Maferefun Eshu

Here's my peanut version of Papa Legba's veve.
No crows or other birds arrived while I did qigong a good distance away, but after I started hiking back to public transit I heard them having a good time.

Happy surfing during this Mercury storm between eclipses. Yowza. My mind is synthesizing connections between all of the various self programming technologies and ontologies I've studied and practiced over the years. Tendency to meander possible, but alas Legba is a wanderer. The cane shape on the right of the image represents his walking stick. Maybe if I stopped feeding Legba I'd stop wandering so much. But why would I want to do that? It keeps me in shape and gives my mind the space to sort itself out so I don't make stupid decisions simply from a lack of awareness. It's a great stress reducer which again improves my health while not burning fossil fuels. Wandering rocks.

Public Social University Is Back In Full Force

A Long and Meandering Road

The link is to my latest blog post talking about getting together with City Repair Project and manifesting some beautiful visions of a humanity in harmony with its homeworld. It might be long and meandering, but that's the shape of my mind. I meander like a river or the slow dance of plants growing and changing. Oops, have I exceeded my soundbyte time? Clicky the linky if you want to know more.

Bardo Listening Party Correction

Arrrgh. The Soluna program on my iPod got the dates mixed up and put the eclipse picture with the full moon on the 24th. That'll learn me to trust the software without consulting my own knowledge of the sky. The eclipse in Leo is of course 2 weeks after the eclipse in Aquarius which is monday the 9th of february. So I want to have the listening party on the evening of sunday the 8th (still hail Eris! since as all Discordians know: 8 is 2 cubed, another way to write 23). Need to find a place. I can bring speakers. Ideally there would be enough space for dancing as this is Ascension Conspiracy's official emergence from the ambient soup and room to move helps the music serve its healing function.

Bardo

On the way home I caught a glimpse of a bright, gibbous Venus sparkling above the first lunar crescent visible since the solar eclipse that danced across the Indian Ocean 3 days ago . The picture is of Sol a few hours before eclipse on Sunday since I didn't have my camera with me today.

Synchronicities abound between sky and ground...

Then a special Yeticave visit manifested via my friend Nolon (aka Cult of Zir). It turned my solo music project Ascension Conspiracy into a social event by the addition of another set of ears conveniently connected to a fellow audio engineer. We listened to my latest creature of sound Bardo. I had gone as far as I could with it due to the fact that I'm not just the musician(s) but also the recording engineer. I thought it might be done, but my objectivity was long gone a couple of months ago. Even without his intelligent feedback just having someone else's energy field present in the adytum of my artist residency changed my experience of it enough to get some objectivity back. It was decided that the song Ghost Heavens really is complete with the interplay between vocals and drums. Bass and guitar would just clutter it up. That dilemma having been settled it shall now be mastered and set loose upon the world. Bwahahahaha!

Go here:

http://public.me.com/wandering_yeti

username is "Public"
password is eyed!sko


and you will find the entirety of Bardo's predecessor Prima Materia as well as the original version of Ghost Heavens before I rebuilt it with drums and live vocals. In a folder called Next Album Prototypes you'll find unmastered (but quite listenable) versions of most of the tracks from Bardo. You may download freely. If you like what you hear and you can afford it and you want to help Yeticave Records stay alive voluntary donations can be sent to
galileo93 at yahoo doot com via paypal.

Mostly I just want y'all to be able to enjoy my music. It would just end up on torrent sites anyway so this is the way a lot of bands are going. I got the idea from Kirsten Hersch formerly of Throwing Muses originally. Then after doing my own printing and copying for the first release of Ascension Conspiracy, Awake in the Kingdom I realized just how much stuff goes into reproducing CD's and I only made 11 copies! Imagine if it were 1000 or 10000. That's a lot of tree pulp, oil for the plastic and truck fuel for transportation that is saved by sharing music on the internet.

I created Yeticave Records as a download only record company to bring my music habits into harmony with my green heart. I'd rather the trees remain standing, living, and binding greenhouse gasses into their bodies not to mention absorbing heat with their dark leaves and turning warming into the metabolic processes of their lives instead of radiating it back into the atmosphere like pavement or a rooftop with no plants. Is it really that important to have an object to hold in my hands? It's the sounds I'm really into anyway.

So in honor of Luna's eclipse in Leo on 9 feb when tonight's barely visible sliver reaches fullness in red I want to have a listening party for the finished beast. The actual eclipse happens in the early morning just as the moon sets so I want to have the listening party on sunday evening feb 8 (hail Eris!) when Luna is in Leo and still approaching opposition with Sol in Gaia's shadow. Not too late for working types. I should have it mastered and tamed for playback on any and all speaker systems by then. I don't have enough space myself to host such a thing. Any ideas?

My artist residency in Kindergarten

Hi everyone! I am doing my artist residency in my son's kindergarten classroom. So far I am brainstorming some ideas for the old "kitchen" area. It is either going to become a grocery (in which I will make boxes of food with the kid's pictures and names on them, for instance, Silas' Soup or Kira's Cookies, etc) or a post office and I will get to put in a stationary-making station for the kids (using the left overs from my wedding invitations kits) with card stock, hole punchers, and other arty stuff so that the kids can make letters for each other and in mail carrier costume, "deliver" the letters to each other's "mail boxes" (which I also may be making). I am in the process of brainstorming ideas to further implement each kid's unique identity and input to go into the "local kindergarten post office" experience. The teacher has also offered me up to 30-35 minutes at the beginning of class sometime to teach the kids something should the inspiration hit me as I am observing her interactions, curriculum, and subject matter with the kids. I plan on spending my Mondays and Wednesdays before Art and Soc Policy class in his classroom, so that should give me some good time to get inspired with some project ideas. Today was exciting in that the kids were like a little ocean of movement during story and discussion time, all fidgiting at different moments but like a chain-reaction, one starts moving and then another and then another . . . . Also, kindergartners are soooooo expressive. If the teacher tells them anything, they respond with a hefty "Oooooooooooh" and/or "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh," whether reacting to a surprise or something familiar, they really do not censor or ration their opportunities to "release" these sounds. It is funny how, as we get older, or whatever it is that changes, "Ooooooohhhhhhs" and "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhs" just do not come as frequently and with such uumph. I almost want to start "ooohhhing" and "ahhhhhing" at mundane stuff, like in the grocery line or something. Maybe it will feel really good.

Year of Earth Ox

Today is the first day of the Chinese year of the Earth Ox. I'm a Water Ox so maybe the ambient environment this year will give some form to my flow. Here's 5 windows into what catches my eye from today's walk.



I didn't make this...a tree plus wind did that. I claim the photo as my piece for this walk since I didn't need to do anything to the arrangement to make it pleasing. This is very similar to the Chinese character Shen, the conscious aspect of the heart. Can also be seen as a smiley face with its tongue sticking out. The tongue is the heart's representative in the head.







3 views of city reflected in river just after sunset.









































Venus seen through wires.

Tea Party in the Park

Making the tea hot using sterno cans. They are this weird flammable purple jelly that keeps things hot. They are used for fondue pots and the like. We also had cucumber sandwiches so it was a pretty classy affair.





























Someone who came to the tea party taught us 'bibliomancy'. It is a type of fortune telling technique. You get a book, the type does not matter, and envision your question. You flip through the book and stop on a random page. (All of this is done without looking at the book) You then slide your finger along the page and stop at a random passage. You can either read the passage or a single sentence and that is the answer to your question. This was a lot of fun.

I do need to find a way of secretly documenting the people that showed up. Many of them were very wary about having their photo taken. They seemed taken aback by the idea of the parties and while apprehensive did come to talk to me. I am hoping I can get them to write me notes or other things as a way of incorporating these strangers into my project in a larger sense.



I am going to continue having parties in the park. Both impromptu and advertised. I will be checking weather forecasts constantly. I thought that this was a nice way to start off my residency. I talked to some people that work in the office buildings around the park and I am going to start bringing sandwiches and hot beverages for free. Or at least for a barter. I will give them food in exchange for a piece of their mind. I will also advertise said luncheons on the blog but, depending on the weather, these dates may change. So far, this Friday is supposed to be sunny with a high of 51. It shouldn't be so bad outside.

On the Way to Eclipse

Today's first improv art expression with whatever is lying around happened as I was headed out the front door to go to the mountain (I live near Mt. Tabor) I came upon a plastic 6 pack thing that was unbroken. I'd hate to be a bird or fish finding one of those things by getting stuck in it. Half of the inhabitants of the house I live in clean up after ourselves, the other half leaves garbage laying around. So I dismantled it and it looked kinda cool so I arranged it on the chair where I found it and snapped a photo. Reminds me of Chinese dragons only in plastic.








Then it was off to the mountain where I made a face with rocks over by the west reservoirs. I was thinking about my dad who I lost when I was a kid because Mt. Tabor was one of his favorite places to go for a walk. It's a wrathful demon face because I got a lot of my anger issues from him. One tooth is darker than the rest symbolizing the dead tooth I'm having pulled soon. It got infected last december and made my face hurt so bad I couldn't chew. If I got angry it got worse. If I relaxed I got better. It was a great lesson in anger management, but I don't want to repeat it so the dead tooth and childish attachments to behaviors I learned from my dad are going bye bye via qigong and dentistry.

On the way to an annular eclipse in the tropical sign Aquarius the local star appears to be perched on the edge of a cloud.

Video Game Club (1/21)

First Manifestation Complete

The link at the top of the post will lead you to my UrBlog also known as Livejournal. I call it UrBLog because it was my first blog started back in 2003 when I was still in my first year of college and going through what astrogeeks call Saturn return. Strangely enough I just remembered that at the exact moment that Saturn was in the same degree of the zodiac he occupied when I transformed from water creature to air breather I was teaching my 3D basic design class about photosynthesis and the cycle of sunlight and air exchange between animals and plants. The story was told via the prop of my sculpture made of yellow yarn with which I made a web by tying fir cones to strands of yarn and using them like grappling hooks to weave a sort of net that culminated in a ball of yellow yarn at the bottom representing the sun.

It would seem that I'm just now starting to grow into the teaching role initiated in that experience. Saturn represents patience, discipline and time. Sound byte culture hardly knows what to do with him. Me Capricorn. Yeah so the Phoenix act is useful from time to time, but for some things like mastery of musical expression or skill with internal martial arts or growing a healthy garden daily maintenance and perseverance through a significant (for a human) span of time is required. An Aikido teacher once told me that you can't do anything well until you've done it 10,000 times. That's a lot of practice.

Bla bla bla...clicky the link, enjoy my pretty pictures. Wy'East was particularly pretty today wearing a granite colored cloud stretching all the way to Portland like a hat. I'm about to turn into a pumpkin. 'Nite.

Yeticave

I've delineated the first couple of weeks for Yeticave visits.

Thursday 29 jan: 4-5pm
Friday 30 jan: 2-3pm and 6-7pm

Thursday 5 feb: 4-5pm
Friday 6 feb: 4-5pm and 6-7pm

2 people is ideal, but I can probably handle up to 4 if it works that way. If you want to bring a friend that's cool, but indicate when you sign up that you will be 2 and not 1 so I don't get too many people showing up at once.

The conversations that arise from having them in my studio/living space are part of what I want to invoke with this project. Part of why I want to keep the attendance down to a small number is so that I can truly focus on interaction with only a few people rather than scattering my attention throughout a crowd. Then there's also the fact that my room is spacious for me, but gets crowded quickly with more than me.

The way I see this as fitting into the social practice meme is that it's breaking the idea that only galleries and museums have the authority to curate an art environment. It's also an experiment to find out what kind of conversations arise from people who I wouldn't normally invite to see my room (only about 4 people have seen my space since I moved in last October) and interact with my various art objects on the walls, speakers and boxes doubling as furniture. I love to share my knowledge since hoarding it all for myself just gives me a headache, but in my own cave I have different thoughts to share than I do when I'm out in the wild of other people's space.


So if you want to visit sign up in the comments so that others can see which slots are still open. Next week I'll post some more times if there's still more people who want to participate.

Groove on.

At 515 N.W. Broadway in Morgan's Alley is where I've decided to do my artist in residency. I am very excited about the location! This week i am going to go there and spend some time conversating with all of the businesses located in M.A... I've talked with Dayna Pinkham of Dayna Pinkham Millinary and she is willing to give tours of her hat studio and workspace to anyone that might be interested. So if you might like to try on lovely hats (men and women), see how they are made or just look at all of her creations, let me know and we can make an appointment! Thanks Flossie

Talk: the Yetiblog Nexus and Project Revision

The link is to the Talk quarter of my website which is the nexus of all of my blogs. 3 are specialized and exist on my own website and one is my Livejournal which Eric also has linked from this blog's page.

A revision has occurred to me after realizing that I'm not really thrilled about the whole other people giving me walking routes idea. I already have an instinct for taking different routes when I need novelty. Anyway, I don't want to walk on any heavy car roads unless it involves a definite purpose like food, guitar strings, crossing rivers or freeways, or catching a bus. So here's my new idea that I find a lot more interesting:

My residencies are still the same with the heart of Portland as my Yang aspect and Yeticave as Yin. I had the thought earlier today that I could link the two by taking my space arranging altar building skills to the public. Then I flashed on the artist Andy Goldsworthy (thanks for the reminder E) who does artworks in the wild with stuff he finds laying around. I decided to expand my Citywood project which began as a painting derived from direct observation of the city from inside wooded areas at night, then became a video, and now will be a public art project. (unofficial of course. I prefer to be a free agent.Of course if anyone wants to pay me to do this stuff I'm willing to negotiate...)

I will make arrangements pleasing to my spacial and visual sensibilities with whatever I find at hand in parks and anywhere I find interesting stuff to make an installation. I will take photos and even go back to check and document the deconstruction of my temporary constructions.

Since this is essentially inspired by my affinity for crows I'm going to perform a sort of intentional act that you could call sympathetic magic, art, or voodoo, whatever works best for your worldview. I like to see it from any and all angles:

I'll Make the veve, or visual link to, the loa (google it if you want to know more) of the crossroads, Papa Legba in raw, unshelled peanuts. Then I'll play crow calls on my headphones really loud (not on my ears) and wait for the shiny black goofballs to show up with my camera already rolling video. I want to obtain sound samples of a whole bunch of crows going gaga for peanuts and also manifest a symbol of intention drawing the minds of humans to the fact that the boundaries of social include all life on this planet and not only humans who share a language and culture. Extending our awareness and respect to the non human intelligences of our planet is necessary for our continued survival. We need the trees more than they need us. Chew on that one, monkey.

This is also an aspect of permaculture which is a subject I'm just beginning to learn about. Basically it's an orientation towards cooperative interrelation with "nature". I put quotes around the word since the idea that we're something other than natural is complete bullshit in my view of things. All wealth comes from the earth including the matter of our bodies replenished, built and maintained by our planet's life support system. If you consider how long it took for hydrogen atoms to figure out the star trick it might be easier to comprehend how computers are every bit as natural as atoms, whales, and apples, or whatever of the 10,000 things you care to name. Still there are ways that suck and ways that suck less. Permaculture is a way to minimize suckitude by finding cooperative ways to do things instead of always operating by conquest. Grow food IN the forest rather than destroying the forest to make a chemical wasteland pretending to be an industrial farm for a short time. This has everything to do with global warming: more plants = less carbon in the atmosphere=less warming. Plants also slow the wind diminishing its ferocity.

Walking not driving, backpack neither paper nor plastic, reuseable cup and water bottle are just some of the practices I've adopted. My gift to the crows and Papa Legba is a symbol of my intention to learn more and eventually be able to grow some of my own food in a permaculture way.

My net brain is now fried. I'll post a schedule for Yeticave visits and a blurb about how the Yin of my project relates to the Yang sometime before the weekend. Visits will start a week from tomorrow. I still have to figure out times. Stay tuned.

Wandering Yeti Arts Term Project

Hey y'all

This is a textual manifestation of the parameters of Greg Wandering Yeti's term project for the art as a social practice class winter 09.

The Yang aspect is the continuation of the Walking Portland blog that I started last term. This is a way for me to make more public the insights and awareness generated by a significant shift in daily practice such as quitting the car and using my own feet to get around. This term I will accept walking routes from others to find out what happens when something other than my own whimsy, habit or obligation directs the course of a walk. I will report back in the form of photos from the walk posted to blog including a coffee shop review describing anything learned via conversations with baristas or coffee addicts in a coffee shop I've never visited before. The boundaries of Yeti's natural habitat are Tualatin Mountain in the west, Mt. Tabor in the east, Alberta street in the north, and Powell blvd. in the south. I might be compelled to walk in Beaverton if the walk includes the Tualatin Hills Nature Park. Powell Butte is also a nice treat hidden in the Eastern suburbs. Seriously, if a city walk doesn't include some time on no-car roads surrounded by living wood it just wears me down. Breathing car exhaust is exhausting.

The Yin aspect of my project is allowing more than myself and a few of my closest friends to enjoy the harmonious flow of qi generated in my room/studio/temple/adytum recently enhanced by learning some basic principles of the Chinese art of harmonizing living spaces with the home world called Feng Shui. Adding the Chinese perspective helped me clear up my mental clutter which resulted in a living space less muffled, stifled, and crowded by clutterful habits than I had known previously. My clutter is finally under control enough for me to feel ok about letting other people see my studio...which happens to also be my living space. Bring a hard drive that knows how to communicate with Macintosh computers like an iPod or external hard drive and I'll give you a prototype of the next Ascension Conspiracy album plastic, fee, and shrink wrap free.

Later in the term Yin and Yang will combine to form a walk that starts from a meeting at the Yeticave. This walk I will direct. I want to hike the Maple Trail in Forest Park again and this time I'd like to have some company. It's a trail deep in a canyon where you can't hear the city and it's too far up for me to make it very often. I learned what emptiness means on that trail a few years ago. This journey will include a bus ride on the 15 Belmont where I demonstrate the technique of Bus Surfing followed by a hike in Forest Park. Bring food and water and clothes that can survive mud. This hike can have silent parts when that's the natural thing that happens. Sharing knowledge and telling stories is more the point this time.

I'll bring a schedule to sign up for Yeticave visits at our next class. Feel free to bring a friend.

Send walking routes to the email addy in the class list.

Groove on,

g

How to Throw a Rat Tea Party!

I would like to introduce Stella (on left) and Sam!

To throw a rat tea party, first you must make itty-bitty invitations and create a guest list of only the most sophisticated rats.

You can use a frame and a swatch of fabric to create a rat-size table.

For the props, you can use old birthday cards and saved objects.



Here is Sam all dressed up!

Stella with her pearls and purse. Make sure your guests wear their most distinguished attire.

Here is the table with a miniature, rat-sized tea set (you'll need one of those).

Put a little smidgen of peanut butter on the edge of the table, and if that does not work, add some enticing cheese. I am afraid that these two were not very hungry.

Here are the props for your entertainment at tea. Every good party has performers! I taped BBQ skewers to magazine cut-outs, but popsicle sticks could work just fine, too!

And what is a party without some music.

Last, to aid in digestion, a stroll in the garden should suffice. This is Monet's garden, what a treat for a little rat!

Special thanks to my very patient crew (my hubby)!

How to sew down a shirt without a machine.