Dearest Christy,

I honor you for the precious teacher that you are in life. You find golden nuggets of essence and weave them between worlds.

Playing in your presence is a gift. Skipping around this lot, my heart has landed upon so many gems. I'm excited to linger and discover what's here.

I find this to be a lovely place. Quite sweet.

Thank you for nurturing the field... Perhaps I'm ready to join you and discover the tones of my voice.

Much love and gratitude.

I really love this talk (thanks to Joe Brewer for posting it!) given by Dougald Hine at Dalarna University in Sweden, on What is a University For? - about the crises (economic, ecologic, meaning) and "networked disruption" and new kinds of learning spaces that are "alive with curiosity, and not focused on acquiring certificated knowledge," all giving rise to what he calls "the invisible college" - global communities of independent scholars, thinkers, writers, artists.



As I read more about his work, I discovered that this is how we are connected:

Among many other things, Dougald Hine is also co-founder of The Dark Mountain Project, a "network of artists, writers and thinkers in search of new stories for troubled times. We promote and curate writing, art, music and culture rooted in place, time and nature." Below is the cover of their second published book.

This cover artwork is by Rima Staines, who writes and illustrates a fantastic blog called The Hermitage. Rima is the dear heart of storyteller, poet, mask maker and apprentice acupuncturist Tom Hirons/Coyopa, whom I admire very much, and whose virtual acquaintance I made through elementally magical Thomas - whom I know in person (and that's how these circles touch the ground finally, I think - with some in-person knowing!)

we turned our bodies into drums

Something about the voice of the whole big body.

"We turned our bodies into drums."

http://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=319

transmutation time

some mini sparks:
maybe i'll get them to bloom into flame, if i feel them some time and some quiet air

spent a bunch of minutes sharpening some of the many colored pencils that I've been collecting from around the house, from dusty corners and under the furniture. what am i sharpening them for, i am curiously wondering?

kintsugi. http://whatacupoftea.blogspot.com/2012/06/mending-our-brokenness.html.
michael m mentioned having intuitively suggested a ritual smashing of pottery to his friend grieving her husband, and then did some research and found it was an indonesian funereal tradition. i in turn mentioned this art to him (having seen it pictured on connie's fb page recently), and he mused that maybe that can be a next step in the grief process...later, much later, i would guess.

this: mark morford 2013: The Year Women Abolish God
plus this: len wallick, planet waves: Your Mission: Changes of Venus and Mars "...theory was that the interval of irregularity, ending in 2060, corresponds to an era of when the relationship between women and men will be undergoing transmutation."
gives some rise to this: v-day, one billion rising:

cracks and fissures, mars and venus, gold and colors (colored drawing) (drawing together), rising, mending, culture healing, transmutation - now's the time (it's always been time) (and now is also time for me to go to work - so what is it i have been doing, then?)

generative oblique strategy

"You can get some appealing effects by just imagining the absent poet as part of the audience. This conceptual approach is what Brian Eno might call an “oblique strategy,” and it can be generative: although I think a lot about what Kees would have made of my Robinson poems, and I want to think he would have liked them, they’re not addressed to him, and, furthermore, he’s not even in them. I’m borrowing his fictional creation and reimagining his own life through that character."

from Conjuring Act in the Poetry Foundation blog