WRITING TOPIC — TELL ME ABOUT MARCH

M. Elisabeth Norton (American, active 1890s), The Bookman: March, 1895. Lithograph, Portland Art Museum, Gift of Daniel Bergsvik and Donald Hastler.

March is a month of transition in the Midwest. Snow, sleet, hail, wind. Temperatures at the freezing mark. Temperatures at 40 degrees. Five feet of snow on the ground. Fresh buds on the willow. March can be a time of transition from body to spirit; maybe you have experienced the loss of loved ones in March. Is there anything about March that motivates or inspires you?

I find inspiration for writing through art. I stumbled on the work of M. Elisabeth Norton this morning while researching lithography. She has a bold graphic style common to the advertising of the 1890s. The Bookman was an illustrated monthly literary journal and one of the first to publish what came to be known as the best-seller list, a driving force in shaping discussion around popular literature. Books that appeared on these lists became best sellers because the lists said they were. (Is the same true today?)

It’s March in Minnesota. Astrologically, it’s a powerful month because Pluto is moving into Aquarius (for the first time since 2008 and will be retrograding in and out of Aquarius until 2044). What does March mean to you? How does it smell when you walk. Is it a warm breeze that hits your skin or an arctic blast. Is the sidewalk muddy, snowy, or are you jumping over puddles of rain.

The Writing Topic is March. If you purchase Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones Deck, you’ll read that she prefers Writing Topic to prompt. Here’s what she says:

I’ve always used the word topic instead of prompt. Prompt is a starting place but topic indicates more the idea of plunging in and immersing. Why write with topics? 

1. A topic that has at least two levels can open more directions in your writing.
2. Sometimes a blunt topic can spring the mind into a full-out sprint.
3. Topics can be used as beginning points, for the mind to push off from.
4. You can also use a topic to move slantwise into a subject.
5. Practicing with topics leads you to your own true writing territory.

–Natalie Goldberg from the Intro to Writing Down the Bones Deck

Dig into March. You can drop your Writing Practice into the comments below. Or jot them into your notebook. Still writing pen to paper? Or is all your practice on the computer. I do both. No matter your style, keep writing.

 

NOTE FROM QUOINMONKEY: Natalie Goldberg (along with Billy Collins, Sensei Kaz Tanahashi, Roshi Joan Halifax, Dorotea Mendoza, MH Rubin, and Lorraine A. Padden) will be teaching at the haiku workshop The Way of Haiku: Winter at Our Back, Facing the Edge of Spring at Upaya Zen Center this weekend. Liz and I attended the haiku workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico in person at Upaya in early February 2020 (our last travel before the pandemic) and have joined every year since on Zoom. We continue to find inspiration, structure, and guidance in Natalie’s teachings, from her latest book Three Simple Lines, and in the dharma talks at Upaya. To our teachers and mentors, much gratitude.

–related to posts: How Many Days in the Month of March – 30 or 31?, Lithograph Stones

 

 

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Bones Of The Sea

Curly-Q, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, February 18th, 2023, photo © 2023 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.

Liz unpacks the spiral shells out of a plastic peroxide bottle with the top slit open to form a hinge. Amy carefully packed them for us before we left St. Joe Beach. Shells, the bones of the sea. Skeletons made of calcium, color revealing the nutrients they ate. Shells scattered on the beaches we visited in the panhandle. Sand dollars washed up at Crooked Beach. You had to wade into the water at first to spot the good ones. Later you trained your eyes to pluck them from wet sand. “It’s like Neptune,” Liz said. “The wave rolls in, all foamy and murky. When the wave washes out, for a moment, everything is clear. That’s when you find your prize.” The translucent jingle shells appeared on Windmark and tiny coquina shells. Surf clams, cat’s paws, and limpets with holes in them on St. Joe. Protection for the soft insides that live outside in the ocean. No backbones.

Shell on the Moon, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, February 18th, 2023, photo © 2023 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.

 

Backbone. We say those with backbone are strong, can pull their weight in a crisis. I’m not good in a crisis. I don’t pivot quickly. But Liz does. In chaotic situations, she will grab my hand, say, “I got cha” and weave her way to safety. Many of my friends react to danger in quick response. I am a person that sniffs out danger from a distance. Empathic. I sense energy around and don’t move into spaces that feel toxic. It’s a different way of sensing the world, moving through air, paying attention to earth. Taurus. Moon.

But what I really want to say is that it’s good to be home from the ocean. To be back in the Midwest. At least for a time. The ocean is constantly moving. The 40 mph wind gusts and driving rain against the beach house last weekend, nowhere near the category five of Michael a few years ago. So much did not survive. So many homes and trees destroyed, people living five years later in RVs on their land under carports. They have not rebuilt.

But people are resilient. A better word is flexible. Resilience is the fortitude to will your way back to the way things once were. That’s often not possible. Not after a hurricane. Not after a tornado. Not after a pandemic. Or an earthquake. Or war. So much suffering in this world. Flexibility is the ability to change. To flow into what is new and unfamiliar. Adapting to a world around you that is ever changing. I used to hate change. Too unpredictable, unfamiliar, disorienting. Now I try to embrace it, learning from the people around me. Some thrive on change. They are at their best when things are new and in flux. I am more of a reflector, like the Moon. 

 

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15-minute Writing Practice on Shells, written on an old iPad Mini 4, Saturday, February 18th, 2023

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Roots

SpiralBound, Minneapolis, Minnesota, iPhone Shots, on the Day of My Solar Return, July 22, 2022, photo © 2022 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Roots that bind. Binding roots. I came home from work last week to find an empty yellow pot on the marble island. “Look,” Liz said, “I transplanted the rushfoil. It was so rootbound, the roots at the bottom became one with the pot.” I peered into the spiral chasm. “Hmmmmm. That’s kind of cool,” my lips said. My heart translated the fused tendrils as a metaphor for my earthbound feet stuck to unforgiving skeletal bones. Heavy and unmoving. Same old job. Same old routines.

But all that is changing. 

The supervisor at work (only a few months into the position) seems to see us as baggage on his journey through the company’s future. Monday when he wagged his finger at me, I pulled him aside and told him to stop treating us like robots, to cease micromanaging a team that has been efficient and exceeding our corporate goals for a decade. To stop silencing us and treating us like neophytes. He is not rooted to the way things were; he comes from another division. He moves like lightening. He makes mistakes, but he doesn’t care. Forward, at all costs.

For a team who pauses and pays attention to details, it’s maddening. Unnecessary. There are compromises that have to be made in the spaces between the 7000 steps I walk at work every day.

I retire from corporate employment at the end of the year. Next spring we rip 38 years of roots out of the bottom of our Minnesota home and transplant them to the mountains. Liz told me she had to grab a steak knife from the kitchen drawer and scrape at the sides of the clay pot to get those roots to budge. And still….the remainders are part of the clay. The croton (rushfoil is the common name) was a gift from a coworker after my dad died in 2017. She has sprouted new buds in a 13-inch frost green pot butted up to our north facing windows. She is happy. Thriving. I transformed the worn pot into photo art. Another metaphor? On the day of my solar return, I feel scratchy and unsettled.

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10-minute Writing Practice on the WRITING TOPIC: ROOTS, Friday, July 22nd, 2022

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The Bardo

The Bardo, photograph by Debra J. Hobbs, © QuoinMonkey, August 15th, 2020.

I meant to do better. To take more Polaroids, roll more clay, shut up and write. But 2020 had other ideas. For my birthday in high summer, Liz gave me a new deck of cards — The Wild Unknown – Archetypes by Kim Krans. The art was created from the center of a dark night of the soul. I pull a card a week. Saturday, August 15th landed me in The Bardo. I was already there. What changed is my willingness to straddle the abyss, to sit in uncomfortable places — in this life and what I imagine to be the next.

In this life, a family member is recovering from COVID-19. Two long time friends are in treatment for cancer, maybe the fight of their lives. Two other friends buried their 6-month old kitten, lost to a disease of unknown origin. In this life, babies are born unseen by grandparents, couples are married on Zoom, people die unable to hold a loved one’s hand. In this life, cities explode, humans rumble and rattle, tired of gridlock, tired of the status quo.

In this life, last night we locked ourselves in the bathroom to the howls of tornado sirens and horizontal rain. In this life, we wear masks, cancel our travel plans, stack bookshelves to the top of 9-foot ceilings, rearrange our studio to hold Liz’s work-at-home office next to old Kodachrome slides and boxes of art supplies.

I am digging in. And expanding out. I am rattling old bones. Untangling ancient root systems. Beliefs are not truths. I am learning that denial is a form of grief. It’s not the Thing that is dead, but how I’ve been doing the Thing. Shine your light, luminous or liminal. That is the Leo energy of August 2020 (from Lindsay Mack’s August podcast, Tarot for the Wild Soul).

I meant to do better. Prayer flags wave against an overflow bookshelf above photographs of my great, great grandparents. I research the goddess Eris, sister of Ares, daughter of Night. I listen to old astrology tapes, a choir hymn hummed through face masks, the tingle of ghost chimes.

In the Bardo:

We may receive messages from those who are no longer with us or see visions of lives not yet lived. In the Bardo there is the potential to forgive the unforgivable, to say the unsaid, to see the unseen, to love the unloved, to let go of all the things that cause us pain. The Bardo suspends us in its spaciousness for just long enough to open us to higher wisdom. Its energy does not belong to the Earth as we know it, but rather to the Cosmic network of which we are a single thread.

—The Wild Unknown – Archetypes deck by Kim Krans

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Gratitude

Gratitude, Mandala Series, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2016, photo © 2016 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

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AMOR

Amor, 2006 by Robert Indiana, National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Droid Shots, June 26th, 2014, photo © 2014 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

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I took this photograph of the sculpture AMOR by Robert Indiana on a visit to the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., June 26th, 2014. Exactly one year later, June 26th, 2015, Love Wins (OBERGEFELL ET AL . v . HODGES).

-posted on red Ravine, Friday, July 3rd, 2015

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Broken Or Unbroken

Broken & Unbroken, Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center, Kansas City, Missouri, Canon Powershot G6, April 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

eight years to the day
broken or unbroken
she decided to stay

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-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, April 7th, 2015

-Part of a yearly practice to write a short form poem in a Moleskine journal once a day for the next year. Related to post: haiku 4 (one a day) Meets renga 52

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Egg Art — Season Of Eostre

Happy Eostre. The Gift, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 2013, photo © 2015 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

season of Eostre:
abundance lives
in the skillful art
of not placing all your eggs
in one basket

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A few years ago, I was getting a haircut when a woman walked in bearing gifts. She carried a basket of hollow, elaborately decorated eggs and asked the patrons in the shop if they would like to choose one to take with them. I had seen pysanky (what we called Ukrainian Easter eggs) before, but had never taken part in the gift-giving ritual. It lit up my day. I took the oval-shaped treasure home and placed it in a raku bowl on my altar where it lived for many months.

There is a booklet produced by the American Folklife Center (1982, long out of print) that gives a brief description of European egg decorating traditions, and explains the techniques (complete with black and white photos) for producing elaborate designs. EggArt can be found in the online collections of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress (LINK). Here is an excerpt:

Egg Art Cover Image: Easter Eggs Decorated with Various Traditional Patterns. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer, 1982.

Traditionally, the egg, both plain and decorated, has been an object with strong mystical and symbolic force throughout the world. It has been associated with the myth of creation, with the concept of birth, and with the hope for abundance. Eggs have been sacrificed to sanctify the construction of dwellings, public buildings, and bridges in many lands. They are traditionally given at the birth of a son in China, and they have been used for fortune telling in the British Isles. In many Western cultures the egg has become an integral part of the complementary celebrations of the Easter season and of the renewal of life in spring.

It is in Eastern Europe, however, where Christian associations with the egg were grafted onto strong, pagan beliefs which connected the egg with sun worship, worship of the renewal of life in spring, and with rituals to maintain or restore health, that the rich traditions surrounding eggs have remained strongest. More secular traditions practiced in the spring by communities of European ancestry include egg tapping, egg gathering or hunting, egg rolling, and egg tossing contests.

It is said that the Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE), a Christian scholar and monk, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (or Eastre, the ancient word for spring). And that Eostre, the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people, Germanic Goddess of Spring, gave her name to the Christian festival of Easter. After the dark Midwest winter, I find it an uplifting season, and feel grounded in the timing still dictated by the Moon.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, April 4th, 2015

-Part of a yearly practice to write a short form piece of poetry in a Moleskine journal once a day for the next year. Related to post: haiku 4 (one a day) Meets renga 52

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Lithograph Stones

Lithograph Stones, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 2015, photos © 2015 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

lithograph limestone
the way water repels ink
paper covers rock

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I like to draw images for my daily poetry practice from the things that are going on around me. Yesterday we visited the Highpoint Center for Printmaking to see Entwined: New Prints by Julie Buffalohead. Julie collaborated on ten pieces with the printers at Highpoint; several of the editions have sold out. It is a beautiful space. One of the cooperative members working on a large piece of limestone stopped to explain the lithographic process to us. Alois Senefelder invented lithography in 1798 while seeking a less costly method of reproducing copies of his plays. In an attempt to reduce his publications costs, he tried to produce his own copperplate engravings which led to the use of slabs of Bavarian limestone. You can read more at the History of Lithography (LINK).

Making reverse images in copper was a very difficult process, a process that required much time and practice to master. Thus, Senefelder decided to practice his engraving on slabs of Bavarian limestone instead of the costly copper. In the mean time, Senefelder needed a liquid that could be used to correct his frequent mistakes on the genuine copper plates. For this, he found a mixture of wax, soap, lampblack, and rainwater were satisfactory. The two materials, limestone and the “correction fluid” became the primary ingredients of lithography.

By experimenting, Senefelder found that an image drawn onto the limestone with his correction fluid would repel water, while the surface of the stone itself would hold it. He found he could first wet the entire stone then apply ink, with a roller, to the entire stone to replenish the ink on the image. The stone, which held water, repelled the greasy ink; the “correction fluid,” which is greasy and thus repels water, accepted additional ink. The chemical process is known as the Principle of Lithography.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, March 29nd, 2015

-Part of a yearly practice to write a short form piece of poetry in a Moleskine journal once a day for the next year. Related to post: haiku 4 (one a day) Meets renga 52

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Graft

Graft, Droid Shots, Washington, D.C., June 2014, photos © 2014 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

A half mile from the U.S. Capitol in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art stands a 45-foot high by 45-foot wide stainless steel tree, gleaming in the sun. Graft (2008–2009) by American sculptor Roxy Paine (part of the “Dendroid” series) is made from more than 8,000 components and weighs 16,000 pounds. When I leaned against her trunk and grazed the steeled bark, I was reminded of Deborah Butterfield‘s later work in which she adopted junk metal and industrial materials such as barbed wire, pipes, and fencing into her horse sculptures. She first composed Woodrow (1988) in pieces of wood, disassembled the sculpture, and reassembled the horse in bronze. The tension between the natural world sculpted in modern materials speaks to the time in which we live—tethered to our electronics, constantly seeking ground.

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Roxy Paine was born in 1966 in New York and studied at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico and the Pratt Institute in New York. The artist has shown his other Dendroids on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), in the Olympic Sculpture Park (Seattle), and outside the Museum of Modern Art (Fort Worth, Texas). Read more about his work at his website.

Roxy Paine, Droid Shots, Washington, D.C., June 2014, photos © 2014 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, March 15th, 2015
-related to: WRITING TOPIC – TREES

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winter wind

-haiga posted on redRavine, Saturday, January 24th, 2015
-Part of a yearly practice to write a short form piece of poetry in my Moleskine journal once a day for the next year. Related to post: haiku 4 (one a day) Meets renga 52

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Ann Patchett — On Practice & Forgiveness

Lately I have begun to measure time by the way I savor or squander it. Yesterday, I had the day to myself. I spent many hours reading in silence. When I find my writing languishing, it is good to read the words of those willing to share the places they have stumbled and succeeded. “The Getaway Car” has traveled both paved and potholed roads.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment. The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the freshwater underneath.

—Ann Patchett from “The Getaway Car” in This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage, HarperCollins 2013.

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Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let’s face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds), I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is the key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

—Ann Patchett from “The Getaway Car” in This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage, HarperCollins 2013.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, April 19th, 2014

-related to posts: The Ant & The Grasshopper – Ann Patchett & Lucy Grealy, Which Came First, The Grasshopper Or The Egg?, Ann Patchett – On Truth, Beauty, & The Adventures Of “Opera Girl”

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Blowing Bubbles At -9°F

Vertical Bubbles, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2014, photos © 2014 by Liz anne schultz. All rights reserved.

The -22°F drop in air temperature in the Twin Cities this week closed schools and businesses, persuading most of us to stay inside and curl up with a good book. But after seeing the images of photographer Angela Kelly, Liz was inspired to mix up a concoction of soap bubbles, strap her Sony NEX around her neck, and head out into the cold.

I was recruited to blow bubbles, while she chased them around the deck, hoping to grab a quick shot before they flew over the roof and collapsed into tinkling ice crystals. It was -9°F with wind gusts dropping the chill to -30°F below. Liz’s camera even froze up a few times. Yet with everything that was going on around us, she captured a sense of stillness and serenity in these photographs.

Red Dual Bubble, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2014, photos © 2014 by Liz anne schultz. All rights reserved.

After we were back inside, warming our bones in front of the heater, we read up on the details of blowing bubbles in freezing temperatures. Here is what we learned:

1) For the best frozen bubbles, add corn syrup to thicken the water base and increase the surface tension. It is surface tension that allows the solution to form a bubble. Use the ratio of ingredients below. Then mix and let cool.

1 part dish soap
1 part corn syrup
6 parts hot water

2) Use a bubble wand, instead of your breath.

A bubble is formed by a layer of water molecules trapped between two fine layers of soap molecules. When it is very cold, and the bubble wand is waved slowly, the water layer freezes before the bubble can burst. By contrast, if you make a bubble by blowing into the wand, the bubble takes more time to set because the air in the bubble has been warmed by your lungs. When this warm air comes into contact with cold air it contracts, and the surface of the bubble sets more slowly.

3) It’s natural for frozen bubbles to collapse into themselves.

The layers of soap freeze, making the walls of the bubble more solid. After a few seconds, the air captured inside the bubble disperses to the exterior, like a balloon deflating, and the wall of ice collapses under its own weight leaving what looks like a broken eggshell.

Green Frost Bubble, Caving Bubble, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
January 2014, photos © 2014 by Liz anne schultz.
All rights reserved.

We are counting on Minnesota to produce another round of sub-zero temperatures (and less wind) so we have a chance to practice more frozen bubble photography before spring.

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, January 8th, 2014, with gratitude to Angela Kelly for the inspiration

-Resources:  Science Fun In The Snow – Try This Out – Frozen Bubbles,  Angela Kelly’s website: Kelly Images & Photography: Acclaim for the “Frozen in a Bubble Series”

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May Your Year Be Filled With Light

Heartbeat Of A Dragonfly, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2014, photos © 2014 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

New Moon, New Year—
I make no promises.
Only hope for a year filled with light,
soft shadows off the heartbeat
of a dragonfly.

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, January 1st, 2014

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Sundog Halo

Sundog Halo, iPhone Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2013, photo © 2013 by Liz Anne Schultz. All rights reserved.

Sundog halo
in a dark world—
her crystal face, silent, skewed.

Deviant rays of red and blue,
diamond dust takes many hues.

There were two days last week when sundogs appeared on our drive to work, adding a little magic to the sub-zero skies. Sundogs, parhelia, are formed by plate crystals high in the cirrus clouds. Though all crystals refract light from the sun’s rays, we only see those that tilt their light toward our eyes 22° or more from the sun and at the same altitude (a 22° circular halo).

When plate crystals drift down with their large hexagonal faces almost horizontal, rays that become sundogs enter a side face and leave through another, inclined 60° to the first. The refractions deviate the rays by 22° or more, depending on their angle when they enter the crystal, making them visible to us. Red is deviated least, giving the sundog a red inner edge.

Vädersolstavlan, a 17th century painting of Stockholm depicting a halo display event in 1535. Cleaned in 1998. Public Domain.

 

 

Sundogs are visible all over the world, any time of year, regardless of the ground temperature. In cold climates, the plates can reside at ground level as diamond dust. The oldest known account of a sundog is “Sun Dog Painting” (Vädersolstavlan) depicting Stockholm in 1535 when the skyscape was filled with white circles and arcs crossing the horizon. The original oil on panel painting, traditionally attributed to Urban Målare, is lost, and virtually nothing is known about it. A copy from 1636 by Jacob Heinrich Elbfas is held in Storkyrkan in Stockholm, and believed to be an accurate copy.

-posted on red Ravine, Monday, December 9th, 2013

-related to post WRITING TOPIC — CIRCLES, haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52

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Gates Of Death — October Mandalas

Wheel Of Life, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2008, photo © 2008-2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

ONE: Gates Of Death, Stage 10 of The Great Round, begins the natural process of ending the Great Round cycle in preparation for a new beginning. Experiences that open this stage often come in losses or obstructions that challenge us to question who we are. The first mandala, Wheel Of Life, brings us face to face with the relentless passage of time. The Wheel of Life turns on, sometimes up, sometimes down, urging us to let go.

Medium: Crayola markers, Portfolio Brand Water-Soluble Oil Pastels, Rainbow Magic pens that erase and change color, Reeves Water Colour Pencils

Celtic Cross, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2008, photo © 2008-2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

TWO: In Stage 10, we are being separated from that which is no longer needed. Celtic crosses made of tall, silent, enduring stone dot the landscape of Scotland. They stand against the sky, washed by the winds and rains of countless seasons, reminders that even though things change, there is a part of us that lives on.

Medium: Crayola markers, Portfolio Brand Water-Soluble Oil Pastels, and Reeves Water Colour Pencils

Lotus, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2008, photo © 2008-2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

THREE: In mandala three, based on the Kali Yantra of Hinduism, destruction opens the way for creation. The eight-petaled lotus represents the goddess Kali in her nurturing maternal aspect. The inner circle, traditionally colored black, reveals her also as a Destroyer, the dark womb that absorbs all into non-being. The central triangle, ultimate symbol of divine feminine creative energy, holds the spark of new life.

Medium: Crayola markers, Portfolio Brand Water-Soluble Oil Pastels, and Reeves Water Colour Pencils

Gateway, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2008, photo © 2008-2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

FOUR: Stage 10, Gates of Death, opens the last segue leading to the completion of a Great Round cycle, and urges us to walk through the gate into the unknown. It is time to let go of the way things have been and clear the way for a new beginning.

Medium: Reeves Water Colour Pencils, Crayola markers

October Mandalas — Stage 10 – Gates Of Death


The last few months I have been feeling empty, like I am nearing the end of a creative cycle. I have been wanting to shed the old, to wrap up lingering projects and push them out into the world, so that I can open to something new. It’s disconcerting to not know where you are going—a good time to revisit old practices. Yesterday, I spent most of the day in silence and opened the book on mandalas. When I revisited Stage 10, Gates of Death, I knew it was time to sit with the lessons it had to teach.

The mandalas are from the 10th month of a year-long mandala practice that began with the post Coloring Mandalas and followed the twelve passages of Joan Kellogg’s Archetypal Stages of the Great Round. I spent that year taking the Great Round to completion. But there was something I had yet to understand—-it would take until 2013 for events of my life to catch up to the last cycles of the Great Round. Some of the signs of Stage 10 – Gates of Death are:

• losses or obstructions that challenge us, causing us to question who we are
• things that once seemed important, seem empty & meaningless
• bittersweet parting with what was; painful rending from what can no longer be
• desire to let go of life the way it was, with no sense of what is to come
• sense of deflation when the connection between Ego & Self grows more distant
• aware of cycles of decay in nature and the eventual approach of death

Adding to the sense of disorientation I’ve been feeling, I lost a writing friend in July. And in November, I found out my blood father died on October 31st, ending any chance he might have to read the letter I wrote. Death. Decay. Loss. Rebirth. I still believe that anything we take on as a practice takes us where we need to go. It is the time it takes to get there that remains a mystery.

Archetypal Stages Of The Great Round on red Ravine:


Crystallization — September Mandalas
Functioning Ego – August Mandalas (Goethe & Color)
Squaring The Circle – July Mandalas (Chakras & Color)
Dragon Fight — June Mandalas
Target — May Mandalas
Beginnings — April Mandalas
Labyrinth – March Mandalas
Bliss – February Mandalas
The Void – January Mandalas
Coloring Mandalas

-posted on red Ravine, Thanksgiving weekend, Saturday, November 30th, 2013

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Top Of The Foshay Tower

Top Of The Foshay Tower, Droid Shots, Northern Spark, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June, 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It was 4:45am when we walked into the Foshay Tower lobby, hoping to catch the sunrise from the 30th floor observation deck. We had stayed up the entire night of June 9th for the second Northern Spark; it was now June 10th. After a random tweet from the Northern Spark app, I won a Jump The Line At The Foshay prize, a gift that proved fruitful. We walked straight to the front of the line and flashed my Droid screen toward the guard. “Wow, that’s cool. Off you go,” he said, shooing us in the direction of the packed elevator.

My stomach dropped on the ride up; the tower view to the east took my breath away. The light was just beginning to change. The deck was crammed with Northern Sparkers, waiting for the sun. It was the perfect ending to the Nuit Blanche, a community shared art event for the soul. Sunrise on top of the sky; a tour of the Foshay museum. Details. Details. Details. Not just tree, what kind of tree. Not just building, what kind of building. A Minnesota icon, built to last, still inspiring sunrises after all these years.

FOSHAY FACTS

• Named for Wilbur Foshay, the original owner & builder

• Modeled after the Washington Monument as a tribute to George Washington

• 32 stories high, tallest building in the Twin Cities for 4 decades
  

• Construction began in 1927 & ended August 1929. Built completely by all-union labor.

• Wilbur Foshay & Gottlieb Magney patented the shape and method of construction

• Faced with Indiana Bedford limestone, 750 window bays, able to stand up to winds of 400 mph

• Numbers: 447 feet, 3 inches high, mast on the top 160 feet; 81 by 87 feet at the base; 59 by 65 feet at the top; contains 2,599,666 cubic feet

• 60 feet below ground with four basement levels

• John Philip Sousa wrote the Foshay Tower-Washington Memorial March for the Foshay Dedication Ceremonies

• Tower Observation Deck is located on the 30th floor where you can see 30 miles on a clear day

• Foshay lights are 10 feet tall, 44 feet across, lit by 900 60-watt bulbs

• Placed on National Register of Historic Places in 1977

• In 1987 the Tower was adorned with a 50-foot by 50-foot banner (the largest ever installed on a highrise office building) congratulating the Minnesota Twins for their championship year

• In 2008, the renovated Foshay opened as the Foshay Museum & Observation Deck, part of W Minneapolis — The Foshay
  

Foshay Moon, Droid Shots, Northern Spark, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June, 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

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-related to posts:  Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche, Northern Spark 2012 – Night Owl Paradise, Northern Spark — Sunrise To Sunset

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

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