We had our second tai chi class this past week and I’ve put together a routine of about 7 movements we’ve learned in class. The movements have long fancy names, like Two Hands Hold Up The Heavens. I generally think of the ones I’m doing as standing, stretching, floating, bending, pushing, pulling, and walking. I also looked up a series of movements called ‘8 pieces of brocade’ which our instructor talks about. It’s eight movements, each one affecting, clearing, or strengthening specific parts of the body, organs, and chi (life force energy). I’ve watched videos of the eight brocades by three different practitioners and while the flows all have the same name, the movements vary a bit by practitioner. I’m doing the tai chi every morning, well, except Thursday, and sometimes some yoga as well but I’m still going to the three evening yoga classes so I’m not too concerned about doing a full yoga routine every morning. I’ll reserve judgement of whatever difference or benefit I’m feeling from the tai chi until I’ve been doing it consistently for about a month.
The last two mobiles are done, 9 in all, and now I need to figure out how to price them. Right now they’re all hanging in the west and north facing windows in the corner in my workroom. They look pretty good hanging there, they make me happy to look at them. I guess I’m going to have to keep one but deciding which is going to be hard. I also need to figure out packaging, some sort of box for people to transport it easily without it getting all twisted up. It won’t do to just stick it in a bag. Anyway, here’s the last two. One is not crystals but strips of colored glass from a previous project.
I knew I was done with them because that last one, being the last and mainly doing it just to use up the last of the crystals, was days in making, I was all but over bending wire, but I finished it last night then scooped up all the bits of wire and other trash, put away the spools of various wire, and put away the tools so now my table is clear and ready for the next whatever. I think I’ll start with the art journal while I consider my options.That clever and artistic Linda Sue is thinking of making shrines with the 8 cigar boxes she has and I thought that was a cool idea. I don’t have any boxes suitable for that kind of thing but it got me thinking about shadow boxes, 3 dimensional dioramas, painting and cutting out the elements and layering them with space between.
There are now 6 tomato plants sitting on the end of my desk that need to go in the ground.
Plus I still want to transplant some of the healthy looking I don’t know what’s, maybe cucumber or possibly a squash out of the compost bin.
I did get out there earlier today and finished weeding and turning the big garden area, weeded and turned the small plot where I had zinnias last year. Yesterday I went to the feed store and potting soil, composted peat, composted manure, and some landscapers mix. The mix is to work into a flowerbed in the little backyard where I want to put a coral porterweed in the ground, get it out of the pot. It’s a volunteer I dug up two years ago in case I’m unsuccessful in protecting and keeping it alive but I’ve had the one in the ground for 4 or 5 years so I think I don’t need to keep it in a pot.
Wren report, denied access to the house, she has started to build a new nest in the pot of maidenhair fern by the backdoor. At least I think it’s the same one. I’ve seen her going in there four or five times with dead plant material in her beak.
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Once again our illustrious leader Trumplethinskin, the so called Peace President, the man who claims he has ended 8 wars in his first year, who feels slighted by the Nobel Committee because they have not awarded him the Peace Prize he thinks he so richly deserves, the self appointed supreme leader for life of his new Board Of Peace, has illegally, without the consent of Congress, and unprovoked bombed the shit out of another sovereign nation. This time Iran, a nation that imposed no immediate threat and during ongoing negotiations, without warning and in conjunction with Israel starting Saturday morning and continuing through the weekend killing 150 Iranian little girls. I’m sure we all feel much safer now that those heinous elementary school girls are dead. They did succeed in killing Iran’s supreme leader and many in the upper echelon of the government but Iran is not Iraq or Venezuela. Iran is a big country with a strong military and some powerful allies and the whole region is going up with Iran retaliating against not only Israel but every Arab country that deals with the US and allows US army bases in country. Trumplethinskin is an idiot and a dangerous one. He has no concept of history or the delicate balance in the Middle East and how easily it goes up in flames. Not only is he Putin’s puppet in Putin’s attempt to dismantle NATO and destroy American influence, now he is Netanyahu’s puppet, goaded into this aggression by Saudi Arabia’s lap dog Jared Kushner whispering in T.r.u.m.p’s ear how this will be great for future real estate opportunities in the region. So the man who has been sidelined by the nations of Europe and Canada creating new defense networks and trade agreements excluding the US, whose ego demands he be the biggest bully and the most feared, who equates threats with statecraft has given the hornets nest a big whomping. And he doesn’t give a fuck who dies, how many Americans and other innocents he has put at risk in the Middle East. It won’t be him and that’s all he cares about.
This is a link to an essay by an Australian. Worth the read I think.
To end with something more pleasant, Cat sleeping on the lap blankets on the back of the couch that we no longer need but haven’t been put away yet.
