The Nest Is Born!

Today is exciting! Phase six, my first animated creation is born.

This is the start of the latest phase, the Dance, of my creation, The Nest.

 

 

The Nest is an ongoing four dimensional fiber art sculpture, unique in all the world.

And an abstract puppet theater with thirteen spheres (moons) and twenty three flexible tubular structures (genes) as puppets.. Knit-mation!

The nest is an interactive posable play structure...inviting exploration of the creative edge of space, furniture, joy, play, color, texture, and sculpture.

And of course, this phase of The Nest is my latest rainbow:) click here to see: the Nest

 

"The universe is squiggly!"- Omni 

Perfect Weight Balance

(From the Flower Child's Garden Planet)

"I'm so rich:

I have enough:

I've never gone hungry."

"...Except on purpose"

 

(Omni reports:)

On creating the all superfood, calorie conscious, intermittent fasting, six hour solar, diversified organic veganish, diet to maintain perfect weight!

The Problem

Over the years, I slowly gain an extra few pounds. Then, last year over the holidays, I put on an extra ten pounds or so. 

Comfort food, I tell myself at the time, it is a stressful time. (In fact, later I hear of the 2016 "trump ten".)  It is just all the heavy winter food, I tell myself, expecting most of it to fall off in the spring as it always does, mostly....But this time it does not.

Now I enjoy looking good as much as anyone, but it is not about that. It is about how I feel. Ok, these are the complaints of a veganish once skinny person who never had to worry about my weight, I admit. 

 

But those extra pounds begin to weigh on me. I feel the stress on my weak spots, such as the joints involved in carrying the extra weight around all day. My metabolism feels like it is messed up. I feel tired. 

But I only eat good organic whole vegan food, I only eat when hungry, and I don't overeat. So what is the matter, I wonder. Perhaps I am supposed to get heavier, and feel worse, as I get older?   Uh,.....No.

So I look things up at the great Shared Library of Humanity, the interweb. I discover that I have a syndrome called ETMF. (Kidding!) The surprise is that I'm actually eating, too, much, food. 

Turns out I am eating a thousand or more calories a day over and above what I need, for a person my age, sex, height and so on. It is amazing I had not yet gained far more weight. 

This surprises me because I was not eating food designed to fool the senses such as artificial flavors, and tricky factory food full of empty calories. I am doing this on all nutrient dense superfoods. That density was to be the key. 

 

This is a puzzle to me. I had learned to trust my body, eating as much as I wanted, on a diet of all natural food, and now, I wonder what I'm doing wrong. Could it really be as simple as eating too much food?

The Cure for ETMF

Ultimately, I make two changes, course corrections, in my daily eating habits. The first one is to not change the "what" of what I am eating at all, just the "when." Calories we eat in the daytime are more likely to be burned right away, I learn, while calories consumed at night are more likely to be stored as fat. So I employ a technique called intermittent fasting. 

We all fast daily, when we sleep at night. That's why we call the first meal of the day 'break'-'fast'. Intermittent fasting, or IF simply extends this. So I attempt to eat all my days' food in a six hour window of time, every single day, starting as early as I can easily manage. At first I can do this only every other day, but now I do it most days.

This is an important aspect of any so called diet. How sustainable is it? Can you do it, day in, day out, forever? This is a diet, as in, the way I always eat. Not as in, what I do for a few weeks to lose weight. The WIAE diet.

There is evidence that this is a very old health practice. The Essene Gospel of Peace, book one, a spiritual health text from the first century, advises that if you can, "it is best to sit down to a meal only once a day." My friends' shaman healer advises her to not eat at night, to give the body a rest. 

I my case I eat two meals usually. All I can eat. But both within six hours. Or eight..

The other thing I change, is to learn to count calories. I do this for several days; looking everything up, adding up the numbers, learning how many are in foods that I eat a lot, acquiring a good working ability to estimate how many calories I am eating. Just tracking, not even trying to eat fewer calories. Just learning, for the first time in my life, to count calories.

(Be aware, as I give to you this sacred algorithm, knowledge is power, and the interweb gives us power; including the power to instantly look up every little thing about your food, and I have heard some people have gotten lost in the Power of the Calorie Counting Game and developed problems that look a lot like "eating disorders"! My advice is, don't try this game without help unless you already eat an all healthy nutrient dense diversified diet or you could get deficient in something eventually)

 

So. I do the math, and subtract five hundred calories from the days' total any day I want to lose weight. As I begin to deliberately eat fewer calories than I usually need, I gradually start to lose weight. Gently, slowly, I drop weight over several months, keeping my habit of only eating during the day, within a six hour window. It is easy. 

Sometimes at night I do feel hungry, so I sip probiotic rich sour kraut water. That makes my tummy happy. And oddly, by morning I am no longer hungry. I have, in my life, on occasion fasted, but other than that, I was not used to being truly hungry very often. 

It is surprising and sad, but most of us who have enough, rarely get truly hungry. Instead, we experience false hunger, the feeling of our gut microbes telegraphing their preferences to us by way of our belly brain. That is probably what I feel at night. But nowadays, I experience true hunger daily, usually after my morning walk. And I REALLY enjoy my food!

When my weight does finally drop below my perfect normal weight, I allow myself to eat longer and later in the day, and quickly catch up within a day or two, and rebalance.

The Result

I feel awesome! People say I look great. All sorts of little complaints that I had, have vanished. My energy levels have returned, my joints are happy, and I feel like I have new superpowers. 

Instead of feeling like a victim of some mysterious malady causing me to feel out of balance, helplessly growing fatter and fatter, I now realize that eating too much (even of a good thing!) made me too fat, and so was causing those symptoms. 

 

I wonder what my rekindled appetite will inspire me to try out next. Soon I might share fun new recipes. My clothes are a little loose so they me fit better as I dance around through the day with more bounce in my steps...

Taking, Giving, and Making Time

 

(from the Timefish Chronicles)

Time 

to stop blaming it on not having the time.

We say we are so busy, we can't. 

Why are we so busy? 

What are we so busy doing?

Getting to the next thing! 

Then, there where we are are going, it will surely be good..

Who do we want to do it with? 

Lots and lots of people we don't know, apparently. 

We stand together with them in line, on line, in traffic, as we wait to do what we say we would rather do. We carefully maintain distance, standing apart as we stand together.

In the little private sealed tubes of our precious attention, we snake along, staring down at our personal handheld glowing devices, intertwining in the writhing masses we form. Snaking, waiting; waiting, snaking...

We stagger along through time, seeking moments of fulfillment, not realizing that peaks are by topical definition, exceedingly rare. For every peak experience, achievement or thrill, there must be a mountain of patience as the foundation.

My friend Saturn is my teacher in so many things. As a young person, she was a bike messenger in the big city for a while. Biking everywhere growing up, she was skillful and fast. 

But she decided to impose a tax of her own creation on the big city when she started the low paid, toxic, dangerous job. 

She decided to *take*  her time. Every single delivery, from day one, she took a side trip. That would be the deal. A break in time to learn, explore, sit, play, eat, meditate, anything whatever.(The messenger service either never noticed or didn't mind.) 

We can share time, but when someone "gives" you time, something is usually wrong. It is often a power imbalance. Like freedom, time is yours, but it must be taken. 

"I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind." – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I wonder if it is better to close our eyes and meditate, than to entertain most of the silly 

thoughts we run around chasing with our attention. More often now, silly things are chasing our eyeballs and running us around on our hand held trance inducers. (Who do you think you are stealing yourself away from, slave?)

 

"Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?" – David M. Bader

This Now.

Taking time is good. 

There are holes everywhere in time. 

Slow down! You can carve out windows in time, and do a different thing than your usual thing. Look up from the writhing morass once in while. 

"Have no age, transcend both past and future, and enter into the eternal present." 

– H.E. Davey

 

Don't try this, for example, while driving a bus, of course. But there are times, -holes in time, where the light can get in.. We can each reclaim our own true time if we want to, and pause. We can *take* our time, and just stare out the window.

Advanced level time taking is learning to *make* time. 

Ask, for what and whom do you make time?

 

This is true magic and it is simple and it works. Lift your eyes. The sky is half the picture and it's a big universe. Try a different path, it is more likely to lead to more choices. Stop and think once in awhile. You were not put here to punch some time clock. Today, that job is for machines. 

"Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness. "– George MacDonald

We rush by on our hurried way, but had we stopped there, really, truly stopped, for long enough to relax and feel centered and grounded, we might have found a spot with peace and beauty, treasure and love. 

Or maybe we can make time to share with someone.

This place we rush past is a place in Time. 

A hole where the living light of now blazes..

 

"In the beginning you will fall into the gaps in between thoughts – after practicing for years, you become the gap." – J. Kleykamp

Expansion and Contraction

I've been doing both. Every breath, every step, every night and day, the cycles turn. Cycles of turning- my spinning wheel, swirling galaxies, atomic orbits, at every level the round and round preserves the illusion of persistence.

 

The last year for me is surely one of contraction, withdrawing into the dark cave of my own thoughts and experience. Here in the darkest moment of the solar and lunar cycle, I offer up the treasure I have found. No experience is without value, and the darker it is, the faster we may learn from it.

 

We can perceive as few as one single photon of light! And when is that photon the most meaningful? When we are most beset by darkness, of course.

 

So I shall not allude to specifics, such as particular foxes in particular henhouses, or orange elephants in the living room, or planets on fire, because specifics always change. The overall pattern is the cycles.

 

You are indestructible. You that you really are. The rest...good and bad...passes. Waiting is. Even this is not inaction or apathy necessarily. 

Sometimes merely standing. 

Firm. 

Is all we can do, now, just for now.

 

The strongest trees do this. They know that to reach way on up to the warm sun, they need to send strong roots deep down into the cool dark.

 

The cycles do tend to persist. The deepest magic is set, like a gemstone seed, curled up in a shell, waiting for the moment to wake up. The dark times are when we can see the tiny things, the single photons, the spring loaded DNA scrolls, the little loves everywhere.

 

 

There is a vacant lot across the street where they tore down an old school. Next year they plan to build a YMCA in that space. The weeds that have sprung up there are so lovely with frost crystals. I take their pictures. 

 

I find a Kincaid lupine, a threatened species of local  wildflower, the host plant of the Fenders blue butterfly, a local species thought for decades to have gone extinct, but recently rediscovered in areas with this flower.. There could be Fenders' eggs on it right now...cool!

 

I wonder if this plants' seeds sat for years under the old school building, only to sprout up now to help bring back the blue butterflies?

 

Silver and Spirit

"..The wind is blowing through the tree

Stars are tangled in the leaves

Clouds are gathering your dreams

They float away in silver streams..."

-Sunheart

 

(From the Omni Color Book files:)

There was a time when I was about four years old when silver and gold were my favorite colors. They were special to me, different from the others. Those crayons of silver, gold, even copper, were magical. Treasure colors. Kings and queens of the color box.

 

Silver is a riddle and a mystery. 

A paradox and a contradiction.

Silver is a color of inner reflection.

It is a color that's a non color. 

Silver is the color of darkness, raised to its lightest form, enhancing the light by rejecting so thereby reflecting it, thus increasing the light. 

 

Silver repels all light. Unlike gold or copper, silver is faithful to all of the colors. Having no identity of its' own, silver is happy to take on and mirror whatever colors and light that may be around.

The silver moon reflects the light of the sun. Like the ultimate negative stereotype of the self sacrificing woman, silver just wants to get along, even to the point of utter self negation. Silver, like black, is no thing, a mere concept bereft of existence. A symbol of emptiness.

(Spinning silver yarn:)

 

Silver is Switzerland, neutral to a fault, non interventionist to the point of slipperiness. You can hide in the blankness of silver. It is almost invisible! 

The only way to visually even convey the idea of silveryness, is to show some sort of variation in a gray surface using the lights around it to reflect some shape.

 

Gray is dim and disorganized light mixed with shadow. But silver is a form of black, only without an ego. Headlights shine from silver cups and form beams of light. Silver is the color of shadow, polished and purified, fully refined, exalted to its highest function, that of reflecting light, with mirror perfection, and so even redeeming itself by amplifying the light! 

 

Pure silver is the sword with two edges, a tool that can help or harm, depending on how it is used. Reflections are happy when the mirror shows the beautiful, but the ugly reflection may be a less welcome sight to behold. Silver throws you back on yourself.

You can hide in silver. Silver holds the shield of the power of invisible. Like eyes behind mirror sunglasses, like peering out of a two way mirror.

 Like spacefaring intrepidae. Or a tricky angel.

 

Like spirit hiding within the thick veil of appearance and form.

I wonder where my light will beam....

"Where your attention is, there you are" -Pearl Dorris 

On the Urge to Hunt and Gather

"I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist" -TF Baker

 

What is that thrill of shopping about? The deeply rooted habit of hunting and gathering, and the brain reward we get, when we find whatever we are looking for, is part of it. If we are going to a physical store, rather than ordering online, we may shop for the social reward of seeing and being seen, rubbing auras with others, and the little dab of respect you get when you belly up to the counter and bathe in a few moments of the clerks' polite attention to you. 

 

 Perhaps you may even be physically touched, ever so lightly, in the interaction, by the person who takes your money. If so you will feel better about the exchange later, even if you don't remember if you were touched. In today's public world, the fastest easiest way to get this attention and love, really, is to shop!

 

If we order online, we still get a buzz. The thrill peaks, it has been reported, after ordering but before the item arrives.

 

Then there is the sought after item itself, the ostensible object. Lately I have been noticing this is maybe not even the most important part. What if we already had everything we needed? 

 

Well then of course we could for example collect photos, or hunt for birds to add to the life list, or experiences of whatever kind we might seek, and so on.

 

But lately I have just been wanting to shop, and at the same time I've been wanting for nothing. At least not feeling the need for anything new, other than daily food. Just the bare desire to shop. With a side feeling of sufficientcy.

 

Feeling like you have enough is an interesting feeling. I understand this feeling is not a luxury everyone gets to have, nessesarily. Many people just don't have their needs being met. Others have much more worldly wealth than I, but ironically, it just doesn't feel like it is enough to them.

 

It is obviously about attitude once you have your basic needs being met. I have wandered around the world with gratitude and amazement for many years. Did this cause my feeling of having enough, or does feeling like I have sufficient means to meet my needs cause me to go around feeling amazed and grateful?

 

In any case, I still wander online and look for things that pleased me in the past, and fantasize about shopping. Even though I don't need more. I just remember the thrill of seeking and finding. 

 

...And then usually I just sit with it, my silly longing, and my gratitude for having enough already!

 

I wonder how this urge will express in a world where there really is enough for everyone, even in practice. My prediction is we will still want to do the trading game. We will seek novelty and experience in more elegant and human ways, like one to one sessions, handmade arts, and fresh made food. I think we will always collect something, if only memories. Generally we will seek interactions less involved with basic survival, and more about learning and helping and sharing in more individualized and personal ways.

 

(The photos are from a photo collection of the leaves I saw on the ground on my morning walk today.)

But Why Socks?

"Walking happens, but we're just rolling the world around with our feet"-Sunheart 

Let us consider the sock. Socks can easily be spit out of big factory machines far faster than anyone could ever hand knit them. And they can be made much finer by machine, with thin yarn, even thread, with subtle strengthening fibers like nylon, so they will last much longer, be stretchy and easier to wash, and be more comfortable. Finally they are way cheaper to make by factory.

So why in goddesses' heck do I want to make my own socks, I wonder.

It seems the lowest of low art. Here I am, making art to walk on, to deliberately destroy. To....use? Sure, right? What about the art of cooking, say, in which the product is consumed? Made to use up. Made to change, just like all things. Ah! The artist is making a statement about consumerism?

Maybe it's not even art anymore. 

Or maybe it is the deepest, realest, most relevant kind of art. 

I wonder if what is driving my effort is a desire to go all the way down and really ground my art in its roots. From fiber art to fiber optic. 

Now that the leaves of my art shimmer on electrons in my ipad art, do I now yearn to don my own wooly handmade socks and wiggle my rooty little toes in their physical ness? Is this how my art is coming around full circle?

"In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling."

-Mary Oliver

 

"The really wonderful task of humans is to bring cosmic love, all the way down to our toes. To ground it, not just intellectually, and not even to the heart level, but all the way down to our toes. To bring cosmic love to Earth, fully embodied."

-Elisabet Sahtouris