What's For Dinner

Another great pottery workshop (Richard Notkin) gives me the occasion to try something I have never done before, but have always dreamed. First, all of my clay-making  neurons were filled to the max by Vince Pitelka two weeks ago, so I very hesitantly dropped out of the Notkin workshop (except for a brief lurk during the mold-making demo). Therefore all the pottery buds are in the studio, and I am home alone using my creative cooking neurons. The non-attending potters cooked during Vince, so now I get a turn.

My great experiment is going to be tamales. I am going to try a vegan version, something I have always daydreamed and will try today. For the real version, check www.sonofthesouth.net. This is the true tamale (minus the lard, plus the corn oil). These things are glorious to eat, and a true taste of a family-style fiesta in the southwest.

Now I am going to cook, and I will report on the results and my vegan recipe after ten or so potters give them a proper critique.

Too Busy Living to Blog

All of the family bloggers are too busy living to blog- that includes me.

This is not good, however. a) For me it is a diary as much as anything, and now after a year or so, I find that it makes a difference in my quality of life when I do not reflect at the end of the day. Perhaps I feel that I am being less intentional, more reactive. I don't know. b) I miss the rest of the family bloggers' blogs. It is a very satisfying way of checking in with them. I feel mildly disconnected.

Each of us blogs for different reason(s). Our blogs are very unique, more or less sophisticated depending on our technical skills, and entirely reflective of who we are. This was one of the greatest things about blogging for me- what a satisfying creative outlet it is, how expressive on so many levels.

In the spirit of gratitude, I guess I can be thankful for meaningful work, busy days, lots to engage me. I am rich with art and wonderful friends, and sunshine. There have been adventures this week, too.

1. Our hot tub found a new home via Casey's tow truck. That was an interesting trick, especially when we discovered that it could not be taken out through the gate, but had to be lifted over the fence. Yikes.

2. A GREAT iron clawfoot bathtub was found on craigslist to replace it. While we were inspecting the tub, a tarantula ambled out from underneath it. A LARGE tarantula. The second I have seen in as many weeks. No worries. These things are so big that there is no way one could sneak up on you (except perhaps at night).

3. Artgirl Brenda had a terrific party for fellow artgirl Gayle- many great laughs and wonderful food.

4. Papa visited his buddies who have bookstore for meditation books and he is considering volunteering to help them there.

5. Tonight we went to see a well known theologian who wrote the book that his men's Bible study has been working on for over a year. It was a provocative talk, and good to experience the voice he has been reading.

6. I am awakened nightly by a packrat (and family) who seem to be amassing a huge amount of loud heavy stuff under the ceramic roof tiles outside the bedroom. We cannot get to the area with our ladder, so are busy trying to find a way to repel the rodents who seem to have metallic objects, rocks, sticks, and other things capable of sounding like a four-person marble game on top of the roof at all hours of the night.

7. That and the six inch termite tube hanging from our ceiling. That's all the high maintainance desert creatures except rattlesnakes. Welcome home!

Vince Pitelka Workshop- Great Week!

The days have continued to be a delight. There have been four, tomorrow is the last. I didn't imagine how much I would enjoy this kind of precision, geometric clay work. However, my batt has become a microcosm in which things once amorphous, can be made to fall neatly into place.

This is without a doubt one of the joys of this kind of work for our instructor. He just turned sixty, but has lost none of the zeal of a thirteen year old who loves airplane models, erector sets, and other kinds of geeky mechanical creativity. And he has passed this on to us effortlessly, enjoying it with us as if for the first time, though he has published books, teaches this at the college level, gives many workshops a year, and is internationally known for his work.

Anyway, my table mate jumped the tracks yesterday and departed from our curriculum of making loaves of colored geometric clay patterns from which we shave paper-thin slices and laminate them to sheets of plain clay. Today I jumped the track as well, derailing not from the loaves or the laminations, but from the geometric patterns. I made a free-form floral loaf.

I had good reason. I was seeking to complement the geometry with some flowers, borrowing from the Japanese aesthetic of kimono patterns. Throughout the workshop the instructor and I have been sharing thoughts about our children's adventures in Japan and Japanese culture (his son has written a scholarly work on the history of Raku in the tea ceremony).

What a whole-heartedly engaging experience this week has been. I am off in a new direction with my clay work and my mindful practice as a result of it. I couldn't have asked for more.

Zen Cheetah Sits

Cheetah occupies my meditation chair, using my prayer shawl for warmth while I attend my clay workshop.

I am able to stay mindful while hand wedging colorants into 5 lb blocks of clay only for the first two. Wrists exhausted, I begin to think ahead during the third block, trying to figure out how to make this job easier so that I can last for all five blocks.

It took all of the workday to do this hand and back-breaking job, but our instructor wisely wowed us amidst the work with demonstrations of what we will be able to do with our blocks of colored clay once they are completed.  A most inspiring day!!! 

Colored Clay Workshop

Flucky me! This week I will be attending another smash hit clay workshop right in the very studio where I do my work- Artifacts. This time we will be learning how to use colored clay inlay from a very well known artist- Vince Pitelka. In this workshop, we will be making loaves of colored clay patterns to slice thin and laminate to the slabs we use for our ware.

I don't know how I got so lucky as to be able to have these wonderful artists right here in my own little world, but I count my blessings daily, and just hope for enough energy to make the most of each opportunity. It will be a great party all week in the grandest weather of the year.

Tomorrow Papa returns from his big adventure to see the Broncos play in Denver. Boy for a couple of old farts, we do seem to get around!

How to Cook Your Life

Have just returned from the zendo after seeing How to Cook Your Life (click to preview). Though not as profound as Into Great Silence, it was still very very wonderful and very inspiring.

It is a cinematic beauty, with many wonderful zen teachings woven among humor, tears, and some fabulous shots of food and nature. This movie was as satisfying as a banquet of wholesome and varied food. I will buy it, and share it. It is now on my list of "must see" inspirational movies.

I had many favorite parts, but the one that most inspired me was the commentary about the necessity for our well being of working with our hands. We have lost this element of life in our cultural milieu, to our great loss. It inspires me, along with many other messages of late (including The Omnivore's Dilemma, and writings by Barbara Kingsolver) to be more intentional in the selection and preparation of food.

This goes along with our decision to be more intentional about our entertainment (vs turning on the drug and channel surfing). Viewing this movie at the zendo is the second time in a week I have gone to a social setting to experience what might have been seen in my bedroom on the tube. Again I am glad for our decision.

Cosmos

We have begun watching Carl Sagan's video series (c. 1980) about the origins of everything in the cosmos. I had forgotten what an amazing writer and engaging human being he was. 

I have been sitting in the zendo with the koan "Mu." Last winter I know roshi was losing patience with me as I struggled to get past logic with "mu." Sagan shows how all the physical matter on earth shares a common physical basis. In the physical universe we are all one thing! We are all one physical thing, and the differentiation we perceive is just an artifact of our binary brain's requirement to perceive things in time and with edges. So 'tis true what the buddha saw.

I remember this epoch in scientific thought including Fritjof Capra's THE TAO OF PHYSICS, and its discussion of Eastern mysticism and its parallel's with physics. I muse- is it the influence of these thinkers in a formative time in my life that have attracted me to zen? These were very important thinkers, Sagan and Capra. 

After sixty years of living, I see that strides in realization will come in fits and starts. Now we are immersed in a ludicrous financial quagmire, so the truth of the universe will be obscure for a time, while greed and avarice arise, and its effects are endured. It is time to drop out again, I think. 

Wireless Broadband Glitch No. 1

Ooops. Can't use the Verizon wireless broadband for downloading iTunes podcasts. Well, can, but doing so last night used up almost 1 gigabyte of my 5 gig monthly allowance. OK, so now I see that in our house we will still have to have a regular wireless  connection since I am a big podcaster, and also we utilize online entertainment. So this toy will have to earn its keep by its convenience as a mobile internet connection.  One month test drive: 1 down, 29 to go.

Window on the World

This is my new window on the world. Costs about the same as cable. So tiny and simple to operate. TV is obsolete in our house now. We are now intentional entertainment consumers, though must develop similar discipline regarding the web. 

We had a tour of sports bars while watching the Broncos this weekend. More on that later- it was very fun. We are in a new paradigm. I like it.

New Toys

We outdid ourselves at Verizon today. Papa got his own cellphone and I got my wireless broadband plug-in making it possible to surf and blog anytime anywhere. The report: the wireless is lightening fast, even better than our cable internet, and at 11 pm (late for us) Papa was still his 1980's aviator glasses reading the thick instruction booklet and doing the settings on his cellphone.

We tried all the cellphones in the store- were very seduced by the ones that would surf the net, intimidated by the ones that would text and decided that we would save our dendrites for other things than texting, and were almost won over by one which would allow us to watch football on the phone (an issue now that we don't have cable TV). 

In the end we got matching Motorolas- ones that you could jump on, roll in the desert sand, spill you coffee on, drop at will, throw at will, and they would still work. We could see the numbers clearly, the screen is decent size, the camera is a little better, but most of all our sweet young sales rep assured us that the Motorolas have the best reception. 

We are on our thirty day test drive. Whee!!!