- Tina Rowley
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- Weekly Zephyr #74: Circle Time Again
Weekly Zephyr #74: Circle Time Again
Shamona Stokes, the id
We're starting again, we're back
everybody
everybody come back to the circle,we're starting
sit where you want but find a seat
We're all here, yes?
shamona stokes sculptures that you don't know the name of yet from top to bottom: flowers in the cracks mr. dark space red rabbit the knower cloud shaman samian the id (again) baby shamans
Thank you, everyone is sitting down, great
Hey!
Welcome back!
How was your summer, Zephyr Town?
Was it fair? decent? wack? a drag? remarkable?
I pray it was a silky ride but
Whatever it was, it's over.
This is fine by me and I hope by you as well.
I'd been planning on telling you about mine but you cannot kick off a fall season with a list of droopy, expired grievances. That's not the vibe! The vibe is fresh! So let's instead pretend that time stopped and restarted with no gap and now it's now.
Now, oftentimes the Zephyr has a thrust of some sort. But we're just reconvening so it's too soon for a whole thrust. This will be more like my youngest son's first day back at school in 5th grade, where everybody just designed cool graffiti for their lockers and brainstormed what might be a good class pet.
they had a primary today and narrowed the race to three: hedgehog, rat, chameleon #hedgehog2020
So here's what's in my bag today
a few things I like, things that maybe you'll like couple ideas voila, ease back in
first things first = playlist, of course
THE BOOKS OF RIGHT NOW
We'll start at the top, work our way down. Tove Jansson kick!
In a previous Zephyr we've talked about the phenomenon where something happens with genius writing in which the text itself somehow gets groovy to look at, outside of its pure meaning. It stretches out and invites air in, or seems more secretly colorful than normal. This happens with Tove Jansson. It's like somebody cleaned the windows. Things gets more see-through but also stronger, if you can track that. You want to walk around knocking on all the words and sentences, feel how well-made they are. Silky, too.
If you've never read the Moomin books but you're under the impression that you have to be a child to dig them, no. No, and in fact it might even be better if you're not. They're funnier if you're not. Tove remembered the grownups while she wrote.
I'm only a couple of stories into the short story book but so far, so good. The first one, woof. It's called "The Listener". I have to give you a bit:
cliffhanger!
And now the book by the glamorous lama
TIBETAN BUDDHISM attracts me and pushes me away at the same time Like it's a wild school where you can learn to fly but the teachers are so strict, even the smiley ones But anyway a conversation I had lately led me to the concept of the dakini and a dakini google-search led me to this lama
Lama Tsültrim Allione which led me to this Buddha at the Gas Pump interview which led me to her book
which I loved! It's a spiritual memoir + how-to
I read it way too fast. Raced, fell over myself into skimming because I wanted to see all the words as fast as I could. I owe it a proper, slow read and then I hope to wear it down over time, get it nice and fuzzy around the edges. Thing I love especially = the Five Buddha Families IT'S A SORTING HAT YOU KNOW I LOVE IT YOU'RE IN AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE FAMILIES, MAYBE/PROBABLY MORE Types of people! People types. Can't get enough.
Are you a member of the Buddha Family? Sleepy, peaceful, your color is white! Padma Family? YOU ARE RED AND SEDUCTIVE Vajra Family? So blue, so smart, so like a mirror but so angry. IS THIS YOU Karma Family? Green and frantic but a real doer THIS ISN'T ME BUT CONGRATS ON ALL THAT DOING IF IT'S YOU Ratna Family? Yellow-gold, eatin' everything, good sense of humor, prosperous DOES THIS SEEM LIKE YOU
Also: It's a great-looking book. The design is gorgeous. A real pleasure to have and hold.
I screenshotted this from Facebook and it improved my day so BLAM here it is it's from a stranger's child's homework that swept the internet
What else.We'll do one more thing and call it a week.
This is a new hobby that I extremely recommend.
1) Go on Google Earth and screenshot a location that has special meaning for you in your memory 2) Put it in the Prisma app (or any artsy, photo-altering app) and play with it until it looks like the memory feels
i.e. childhood home in Ryebrook, New York
which feels like this
site of first kiss, Olympic Hills neighborhood, Seattle
which was much more like this
cafe on Maui where I met Dave
which I remember more like this
site of proposal, Balmoral Beach in Sydney
which was pink everywhere no matter whether it was or not, more like
The final product isn't the point. It's the process: all the decisions and remembering how things feel. You could also of course do it with bad memories and be satisfied in a different way. Trap 'em.
