Tuesday, March 7, 2006
"Without a Written Language"
6:10am
I learned of a fascinating site, weaversofwisdom.org: Tuesday, March 7, 2006
"Without a Written Language"
6:10am
| "The Q'ero people, keepers of an ancient tradition as the skilled weavers for the Incas, have lived in Peru's remote highlands for thousands of years. Without a written language, the Incas communicated their wisdom in cloth. The Q’eros, having the smallest fingers, were chosen to weave their dreams and prophecies..." |
Without a written language, they manage this delicate communication.I wonder what symbolism was being conveyed in these local Quechan artifacts found at Yuma Historical Museum:
Julia thought the face markings might have been tattoos. Of what significance were they? Has this been lost? Did the missionaries make them forget all that they once knew?
"These two wood Quechan dolls were given to Miss Anna Egan while she was agent and school superintendent at Ft Yuma. According to her notes, the clothing was authentic."
In this present time, we have all these mysteries.
And I am thinking, I too have this language without words. It is my art, and through it I express the things I do not have words for. Words seem limited and frustrating now that I've found this medium of 'automatic drawing'. But of course I run the risk that my language is not understandable. If anyone understands, they must understand from the same weird gut level place in which I draw.
I was feeling somewhat off until I got the idea to draw something. I looked around for a suitable subject and found one. After I began drawing the Naga Kanya statue, she took on a life of her own: Wednesday, March 8, 2006
"A Celebration of All Feminine Gifts"
7:53pm
I didn't like both eyes shut, as the original statue has. It seemed one eye should be wide open, alert to the world around her. The offering of the couch shell became another sort of offering. Perhaps knowing today is "International Women's Day" went into my inspiration, for she seems a celebration of all feminine gifts.
She sure does look like the archetypical Mother, doesn't she? She seems like she's winking at you and offering homemade cookies, or some other tasty treat. Maybe it's hummus on toast. Julia fixed that Middle Eastern spread made with chick peas on toast tonight. She's doing well finding us a variety of things to eat, not using the stove. We've not had gas for an entire week now. Wednesday, March 8, 2006 B
"A Celebration of All Feminine Gifts - Color"
10:17pm
That's the sight that greeted me when I came home this evening. It is like that around each and every apartment building. I don't have much hope of gas being turned on anytime soon. Julia, who was off today for doctor's appointments, said the apartment manager told her the discovery of one gas leak led to the discovery of more leaks. The whole system is suspect! Thursday, March 9, 2006
"Not Any Time Soon"
10:17pm
huge, deep ruts along entire sides of our buildings...
Well, I would rather them take all the time they need to do it right, than speeding it along, and having the place go "Ka-BOOM!"
Later this evening, I played with the 'invent a tree' concept for the 52 Figments and this is what I came up with:
My drawing for the Friday Illo theme of Tattooed:
The handy vivacious tree provides both apples and money (the purse contains cash), as well as shade and shelter for birds and snakes
Yes, I am curious, having decorated his back this way, what he would do with the front? "Always Dressed"
11:35pm Julia is doing the dutiful tasks of filling the car tank, getting water, and visiting the post office, etc. I thank her for these tasks as I slept in due to going to bed after midnight.This is what he did with the front...
Edited a bit ;)I had a lot of fun with the Friday Illo challenge of 'Tattoo'. I think if I WERE going to get myself inked, which I am NOT, but if I were, I'd choose as the character in my illo...
10:16am It's raining, it's cold. Poor Julia came in wet as a forsaken cat, badly needing warmth. I brought the groceries and one bottle of water in, and shut the car lid on the rest.
Have I told you my sad tale of woe with Northstyle? Back in January I decided to gamble on a 'Prairie Tencil Skirt' they offered. I had hopes the XL with an elastic waist would fit nicely around my thick midsection. The nice brown tiered skirt did look so lovely in the picture. Alas, it arrived looking more like a 'medium', and its weak threads broke when I tried it on.
Their instructions for returns are quite elaborate. I've rarely had to return things, but when I'd had to, it's never been this difficult. Lands' End's returns are a simple trip to the local Sears with the offending items and the receipt. When I received a defective CD, Amazon kindly gave me a return paid address label to print out. Northstyle requires one PAY to send the bad item back, and not only that, we must pay to insure it.
Not only that, their customer service team is most unhelpful. I am so frustrated with them. They never answered my emails, so I called them. The lady in customer service seemed to not really want to help me. Not even if I were surpremely talented in the art of CHARM could I have moved her into action. However, I have now a rain sprinkled printed proof that the returned skirt DID come back to Northstyle. If our 'account activity' doesn't show a refund within this week, I will call again. I will make myself such a pest that they'll do something just to no longer get my calls.
Earlier today, Julia observed, "Ah now there's a hummingbird feeding. Poor thing, I'm sure he's very cold." Cold and wet it's been. I felt sorry for the worker I saw outside in the ditch, down chest deep in the muddy soil. Not to be compared with his miserable toil, still, the cold didn't keep us from some of our tasks either. Among the places we went was the library. I found a couple of DVDs which I thought would be of interest. Elie Wiesel Goes Home is one of them: Saturday, March 11, 2006 B
"Beyond the Capacity of Language"
11:28pm
Plot Synopsis: "A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and his "long trip", the history of his sufferings. In a remote corner of one-time Hungary, in the shadow of the Carpathian mountains, Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to the town where he was born to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?"
I recommend this movie to all. The movie is important with its horrible truths. How glad I am that Elie Wiesel speaks out about these terrible truths! I think, what is the cause of these evils? The unconscious, sleeping, silent majority that 'follows orders' and never questions. A great many horrors are washed over, ignored, and still people do not want to think about them. They want to keep unconscious, do not want to be disturbed. But it IS disturbing that so much evil there and elsewhere has been done.
I think of that unusual article someone posted to the LHP forum, "Cultivating Loneliness: The Ethical Fragrance of Yoga" There, you can be all of the concern 'not to cause harm', always thinking of 'unity', and then end up with this 'loneliness', and why is that? Because the 'isolate intelligence' is NOT a myth, because we can't REALLY enter another's head. I think of Elie Wiesel who wrote "not that you may understand, but that you will know you can never understand just what horrors we went through,"(paraphrased a bit.) So true. Perhaps this is the beginning of understanding, to know that we can't really entirely bridge the gap. We can get hints of what's happening with another, some clues of similarity of experience, but to enter their head and KNOW? That can never happen. I remember Laura suffering with her heart disease, the congestive lung failure, Julia trying to be comforting, "I know what you feel", and Laura correcting her, "NO! You do NOT know what I feel!"
It is all frustrating, that. But the great struggle, the important struggle is that we keep trying to communicate. It is all just hints of this and that, but occasionally, the veil breaks for just a second, and maybe some small insight breaks through. And then we are there again, in our separate worlds. But not to acknowledge this, which sometimes people fail to do, makes it that much more impossible that real understanding can occur. We MUST understand the difficulty of it all, respect it, and then maybe we can have this chance at any sort of bridging the gap.
I was lying in bed, and these thoughts go round and round in my head. I was thinking about the following paragraph in the unusual article I read yesterday: Sunday, March 12, 2006 A
"Rejoicing in Solitude"
5:50am
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Loneliness - The Final Liberation
"Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself." - (Hermann Hesse)
"Loneliness vanishes completely in the stillness." - (Paul Brunton)
Having successfully laid the ethical foundation enjoined by Patanjali, the adept is now poised towards the ultimate goal - liberation. Patanjali however, doesn't denote this culmination with conventional labels like 'moksha' or 'nirvana'. He calls it 'kaivalya,' derived from the word 'keval', meaning 'only'.
This is the detached isolation that those lucky amongst us feel in a crowd. Yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar describes it as an absolute state of aloneness. It is living in constant communion with a higher reality centered within our own selves - the ultimate fulfillment of yogic practice.
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Thus, Nitin Kumar writes. However, most of us are not yogis. Meanwhile, the essential loneliness, how does this become a 'liberating' factor? This is something anyone truly awakened can learn. When Brunton declares that 'loneliness vanishes', what does he mean? I think it is not that the sense of essential separation goes away, but that it is no longer a painful thing. The 'loneliness' becomes 'solitude', and then becomes a strength.Forward...I think of what makes for the most effective communication, when we consider what psychological effect our words have upon another. But how can we enter the mind of another and know? When we were discussing this, Julia said, "I simply treat others as I would want to be treated." What if they have a different modus operandi than we do? I can not know. We can only understand others as well as we understand ourselves. My words will only resonate within you if you have similar values as I do. If you don't, then I might as well be speaking French. Or Greek. Some language that you don't speak. But this is the beginning of understanding the basics of communication. The beginning must begin with knowing the essential difficulty, making peace with it, and resolving to do what we can, despite it.
But meanwhile, back to the center. The first thing is to find that 'higher reality'. Gurdjieff called it 'essence'. Strip away the surface things, the inconsequential things, the things with which the superficial are too absorbed. It's maybe why they can't stand to be alone. They don't want to be reminded that they are superficial. In crowds, they can forget it.
Those in touch with their essence do not ever forget their uniqueness, no matter how many surround them. Thoreau said, "Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert." (Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), Walden) His compatriot Emerson had a similar idea, "It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of a crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), Self-Reliance)
This 'great man', (or woman), rejoices in his own consciousness. Like Byron, "In solitude, where we are least alone.", we enjoy the neverending panorama of thoughts and sensations to which we are witness. We understand we are NOT these thoughts, but the one who thinks them. In solitude, we know ourselves, can find our 'higher center'. It takes a keen 'ear' to locate this. Those who do not listen, do not find it. And it is all there, in the listening. Within each of our unique consciousnesses is a universe. Finding it and exulting within it is the 'liberation'.
From there, strengthened, we then go to 'the marketplace', in which ideas are exchanged. These thoughts here, born in my solitude, are now in the vast marketplace. You may find them here, but you will digest them in your own solitude.
© Joan Lansberry
