her incense and candles, and all; and two of her teachers sent her to another teacher, to whom she supplicated, Can you tell me the next step? -- and he just LAUGHED and laughed; and finally said, okay, you have your tape recorder, good, very good, set it up, and then he laughed a bunch more. Into the tape recorder.
Two Very Important words -
"Sensa" (oh, it must be something old in Sanskrit...)
"Houma" (breathy with tight nostrils...."nhyumaaaaaaah"
"You must practice at least 2 hours."
Well, she took it back to her hotel, with her rug and rosary and candles and incense and bells; and chanted her new mantra...it took her 6-1/2 hours of chanting & breathing before she rewound the tape to hear "sense of humor!" and Oh, she was so pissed off ! and Oh, it makes a such great story now!

Clarity, sense of organization
Track: what is clear for me? take action from the places that are clear.
What's become defined?

Ability to be a problem solver balances with resting with the question:
what's my capacity for holding creative tension before leaping in to fix it and resolve the chord?
Honor the creative tension; else it's too easy to fall into addictions,

Major four addictions are to, and come out of: intensity, perfection, a need to know, and what's not working. Don't fixate; some folks want to recreate peak experiences over and over again; of If I can only get back to - look at weaning such dependencies.

Four portals:
Love Wisdom, Integrity, Vision
Those domains are explored deeply on spirit realm. Keep a curious, humble beginner's mind; be willing and openness to practice discernment (the rim of the heart)

I am responsible to place myself well; to ask, am I in the natural cycle? right place, right time?

Quotes the poet Mary Oliver: "the heart of spiritual work is..." contained in the question "What is it you want to do with the wild precious thing that is your life?"

Rumi:
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing
there's a field.
I'll meet you there."

Superb recap of all points...

"Bless those who challenge us
for they remind us of doors we have closed
and of doors we have yet to open
They are big medicine teachers."
- Navajo saying.

She herself is Basque; and they celebrate 12 birthdays a year; one a month; and do something new - 12 ways we have grown each year.

We are all original medicine (fingerprints, irises, retinas, DNA).

Questions from the audience:

What is that field of Rumi's?
A metaphor. It is the here and now where we meet - we create it together as we go.

On becoming a teacher; I can teach only what I have experience
She vowed not to teach just conceptually, but what I have embodied in the four intelligences.
At 33 i vowed I would never teach if it didn't have heart-meaning; heart fire. To know i was in a good heart place and inspired; always to put myself into the learning crucible and never stop learning."

Each year - who do I want to learn from this year? This year is Golda Mier. Past years have included Abraham Lincoln; Schweitzer, Eleanor Roosevelt, someone she lived with, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa. Lives fully lived root in spirit.

Whoever comes to my gate has been guided there - they are also a teacher to me. This thought keeps me humble and in heart grace.

Guarded questioner: Do you believe you are 100% responsible?
I believe in co-creation; that I have some responsibility -- but I believe in helpers, unseen forces, friends, influences and synchronicity. In a relationship with you, I would not take 100% responsibility; I would take half, and I would take full responsibility for my half.

A therapist (and old friend), Elliott, wonders: Are taboos arbitrary? and mentions working in therapy with addictive behavior - dealing with clients who use crack. They adopt a societal attitude of loathing the behavior (and therefore themselves), but are drawn to the forbidden behavior.
Breaking societal cultural and family taboo is the shadow side of individuation. On another side of the Rebel, a leadership gift waits to be discovered.
How to reach?
Go after the fire - if they could do anything, if money and time were not an issue; nurture that.

Jana asks - how does a student approach a potential teacher? Is there a protocol? Spoken from a place of wanting to have a (specific) teacher.
In some cultures and societies, the student is to wait; in others the teacher waits. Since you're being called and you have the desire, then approach. Go for it! Look for the fire.

Teaching questions; Learning questions to track:

What is strengthened in my nature?
What is softened in my nature?
What is deepened in my nature?
What is opened in my nature?

What is calling to be strengthened in my nature?
What is calling to be softened in my nature?
What is calling to be deepened in my nature?
What is calling to be opened in my nature?

Ellen who had a teacher's workshop with Angeles 15 or 20 years ago and gave a presentation that she remembers nothing of except that she ended it by playing the BeeGee's song, How deep is your love? (Angie remembered) - she says: You have been my example of outward, extroverted Beingness as How deep; now I am seeing that my introverted, quiet deep inner self is How Deep is my love. An aha of the evening's experience.
In thanking her, Angeles said: It is important to recognize where we drop the shroud of insufficiency and stand in our own sufficiency.

I want to sit with that phrase for a while; my whole being resounded when I heard it, and does again as I type this.

Arthur - regarding explorations across many beliefs?
It is a timeless question, but in high relief now. There are three doorways, each of us has a spiritual root, a cultural root and a family root; it is a sign of maturity to be able to go back and visit there and honor it; honor = willingness to confer respect, (not that one has to agree with it).
Whether on one deep path or exploring a few or several tools and paths, that a person comes back to honoring their roots is doing that deep Grail work.

ends, with mirth:
kisses, kisses, kisses!
-- blowing kisses to the audience, who blow them back unabashedly.
I like this form of open academic lecture...

blessings and scrivenings,
Ruth Temple
San Francisco, CA

Sunday, April 21, 2002

Staggering off to find a piece of pizza for late lunch, and perhaps off to water the garden?
Tomorrow is Angeles Arrien talk, part of a CIIS lecture series; free admin for working the door; a sweet deal.
Angeles writes about symbolsim and creativity; I'm editing a thesis she's referenced in, the folks out at the artistsjournals2 yahoogroup love her book, and I'm looking forward to hearing what she's about in this talk; and seeing what she's like in person.
1:30 on Sunday, and yesterday in bed totally zonked out till 11:30 am; yet another weekend in the upstairs neighbor's band of boyrs who come over on Friday evening and stay through Sunday afternoon, and are AWAKE, making noise, ALL NIGHT LONG, despite clauses in the lease. At least repeated complaints and a complaint directly to the very responsive landlords who love this place, having lived in it for many years, resulted in music being turned down when we call and ask (at 12:30, not at 11:00 when the lease states quiet hours are).
All this subtle loss of sleep on the weekends for months is, I think, sapping our energy; is certainly not helping my health any by kicking the weekend circadian cycles around half the day. I was up at 4am this morning with the upstairs conversational noise, and worked on the contract editing I have here to do, but zonked out again at 7:15 when things finally got quiet.
Now they're doing laundry for the guests, vaccuuming all over (a daily ritual, I think the one who has a cat looking to her even though she keeps it outside 90% of the 24-hour day is either allergic or obsessive-compulsive).
It would be a drag to have to move from this lovely home just to seek out a decent night's sleep...but how far can we reasonably push back to this thinks-she's-being-the-soul-of-reason by being willing to turn down the music?
Beginning of March, she made no response to our coming up and pounding on the door, only after complaining vigorously to the landlords, who had a talk with her, did we get her phone number and her stated willingness to be responsive to a phone call requesting quiet.
This sleep deprivation on the weekends is really painful.

Friday, April 19, 2002

What I'm up to today: editing theses: client work. Monday I start a month stint in previous employer's abode; it'll be delightful both to see and work with these friends again, mostly; and it'll be good to have an End Date so I can put up with the one I really can't abide working with for very long. They'll have the chance to hire in a new person and do some training, and off we'll go!
it'll be a little wierd, since they had to fire my replacement desktop publisher guy for just not showing up on time, and not wanting to work. Glad he's not the one I hired, ew...
Well, it's been a long time since I posted here; does that mean I'm not up for this online blogging thing?
Or just that I'm getting my journaling cravings out in the artistsjournals2 yahoogroup, my monthly zine to LASFAPA, and life offline?
Who knows. I'll continue this thing with at least a touchpoint as often as I think of it, and If another several months go by with no noise, give it over for other more exciting hobbies, like GNU shogi.