Compartments, measurement, geometry

My evolving druidry kit
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Over the last few days, while working on other things, I’ve been fussing and sawing and sanding and gluing small bits of wood into place to make this little box.

I’m a member of a couple of druidic organizations, namely AODAand DOGD, and I’ve noted that the more of these kinds of ritual groups and ritual paths that I practice, the more that my house and life gets cluttered up with stuff… stuff that’s difficult to pack, difficult to put away, difficult to sort or keep separate, and difficult, frankly, to explain in short order.

Plus, there’s the Hermetic Kavad, which is going to take more carpentry skills than I currently have, to finish in any appreciable way that people are going to find useful or interesting. So there’s the need to practice those skills, and this is a good way to do it.

I need more practice. Clearly.

Part of it is that carpentry is not pure geometry, nor pure measurement. The thickness of the wood worked matters; so does its flexibility and strength. The rules for assembling pieces are not hard and fast – there are knots in the wood, there’s the fact that a piece of wood which has straight sides is not perfectly straight, and there’s the challenge that cutting a piece of wood that looks flat may in fact warp it — particularly if it’s these tiny thin pieces that make up the internal walls of this box.

Also, this was about making sure that certain objects fit, and fit snugly, inside the box, without a lot of wiggle room (Some of them are fragile, after all). It’s not pure geometry by any means. Actually, most of it was done with a straight-edge, with only inches marked and not to any degree of accuracy (no quarter or half inches).

And you know what? It turned out ok. Not perfect by any means. But not bad. Not beautiful. But functional. Acceptable. A suitable learning experience.

A good beginning.

If you’re further interested in the contents of the kit, click on the picture, and visit the Flickr page… there’s about 20 notes about the contents of the box, but you have to be on Flickr to read/see them.

Via Flickr:
(Roll over the image to read the notes.. but on Flickr, not here.)

I had it in mind to build a small box for the tools and equipment of druidic practice in the DOGD. I got the box from Michael’s Arts & Crafts, and I’m in the process of laying out a Celtic knot-work pattern on the outside, along with spaces for the four animals of the directions (hawk, stag, salmon, bear), the sixteen geomantic characters, and the various other sigils of this society.

One of the big problems was the red cross and the green ring. The standard 5″ diameter one doesn’t fit in the box. I’ve now tried making a 3×3″ ring and cross, but the scale of the two parts seems off. Time to remember my proportional rules, and try again.

Inside the box are compartments for incense and candles, a small egg cup ‘chalice’, a crystal ball, three candlesticks, two cauldrons, a wand, and (tucked out of sight) four geomantic “Druid wands” for casting geomancy charts. There are also two bottles which will eventually hold Spagyric preparations, and space for several more. Although I don’t think this box will ever be able to hold all 17 spagyrics that the order has on offer… by then it will probably be time for a new box…

Tai Chi Y2D7: Holy Discovery

I think there’s a sense in which I’m trying to adopt a practice of holy discovery to my daily tai chi exercise.  If one goes to church every Sunday, at least in theory one rarely has a massive spiritual insight once a week; instead, it’s a series of small insights which, if one is lucky, regularly build up to a fever pitch that leads to a deep insight… and those deep insights arrive somewhat often.  But without a process for tracking those insights, of course, they fade away and are lost. Hence the importance of journaling in so many spiritual traditions: without a process of tracking insight, the insight is lost and vanishes.

How does one approach a practice from the point of view of holy discovery, when some days (like today, for example), are just not going to be that interesting?  I mean, every day just isn’t going to be Easter or Christmas.  How do you keep going (especially when the Dweller on the Threshold is always there, saying you can sleep in, you can stay in bed. It won’t matter if you miss a day… And more or less, the Dweller is right. Missing a day isn’t going to matter that much… but it also doesn’t take long to wreck a habit, either).

And I think that the answer is that one chooses to approach the practice from the point of view of what will you teach me today?  Sometimes the answer is going to be Nothing. That has to be ok.  Sometimes we learn nothing.  But we also have to assume that somewhere in our cells, deep in our muscles or bones, something was learned today, even if it didn’t make it all the way to the conscious awareness of the ego.

Not everything does.  Not right away, at least.

Taiji Day 346: time and space

Today I had trouble slowing down. For a variety of reasons, the living room is crowded, and there’s limited working space for the forms I intended to do. there’s this irony, of course: it’s easy to go slow on the qi gong forms in a small space, because that’s what they’re intended to do. They work out the body even within the limitations of space — you need enough floor room to stand in horse stance, and maybe a little more for therm swings, and that’s it.

The tai chi form needs more floor space. And that’s just the way it is: without room to step and move, it’s impossible to do the work in the right way. There has to be room to step around and move. And if there isn’t, the form is compromised in some way — you have to take extra steps, or you have to remain in a position for three or four breaths instead of ten or twelve. For example, during one part of the form this morning, I had to take four or five steps to arrive at a place where I could turn back, and be facing in a direction and into an open area of floor where I could do the four postures of Parting the Swallow’s Tail: roll back, press, push, single whip. But then I was facing the wrong direction, and directing energy in the wrong place, to move on to the next posture. One does not wish to kick a steel framed book case, for example, with bare toes. So another positional adjustment was in order. Now I was facing a new direction, and I could do the next few movements… But then I was in the wrong place for the next movement… And so on… And so on… One wonders if it really counts at all as tai chi if one does all the motions of a tai chi form, but doesn’t do the flow from one posture to the next?

In the short term, it probably counts. But it can’t count over the long term. otherwise, one gradually begins doing a completely different thing besides tai chi. The flow is one of the things being practiced, after all. When it’s absent from the practice, one isn’t practicing. At the same time, it really took 300+ days to evolve my practice to the point where I understood this.

Teaching to Minimum Yields Results

I’ve been teaching to the test, and teaching my history students how to study for a test with minimal preparation time. The results so far are instructive. Half of the class made massive improvements in their grades just by developing chapter outlines. By taking 3 minutes from their nightly homework prep time to do an outline of the chapter headers and sub-headers, and then filling in that outline as they read, about half of my seventh graders moved from doing ok but not amazingly on a chapter test set for grade level or a little below, to doing honors-level work on a test calibrated to above grade level.

The other half … Well, it’s hard to say. The rule for this test was that kids didn’t have to turn in their test if they were unhappy with the results. That was my strategy for getting them to give up their old methods long enough to try this. Yet, about half the students didn’t turn in the test. So I’ve been investigating one-on-one like a detective, trying to absorb what’s going on. And from what I can tell, about two-thirds were disappointed with the result. They didn’t do badly; most of them got in the 70s to high 80s, actually! They just didn’t do as well as they wanted. Ambition and expectations are in the way of their success, I think. Something to teach and reteach in the new year.

The last group did worse, relative to their over-prepared but haphazard study method they were using before. They were spending four hours studying for tests and getting better grades — but trying to know everything. What’s the real point of quality control if you study for hours, but in an unsystematic way that doesn’t guarantee results?

In any case, the data supports three ideas:

• studying not at all gives poor results
• overstudying (for too much time) gives good but inconsistent results.
• studying with a plan in mind conveys a solid B+: better than the average grade, C.

and the plan we’ve been working on is this:

• study for no more than the allotted time (here, about 25 minutes)
• begin studying a chapter with the chapter test in mind
• collect and retain all chapter-related materials in an organized way — quizzes, in-class notes, homework, reading outlines, etc.
• work during homework time to a plan:
  • create a “major themes” outline of the reading in 3 minutes
  • leave room for extra details
  • read for 10-15 minutes; as you read the text, fill in details in your outline
  • answer assigned questions by referencing first the outline, then the textbook
  • take no more than 10 minutes to answer questions.
• before the test:
  • study the section outlines and questions for 10-15 minutes each
  • re-tell the chapter narrative to yourself as you review materials
  • get a good night’s sleep beforehand

The results showed that the methodology mostly worked for 50% of the students, still needs some tweaks for 30% more, and 20% may need a much different system. I need to close that gap at the end, and find some ways to tweak both the method, and my teaching methods.

Taiji Day 287: go for it

Let’s say you start a project that you know will take a year of daily effort. It’s going to be difficult, but you get to work on it. It’s not much time every day, but you have to put in some effort daily or you’re unable to get this project done in a year. How much is each day worth as a percentage of the total project?

About 0.27% — a little more than a quarter of a percentage point. That quarter-percentage seems huge on a daily basis. “how can i find the time??” yet its real power is the accumulation of simple interest. You can’t ever increase time the way you accumulate money, but you can bank your time in the work you intend to do and make a plan to complete. At a half-hour a day, it’s around 182 hours of effort on a single project. At a page a day, it’s a novel or a book of poetry or a non-fiction piece of some kind. It’s a gallery of small paintings or a small house constructed in the back yard (although some things like architecture are better accomplished in short, intense bursts than spread out over all available time, willy-nilly, and oft require specialized help.)

I made the mistake of giving Facebook a half-hour this morning,and then doing tai chi in a rushed and haphazard way. I got the tai chi done, but not well. Where you allocate time has a lot to say about what you accomplish in the world. Where does the time go?,you may ask. it often slips out the side door on little cat-feet, one 0.27th of a 1% of your year at a time.

Taiji Day 264: Where was I?

Somewhere in the middle of the qi gong routine today, I forgot where I was in the form, and I had to stop and start over.  I mean, I had done one or two sets of the postures, but I’d literally forgotten where in the form I was, and what was to be done next.

This happens a lot, actually.  The dropped place, the moment of “wait, where was I?” in the form or in the two qi gong routines. My brain will just sort of ‘forget’ what it was doing.  It’s hard to know how much of this is the Dweller on the Threshold problem, and how much is just getting older.  I don’t get headaches or have any symptoms that suggest I’m developing mental challenges.  In terms of memory and imagination, I’m as strong as ever.  It’s just this thing that happens — even though I started doing tai chi this morning, and I’m doing fine, and it’s just about 100 days ’til I’ve done it for a year… oh look, where was I again?

But this happens in ‘regular life’ too… I’ll be typing something up, and then I’ll need to “just go check my e-mail for a minute” or “I need a drink of water”.  And I’ll lose my place in the world, in the sense that whatever I’m doing at that moment will stop mid-stride, and I’ll go do something else for a few minutes. Then my willpower returns, and I go back to my current activity.  It happens all the time.

And I think this is one of the benefits of tai chi. Because these ‘senior moments’ happen, when the body and mind just wander off on their own errands.  But as my Mother the Artist says, “we are our projects.” And if my project is to do a year of tai chi, then it’s important not to wander away from the work just because the mind wanders off; or, when the mind wanders off (because it will), to bring it gently back to the task at hand… and if it’s really wandered quite far, to begin again in a more focused way.

Taiji Day 244: Reverse Order

I woke waaay too early this morning… popped awake about 3:00 am, with Ke$sha’s “”Dance like we’re gonna die young” running through my head like a strand of diseased DNA .  Gaah.  Yikes.

Moon sign

But I’ve mostly successfully banished that little brainworm from my morning, and though I’m still hideously tired, I’m at least functional. And so it was a perfect day to do my three forms in reverse order — beginning with the tai chi form, then moving to eight pieces of brocade, and ending with five golden coins. It’s good to switch up the order a bit from time to time; while I don’t move individual postures around within each form, doing them in a different order leads to a subtly different workout, and a different experience.  I also did it in the living room, where the rug flips back to reveal a beautiful wood floor that’s perfect for some of the spins in the main form.

Continuing with my color studies, I did this small painting of the Moon sign last night, with the background in the dark blue of the King scale (projective energy), and the curvature of the moon in a pale purple, the Moon’s color in the Queen scale (embodying energy).  I wasn’t able to do the full set of experiments with color, because I found that I didn’t have time to try — the blue paint was very fast-setting, and if I wanted to do the purple Moon at all, I was going to have to hurry.  Maybe this is what Bob Ross meant by, “There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.”  I was hoping that the brush strokes on the background would look like waves, but they don’t, really. Oh, well.  If you’re not painting, you’re not learning how to paint.  If you’re not doing tai chi, you’re not learning how to do tai chi.

That’s sort of the point of all this work, I think.  I’m here to learn things, and learn new things, and there’s an intensity of experience which comes from dedicated practice.  Sometimes that means doing things backwards.  Sometimes it means doing things in a hurry that you thought were going to be leisurely.  Sometimes it means waking up at 3:00 am and figuring out how to go back to sleep.

 

22nd Mansion of the Moon

22nd Mansion of the Moon
Originally uploaded by anselm23

Today and part of yesterday, the Moon was in the 22nd Mansion: Fortune of the Sacrificers.

This is supposed to be an auspicious day to flee intolerable situations and difficult circumstances, and to break free of limitations. The name of the angel is actually Geliel, and I think the sigil or image turned out pretty well: it shows the interplay of Mercury, Venus and Mars forces pretty well, I think.

Via Flickr:
I wanted to work on this art project. But I don’t have a whiteboard at home. So I made do with a notebook. Here’s the 22nd mansion of the Moon: Geliel, the angel appointed to watch over swift escapes, ends to intolerable situations, rapid changes, and liberation from constraint.

I thought long and hard about drawing this image and then had a brief chat with a friend, who reminded me that I’m not charging the image, just making it.

Public Speaking

Earlier this week, my friend Hollie told me that she’d attended a meeting of Toastmasters this past week.  Although I’m paraphrasing, this is roughly what she said:

It was awesome, Andrew. There were people who gave prepared talks, and those were singularly great; but they also had these things called Table Topics. They had a basket with a range of subjects in it, and you drew a topic from the basket, and you had to speak on that topic for two minutes straight, say “thank you,” and sit down. I agreed to try it out, even though I’m a guest, and I got “pepper” . There were apparently a whole bunch of spices in this week’s basket, so we heard talks about oregano and thyme and saffron… And they said I was a great speaker! I’ve never done anything so exciting and interesting, or at least not in a long while.  I’m going back.

So, with that in mind, of course I had to try it with my Debate Club.  I made up about a dozen cards, and we had three Table Topics this week speak.  We’ll do it again in a week or two, with more cards.

I’m not sure this counts as a Maker’s Grimoire item, but it turns out that randomly assigning kids to random topics of conversation is a great way to get kids prepped to talk about a broad range of subjects.  I got notes from a couple of different families reporting that the subjects that had come up at the first round of Table Topics had become discussion items by dinner that evening.

My initial collection of Table Topics cards were as follows:

• Germany
• Hawaii
• China
• Japan
• Coffee
• Physics
• Biology
• Geometry
• Algebra
• School
• England
• South Carolina
• Montana
• Mountain Climbing
• Manufacturing
• Painting
• Fashion

We spend a lot of time in Debate Club preparing for Mock Trial in January, but I think that all of our students need more prep time at just plain-ol’ public speaking, and I hope to figure out how to introduce this into our regular curriculum in the classroom.

 

Six Chapters

Six Chapters

Deb has written a rant on creativity, tiredness, juice, and the power of working hard for the great things we want to achieve.  

It’s well worth reading, and I hope you will.  It’s worth notice and special attention.