Mother, more Time

I am having so much fun playing with my stencils. Here, the 28 around checkerboard is overlaid with an Islamic style cosmic mandala of 12 around. Because they share a divisor for four, some interesting alignments happen.

Here's the checkerboard in silver, Islamic mandala in gold, and a star pattern, fives and sixes, on top in black. The stars and the mandala patterns meet up nicely in places due to their common divisor of six.

I am trying to work out a design for a thirty day month. I thought I could use sixes and fives, and bring in the twelve for the twelve months of the year, but I think the 28 grid may have to go. So I am working out other ideas and colors.

More in a few days, hopefully success!

Six Days Left

The last print is finished for Mother Time. Of course I still have the cover and title page, and four more pieces of text to set in type and print. I have 6 days now to deliver the book, and can't believe I am stopping to post, but my feet and body and mind get tired. Plus, I thought maybe I could work on the cover design. Ha!

Here is the text for the image above: Besides the obvious doubling of thirty, sixty has its own measure in the moon and correspondences to Earth. 6 x 6 x 60 = 2,160 = the moon’s diameter in miles. In the ancient Hindu system of measure, there are 21,600 breaths per day to equal ten times the moon’s diameter. The mean distance between the earth and moon is 60 x 60 x 60 = 216,000 miles. We can only wonder that the ancient Sumerians chose this base 60 system to measure by, thereby keeping in perspective their relationship to the moon, the sun and the planets. We still use this system today to measure time.

Funny to read this again and think about my 6 days left!

Last night I had a dream about the cups that chain down from our gutters. During our Thanksgiving cold snap everything had frozen up. I took a picture of them then, and for some reason dreamed of them all frozen up again last night. Maybe I was cold. Below freezing temperatures, but no snow, are in the forecast again.

Billy just came home from a geometry night with a friend. Yippee, that means my work day is over now!

Early to Bed, Early to Rise

Lately Billy and I have felt healthy, wealthy, and wise during the work week, going to bed early and getting up before light. But the weekends have been quite the reverse. We've been staying up partying and printing till too long after midnight. (Bill doing more of the partying and me more of the printing.)

We went to an amazingly over the top party over the weekend and had a late night drive home from Seattle that was intense. Many of those inches of rain were on the freeway as I hydro-planed our way home in just under 2 hours. Few cars were passing me, but when they did, their rooster tails of water were blinding and lasting so long I was worried I would hit something or someone.

The weekend was a flood of rain, literally. We had over 5 1/2 inches in 48 hours. When we got home the ground between the house and my studio was flooded, and in the morning Bill was out digging a trench to drain the water down the driveway, something we did the last el nina winter.

The night before the party I was up till 1 am, printing printing printing. I am honing in on some designs to illustrate Mother Time.



Check out this link - http://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/bookart
I am excited to see my Revealing History of Women's Underwear in a show at the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University.

I am hanging in there, but need to get to work now.

Newari New Year

Saturday was a wonderful day of celebrating Newari New Year and Deepawaly, festivals of Nepal. We are exceptionally lucky to have Shweta and Pratistha so close to us and so inviting to share their festival time. Here they are with Shannon, a close friend of Pam's who was able to celebrate with us.

This is our second time to celebrate Newari New Year with Pratistha, and our first time with Shweta. This is a very festive time in Nepal, celebrated over many days, but we generally just celebrate on one day, though this year we started cooking the night before.

The party was held at Pam Didi's house in Seattle. Pam is my friend who has water development projects in Nepal through The Living Earth Institute (LEI). She was in the Peace Corps in Nepal and it is because if her that I know Pratistha and her family. Lucky Bill and I.

In Nepal, in Newari culture, each family has their own mandala design, or sometimes maybe the same design, but a different way of placing things in the mandala for prayers.

Two of our designs are traditional and specific, one for Shweta and one for Pratistha. They were drawn by Bill from photos their family's sent from Nepal and then cut out into a stencil. Bill used our geometry skills and tools to cut them out, very precisely.

Ground limestone is used in Nepal, but here we use ground rice dyed with tumeric, or last year we used powdered sugar.

Pratistha's mandala after stenciling.

We had a third design for us westerners, using the orbiting pattern of Venus as seen from Earth. It was appropriate to our geometry studies of late, so we thought it would be fun to put it in there.

Because this day is also for prayers to Lakshmi, Goddess of good fortune, it is the eldest woman of the house who does the prayers and blessing for all of us, mandalas God/Goddesses included. This falls to Pam, and a good thing, because she is so well versed in Nepali tradition and language and does a beautiful honoring of everyone.

Shweta was an elegant and beautiful overseer of the evening. Not only did she supervise much of the food, she helped make sure the prayers went as smoothly and properly as possible for a bunch of non-Nepalis. She also translated Pam's Nepali prayers into English so we all could follow along.



The food was amazing, and everyone had a really good time. Thank you everyone for your contributions of food, prayers, and presence.

We wish you all a very happy Newari New Year! Bill and I always feel so very fortunate to cross cultures and meet new friends. Thank you Pam for hosting this beautiful event!

Earth to Venus

The view of Venus orbiting the sun as seen from Earth, and likewise how Earth looks from Venus as it orbits the sun. The pattern is a beautiful five-pointed star. It takes 8 years for Venus to make one star pattern: like shown above.

A few days ago Venus went "retrograde." What this means is that from where we sit on Earth and look at Venus up in the sky, it appears to be going backwards. This is just an illusion created from the different speeds of the two planets and that they are passing. Historically this has been a big deal in many cultures and many myths have been created about this time. They are myths of underworld journeys when Venus goes "below" to face demons and returns reborn as a morning star. The pentagram became a symbol of this planet and this journey of transformation.

Interestingly, Venus will be retrograde this time for 42 days. It is always about that amount. So I learned how to draw a 42 pointed star. In my geometry group we draw only with a compass, a straight edge, and pencil. So this is how this was done. 6x7=42, of course. So if you look carefully you can see that the six pointed star divides the circle every seventh point.

Last night in geometry I showed a new way (to us) to draw a pentagon/pentagram, in honor of Venus. Bill filled his page and all day today has continued to color his page.

I also learned yesterday how to find 60 equi-distant points around the circle, using only our geometer's tools. I was pretty excited, as we have all been trying to figure out 30 around and 60 around for some time. So when I figured it out, I was pretty excited, so I demonstrated this to our group as well. 60 around is about time: 60 minutes and 60 seconds build our clock, and time is ruled by Saturn. Saturn is the furthest planet out that can be seen with the naked eye, so to ancient time-keeper/astronomers Saturn was used to mark time.

This may all make me sound like an astrology geek, but I am not. It is really astronomy and archeology. I find it fascinating.

Mother Time

"Every twenty-eight days the moon moves through all twelve signs of the zodiac to return to the same place in relation to the stars. Due to this lunar cycle, twenty-eight day months have divided the year in many cultures and still do in various Hindu, Islamic, and Hebrew traditions. Women’s menstrual cycles average twenty-eight days and have been symbolically related to the moon’s cycle throughout history. Interestingly, human gestation, the time it takes for a fetus to develop in the womb, averages 280 days. No wonder that the moon is often feminized and in many native cultures is called 'Mother' or 'Grandmother.'"

This is an excerpt from my new book edition project called Mother Time. I am working on 3 projects at once, all towards various deadlines. All the holidays are working ones for me! Billy has been a big help, cutting stencils and some linoleum for me, and cleaning the press in between as usual. I don't know what I would do without him. Shweta was also in the studio with me this weekend, helping me with excellent color suggestions and making multiple serious offers to organize and clean my studio. I could use some of that!

We were all pretty tired after having a lot of grandkids playing and climbing all over us, cooking, dish washing, and eating lots of pie. (It was all good.) We all had such a very good time. (The pies were 4: apple, cherry, pumpkin, and coconut cream. The grandchildren were 4, adult children were 4, Grandparents were 2, and the dirty dishes were endless.) There was even a snowball fight!

But we were tired the next day and Bill still worked so hard on a stencil for me to use for the print up top. Unfortunately, he cut a 42 pointed star instead of a 28, and we had to start all over again! I know I'll use it eventually, so it's nice to have it in the back file.

By the way, this printing style is done with stencils. The printing technique I learned from Kathy Kuehn, but designing and cutting stencils to make them I figured out on my own. I love it!

The Geometry of Five & The Taste of Love

Looking at sources from art and science, the associations between humans and five are many. Five senses, five extremities, five taste distinctions, five digits on each hand, on and on. So five is symbolic related to human fulfillment. Fruiting flowers have five petals. Flowers, too, are a symbol of fulfillment. To me they also symbolize the human self, abloom in the Garden of Love -- fruiting flowers ourselves. Our favorite flower of love, the rose, has five petals, or multiples of five. Other flowers of love are pentagonal in symmetry as well. Hmmmm. Isn't this interesting?

If you look with soft eyes you can see the pentagram that doesn't quite settle into form in the middle of this echinacea flower.

Five is also related to the golden spiral. The golden spiral is based on the proportions of Phi: 1.618... or phi: .618... . Phi is a ratio found in nature (shells, growth patterns of plants, and more) and also in the human body. The Golden Mean applies Phi to a line, dividing it so that the whole and the parts relate to each other proportionally as in a:b as b:c. One of the easiest places to see phi is in the pentagram (here is one of the ways that five comes in). When you have a perfect pentagram, the segments are in a phi relationship to each other. This is part of what has made the pentagram a powerful symbol throughout history, and thereby responsible for giving it a bad rap at some point, becoming associated with evil spells by witches, the devil, and so on.

Really, the pentagram is a symbol of the beautifully proportioned. There are a million sources on the Internet and in the library for this, but most important to me is understanding that the phi relationship of the part to the whole is geometry's way of expressing the universe creating life in relationship to itself, and perhaps to an even larger whole. Therein lies the pentagram's power and fascination.

Julia Brayshaw, author of Medicine of Place and co-conspirator of all things Venusian.

Thanks to my friend Julia, I've learned a lot about the heart recently. She shared an issue of Lilipoh with an article about Frank Chester and also an interview with Rollin McCraty, PhD.

In Walter Alexander's interview with Rollin McCraty, McCraty describes how the heart is a sense organ. He reports that the heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. Other research shows that it is the heart that modulates brain function and perception. You have to read the article and more if you need convincing. It is not a stretch for most of us to agree that how we feel about things affects how we think about things. So what if we fed our hearts with nectar?

Frank Chester reports that research has shown that the heart is not a pump. Blood courses through an embryo before the heart is formed. Something else is moving the blood. Chester believes the heart is a streaming device. There's too much to report on here, but he goes on to describe how the blood spirals into the left ventricle clockwise, and spirals out the same ventricle counter-clockwise. It reverses direction inside the heart chamber. There is a point where the blood has to pause before reversing. I find this fascinating. And it is a leap of my imagination, I know, to link it back to the golden spiral, but I do. It is that point at which the blood stops, as if time stands still before spiralling out backwards.

"And how does the golden spiral come in?" I bet you are asking. Well, this is my leap. The golden spiral grows from zero, from nothing. If you look at the heart of a daisy, or sunflower, you'll see that the golden spirals keep forming, keeping enlarging from the center. From nothingness they grow. The Fibonacci spiral, a way of approximating the golden spiral, grows from zero as well. It uses a formula where the first whole number added to the next whole number creates the third in the sequence. Then you add your second whole number to the third whole number for the next. 0+1=1, 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, 5+8=13, and on and on to create a sequence that looks like this: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89, etc. This is a sequence, or spiral that grows from within, meaning the numbers are self generated. The ratio of each successive pair of numbers in the series approximates phi, 1.618... , getting closer as you move higher along. All that is needed to begin this algorithmic function is nothing, but somehow, that nothingness is full of potential. And this algorithmic golden spiral is how we grow. Five and the pentagram are symbols of human fulfillment, but put phi in the mix, and you see also the potential for growing fulfillment. (By the way, most flowers have petals that correspond to a Fibonacci number.)

The body is full of phi relationships and golden spirals, more than I am aware, I am sure. My favorite is the heart. Muscles wrap the heart with a golden spiral. Within the heart (sense organ, not pump) is a point of stillness, of balance, of pause, perhaps even a point of listening. What do we wish it to receive? The gifts of flowers, the sharing of joy, the flavor of nectar? As the heart expands, energetically spiralling out energy in emotional waves, what do we wish to send?

Invocation to the Water Spirits, a flexagon edition I created.

For me the hummingbird is an elegant symbol of our loving potential. Now I know the hummingbird also eats small insects, but by and large, it is the sugary nectar of flowers that is their food source. What we source from influences our view. The hummingbird sources from the sweet things in life. What if we all knew how to drink from life as the hummingbird does? And what if we grew as the flower does, opening our hearts to the sun and offering our sweetness without judgment?

Salmonberry flower.

Geometry of the Heart

Valentine Billy figured this out.

Last year our geometry group met on Valentine's Day, as it fell on the designated group night. Bill got a bee in his heart shaped bonnet to figure out how to draw this with our geometer's tools: drawing compass, straight edge, and pencil. This is what he came up with and presented to the group. This year we also meet on Valentine's Day. The geometry of chocolate is part of the draw.

I love our geometry group,


and I love my Bill.

Small Decisions That Changed Everything

Each New Year's Day I can't help but think of Florence. Her and her family brought so much into my life, and into the lives of many. These flowers were scattered new year's day into the Gulf of Mexico in the same place Florence and her husband's ashes were tossed. It's a ritual her daughters and son-in-laws, and once myself, perform each year about this time. I feel so honored to have been included.

For 25 years, along with whatever else I was doing, I did end-of-life care for over 30 people in Seattle and on Vashon Island. Florence was my last hospice client. I almost didn't take the job. It seemed very short term and not many hours. At least at first. I ended up caring for Florence for 7 1/2 years. And she took care of me, too. She showered me with love. You never know when you take on a job what it will bring, and this job was one of those that at the beginning I could have had no idea what gifts would be opened up. And they keep opening.

Every day of ours lives is like that. Last night at a friend's for New Year's Eve, Kevin asked each one of us to share a decision we had made in the last year and what that decision meant for us. It was amazing to hear what people shared. And today as the new year begins I have been reflecting on some of the smallest decisions I have made and what results they have brought. They are like Russian dolls, but beginning with the smallest, the result of the decision gets bigger and bigger as the ramifications unfold.

Of course one of them was the decision to go to a Peruvian mysticism community outreach meeting on a day when I was sick and and at a time when I didn't travel off Vashon Island very much. That was where I met Bill. Two months later I realized I was in love, and three months after that we were married. As cliche as it sounds, the day we married was the happiest day of my life to date, though truly, I have had so many days with Bill that have been nearly as equal. This was three and a half years ago, and I think of it as the beginning of my life.

This reminds of a day in January in 1984, I was 23 years old. A friend asked me to take a tai chi class with her so she wouldn't have to go alone. I didn't know anything about tai chi, but decided I would go and try it. The teacher talked about her recent trip to China as part of a group tour. At the end of the first class I turned to my friend and told her I was going to China. To put this in perspective, I had never travelled outside the country, I didn't have a passport, and I didn't know China was "closed," though it opened to individual traveller's that year. I just felt compelled, like a force beyond myself was guiding me, and I had no choice at that point. A year and half later, I was there. I loved it! I spent 3 months travelling around with a woman friend, Connie, who asked to join me just before I was to leave.

We went to lots of wonderful places in China.

Saw amazing things.

We met wonderful people everywhere.

We were invited in for tea, a meal, a party, an english lesson. Rarely did anyone speak english, and we knew no Chinese.

We ate great food, all the time.

And we stayed in some charming places.

Because of Connie, we went to Tibet, and again, because of Connie (more adventurous than I) we went to Nepal. But there in Tibet I met Narayan, a Nepali mountain climber who would also change my life. Once in Kathmandu, he took charge of my sightseeing and even took me trekking.

Narayan died just a few years later in an avalanche on Mt. Everest. His death brought me closer to these good friends of his who would become family, bringing so much love and joy into my life.

My Nepali "sister" Lalita holding her son Bijay, me with their daughter Rashmi in front, and Lalita's husband Hom in 1985. They would go on to have two more children, twin boys.

Rashmi is grown and married with a little girl of her own, Aleya.

Her brother Bijay is married as well, and they have a son, Arush.

I would return to Asia soon to live in Japan, but that is another story for another time.

Only as I write these two "small decision events" right now am I realizing they both have a spiritual beginning.

And that leads me to one last realization about a small decision. It was the decision to take an astrology class that inspired me to finally sit down and read Julia Brayshaw's beautiful book: "Medicine of Place." I realized then that Julia, who was joining my astrology class, was an avid sacred geometer, as am I. We got together for soup and sharing and our Sacred Geometry Study Group was soon born, and grew fast! This has been such a gift for me. As well as pushing me to deepen my spiritual studies through geometry, it has brought me into circle with some of the most wonderful people in Olympia. They have become important friends that feed my heart.

The marriage of five and six. Inspired by John Michell's book: "How the World is Made: The Story of Creation According to Geometry.

I wonder what I am doing now, or have done recently, that will be one of these great unfoldings of wonder. I can tell you I called an old friend, Kim, from high school the other day. We don't talk or see each other often, sometimes years go by. Late in the conversation I told Kim I was reading the "Bagavad Gita" and really getting so much out of it. She told me she tried to take a class in that when we were freshmen in college, but it was too hard. She told be she was reading "Autobiography of a Yogi." Bill had traded for that book last summer and I have been wanting to read it. But there is always so much to read. Kim said she was a little bogged down in the book and I suggested I read it too so we could talk about it and help each other along. Well, in three days I am over half way through book. And I am already wondering, is this "small" decision to read this book going to change my life?

(One of Bill's drawings from a group geometry night.)