Maebius Musings

It rocks.

That is all.

Purchased thorough the following Merchant:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/LunaRana

Thank you, thank you, thank you to my lovely friend Nettle, for the loaning of cash since the merchant could not accept plastic.   Almost settled the tab, but it was worth the temporary debt!

Welcome to my newest visitors, who have indirectly pestered me to post more here.    *waves*

I’ve had two private messages asking about some crafty things I made recently, so I figure here’s a great place to post about them.   Sadly, I do not have any pictures of such in-progress, so you’ll have to be content with words.  First is a scrying mirror, second is poke-berry  which makes a wonderful kid-friendly project and can be used for all sorts of magical inscriptions, or simply  painting in a colouring book! 

First, a scrying mirror I made for a lovely friend of mine, which can be seen on her altar here:  http://bringingupsalamanders.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-moon-thoughts.html

First, I took a simple wooden picture frame and decorated it with blue wood-stain and black paint.  It’s hard to see, but the bottom is ‘celtic’ knots across the bottom, which was really time-consuming.  I had planned to do all the designs that way, being pressed into the wood with an ink-less ball-point pen, but it hurt my hand so I stuck to paint and ink for the other designs.

The left side is inked with vine-like designs, the top is speckled like a field of stars, or chaotic dots, your choice, and the right side contains a symmetrical series of geometric sacred shapes.

The corners of the frame are decorated with a star-like design based off a custom pendant I wear, a triskele triple-spiral, a pentacle, and (I think I recall) an acorn on the bottom left.

To colour the glass darkly, I had a small ritual fire from apple and elder branches that had fallen in our yard, and burned during a New Moon.  I  smudged the frame and glass with mugwort and cedar (also from our yard), and charged the whole thing with love, and somewhat open-ended intent to be a sacred tool (since it was not for my use, I did not want to get too specific with ‘charging it’).

After the little bonfire died out, I took the black coals, powdered them in my stone mortar & pestle, and mixed some more dried mugwort leaves in with a bit of salt-water to form a pasty goop.  This got smeared on the back of the glass  allowed to dry, before affixing the back of the picture frame “stand”.   (So instead of being painted glass, you look into the soot sandwiched between the glass and the backing).

I am quite willing to make a mirror for anyone else, with this, or other methods.  Simply comment with a request and I’ll coordinate things via email or facebook.     Enjoy! 

*   *   *

The second craft is a quick and easy ink, for those of you with access to Poke-berries. Any other dark berry will work, but I prefer poke, because it’s an abundant ‘weed’ in my area, and things like raspberries get eaten too fast to be saved for inks.    One interesting bit of trivia is that the Unites States Constitution was apparently written using fermented pokeberry ink, as it was the “common ink” of the time.  Fermenting it seems to help preserve it, but for myself and the kid, the quick and easy method works just fine as a family project.

Collect a bundle of ripe berries, maybe a cup or three, depending on how much juice you want. Remember, a little ink goes a long way! You will also need a tiny splash of vinegar and a pinch of salt.

I tend to collect berries after the first killing frost, because the plant is dying off, and most songbirds who eat these have migrated away, leaving the leftover berries to rot.    I’ve also used elderberry for this recipe, when I have an abundance of those.

Simmer the berries in a small pan with just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, with a splash of vinegar (any type will do).  Vinegar helps set the colour a bit more, and seems to draw out some more ‘oomph’ from the berries in terms of alkaloids and energies, I think.    Your mileage may vary.

Basically add enough liquid to prevent the bottom from burning, but not enough to overly dilute the juice from the berries.  While you could squeeze out the juice, I find that heat helps extract more, and is less messy on the hands.  Plus, while I have no scientific proof, I think that heating the berries helps set the colour better, and thickens the juice into a better ink-like consistency.  Feel free to improvise and experiment.

I tend to keep stirring the pot for a good 20 minutes every so often, until the water looks nice and richly coloured. Not too much that it turns pasty with berry-skins!

Turn off the heat and let the pot cool off a bit, then simply strain out the ink into a container.  I used a coffee filter and a funnel to strain the ink into an old sea-salt bottle I had lying around.   Small pickle or baby-food jars work just as well.

Grab a quill, or a fountain pen, or, as we do, a small craft paintbrush (size 1 or 0o, or whatever your preference!) and have fun scribbling, painting, and drawing.

This ink will wash off of things fairly easily, so it is not recommended for clothes and such.  However, it is great to use on paper, and staining wood a vibrant magenta!

With age, the bright purple-pink colour of this ink will fade to a rusty brown after a few years, so keep that in mind.  This fact, however, makes it even cooler to use in magical journal writing, as it seems to look “archaic” as it ages.

Recently, my son has been drawing short 4-page comic books in his spare time, and is planning on a large 8-page one featuring Bulldogs playing Baseball (The Bulldogs are the school mascot/team name).

Here is a rare glimpse into the creative process involved in bringing these works of art to life.

I present to you,  “Electro-Charles versus Hairy Potty!”

Enjoy!   Transcript as follows:

Maebius: Here is the master comic, hard at work.

The Artist: Oh hi!   I’ll start with the face… Then draw the rest of the hair… The eyes, the nose, and the mouth…

The body, his legs, his arms…  I added spears since he’s in battle.  Facing a Hairy Toilet.

Maebius: Could you read the comic for us quickly before you finish the artwork?  So that the read… viewers of this video can see the comic?

The Artist(affecting his ‘erudite’ accent):   Alright, I’ll finish it later.

Electro-Charles versus…

Electro-Charles versus Hairy…

Electro-Charles  (points to picture) versus Hairy potty (points to picture).

(turns page) Zaaaaap!

(third page) Hairy potty is terrorizing the city with his henchmen.

(while pointing out features of the illustration) Henchmen… city people…  (Maebius mumbles something in the background to acknowledge the contents of the illustration)

(turns to final page) Electro-Charles defeated Hairy potty and saved the world.

Maebius: Excellent!  We’ll have pictures when the comic is finished and coloured.   Good bye.

I had a little post about our latest Boy Scout meeting, and how it looks liek it may start to become more than a jumbled disorganized mess… but then I read this entry from FreeRange Kids, which says things with a slightly different focus, but much more eloquently than I could.

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/why-scouting/

One quote from the bottom summarizes what I was going to say already:

It is the same earth, but we have grown in this short time from 3.5 billion to 7 billion people.  The outdoor code, to be conservation minded is no longer quaint — it is part of the solution. To do your best, To be prepared…

Update: re-editing since the original posting ate my words.  Darn you internet gremlins!    Here is it again, slightly re-worded but accurate enough for me to post on my work break again….

Today I’ve been musing about the spread of “social media” and similar internet-based services and games, which provide a lot of value in terms of keeping in contact with far distant people we may have never met in-person.

Combine that, with the opposing viewpoint of such “fake friendship” degrading the real face to face social value of knowing our neighbors and townsfolk.

I tend to fall on the positive side of the debate, and agree that the internet is a wonderful tool for social networking and communication.  Be it chat rooms, online games, or FaceBook, there are people I talk to on a relatively frequent basis that I would never know if not for my online presence.

Still, I do hold onto a little corner of my mind that wonders if the ease of internet friendship is just a little bit detrimental to the larger social scene.  Perhaps it keeps people just that little bit more selfish.

After all, on the internet, you can pick and choose your friends much more carefully, and align the interests of your friends “just-so” to match your own.  If someone angers you terribly, it is much easier to “unfriend” them and just stop interacting.  Distance and internet pseudo-anonymity make it easy to ignore the person. Especially if your preferred method of contacting them has an actual “ignore/privacy” setting.

In real life, if you don’t like the crazy old neighbor, it’s tough to “unfriend” him.   You may stop saying hello, but in real life there’s always a chance of interaction with the neighbor, barring such extreme measures as moving to a new house, or becoming an agoraphobic hermit.

My muse is, does this shift cause a slow degradation of our cultural acceptance and social skills?

I think I mused about this last year, too, but it’s on my mind again.    Does dealing with the weird and oft-times unfriendly neighbors provide people with a much broader “acceptance” outlook towards diversity, and the lack of such result in the continued undercurrent of xenophobia in many people’s outlooks?

Or is such thought reading too deep into things and merely “scapegoating” the technology from what may simply be a human-nature situation that would happen regardless, and Facebook, et al, is merely the most common outlet for those natures to manifest?

Hurm….

Ever have one of those weeks where you have about 280,000 things to do, and five days to do it? That’s my brain lately.

Got a horse, have not done much more than feed her a bit of grain each evening.

Got a new computer,  it’s still in the box.

Got my next belt in Karate (well, will officially get it Friday, but passed the test to earn it last thursday), feel like I should be doing more practice in the evenings.

Got a patch update in my favorite computer game that Changes Lots and totally upends the mechanics of the character skills.   Have not logged on for more than 10 minutes in the last ten days.

Got a new book, from one of my favorite series, and am finding it difficult to sit down and read it.

Got a little faerie-hut (bird house) at the dollar store and painted it prettily, and yet can’t find a home for it, which bugs me a Lot  more than it should….

Gotta re-do the dresser decorations for autumn, and feeling terribly uninspired and procrastinatic[sic].

It all seems like tons of “fun stuff” is not getting done.  But then again, all that Fun stuff, and the lack thereof, is making me horribly irritable, wanting to crash in bed at 7:30 after work, and frazzled.

Must be the changing of the seasons… or the two days of frost that kit and cemented in my psyche that a Cold Winter’s Coming and it isn’t gonna wait.  And the least among us knows, Where you stand won’t change the way the wind blows…

..either that or the “sludge” in my brain rising to the surface after pouring in a bunch of water last week. 

The kid made up a song for his spelling words and we recorded him singing it. He wanted to share it with everyone, so hopefully this works….
(link to the video if the embed does not work:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_iwP9pb5CU)

This week’s spelling words, made into a song, to the tune of “Loony Tunes”.

Lyrics:
I do NOT want to play with you,
I sent you a NOTE.
Bunnies just HOP around,
I’ll get to school I HOPE.
I’m fishing with my new ROD
I RODE in the car.
TOT is for toddler,
you put things in a TOTE.
I take a bath in the TUB,
straws are mini-TUBEs.
Everyone knows what a bear CUB is,
at school we have a CUBE.
US means you and me,
we USEd up the ice-cream maker.
I can CUT with scissors,
my mother thinks I’m CUTE.
I eat BECAUSE I’m hungry,
your letter is FROM meeeeee——————————————————-!

Quick blog post as there’s lots swirling in my head that needs to filter down, but for now, I wanted to post and get in the habit of posting regularly here again…

This past weekend has been interesting, and rather tiring, but all in a good way.

Saturday, I drove to Rochester for another fire-walk, which was a smaller group than the one at my own house, but was nice. More intimate, and seemed to connect better with each person, probably due to the smaller numbers.
The fire was great, and I was chuckling with the hostess about how the coals seemed “colder” as they glowed under our feet. This of course was most likely due to my own energies being much higher.

Before the walk, I also bent a 6ft length of 1/2 inch Rebar (steel rod). Similar to this video. It was absolutely scary, but so inspiring after I had done it. Truly a sense of “you can do anything if you put your mind to it.” I can simply not put into the proper words right now how frightening it was to look down the length of cold metal sticking in my throat… and again how absolutely Amazing it felt when it bent and I hugged David (the man on the other end of the rebar).

Since I was not distracted by playing host, like I had been when the walk was on my property, I was able to let go a little more, and really focus on the fire, our Intentions, and all that. Thus, the coals seemed not hot at all.

At one point, I even made an effort to walk immediately after they were re-raked, along a little trail of piled extra-glowing coals. Never felt a spot of heat, no “kisses” from the coals, and quite amazingly un-phased other than the heat revving up my Joy even further. I was In The Zone, and it felt wonderful.

After the walk, I got to spin my fire-poi a bit, with hand-drumming accompaniment, which was AWESOME! I’m finding that spinning really is a moving meditation, if I get my mind in the groove for it. Similar to drumming all night around a bonfire. It’s Prayer-on-fire. AWoo!

Pretty serious intense work, that stuff though. I was wiped out afterwards and was a tough 3-hour drive home afterwards. Whereas drummnig all night is energizing, Firewalking seems to be really “Transformative Work”, instead of “Sacred Play”. They both have their benefits, but it’s kinda neat to notice the differences and shifted focus required for each activity

* * *

As for the horses portion of the title, Sunday, after the firewalk, we stopped by to visit a nearby stable.

One of the people I know at work had mentioned to me late last week that she had a horse which needed a good home. She was well kept, and very trained, but the price of the stable had gone up, winter was coming (so more $$ for grain, etc), and she had not had time to even visit her Equine much in the past few months due to other family priorities. She knew my wife had horses on our property, and since auctions would just sell off her horse to the highest bidder, she’d rather ask around for a local place to visit and know the horse would be loved.

I, myself, am still really nervous around horses. I can feed them, and brush them, and such, but the thought of actually riding them makes me nervous and tense. Still, learning to ride a horse was something on my “bucket list” when I met my wife, which sadly is still on my list. So I offered to go meet “Jackie”.

When we arrived, she was saddled up, and My wife put the horse through the paces, trotting, running, steering around the open field, and such. Then she asked me to hop on and walk around a bit.

Surprisingly, I learned really quickly that this horse would listen to me. (I’ve never ridden a REALLY trained horse, which may contribute to my fears.) I’d drift the reigns to one side, and the horse turned to that side. No “yanking their head around” needed, like our still-in-training horses. Wow!

I’d touch my heel to her side, and the horse began to trot. I’d say “Woah” and without even pulling back, she’d slow to a walk. double-wow! (At this point, I’m sure you folks who know horses are jsut shaking your head with a smile, laughing at how silly it sounds to hear a trained riding horse actually follows instructions, but it was new to ME.)

Long story short, I actually kicked her into a fast lope. That scared me, so it didn’t last long.

However, the surprising thing, and main reason why we are taking this horse home with us soon, is that the fear I had moving fast was not directed at the Horse. All my past fears were concern that this wild animal I’m sitting on was going to hurt me, even accidentally. With Jackie, I wasn’t afraid of her at all. I was worried that my untrained riding skills would make me fall or lose my balance, but it was totally directed inward, rather than externally.

For a few second there, in the middle of “EEEK! I’m gonna fall off!” was a grinning Joy. I was riding! Same joy I felt after walking coals unscathed. This was awesome!

Click the little thumbnails for larger pictures!

…So now I’ll be learning to ride a horse properly. Firewalking really does Transform the walker.

SEA / AHO! <3

The kid turned seven today! Sadly, we’ve all been fighting the plague for the last (literally) two weeks and it’s just not leaving us alone, but it’s better, with a drawn-out sniffly blah lately, but functional waking at least. I wanted to do a bit more “coming of age” type stuff, but that may wait until Halloween party and such to mark the age-growing better with a bonfire and such.

However, I’m not here to rant about our health. I’m here to share the fun that was his birthday breakfast and gifts, because I’m feeling like a Proud Papa today.

He got three gifts, two of which were a surprise, one was specifically asked for. The fun part was that he had to follow a trail of clues around the house to get all three gifts.

• A Kung Zhu hamster, Thorn, from the Skull Tribe of ninja warriors…
• A foam “battle staff” suitable for frequent trampoline battles with me, and his friends. (He’s actually been practicing staff-combat with a length of PVP pipe and gotten surprisingly smooth and fluid! I sense great things here for martial artistry…
• A pre-owned copy of Cooking Mama: world kitchen, for the Wii, because he loves to help cook.

The clues read as follows:

At your birthday breakfast, you are reading this note,
To start on a scavenger hunt that is fun.
So first you should go read the next clue I wrote,
on the cage of the six baby buns!

The bunnies are cute, the bunnys are furry,
The bunnies need water to drink.
So I would go downstairs in a hurry,
and look in the kitchen _____!

You’ve probably noticed the staff that bends air
which is not the only surprise for you.
So I’d go look in front or under the green chair
for the next scavenger clue.

The bunks beds that have a few Mjollnir toys hanging
are the next stop on your quest.
But watch your head, do it’s not banging,
on the bottom of where you rest.

Where we eat is a table, that is made of wood,
Which your puppy likes to also eat under.
So the next clue should be there, so look real good,
Where could it be, I wonder???

When done playing outside, and covered in dirt,
you need to get clean and scrub.
Before you can eat dinner, and then a dessert,
So you should wash up in the ______.

You found this clue now, so you really are smart!
One more step to the final gift from Dad.
Old paint is where you should look to start,
you will love it and not be sad.

There are a few things that may not make sense to readers not familair with our house layout and contents, but he got each clue right away and was grinning from ear to ear by the tiem he was on hte last clue, before the actual wrapped gift itself was found.

Guess it was a pretty nice start to a birthday. <3

The barn roof is a good way cleared, with just the final wall section to be knocked out. Unfortunately, that part is somewhat on-hold until the Electrical repair people come and help us, because that particular part of the barn is where the power meter and wires come in to keep electricity running to our house.

Soon, though, Very Soon!

Still quite a lot of work to do yet, but compare it to this earlier in the spring…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfCkbe…
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcYXCk…