Mandala- Part 5

I have returned from my trip and have finally gotten caught up on all the chores.  I actually had a day or two to get back into my studio.  We are so busy these days that I feel like I hardly have any time to get to be in my studio working on something.  I am trying to get back into the swing of things. 

Anyway, I finally get back into the studio and try to get started on the Mandala project again.  Regular readers know that I have been working learning about Mandala.  I am working on learning how to create Mandalas by using a book titled: Mandala Luminous Symbols for Healing by Judith Cornell, Ph.D.  And when I opened the book to start on the next chapter I ran smack into the part that was stressing me out the last time I worked on the project.  The book has many pictures of beautiful Mandala.  Some were hand drawn by very artistic people; some were computer generated.  What stopped me was that I know that no matter what I do my Mandala was not going to look anything like them.  My drawing ability seem to have stopped at around age six.  It took a few days to get past the fear factor.   

The only way to learn is to go ahead and face the fear and get on with things.  This chapter has a meditation on the CD.  The reading said that you had to let go and draw whatever image came to mind during the meditation.  The book also said that you should draw whatever image came to your mind during the meditation no matter what it was.  The book also said that many times people rejected their Mandala because they thought it was too hard to portray.  The recommendation was that you trace around a picture of what you would like to portray in that case.  A final recommendation was that you make some thumb nail sketches before committing your design to a final sheet of the black drawing paper. 

So I sat down and meditated.  I did have an image come to mind.  It was a night scene of a waterfall on a river.  It was dark and the stars were out.  I could see a river that came up to a waterfall.  The
water was dark but bright light reflected off rippling waters making the water look luminous.  The bright light was an orb that was pulsing and vibrating with energy.  I want to be clear about this part.  It was not the sun or moon, but some strange orb vibrating with energy.  The orb had a glow surrounding it like some sort of glowing mist.  It also had bright ray coming off of it.  From time to time a discharge of energy would take place and lightening bolts of energy would come out from the orb and strike the water, land, or the air.  The bolts were different colors.  In the dark, the land and foliage was barely visible for the most part.  Once in a while you could make out a tree or bush, but mostly it was just dark almost to the point of being a silhouette.  The water was glowing translucent blue and white.  That is what I saw.  It did not seem very Mandala-like to me but there you are.  So now it was time to commit it to paper as best as I was able.

 I created one quick pencil  sketch right after the meditation.  Things did not look quite right.  Memories fade quickly.  Then I did a very small drawing in colored pencil.  After that I did a larger drawing in colored pencil.  I am not sure whether it was better or worse.  I guess my next drawing will be full size.  I had a very strange feeling while I was doing the third drawing.  The exercise reminded me of an old science fiction movie called Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Early in the book/movie people found themselves making the same figure over and over again.  They drew it, modeled it in clay, painted it, baked it, made the shape out of mud, you name it.  They made it without knowing why.  That was kind of the feeling I had with the sketch.  The picture means something to me.  I just don't know what it is.  Maybe I'll figure it out sometime.  I'll have to see what is next.  Maybe it will help get some clarification.

Other than that, I have not had a lot of time to do anything.  I missed my creative time so much that I ordered a packet of note card Artist tiles.  They are only three and a half inches on each side.  I thought that if I worked on something small that I might have a little time to do something.  I really need to be creative on a regular basis.  I was experimenting with glazes, clear Gesso,and acrylic paints to see what effects I could get.  Seriously, I would love to learn to paint and draw better, and the only way to do that is to practice.  I may not have time to fill up a sketch book page, but I can do something that takes me only a few minutes.  I painted a couple of flowers.  It is not much, but it satisfied my need to say to myself, "See, I did something today".

I have not yet gotten back to the Walking Stick Z project.  The last few days the temperatures have been in the upper 90s.  This year we seem to have a lot of biting flies.  Going out in the yard has been a miserable experience.  I am hoping for better weather next week so I can get out and work on the walking stick.

Photos from the Road - Latest Road Trip

Crossing the Potomac.

I’ve been away for a few days on our latest road trip.  My husband and I traveled to Pennsylvania to   We spent several days there.  Many people want to travel by air to get some place quickly.  We prefer to travel by road and see what there is to see.  The weather was favorable and we had an enjoyable trip. We traveled through four states: Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.  The traffic was heavy in Norther Virginia as we skirted Washington DC on the Beltway.  It was also heavy around Philadelphia. 
see his family.

Somewhere in Pennsylvaia.

As we headed north, we saw an amazing amount   Not all of it is lovely, but the rusty buildings have a story to tell if a person will take the time to  look around.  Some of our trip ran close to the Eastern Seaboard we were near salt water or brackish water and there was a considerable amount of rust on anything metal.  A lot of the things looked as if they needed a good coat of paint. 
of the infrastructure that makes this country run.
 

Adirondack Mountains in the distance.

 

We crossed a number of large rivers.  On the way north we crossed the Mattaponi, Potomac, the Severn, and the Delaware.  After seeing these rivers, it makes me wonder just what it would the Amazon River must look like since it is so much larger than these rivers.  On the way back we crossed the Susquehanna River, the    and South Anna rivers.    With the exceptions of the Mattaponi and South Anna, these are all very large rivers.  It would be easy to mistake any of them for being the Chesapeake Bay rather than being a river.  

Rappahannock River,

Justice without blindfold.

The East Coast has had a lot of rain and snow this year so everything was beautifully green.  The fields were green.  The forests were green.  The trees were green.  The color was broken up by deep red barns from time to time.  But by and large, after several hours the green became   It was a relief to drive through small towns from time to time.  

a bit monotonous.

An inviting Grotto in Maryland.

There were many picturesque small towns.  The main streets had older styles of stores and homes with lots of gingerbread trim.  One of the small towns had a statue with some interesting information attached to it.  The statue was on top of a municipal building.   The statue is of the figure, Justice.  Most statues are called Blind Justice because the figure is wearing a blindfold and justice is weighed out on a scale.  This particular statue has a scale, but is not wearing a blindfold.  I am told that there are only three statues like it in the country.  If Blind Justice is only weighing facts on the scale, I’m not sure   Weighing facts but also looking at circumstances maybe?

about the meaning of the Justice statue without the blindfold.

This same municipal building had a Civil War memorial in front of it. (Civil War 1861-1865) Since this was in Pennsylvania, the war memorial was called a memorial for the War of the Rebellion.  In the South, this war was called The War of Northern Aggression.  Sometimes that war was called The War Between the States.  Now it is generally called The Civil War.   Being that the war ended 150 years ago, there is no one left alive who fought in the war.  The war is long over, but not forgotten.  I hope that it can be a lesson to the rest of the world that fighting can stop and prosperity can return if people will stop fighting and give enough time for everyone to heal.

For the trip up we took Route 301.  This took us up to Pennsylvania.  It is a more pleasant drive, but in some areas it is only one lane in each direction.  It is a great ride as long as the traffic is not bad.  Of course around Washington D.C. and Philadelphia it is always heavy traffic.  On the way back we came back down Route 15 to Route 17.  That mostly took us through the countryside.  The last leg of the journey home, Route 17 runs along with Interstate 95.  Being that we were already on 95 we decided to return home by picking up Interstate 295.  At one point we could have gotten off and taken 301 but by this time we were tired and just wanted to get home as quickly as possible.  There were lots of trucks on the road, especially on 95.  Unfortunately, we arrived in Northern Virginia at rush hour and the traffic was terrible.  It was a great relief to finally arrive home. 

Elk - Coming Soon to a County Near You

Once in a while I write an off topic piece.  Since I do blog about my trips to the mountains, it is only marginally off topic.  Last year I wrote an article for the blog entitled The Thing in the Woods: published on the blog on Wednesday, May 21, 2014.  The article was about animals that were in the woods near my home that one would not normally expect to be there.  The list of creatures included chimpanzees and alligators.  I wrote the article as a cautionary tale to remind people that they need to be aware of their surroundings and not take it for granted that animals not normally found here won’t show up in unexpected locations.  The blog post also touched on animals that were once in Virginia and were thought to be coming back such as wolves or animals recently migrated to Virginia such as coyotes.  Today’s blog post is about another animal coming back to Virginia, Elk.

 

My husband and I were returning from a trip to the Mountains earlier this year.  As we drove down the I-64 corridor towards home, my husband said that he had seen a large horned animal and thought it was an elk.  I was surprised.  As far as I knew there had not been Elk in Virginia for a long time.  (The last Elk was thought to have been shot near Front Royal in 1855.) I decided to do some research to find out if Elk were back in Virginia.

 

Yes, Elk are back in Virginia.  An Elk restoration project began in three Virginia counties began in 2010.  The counties are Buchanan, Dickenson, and Wise.  It is illegal to hunt Elk in those counties, but according to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries website it is legal to hunt Elk in any county except those three counties. (Hunting is allowed during the appropriate hunting season and in the approved manner of course. See the Game and Inland Fisheries Website for details.)   And now that Elk are back in Virginia, there are a few things you should know about them.  I am passing this information on because sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you.  Right now, there are so few Elk in Virginia that an encounter is unlikely.  However, lessons learned from western states that do have significant Elk populations can be useful here.  (By the way, a group of Elk is not called a herd.  It is called a Gang). 

 

Elk can be four to five feet tall and weigh as much as 1,100 pounds.  For the most part, Elk are fairly calm.  However, there are two times of the year that the animals are more likely to be aggressive.  The spring calving season, generally May and June, is one of those times.  Mother calves are very protective and have been known to stomp people who get too close to their calves.  Authorities in parks out west recommend getting no closer than 25 yards from an Elk even if it appears calm or tame.

 

Elk calves are known to be food for wolves, black bears, grizzly bears, coyotes, and cougars.  We have wolves, coyotes, and black bears in Virginia.  As I wrote in my last article, there have been reports of cougars being seen in Virginia although it is not officially confirmed.  If the Elk are calving, it is possible that predators are nearby.  You should be keeping an eye out for them as well. 

 

If an Elk starts coming towards you it is recommended that you back away quickly, raising your arms to look bigger, and swing your jacket if you have one.  Do not turn your back and run.  You can’t see if it is charging if your back is to it.  If the Elk does attack and you are unable to get away, drop to the ground and use your arms to cover your head and neck. 

 

If you come upon an Elk and calf while walking your dog the Elk is more likely to attack the dog than the person.  Release the dog so it can run away and back away.  Reconnect with your pet once you are well away from the Elk.

 

In some states, Elk may come in contact with populated areas.  The Elk are generally ambivalent about people but can become aggressive if disturbed.  If it is calving or rutting season it has been recommended that people peer around the corner of a building before stepping around it.  Suddenly confronting an Elk may make it think that you are a danger to the calf or challenging it.  Elk can and will stomp a person even if it was calm just a moment before.  We are a long way from having Elk in populated areas in Virginia, but it might be good to know if you happen to live in area where Elk might be roaming.

1. The other time of year that Elk are more likely to be aggressive is the mating season.  The mating season generally runs from early September to mid-October. When males are in rut, they are more likely to be aggressive to people and vehicles.  Elk have also been known to mock fight with items on people’s lawns.  Wires, shrubbery, and other objects can become tangled in their antlers.   Some states ask people to remove lawn ornaments, nets, or objects that may tangle in antlers during the mating season.

Right now the Elk population in Virginia is small, but it is growing.  As I said earlier in the article, my husband saw an Elk on the I-64 corridor.  That is a fair way from the original counties where the Elk were reintroduced.  As the Elk population grows, more hikers and campers are likely to come across one unexpectedly.  It is a good idea to be familiar with the animal and its behavior because Elk may soon be coming to a county near you.

Walking Stick Z - Part 4

After a few rainy days the weather turned nice and I was able to spend some time outside working on the walking stick.  It took about six sessions of working on it, but I have finally completed stripping the bark off the walking stick.  The outer bark peels off quite easily, but the inner bark takes a considerable amount of scraping to remove it.  I find the rhythmic sound of the knife scrapping across the wood to be very relaxing.

I really enjoy working outside in the early morning.  From about 8:30 to 10:00 am is the best time to be in my yard.  It is late enough in the morning that the mosquitoes have gone in until dark but it is cool and breezy enough to keep the
flies away.  The grass is also damp enough with dew that no one is out mowing the lawn.  It is the best time for being out and hearing the birds sing.  (Although this year we seem to have a cuckoo that is permanently stuck at one o'clock.)  After ten, the sun is up over the trees and is shining full on and the breeze dies.  It can be pretty uncomfortable an humid after that.

Now it is time to decide just how tall I want the stick to be.   At the moment, the stick is seven feet long.  Some of the length will be lost because the ends of the stick need to be trimmed.  The ends of the stick have cracked during the drying process.  In this case I only have to trim off a few inches from each end.  This is not bad.  I have had sticks that needed a foot of material removed from the ends.  Long cracks on the ends are more likely to happen when the stick has been stripped while it was green, but it will still develop a few cracks if the stick is dried with the bark on it
.  By leaving the stick so long, I will have plenty of length so that I can cut the stick to show off its best areas. 

Also, if I am making a walking stick for a specific person, I am pretty much assured that it will be stick will be long enough.  A walking stick used for hiking is generally held just below shoulder height which will vary with the individual.  A quarter staff used for fighting is generally between six and nine feet long.  A collector of folk art walking sticks may want a shorter stick in order to accommodate a space on a wall. The length of the stick is a case of form following function.  In any case, consider the use of the stick when deciding how long is should be.

Currently the walking stick is in a rough hewn state.  It is usable as is, but since I will be tracing a design onto the stick it is easier to do it if the stick is smooth.  I will be using a sander to give the walking stick a smooth finish.  Sanding the stick may also help with removing some of the gray staining that occurs when the inner bark turns dark during the drying process. 

It is hard to get a picture of a walking stick.  If you are far enough away to show the whole stick you lose the detail.  The first photo shows the length relative to the door.  That photo also shows the progress of my hypertufa project.  I have cemented the two hemispheres together to form a sphere that sits on its stand.  I need to get out the angle grinder and grind down the lip that formed during the casting process. The second photo shows the rough hewn look of the wood.

That is where things are with the walking stick project.  I am blogging about a couple of project I am working on at the moment.  The next blog post will be on a different topic.  I should be blogging more on the Walking Stick Z project on the following Sunday.

Mandala - Part 4

Second attempt of Exercise 2.

Regular readers know that one of my current project is working from a book about Mandala.  The title of the book is Mandala Luminous Symbols for Healing by Judith Cornell, PH.D.  As I blogged last week, I had difficulty getting started on the second exercise because I had a block against doing something that felt childish.  After I finally did the lesson I had a great time with it.  I decided that I should try the lesson again giving it more attention and doing the lesson in a round shape.

This time I learned something about expectations.  I started out with an expectation that I would have

First attempt.

the same type of fun experience that I had the previous time I did the exercise.  Not so much.  I learned other things, I enjoyed the experience, but it
was not the same experience I had of having my Inner Child come out to play.  I guess I was a little disappointed, but I also realized that by coming to the exercise with expectations I had set myself up for that disappointment.  I think it is important to enter into theses things with no expectations and to be open to the lessons learned.  I did learn something from doing the exercises again.

When I did the exercise this time, I felt that I concentrated more on sensing energy.  In my drawing I tried to represent what I was feeling of the flux and flow of energy.  I concentrated on feeling energy move.  I was trying to feel where energy was strong and where energy was less strong.  For a while I had thoughts about the spaces in between: those small spaces that energy must jump across to get from one space to another.  I was also trying to express that I was simultaneously part of the field and yet in some ways separated from the field.

Adding a third hand added a new dimension to things.  Two hands tended to make me think that this is just me.  A third hand, since it was also mine, made me think that there was another part of me that was participating; some inner portion of myself that had come up to take part in the endeavor.

The book had suggested an 18 inch circle.  If you did not have a large enough piece of paper it suggested using just a half sheet of black paper.  The first time I did this exercise I used a portion of a sheet of paper.  The sheet I used was barely large enough to get two hands drawn on it.  I actually had started out with a circle drawn on it, but had to choose between keeping it circular or having enough room for two hands.  This time I grabbed a platter and traced a large circle.  However, the circle was only 14 inches.   In a way I'm glad that I used the smaller diameter.  This drawing took just over three hours to complete.  I don't always have that kind of time.  It was not necessary to color in the entire circle.  That is just what I was inspired to draw.

Being inspired may not be the only driving force behind my drawing.  About two-thirds of the way through the drawing I was wondering what had possessed me to take on such a detailed picture.  At that point I realized that my enthusiasm for the second drawing was not just inspired by making a picture of my hands.  I realized that during the guided meditation a suggestion had been made that I would feel free to visit that exercise again and again.  And here I was, gleefully plunging into the same exercise a second time.  I should know better.  I have learned a great deal about Neuro-Linguistic Programming.  I thought I should bring this up in case any readers should purchase the book and suddenly find themselves unexpectedly deciding to make numerous aboriginal style hand paintings.  There appear to be post-hypnotic suggestions embedded in the meditation.  They are more effective when listened to on the CD than just reading them.  It is worthwhile to read the exercise through before listening to the CD and decide if there are suggestions that you might want to cancel out.

Anyway, enough on that for now.  Next blog post will be on my walking stick project.  It is still raining.  

Walking Stick Z - Part 3

I started stripping the bark from my walking stick.  It is much more work to strip a sapling if the stick dried with the bark on it.  Difficult, but not impossible.  So far I have stripped 21 inches of the sapling.  That represents an hour and a half of work.  At this point the stick is still fairly rough.  I will sand it once the stripping is complete.

I had hoped that I would have the stick completely stripped by the time of this blog post, but Mother Nature had different ideas.  It has been raining for two solid days.  It is supposed to rain all day again today as well.  The rain comes and goes.  Sometimes it is raining hard, other times we have thunderstorms, and sometimes it is just drizzle.  At any rate, it has been pretty wet and chilly and not a great time for working outside.  The weather has really put a damper on my plans.

Hopefully the rain will pass in the next day or so and I can get back to work on my walking stick
project.  Thursday's blog post will be on the Mandala project.  I plan to have some progress to report on the walking stick by next Sunday. 

Mandala - Part 3

Regular readers know that I am working on a couple of projects at the same time.  I am switching back and forth on blogging about the projects.  If you are following the Walking Stick Z project, I will be blogging about that project on Sunday.  Today I am blogging about the the Mandala project.  I am working on the second lesson in the book: Mandala Luminous Symbols for Healing by Judith Cornell, PH.D. 

I had a hard time getting this lesson off the ground.  The lesson said to draw a Mandala by tracing around your hands using a white pencil on a black background.  After the hands were drawn, you had to decide where and how to illuminate the Mandala.  I "humphed" and I grumped, complained, whined, and procrastinated.  I just felt the project was "childish".   After all, children trace around their hands all the time. 

Finally I ran out of excuses and decided to get on with the project.  I finally rationalized my way into getting the lesson started.  I said to myself that if I had paid for a class and that was the assigned exercise for the group that I would go ahead and do it rather than refusing to get started.  Well, since I had purchased the book in order to learn something about Mandala,  I finally decided that it was time to get with the program and get on with the exercise whether I liked it or not.  So I did get started.  I read the chapter, then put on the CD and listened to the guided meditation and started to draw.  The exercise said that if you did not have a large sheet of black paper to make a Mandala just use a partial sheet and draw.  It also suggested that you draw in at least three hands.  I did not go that far, because I was still not totally on board with the exercise and because I needed to purchase some large black sheets of paper.  And then a wonderful thing happened.

Once I traced my hands and started to color in the dark areas my attitude changed.  Somewhere along the line I started to have fun.  The circular scribbles that I was using to color in areas became spiral galaxies.  Where I perceived that lines of energy intersected I added stars.  About half way through the exercise I realized that I was really enjoying myself just playing around.  This was not a serious piece of art.  The idea was just to get your Inner Child to come out and play.  And my Inner Child was saying, "Hello old friend.  Where have you been?  I haven't seen you for a while."  So much of the time I am trying so hard to get it "right".  Or I am working hard to meet a deadline in order to have something to post on the blog. 
I feel pressed for time rather than taking time to enjoy the process.  It was a total joy just to sit there and play. 

Great art?  No.  But it was great fun.  So in a way, it was very healing, which is the idea behind the book.  The exercise that I did not want to do turned out to be truly beneficial.  It just goes to show that sometimes what is resisted the hardest is what is needed the most.