A Perpetual Magpie in Everyday Ramblings

Happy New Year! This is the serene small studio at the space where I took the anatomy workshop a few weeks back. It looks almost like it could be on a ship: perhaps an icebreaker. :)

It was supposed to snow this morning so I went out early to get my floors in. For my Fitbit, you know. It was raining then and I was all geared up.

But it didn’t snow, so a bit later after dawn and the rain stopped I went out and walked up the hill behind me (now I have 41 floors) and listened to some more of Wolf Hall. Cromwell’s Liz just died of the plague.

The weather ahead for the next few weeks is worrisome for a person who does things on foot. I keep telling myself I have the common sense and gear to make it through but one is always asking…should I go to the store now???

For the year I pulled the Seven of Swords. At least it isn’t a major. I pull a Tarot Card every New Year’s Day. I think of this as the “stealth” card. It is not always negative but it points to a getting away with that may have consequences.

“The Seven of Swords, when upright means to use your wits for diplomacy and not to use aggression, this is why it can be viewed as secret planning or hidden dishonor, your acts may be legitimate however you prefer to use your mind and intellect rather than force or via obvious means.”

It is a cautionary card to me, a message to focus on what I can do for my students and my employer and not to let my anxiety about my financial well being be the driver for my actions; something a bit contradictory in terms of our new government about to take office, which celebrates both greed and aggression.

I have been enjoying my intellectual pursuits this weekend. I read a long review in The New Yorker on some books about Bach and when the reviewer talks about a melisma I kind of know what he is talking about because of the How to Listen to and Understand Great Music program I am listening to when I can…”a group of notes sung to one syllable of text.”

The library had a copy of the audiobook version of A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, (a man very much of his times, a serial sexual predator that had an affair with T.S. Eliot’s emotionally unstable wife and said it was for the best for all of them) available, which I have been listening to bits of.

He has an interesting definition of Philosophy that I like. He says it is the area of thought between Religion and Science.

And then there is The Path of Modern Yoga, which is a wonderfully readable book about the people involved in the development of yoga as I teach it. Not only were Emerson and the Transcendentalists a huge influence but once again a mention of the appeal of the message by the Unitarian Mission in Calcutta that was formed in 1821.

In a review about two new movies about poets, Anthony Lane says “This movie (Paterson) has almost no bite but plenty of moseying charm, and what it does get right is the idea of poets as perpetual magpies. They pick up scraps of talk and offcuts of sensation, with which to feather the nests of their lyrical work. Nothing goes to waste.”

Like say…It was in Babylon that the day was first divided into 24 hours and the circle into 360 degrees.

Or that castle walls were considered secure until the development of the cannon.

All the best for this New Year! May you have confidence and ease, health and a sense that you matter and have much to offer this deeply troubled world.