Category: Labyrinth

Labyrinth, 11/7/10

Posted on by Dale

Those who have visited the labyrinth know well my chakra candles that I usually arrange along the western path:

Last summer I was cleaning up after an evening of quiet and meditation and I kicked the indigo/purple one. It broke. Not to worry, I knew I had a place to order one from.

Except it turned out I had to order a dozen. Again, not a problem. I’m sure I’ll find a place for the other eleven at one point or another.

However, a month or so ago I broke the red one. I decided against ordering a dozen red ones, I am trying to economize these days after all, and went rummaging around the house for a replacement. I found one of course—have you seen us decorate for Christmas?—but it was a largish round thing, not the same as the others.

This started me thinking. I decided to begin to replace all the votive holders with a random assortment of holders.

I rummaged some more and found a large square green one, actually a deeper, better green than the one I had been using.

It had seemed to me for some time that my blue votive was quite weak, looking more white than blue, so that became my next quest. This weekend, we were antiquing in Greensboro, GA, and on my way out of the largest, junkiest store, I found this:

Beautiful. And at Target back into town, I found an orange one that is more traditionally shaped, but has decoration on it.

Now I’m looking for a brilliant yellow and a decisive violet/red-purple. Keep me in mind as you travel.

Labyrinth, 10/10/11

Posted on by Dale

Poor labyrinth , the grass just will not live back there, at least not the shade-blend of fescue (the nice pretty straight-bladed grass) that I’d planted. Apparently it just cannot deal with heat, and heaven knows we had enough of that.

Other grass has sprung up. I fear it’s crab grass, but actually, it’s growing so I’m leaving it alone. And in the meantime, I’m watering it.

I’ve got the sprinkler on a timer, and it’s set to go off around 5:00 for about an hour. These days, that means it’s catching the rays of the declining sun, to wit:

Very pretty, I thought, even if the grass is not so sumptuous as it might be.

Labyrinth, 8/15/10

Posted on by Dale

I worked yesterday and today in the labyrinth. I was extremely productive.

The neighbors finally had the pecan tree taken down. Not taken away, mind you. It’s still in large chunks right on the other side of the fence, plus the 20-foot stump along with this substantial hawser which has been abandoned by the tree people. What happened? Disaster in the business? Non-payment? (but why leave the rope?) My father-in-law has given me his chain saw, and once it’s out of the shop (where it’s getting a look-over), I may just start to work on a huge amount of firewood.

Which brings me to my major project of yesterday/today. With the pecan tree down, I finally felt comfortable putting up the rest of the bamboo fencing. Needless to say, the one remaining roll I had on hand was not enough to complete the job. That’s fine. I can order one more roll some time later. It’s not as anyone is actually living in the house there, and any peeping toms about would have a job negotiating the huge tree bits littering the yard in the dark.

The fencing I did put up looks nice:

The gap is a gate, and you’ll notice the old woodpile in a pile in front of that. I had a whole new truckload delivered this past week, and so I had to move it all. I’ve decided to move the whole thing down to the fire pit level.

Now you might think that moving a woodpile is simple enough: pick up the wood, walk it over to the new place, and put it down. Sadly, no. First I had to design a woodpile. I chose to go semi-industrial, with corrugated metal base and rebar sides:

Then I had to add some ropes and copper pipes to secure the top ends. Finally I could tote all the wood over. I also decided I wanted a tarp to keep the wood dry. As fate would have it, I found a perfectly sized one, and it even had grommets every 24 inches around it. Perfect:

And if I had thought of these things, they would not have existed. But they do:

Zippers! Isn’t that the coolest? They tape down, then you unzip them and cut them. I especially like how they have zipper pulls on both sides. In case you’re trapped inside the woodpile.

Zippers installed!

And here’s my magnificent woodpile, sans tarp:

I think it’s gorgeous. The rebar works even better than I thought in holding the wood in place, and I’m excited about the corrugated metal holding the wood off the ground. I’m hoping it will help keep the ant/termite thing down.

And finally, the mise en scène:

It looks perfect, but alas, the grommets are too small to go over the rebar. I shall have to go get some grommets at Michael’s and install them myself. Later.

Summer Countdown: Day 10

Posted on by Dale

I spent a lot of the day doing errands and stowing materials all over the house.

The only halfway creative thing I did was work on labyrinth a bit. My dear friend Anne’s family has been clearing out her house, giving away things to those of us who loved her before they donate the rest to charity. I was offered the lanterns out by her “party patio,” a beautiful concrete circle that was the former base of a municipal water tower.

I’ve been looking for ways to light the labyrinth that don’t blind the person walking, so I gratefully accepted the offer. We’ll see if the work. If they don’t, I can still use them on the margins.

Here’s one, that I set up on the walkway to the lower lot:

The other three are identical, and I put them at the northeast, northwest, and southwest corners of the labyrinth. The southeast corner, of course, is lit by the fire.

I doubt I will get anything done tomorrow (today); I am having an upper endoscopy to determine exactly what might be the cause of my ongoing intestinal distress. Since that involves general anesthesia, I’m pretty sure I’ll be useless the rest of the day.

Summer Countdown: Day 24

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian goals:

I took a stab at destroying Resignation and got one or two interesting ideas out. Here’s where I just need to sit down and crank out crap until something grows out of all the manure.

I had sent the Preludes (no fugue) No. 1 and 3 to Maila Springfield, the insanely good pianist from VSU. Today I heard back from her: she had been practicing them and wants more. In fact, she and her husband and their saxophonist friend are going to play for the jazz majors at GHP the weekend I’ll be down there, and she wants to play them as part of that gig. So there’s a deadline, which is always helpful.

I worked some on No. 4, which is a complete reversal of No. 3: completely still music, mostly fading away, barely sustainable. I like what I’ve done so far. I may have that done by the early part of next week.

Lichtenbergian distractions:

I worked a great deal in the labyrinth. I planted half a tray of St. Augustine grass plugs in the area between the firepit and the labyrinth. I’m going to see how well it grows there and what it will look like before experimenting in the labyrinth itself.

I also moved the logs left over from last fall’s tree fall. They were an attractive grouping, but they really blocked the entrance to the men’s loo.

Since I was already moving those, I decided to go ahead and set one up over at the westpoint, since that’s where it would go eventually anyway. Then I set the great stone on top of it and put the mosaic dish I already had there on top of that. So I have a new westpoint (water) station.

Summer Countdown: Day 38

Posted on by Dale

Lichtenbergian goals:

  • filled some pages of the sketchbook with studies of eyes and noses, both generic/anatomical and specific. It was interesting to me that while I think I was able to capture the specific shapes of various Lichtenbergian eyes and noses, I don’t know that you could identify the Lichtenbergian from his isolated feature. Mike’s eyebrows might be a giveaway, maybe. Or maybe I’m just not accurate enough yet.
  • read some more Power of Now and Art & Fear.

Today I’m working on mouths, and I may try painting some details as well.

Lichtebergian procrastinations:

  • reset the clay pots at the cardinal points of the compass deeper into the ground, so that I can mow over them. (These are the pots I put the citronella candles in.) Having mowed over one of them and nicked it still, I may have to set them deeper.
  • stripped ivy from the trees where it had taken over. This was not as time-consuming as I had feared: all that foliage is produced by very few strands, although on the cherry laurel up by the table the stems were as thick as a sapling. Still, it’s a soft kind of wood and easily cut and easily removed.

Musing & planning

Posted on by Dale

People have assumed, with reason, that my separation from GHP this summer must be emotionally trying for me.

It’s not. From the moment I decided last summer that I needed a break, I have not had second thoughts. I awoke one morning a couple of weeks ago from a dream about the opening meetings during preplanning that caused a twinge, but this past week, as I helped everyone get the program up and running, I had no regrets nor waves of bittersweet nostalgia.

On the contrary, it was a very good eight days, omitting always the glitches that recur every year no matter what we do to try to prevent them. I was happy to see all the returning staff and to meet the new ones. I discovered the pleasures of CJ’s Pub & Pool. The students arrived on Sunday, and it was as marvelous as always. “Good,” I thought, “the kids are here. But they’re not my kids.” And I was totally OK with that.

It was very odd driving out of the campus and passing West Hall as I left Tuesday morning. There was a sense that I was not supposed to be doing that, that strands of my being were being pulled back towards the campus. And of course being at GHP is like the best dramedy series ever, so I felt as if I were turning off the TV in the middle of an episode: you always want to know what happens next.

But that soon passed, and it wasn’t even a major twinge, to be honest. No, my decision to stay in my labyrinth this summer was the right one, and now I’m getting ready to do all those things I said I would do.

It was with some alarm, therefore, that I looked at the calendar in the kitchen this morning and realized that it seemed that many days were taken up with out-of-town duties (some back at GHP), which would preclude my getting any work done at all.

I have exactly seven weeks before I have to report for preplanning at school. Of those forty-nine days, ten are unavailable as work days. (Four more days I’m out of town, but I’m with my painting teacher from GHP: she’s going to teach me all those things I failed to learn forty years ago.)

That leaves thirty-nine days to do my work. I should probably do a daily post cataloging in boring detail what I accomplished each day. It won’t interest you, necessarily, but it will help keep me focused. We’ll call it Summer Countdown. Unless you can suggest a better name for the series in the comments.

I’ve already emailed the director of the Ayrshire Fiddle Orchestra to ask if it’s OK for me to include some solo work in our piece, and a piano if we provide the pianist, and he’s already responded affirmatively to both. My plan, in case I haven’t said, is to work up five fragmentary sketches so that he can choose which one would be most interesting and most playable, and then I’ll compose that piece.

Of course, I’ll also have four other sketches that I can eventually turn into full pieces, so that’s all to the good.

Also yesterday I did a couple of sketches, just to keep going with that project. Mike will be glad to know that they actually look like him. Either I’m getting better or Mike is just easier to draw.

So there we are.

Labyrinth, 5/4/10

Posted on by Dale

I came out this afternoon to bask and found that the labyrinth had, overnight, turned into a shady respite.

At some point I will probably have to weed-whack the paving stones to keep the grass from overtaking them. I think they’re lovely au naturel, but I can see where it could turn into a problem. I know we have a brick walkway in the front yard that no one has seen for years for that very reason.

Labyrinth, 4/25/10

Posted on by Dale

As promised, photos of the new fern growth:

Over by the stone steps at the northpoint. Autumn ferns, still rust-colored, but really putting forth. These have been there longer than any of the others, I think, so it really gives me hope that the whole garden will eventually be really gorgeous.

Southern wood ferns over where the tree fell. You may recall that they were slow putting out, but I think once they’re established, they’re going to be huge.

Photos cannot do these justice. They’re Japanese painted ghost ferns, and they’re beautiful. I need more of them here at the westpoint. I will have to restrain myself from buying and planting more until I have the stone circle actually installed.

Labyrinth, 4/24/10

Posted on by Dale

After having been away from the labyrinth all week due to the Objects class at the Alliance, I was hoping to get back out there today. Alas, of course, it is raining. I did take a quick tour around the place right after lunch and am very happy to report that the ferns are becoming magnificent. I’ll have photos tomorrow.

In other news, next Saturday, May 1, is World Labyrinth Day. I can’t decide what, if anything, I want to do to celebrate. Half of me wants to light the candles and sit quietly by myself. The other half wants to throw open the gates.

Discuss.