Online is so much the new reality in business.  One creates an identity and then becomes a living entity.  Though those of us who know someone who is living online, are a little mystified about who they really are.  Wait, maybe I am talking about myself.  How do I relate to the part of myself that is living online.

Long live osha root:  http://www.herbco.com/p-745-osha-root-whole-wild-crafted.aspx

After coughing for a couple of hours in the middle of the night last night, I remembered that I had in my tea stash some osha root from the Ashland Food Coop.  I didn't have health insurance for a while in Ashland.  My mbira partner fortunately knew how to survive on herbal medicine.  I bought and used osha root as tea for a bout with bronchitis.  I really like it.

This story also reminds me that during the same bout with bronchitis, my Ashland hair cutter suggested Gao Mao Ling which is made in China.  She cut the hair of a Chinese Medicine doctor right before my hair cut and he suggested Gao Mao Ling for the bug that was going around.  This also really helped.

And this story reminds me of the story of having sciatica one winter after going to two Aikido camp intensives the previous summer.  I suffered a great deal that winter and while getting my hair cut, my hair cut favorite in Portland suggested going next door to Rite-aid and getting some Aleve.  I did that and bingo, the pain was controllable and eventually it worked its way out, never to return (cross your fingers).

Now if I could just get some allergy advice from my new hair cut provider.  

p.s.  I had my hair cut yesterday and got no new advice on coughing from my hair cut provider.    Maybe time for a new one. 

John Beaulieu

Love the Sacred Sound video AND my new Crystal Tuner. Tap it on the blunt end of a quartz crystal and it comes alive. Vibrational medicine is so clearly defined here: wave, form, and pulse. Still point. Shape shifting. I love his understated approach.

My first tuning fork below from BioSonics...OM  http://www.biosonics.com/shop/om-tuner/

 From BioSonic's website regarding the OM tuner:

"Achieve a state of deep relaxation in seconds with the primordial vibrations of “Om”. Physically tune your body to the Om vibration and enter a state of balanced wholeness ideal for healing and higher consciousness. Helps center the body and mind when placed on the rib heads, thoracic vertebra, sternum, sacrum and illiums. Helps meditators and yoga practitioners achieve desired states effortlessly.
Benefits:

• A state of balanced wholeness
• For deep meditation
• Center the body and mind

The rishies or spiritual master of India believed that the musical tone sadja or sa, which means the father of all others, to be the musical sound which resonates with the never ending primordial vibration om. The rishies arrived at sa through deep meditation. To this day, Indian musicians approach tuning their instruments as a meditation to set the Spiritual tone for a whole concert. The effect of India’s meditative music is based on a musician’s ability to tune to sa."

Grandmother Spiderwoman

Spiderwoman totally loves the hand placed fiber samples from Habu. There is a trunk show this week at Knit Purl in downtown Portland (and classes).

A weekend of learning new mbira music and appreciating the quality of teaching from Erica at Mbira.org.  Love her versions of songs.  She has been a fan of Zimbabwean music since she went to college at 16.  She traveled on her own to Zimbabwe in her late teens and has been bringing back the music and taking students there since then.

Check out her nonprofit at www.mbira.org.

A weekend of Shumba, the song of spirit lion from Zimbabwe.  I named my little boy dog, Shumba.  He has a lion's spirit though he is very small and gets afraid and freaked out sometimes.  Oh, that in his next life, he be born a lion with a might roar and a lovely pride. 

I will think of that as we play this weekend.  Shumba!

Habu textiles http://habutextiles.com/yarn:  From their website and in support of making Reiki shawls:

"Why?
Do we bother to take so much time and labor... actually weaving or knitting when there are so many good machine woven fabrics or knit wears? They are durable, inexpensive...

Why?

Because we must stubbornly believe all the care our actual hands give to each and every process of making a length of fabric creates something more than just a good look. It may be very subtle, but you know when you wear and touch. You know when that fabric ages with you. You feel the thought of that person, who made it for you. We carry “slow” materials, not flashy, not necessary pretty, not cheap, not easy, but those that will give a soul to the fabrics. We would like to offer you the best and unique, rarely available. It took us many trips and years to cultivate the relationships with the suppliers to discover them. You do not have to do that. They are here."

 Red silk with stainless steel (above).  Silk mohair (below)

Now here is a strange example of truth gone astray.   I thought of Wilhelm Reich because of his work with orgone energy and the subsequent burning of his books and destruction of his orgone accumulators.  He was jailed for his refusal to defend a truth,  work he considered scientific.  He died in jail.  So strange.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

There is a small company in Ashland, Oregon that sells orgone blankets which have stainless steel as lining  to help accumulate the universal energy.

I just found some stainless steel yarn during the 2012 Rose City Yarn Crawl.  It is made by Habu, a very fine yarn company in the US (inspired by a Japanese connection).  Trying the copper wire first.  http://www.habutextiles.com/A-148

A friend said that Reiki is better (which is also from Japan).  Still how very fine to wear a scarf made with a substance that helps one accumulate one's life force energy.

Does this seem weird.  Probably.  Is it true, yes.  

Perhaps Habu makes a color close to True Blue.   Checking it out. 

Flower of life

My morning meditation with color, flower of life sacred geometry, and stone friends.

Reorganized my color list of Berol Prismacolored pencils. Added in new colors yesterday. Accidentally bought a second true blue. My friend says there are no accidents.

A good friend emailed her practice of writing one true sentence a day. When I called another friend to ask where to buy the artist's colored pencils, she suggested that I read the book, One True Thing by Anna Quindlan, a story about a woman taking care of her dying mother. 

Now I have a "True Blue" colored pencil. Each day I will attend to what I color true. I will honor and protect it ferociously with my Black Tourmaline stones.

So far the universe has responded by helping me knock over my cup spilling all of the bright yellow and orange pencils onto the floor while moving a screen.  Balance.  Adding in some sun to warm up the serious nature of the ponderings.

True blue

True blue! Focusing on the vibration of true blue.
A good friend is writing one true statement a day. My statement that is true for today is "I color my sky and all that is in it, true blue".

Thinking it is a good time to write a mystery.  All good things must have their out.  Lots of twists and then the truth, the ultimate truth and a happy ending.  Yes, I think so.

I remember in a math class in college a hundred years ago, a professor saying to a fellow student, "that question was redundant".  I rushed to look it up knowing by his tone that he was thinking that poor student who offered the question we were afraid to ask was not only redundant but "st-pid"and "useless".  I know it is Monday but sometimes I feel like when I offer the quietest part of myself, the most vulnerable, that the message comes back in a similar form.  Something Jung would say about the inferior function.  One carries on to someone who is least likely to understand them.  And that perhaps the one you are trying to explain that you don't understand is someone the other person understands the best.  There must be some equation that explains all of this having to do with triangles and why to stay away from them.

Remembering that, I now remember that I was in advanced Geometry in high school and never really got proofs.  Maybe they teach it differently now.  Logo the language of the turtle, an expression of Seymour Papert, was a welcome help.  How to move with the body like the movement of the turtle on the screen.  Wish more people were excited about it for teaching kids.  It never caught on in our district in part because our coordinator programmed in basic and logo is recursive with loving iterations.

I first met fractals in logo.  Now I understand just enough to tantalize my mind.  I "should have" been a programmer.  I remember control codes.  Now programming is a whole new language but maybe not so much.

I need to go see my mother, I am remembering how much she loves patterns.

Love, April

Reading Alchemy of Nine Dimensions:  The 2011/2012 Prophecies and Nine Dimensions of Consciousness by Barbara Hand Clow.  The 6th dimension is  Sacred Geometry and Platonia... the 7th dimension has the property of sound.  "The 7th dimension is the realm of sound that generates the 6D geometric forms by vibrational resonance."  "These waves sing the Divine Mind."  The eighth dimension is the realm of the Divine Mind--light--that manifests through the visible light spectrum in 3D.

I am relating these levels to my work with stone grids and sacred geometry and weaving and fiber optics.  The sacred flower of life is found everywhere.  Geometric shapes are held in the stones themselves and in our earth's core. Here is a little bit of stone grid info:  http://www.crystalsrocksandgems.com/Crystal_Therapy_and_Healing/CrystalGrids.html

The 7th dimension I relate to the tuning fork that I bought on Monday at Mt. Shasta (city of).  The OM tuner http://www.biosonics.com/shop/om-tuner/ is a sacred sound based on the music from India.  My harp practice with IHTP and reading about resonant tones and geometric shapes relating to sounds in water and sand are tuned in here.

Light, the 8th dimension is now my realm of exploration.  I think of fiber optics but so much more.  A tricky topic with many aspects and yet a simple thought form.  Weaving fits here. 

Hmmm...  A shower and some humming are needed here... my heart is stepping forward to hold my exploding brain.

Two lessons from Musekiwa.  Learning Nyamaropa which never seems to stick.  Sitting by Musekiwa as he played and then clapped the rhythm gave it great staying power.  And then I revisited the kutsinhira to Mukatiende.  I learned it in Ashland from Musekiwa now learning it again as I haven't played it.

A hug from Musekiwa is straight from the heart.  A gifted young man.

If anyone has an discarded cell phone, they could be put to good use in Zimbabwe.  I only had one old Nokia to send that only got put on the shelf because I was dying for an iPhone.  The Nokia would have worked forever!

Rats! I typed the word "rats" instead of "darn" in my gmail e-mail and a sidebar immediately listed ads for rodent control including how to keep rodents out of my engine. Spooky.

Big brother is watching.  Beautifully but strangely webbed world we live in.

Time

According to theory, time moves every so tiny bit slower in the lowest level of a building.  So in my low level apartment, I should be aging less quickly than if I lived on the top floor.  Today, I will finish my segment on time/space from the Nova series.  Though time is edging along where I am but I expect that life might be more exciting at a higher level. 

Distraction occurred when a white Ridgeline truck started to whinny at me.  Soon I could imagine that it was a white horse an I was riding wildly across the snow capped peaks.  Next I had a loan and a horse in my driveway:

Such a welcome turn of events.

Watching Nova series called The Fabric of the Cosmas by Brian Greene.  I am half way through the segment on time or (spacetime).  And flirting with the term dark matter.  I see that first my vocabulary is behind.  Catch up time.

String theory, fabric of the universe and flower of life sacred geometry

What do these have in common? I am determined to come up with a "yarn" regarding the above. Any help out there?

Time

Anna left me her books from college relating to time.

A fascinating mind trip? Is one better off with traveling experientially? Meanwhile the clock ticks. Which clock should I listen to now?

Harp meets keyboard

Dusty Strings harp and Yamaha keyboard collaborate. GarageBand assists.  Where is my midi cable?

What is a writing table without an iPad (and iCloud)

Images seems to explain everything. My small writing table has an iPad which collects the images taken on the iPhone through iCloud so one can take another image immediately which contains the previous image or some warp of the image. Love the idea of nesting. Might be my new theme of introducing one different thing in each nesting of the last different thing.

Not sure what that all means but it is fun exploring image as a dimension.

 

Here is time as the 4th dimension. Hmmmm. How does that work? This is the inner workings of a watch my great aunt gave me when I was a child. This is all that is left of that gift but somehow the very best part of the great wheel of time being held in a very small space.

The bag on the table above: my knitting. Knitting a bit of copper wire into my shawl. Wonder how that will impact the greater scheme of things. More on that another time.

Tuesday, Jackson day.  He is 19 months old.  Learned to clap for himself when he makes a basket.  Important skill.

I have no cohesive thoughts or feelings.  Maybe tomorrow.

Rose City Yarn Crawl:  We visited 19 shops in the greater metropolitan area and found some all time favorites including Knit Purl in downtown Portland.  The good ones far outweighed the so so ones.  Learned so many new things that I might have missed had I not been traveling with a long time friend.

Revisiting Ravelry.com as social media.  I have an account but only downloaded patterns, didn't share.

Alas in a New York Moment, we were rear ended on the Marquam Bridge on our way home.  I wasn't driving thankfully as we stopped short with traffic stopping short.  4 cars piled on behind.  We were in a nice solid Audi which took the shock well.  Policeman made us all drive off the bridge since we all could and exchange info.  One poor young man with kids in his car had no insurance.  I know he "should" have insurance but felt bad for him.  Some cars drove on once we got off the bridge.  He pulled over and said, "I don't have insurance."  I think he should get points for that.  He was two cars back.

The policeman said exhange information, got in his car and left.  The three cars that remained exchanged info amongst drivers.  Must happen all the time.  He just said it was an accident and that is why they call them accidents.  We agreed, still sorting out things would have been helpful.  Assume it was minor in the total scheme of things.

We should have stopped for ice cream or better for coffee.  Doing Reiki and using Panaway on my neck which liked the accident less than I did.

Blogsy

My little blogger post is my first attempt at posting from the Blogsy app on the iPad.

Love this way of casting on for a Moebius strip shawl.  There are others.  Love youtube videos SO much.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx85sIs8x4w&feature=related

Here is the way I would probably use.  Seems easier in the long run:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3si7KrA9I

Rose City Yarn Crawl + red soap dream = silk and merino wool yarn (abstract fiber and scrumptious brands)

Woke up feeling like I was living in the movie Groundhog day.  Maybe today is actually tomorrow.  I'm ready.

Day #2 of the Rose City Yarn Crawl.  19 shops in 4 days.  We are doing 19 shops is 3 days so there are 7 on our list.  Yesterday we started in Forest Grove and worked our way back through the 5 west side shops.  Today we start in West Linn and Oregon City and work our way north through 7 shops.  Sunday we will do downtown Portland and a couple of NE shops.  All for the cause of visiting every shop in the metro area this side of the river AND to register for the grand prize by getting a stamp from each shop.

This is not a 4th dimension voyage.  It is a grand 3rd dimensional experience to feed the night dreams of a weaver.

Reading Hyperspace, by Michio Kaku, a popular account of higher physics.  I have just gone through the dimensions to 5th level.  He started with Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions by a Square in the 2nd dimension.  The 4th dimension adds time.  The 5th dimension adds light.  Not a great description of time as a dimension but hints at how it would be looking in from the 4th dimension, seeing all perspectives as one, kind of like a cubist painting.

My best guess if that you are most likely to enter the 4th dimension as he describes it by riding the now moment.

Low Nemakonde mbira.  That is what I need.  The lowest of sounds, a doorway to what is.

Invisible and visible worlds.  So tied to the visible world and yet when I move stones on my flower of life grids this morning, I know that there is some corresponding move in the invisible world.  When I weave a thread or pluck a harp string, something in the fabric of the invisible world resonates.  Mbira has been called the telephone of the spirits.  No questions with mbira in hand.

Finding more ways to remember these connections.  Winding warp and selecting the woof, it all matters!

Fan of Sinusalia. Jennifer, my daughter-in-law brought some home yesterday creating 150% increase in reduced cold symptoms.

My cuprite has now chosen yarn for a weaving.

Now we just need a song.  Earthy.  Any suggestions.

Aprilponders.com

 Ah, here is cuprite.  According to the manager at the Fossil Cartel, cuprite is dendritic which means:  resembling or having dendrites : branching like a tree.  The red is the cuprite which is a first chakra mineral relating to my red soap dream (see aprilponders.com).

Uploaded images to my main blog: www.aprilponders.com for cuprite and chrysocolla with cuprite. The perfect stone to accompany me on my humbling journey. Those stones plus eucalyptus globulus for the snuffles and rosemary for the brain freeze essential oils, made for a very sweet morning.

First day of drawing in from many years of caregiving for children parents and grandchildren, so to get up and ask myself, what do I need today to be happy?  Seems like a simple letting go.  Striving aside, caretaking aside, looking out there for answers aside, I find myself a willing companion to solitude.

Missed Ash Wednesday but see the significance of seeing clearly what needs to exit into ashes so that heart and love can move into openness. 

Wonderful always to have something to fall back on.  Distance reiki trade before bed last night with a fellow practitioner.  Loving waking up with so much energy in my body.  The mood held until the dogs that were sitting on my lap got excited about someone walking by and jumped up spilling the coffee I was drinking all over my lap.  I believe they call that a bifurcation.  And I guess in the humorous world that makes me "all wet!"

Here is my Reiki sister, initiated by Paul Mitchell.  She is indeed a brilliant person who is so kind hearted and a world traveler.    I had never heard her story about choosing Paul as her teacher.  I have only met Rosina once.  I am honored to know her.

http://reikiinmedicine.org/daily-practice/who-is-my-reiki-master/

Dreams.  I dreamed that I was at the top of the ridge saying, this is it!  I found the place the meets the ridge up from the other side.  A traveler who had already reached the top said, but this isn't the highest point in the mountain ridge.  I didn't care about other higher points.  This was the place I had heard about and I found it, in my dreams. 

Tuesday night.  The true magic in the world is to see a child start to form words and the sheer joy of naming one thing that another recognizes both the word and the object it identifies.  My grandson said, "ball" today so clearly that I wanted to buy him the best ball in the world but he just wanted a little ball, one that fit in his hands as we drove home.

Set back.  In my wonderful source book on teaching my dog physics, I note that the author says that someone teaching distant healing is an evil squirrel and that there is no unified field.  Hrmph!  And I thought I was a silkie.

"Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean. If she finds her skin she will immediately return to her true home, and sometimes to her selkie husband, in the sea.
Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him. In these stories, it is one of her children who discovers her sealskin (often unwitting of its significance) and she soon returns to the sea. The selkie woman usually avoids seeing her human husband again but is sometimes shown visiting her children and playing with them in the waves."  Wikipedia

Playing "The Silkie" on the harp.  Missed the significance until I heard 3 young women walking on Hawthorne talking as they passed.  I realized why I couldn't find the feeling of the song, written by Christina Tourin.  Now looking for my skin.

The Ending of Time by J. Krishnamurti and Dr. David Bohm.  Reading at the suggestion of a dear friend for the support of a paradigm shift which doesn't require "thinking", "thoughts", "trying to become something", etc.  Interesting that the dialog wears down one's "thinker" until one is left on the "ground" or with "ground"in one's belly.

David Bohm is brilliant at sorting out questions such as:  "is the source of human conflict the individual's inability to face that fact of what he or she actually is, psychologically, resulting in the imposition of an illusory goal of what one must try to become?"  Such an excellent question, the answer suspends time.

Which is good because I am getting old (an illusion of course).

I wonder if there is anything in How to Teach Physics to Your Dog about dual relationships. Emi and Shumba get on my lap whether I pay or not so that keeps things pretty simple.  Good to establish this boundary for myself.  Boundaries, that's it.  I wonder what physics has to say about boundaries.

Here we go:  "quantum Zeno effect:  A demonstration of quantum measurement in which an object can be prevented from changing states by repeatedly measuring its state.  The classical equivalent is a dog who prevents her owner from napping by constantly asking, 'Are you asleep?'" pg. 239

Now that is a bit convoluted but good to remember how the world responds to our measuring it. Time to read.

Saw the cover for the first time of Carl Jung's Red Book.  The following description offered on DealOz.com:  "The most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology. When Carl Jung embarked on an extended self-exploration he called his “confrontation with the unconscious,” the heart of it was The Red Book, a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. Here he developed his principle theories—of the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the process of individuation—that transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with treatment of the sick into a means for higher development of the personality. While Jung considered The Red Book to be his most important work, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public. It is an astonishing example of calligraphy and art on a par with The Book of Kells and the illuminated manuscripts of William Blake. This publication of The Red Book is a watershed that will cast new light on the making of modern psychology. 212 color illustrations."

Does one support the local bookstore as I want to do or use Amazon Prime which I often do.  Does one need to visit a collection of another's "confrontation with the unconscious" or should one focus on one's own, or both.

That thought contributed to the dogs barking at some imaginary guest and at the same time, I felt hungry.  I guess that question is answered.

Chad Orzell promises in his chapter, "Why talk to your dog about physics?",  "Like most dog owners, I spend a lot of time talking to my dog.  Most of our conversations are fairly typical.....  Some of our conversations, though, are about quantum physics."  So far, so good.

I am sure that weaving has something to do with quantum physics.  I just bought the book, How to Teach Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel at Annie Bloom's bookstore in Multnomah Village.  I feel confident that this will help me describe more how our connections work!  Maybe Emi will want to learn with me. 

Perhaps this will become a sacred garden images and thoughts to see what is attracted to this site and what wants to be held carefully in the world.

Weaving has become my metaphor for all that is connected.  I like that as a starting point.

first blog post

Trying this google blog as a possible host for my blog.  So many topics though at the moment, I am only posting a note.  More to follow.