Maebius Musing

Related as a followup to this post right here.

I had planned to go a full 2 weeks with only checking online for work-related emails, and friend-related messages.  No other blogsurfing, no online gaming, nothing beyond quick scans and email replies to my close real-life contacts (who mostly also read this blog).

I broke my intarweb exile a two days early, mostly because I actually stopped looking at all my blogs and felt a pretty solid down-shift from the stress of “gotta check my email, gotta check my blogfeed, gotta check something else.  ZOMG I’m bored, lets surf the web for random shit“.

Honestly, I’ve read about “those people” and realized I’d started to become one.   Before leaving work, refresh feed reader after JUST refreshing it 2 minutes ago, froth at mouth, rinse, repeat….  Life is NOT that important to stay glued to my monitor, and I’m glad I did it.

I took a solid week and a half off from world of Warcraft and actually miss it, or, certain parts of it.   I found I missed the social aspect, chatting with some hilarious officers in my guild, being particularly punny with my Troll Nookni, and making bags free for the new alts we have in the guild.    That’s a huge reason I only recently hit max level on only one character after 3 years. I don’t play to kill things and quest. I play to network and RP after work.
What I did NOT miss was some other officers bailing because “Their Healer” was offline for over week and thus they wanted a better chance at seeing bosses die in instances.   Not a slam against them really, but I wish them well in their new home.  Dudes, just say you were looking around for progression, don’t just “Screw this I’m outa here!” in the middle of the week, M’Kay?  I won’t miss them much if they were truly relying on my character to make their gameplay fun.  That’s a good lesson from disconnecting….Perspective!

I also enjoyed a bit more time at home, just doing stuff with the family.   We went camping at Watkin’s Glen (beautiful!!), we gardened a bit, and I helped the sprog play LEGO Indiana Jones on PS2, or random imagination-games in his room.  I didn’t feel really rushed to bedtime, like I sometimes was.  I’ll admit, some nights if work was stressful, I jsut wanted to come home, put kid to bed and play online, not just WoW but random blogg-feeding.  It surprised me the selfishness that implied, and I’m glad for the escape from that escapism this week.

So, for now, I’m limiteing my online time to work for blog-reading, and two hours at night for home-computer.  If It’s Warcraft, that’s cool.  If I want to fiddle with other stuff like this cool online hand-drum lesson site?  Thats’ cool too.

The main lesson I took away from this experiement is I was overstretching my attention.  Started to feel crushed by “I didn’t read XYZ yet tonight?!?!”

and more importantly…..32 days until Starwood!

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Our little one is entering Kindergarden, and turning 5 years old this fall. (He’s all growed up!) What follows is a photo-spam of his recent school artwork, and him riding the buss when they visited the Kindergarden school this week. Dialup users BEWARE!

He went in for his official evaluation yesterday, and completed the battery of tests with fairly predictable and proud-parent results. Forgive me for a bit of well-intentioned bragging.

As for mental development, he was well over average in terms of vocabulary (he’s reading signs on store shelves now, while his Pre-K peers are learning their letters), and impressed everyone with his creativity, and exuberance to get tested. Average IQ for intellectual/creative/vocab wound up being somewhere around 125 (vocab/language skill was up at 131!).   GO BOY!

Otherwise, our concerns about his general habit of fidgeting during class, not paying attention, and constantly mumbling stories or singing under his breath were slightly assuaged. This type of behavior is slightly disruptive, but…. His ability to memorize lists and such, even though initially outwards he was not “paying attention”, then reciting them back later and getting all creative like saying them backwards, showed that he fidgets because he’s somewhat ‘bored’ with the simple things he does in school. Thus, he fidgets to stay stimulated.

One noticable improvement-area was a possible lack of focus in his left eye. He can not cross his eyes at all, and turns his head to follow a pencil moved towards that peripheral. Granted, I can not cross my eyes either, which my wife never knew. Nothing as serious as needing glasses, just something to watch… (and if he does, they will need to be prism glasses, like vertical bifocals). Otherwise, I’m going to summarize his “evaluation” as him being Gifted, and slightly out of focus, which causes the tired tantrums if he’s been playing games or inside all day. I’m guessing our noticing that video games tires him out slightly is due to effort at concentrating/focusing. All in all, a great report-card!

/cue Proud Papa.

In art, they made collages. The brown label/note reads as follows: “Piet Mondrain / Henry Matisse : Mondrain used primary colors and basic shapes. When Matisse became too feeble to paint, he did collages. We combined both styles for this project.” Our little one made the rather zen collage with three yellow shapes, centered on black. One circle, one square, one triangle. “That’s all it needed”, he said.

Next, we have the portrait class. He has two teachers, one with straight short hair, one with curly hair. See if you can tell which one is which.

Next on our Tour De Artiste, we have the interpretation of “sunflowers” by Vincent Van Gogh. Doug’s is the one of the bottom left, which I think looks remarkably like an orange dragon traipsing through a wooded field. He describes it as “The yellow are dandelions, the green is chive stems, and the orange is our yummy violets because she didn’t give me purple.“. How kawaiii!

Finally, the wall outside their Pre-K classroom, filled with painted flowers, bumble-plate-bees, and a rainbow of hand-prints.

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In Everthorn did Maebius
A stately fire-bon decree
With ribbons round a maypole ran
Young girls, some women and their man
Down trunk of sacred tree.
So then his patch of fertile ground
With labyrinth was girded round:
And there the gardens bright with wildcraft frills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing weed;
and spirits ancient as the hills,
Dancing the sunny spots of greenery-d.

—

Ok, forgive the poem. I was…inspired…last night. (not quite in the way the original was inspired, mind you, but still )

This weekend, we had planned a lovely bonfire and maypole party. The wife got horridly ill (possibly food poisoning?) and thus we spent the day inside sleeping or watching TV. So we made due with what we could accomplish in light of the situation.

In the evening, we got all our starter-seeds planted and hung a grow-light from the ceiling above the counter. This should prevent our little sprouts from straining too tall in search of the sun, which tends to happen each year. (insert picture here)

The sprogling and I made salad entirely from yard clippings, with him learning the tastiness of garlic-mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and realizing that our mint patch has finally grown enough to pick. (If given the opportunity, he will sit in the yard and eat mint for a good hour)

The garden-proper has been tilled again, and ready for planting this week when the rains stop. The outdoor chicken enclosure is within an hour of being completed (once I get adult assistance to hold the fence while I hammer posts, etc). And, the side yard labyrinth will start being outlined with wheelbarrow-loads of black composted pony-droppings. All in all, a good weekend’s progress, considering.

I did manage to spend a little time out by the maypole, meditating, circle casting, and inviting the spirits of the land to stop by and play if they wanted. I discovered that our ‘Grandma elder” was very very unhappy, with a small bushy plant that was starting to grow right beside her trunk. Trimmed that, and was quite surprised at the literal emotional imagery that smacked me in the head with that message. Usually plants and nature spirits are more a general faint feeling, not so much a “Hey, you whippersnapper, get over here!” complete with almost-vision of creamy-white-haired crone with berry-stained hands and knobby knees. Yet there she was: Grandma elderberry.

Got it, I’ll trim the weeds!

More musings on spirits and such for tomorrow’s New Moon Muse. Stay tuned, and Happy MayDay!

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(warning: A Looooong glimpse!)

Last weekend (April 12-13th) my son and I went on a trip to the 4-hour-away-now hunting cabin I used to frequent when I was younger. My dad, brother-in-law and his son, and some of the old “hunter gang” were there, plus a few kids I had not seen before. We had a fun time! *** -No Girls Allowed- ***

In talking with everyone, we realized I was last at this cabin around the age of 15 or 16, which is around half a life ago! The other man there, my age, had two kids with him, and while we were never really that close (being simply sons of our father’s friends) it was nice to reconnect on a mutually understood ‘weekend campfriend’ level and discuss random life events and swap parenting stories.

There were 6 younger boys there, ranging in age from 3-14 with all but the teen being under 9 yrs old. They had fun catching salamanders, having adventures in/on/around the broken down pickup in the side yard, and a few impromptu ball-and-bat games that bore no resemblance to anything World Series. The older men, in addition to the three of us 30-somethings, were the three “grandpas” and the group rounded out with “Uncle Bud” who was father to one of the older grandparents there. Bud was fully blind, and had the timeless manner of a different way of life. He was spry in his steps, slow and warmth in his wisdom, and quick with the wit of a practiced cynic.

We joked to him, after catching enough salamanders to feed a third world country, that his rocks on the trails were all overturned, so he should be careful, yet a quick hike to the nearby spring still saw him shuffle with remarkable spryness that defied his years and lack of eyesight. He KNEW that cabin and the woods around it. He may not have viewed it clearly for years, but it was his land, not by property deeds, but in spirit. (Having visited the property for more years than even my own father was alive, this could, I suppose, be expected)

The weather was perfect, with a bit of cool drizzle the evening we arrived, yet cleared up and sunny for Saturday. While I am not really into the hunter-mindset, it was with a fond nostalgia that I watched most of the others go through shell after shell of ammunition. No soda can or plastic water-laden bottle was safe from the .22 rifles. A box of orange clay-disks soared and shattered above the field in a flurry of shotgun pellets. Even yours truly, who has not fired-off anything remotely boom-sticky, took 20-gauge to shoulder and blasted 3 out of 4 clay skeets.

And those flying targets felt good. The shotgun rested tight; the bead steady as I swung towards the sailing clay; and a gentle tug on the trigger. #BOOM# missed the first, then three more broke apart like I had been doing this for years. Pull…aim…Boom. Reload. Pull…aim…Boom. Pottery fragments flew apart. It felt magical.

There was the not-quite-as-fun moments, like breaking up the inevitable child-argument (anyone with young kids knows that playtime sometimes requires adult intervention). There was the late night, sleeping in the room full of military barrack-bunks surrounded by either snoring old men, or wrigging dream-held kids and listening for the ‘THUD’ of gravity finding one outside the cots. There was the alternately cool and over-hot of the woodstove that made dressing a delicate dance of t-shirts and wool undergarments (often within hours of each other). And yes, there was the diet of crackers, soda, and grilled meat for meals (with the standard meat and eggs for breakfast). By sunday night, I wanted something green and leafy. *grin*

Still, even with the ‘challenges’ of camping, it is part and parcel of the experience. Such weekend outings need the minor bumps to make the entirety of the days a wonderful blessing to have attended. It felt deeply -fun- to be with the guys and just do whatever. They shot their guns. I tried a few shots myself. We hiked through the woods, drank directly from the spring, and cooked marshmallows over the coals. We slept in the next morning, and feasted on hearty sustaining camp-food. It felt magical.

And thinking back, as I did my daily meditations today, I realized it was magical.

Perhaps it was reconnecting to the primal hunter mindset. Yet, in some sense, the same thing happens when I visit the old Zen-porch crowd. In that group, no guns are blasted against cans, yet the bond is the same. It goes beyond words and eases into a comfortable silence watching some movie or game. And even in that group, I am blessed that the women are liberal-minded enough that any wise-cracks about their gender, or other male-centric topics (such as gastric processes) are accepted and retort-worthy in their own right.

This past weekend was, to glance quickly at it, a bunch of guys just hanging out at the woodland cabin. To glance closer, it perhaps was a bunch of guys attempting to connect with some primal hunter mentality. As I think a bit deeper on the weekend, it was more powerful, and yet more simple. We bunch of guys hung out at the woodland cabin.

It was something I had not done for a long time, and is sadly missing in a lot of mundane life in today’s culture. I begin to see a hint of why the AODA’s current leader frequently talks about fraternal organizations. There was a sense of deep connection between everyone there. Something unspoken, and brushed off as “girly-talk” if even dared to be mentioned by one of the kids. Yet it was there.

Thirteen men and boys, together in one place for two days. Four generations from varied backgrounds, and two states, sleeping within feet of one-another, sharing the same table, and vowing-without-saying to leave politics, religion, and our outside lives behind for a day. To just enjoy the weekend and Be.

I loved it.

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I found the camera cable, and was able to dump a good backlog of images to a more PC-friendly location (ie: my hard drive and subsequently a CD-rom).

So, here are four fun images to keep you occupied until a real Musing-style post hits the site in a day or two….

First, announced briefly over here, was my wife’s grandfather turned a century old earlier this month, and had a wonderful party with all sorts of relatives, friends, and the like. Here’s the man of honor himself, presiding over the cake & candle ritual. One candle per decade, Awesome!

Next, mentioned in this posting on Happy Camping, is a shot of the new bathroom style. The walls are painted “Happy Camper” green, which fits nicely with the general use of the room. *wink*

Thirdly, there was a strange visitor to our house, who took control of the Wii for the day, and played “the TMNT game” for hours upon hours, giggling the whole time. Isn’t he adorable!

Finally, after years of deliberation, and in order to help out a good friend get some practice with his chosen hobby, I have gotten myself re-inked. This design, which is not 100% completed yet and will get some touch-up work and perhaps a bit of colour, has lots of cool symbolism for me, which may be described in a separate post someday. This solar-inspired design is also going on my djembe head, in either henna, or watercolors, because it is just that cool to me. ….it’s still a bit ouchy though today.

Sorry for blurry pic. The camera was out of batteries, so I had to keep snapping it, hoping to grab the image before it turned itself off.

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