Transition Time

NEW ENGLAND: APRIL WEATHER IN DECEMBER
I still see squirrels occasionally, and today a small chipmunk with a very red back streaked across my path--I wonder if they're confused about the season? Monday's high here was -7 C, and this morning (two days later) it was +12 C and raining.

TEN MORE SLEEPS!
Neither buried beneath books, nor home for the holidays, now is a time of wrapping up loose ends and of anticipation. My classes resumed last week, after the Thanksgiving break, with significantly lighter assignment loads. This gives my classmates breathing space to finish their major term projects, but mine are already complete. I handed in my research paper on Leo Tolstoy to my instructor last Friday, one week before the deadline--he thanked me for the 'preemie.' I am learning the tenor recorder part for a few pieces that my class is preparing to perform on December 19th, and I found and stitched some accessories for the three angels in our Shepherds' Play for December 17th. I brought my watercolour painting notebook up to date, and jotted down my ponderings, comparing and contrasting 'touching' and 'beholding,' and my experiences of darkness and light. I registered for my January courses--did you know that we skip winter, at Antioch University? We are coming to the end of our FALL term, and in January we will begin our SPRING term--how convenient! These tasks, and my daily rehearsing, do NOT add up to a full week of work.

I looked after Jan's (my landlady's) dogs while she was away for a few days--fed them, watered them, and gave them attention. Hero and Winnie don't go for walks on leash. I took Safi on two brief walks, but she is quite skittish. She tends to lunge when a car drives by, and she's a big enough girl to provide a challenge for the one holding the other end of her leash! Precious was definitely easier to walk, and you can view photos of her at Robin Hood Park here. (I was mindful NOT to call her by name, in public!)

BOOKS AND STARS
I've read five novels since my last class before the Thanksgiving break, and I've decided I enjoy two Canadian female authors in particular--Joan Barfoot and Gail Bowen. It was fun to read about places in Saskatchewan in Gail's books. I read one of Garrison Keillor's Wobegon books, appropos to living in New England, and I especially enjoyed a new book by Peter Manseau, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. Its themes include Jewish emigration from the Old Home to Israel and New York, and the Yiddish and Hebrew languages. The Canadian Living web site posts instructions on how to make stars by weaving gift-wrap ribbon, and I've made a couple dozen of these stars, to adorn my bedroom altar as well as the gifts I will wrap back in Edmonton.

FRENCH REPUBLICAN CALENDAR
Several years ago, a local radio station (perhaps CBC) declared, as an April Fool gag, that Canada was switching to 'decimal time.' There would be ten hours per day instead of twenty-four, with ten minutes per decimal hour, and ten seconds per decimal minute. When I found out about the French Republican calendar, I learned that the republicans had proposed this system, and created actual decimal time watches.

The French Republican calendar was used by the government of France for about twelve years, following the French revolution. It seems there was a desire to overturn every possible remnant of previous regimes. Said Romme: "...reason demands that we follow nature rather than servilely continuing upon the erroneous path of our predecessors..." The Republican calendar year began at the autumn equinox and had twelve months of 30 days each, which were given new names based on nature. Each month had three weeks, and each week had ten days. The names of these months translate (approximately) as follows: Grape Harvest, Fog, and Frost (autumn), Snowy, Rainy, and Windy (winter), Germination, Flower, and Pasture (spring), and Harvest, Summer Heat, and Fruit (summer). In England, people mocked the Republican Calendar by calling the months: Wheezy, Sneezy and Freezy; Slippy, Drippy and Nippy; Showery, Flowery and Bowery; Wheaty, Heaty and Sweety. What fun!! The French Republican calendar would make today the twentieth day of the autumn month of Frimaire (Frost). (The first month of winter would not begin until December 21.) Rather than the traditional Catholic saint-days, each day in the FR calendar has a designated animal, mineral, plant or tool (!), and today's special tool is the grub-hoe (tee-hee!).

In my posts of June 18 and August 27, 2008, I mentioned the ancient Chinese almanac from Liza Dalby's book, East Wind Melts the Ice. What is my attraction to these alternative calendars, you ask? I've been asking myself the same question. I believe it is a symptom of nothing less significant than my Quest to find Meaning in Life. A calendar can remind me of the seasons and the rhythms of nature, that nourish the seasons and the rhythms of my soul.

Soul nourishment for this week:

Within my being's depths there speaks,
Intent on revelation,
The cosmic Word mysteriously:
Imbue your labour's aims
With my bright spirit light
To sacrifice yourself through me.

Artist in Residence

When one has hearing loss, it is often difficult to discern the direction of the source of a sound, and whether it is coming from near or far. These are essential clues in helping to identify a particular sound. Due to these difficulties, I sometimes feel foolish when I hear something and make a remark about it that seems way off base, to my conversational partner. This is why I hesitated to say anything about a remarkable sound that I have been hearing every morning here at High Mowing, when walking past the gym on my way to breakfast. I wondered whether it was an owl, going, "Hoo! Hoo!" (On the other hand, perhaps it was Johnny One-Note practicing his flute, or a squeaky wheel on the air circulation fan of the gym.) Yesterday I screwed up my courage and asked my fellow student Jennifer whether this was, indeed, an owl. No, it is the call of the delightful mourning dove! Jennifer was able to point out one of these beautiful birds to me, as it stood calmly on the road, and she can even play its call on her pentatonic flute! I find the bird enchanting, and found this photo on Wikipedia. Jennifer kindly drove me to Keene yesterday, and I was quite excited to finally see the charming place that will be my home for the year.

One of the treats of this three-week summer intensive term has been my clay modeling class. We began our work together by modeling a perfect sphere. We passed our spheres from hand to hand to compare them, and then transformed them gradually, using pressure from our hands, into tetrahedrons (four surfaces, all equilateral triangles). Sometimes the hand knows more than the eye, and I particularly enjoyed forming my tetrahedron with my eyes closed. By exerting pressure on the points of our tetrahedrons, they gradually became octahedrons. Next step: press carefully on the points of the octahedron, to make an intermediate shape on the path to cube-dom called a cuboctahedron--all squares and triangles! Final step (only one of my classmates was successful in accomplishing this feat): press on all the points to gradually create twelve perfect interlocking pentagons--dodecahedron, ta-da! Plato introduced the world to the mysteries of the five platonic solids, which are fun (and easy!) to make out of paper or card.

New project: we each made a half-egg shape out of clay; then spent most of the two-hour class period blindfolded, adding little bits of clay to build up a face on our shaped bases. (That time my hand didn't seem to know as much as my eye!) And here are two more of my sculptures, the first one exploring convex and concave surfaces, and the second one expressing a twisting, out-reaching gesture inspired by driftwood. Can you tell I'm having fun already?






This week's message for your soul:

To bear in inward keeping spirit bounty
Is stern command of my prophetic feeling,
That ripened gifts divine
Maturing in the depths of soul
To selfhood bring their fruits.