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Month: April 2006

Nature and Such

2006-04-29 John Winkelman

This afternoon, having nothing better to do, I hied me over to Blandford Nature Center wherein I discovered much nature.

Up until about a year ago one of the main attractions at the Center was a rescued fox. About a year ago the fox passed on, and a new tenant has recently moved in:

bobcat_1

This bobcat is about four years old and was raised as a pet until it became too much for its family (and neighbors) to handle. It is quite fearless around humans and so, out in the wild, would not be able to fend for itself, and would probably have had to survive on a diet of garbage and small yappy dogs.

bobcat_2

I do have to say, though; he is an absolutely beautiful animal.

Since the bobcat was not interested in what I was doing, I wandered around and looked at the other rescued animals. I immediately discovered something else new:

vulture_1

The turkey vultures are expecting. That thing to the lower right of the bird is one of their two eggs. Which just goes to show, everyone is beautiful to someone. Especially in the spring.

Onward and inward. Every inch of the park was teeming with life.

click_beetle_1

Some of the photos just seemed to compose themselves:

leaf

trillium_2

On the way back out of the park one of the attendants was preparing to feed the cat. Like any other cat, he sat at the door and waited impatiently. Once the door was open, he hissed at the attendant and swatted her in the leg.

bobcat_3

Note that this is NOT a small animal. He didn’t use his claws, however, and for his rudeness the attendant squirted him with a water bottle. Now, I have seen this tactic used on house cats with a great deal of success; but a 40 pound bobcat? Who’d’a thunk? Next time I am on safari in Africa and a lion charges me, I am going to squirt it in the face with a water bottle. It should keep me perfectly safe!

I watched the cat eat for a minute, then discovered why it was angry at the center employees:

bobcat_4

Jeez, what a slap in the face.

On the way out of the park I was surprised by one more Piece of Nature™:

garter_snake_1

I guess this one hadn’t learned the “crawl quietly through dead leaves” trick yet.

Posted in PhotographyTagged Blandford Nature Center comment on Nature and Such

Impermanence

2006-04-26 John Winkelman

This past Saturday I visited From the Heart Yoga Center, where the Venerable Thupten Tsondu Tashi of the Gyudmed Monastery was performing a peace blessing. I arrived a few minutes after the start of the ceremony, and sat quietly in a corner until the ceremony ended, at which time Rick introduced me to Tashi, who floored me with this:

“I know you.”

The first thing I thought of was that he remembered me from when I was in India back in February 2001, during the Losar celebration at the Zongkar Choede monastery. Gyudmed is just up the road from Z.C., and many of the Gyudmed monks had come to Z.C. for the Cham dance portion of the ceremony. I don’t recall if we were introduced back then, but it is entirely possible.

It wasn’t until a day later that I remembered that he had been in town a couple of years ago on another tour, and that he and I had attended a gathering at the home of Anisa. He and Anisa had met several years earlier when she was a driver for the North American leg of a tour by a group of Tibetan monks from the Gyudmed and Dzongkar Choede monasteries. When I mentioned that I knew Anisa, Tashi became quite excited and asked that I tell her about the other events which he would be holding throughout the week.

This evening I attended the dismantling of a sand mandala which Tachi had built over the past three days. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, he said. Eight in the morning until five in the afternoon. Twenty-seven hours, by himself, building a two-foot-square mandala by himself, a grain of sand at a time. He finished at 5pm today, and the dismantling began at 5:30.

This particular mandala was the Mandala of Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, whose symbols are the sword and scroll.

The ceremony began with Tashi explaining the different parts of the mandala; why there are certain colors, why the mandalas have specific number of specific design elements, and why the thing is built out of sand in the first place.

After the questions ended Tashi set out his tools and began a prayer chant which lasted around fifteen minutes.

When the prayer finished Tashi began to very carefully dismantle the mandala by cutting precise lines into the sand with a dorje.

Once the lines were finished and the mandala dismantled, he began to sweep the sand into the center of the mandala, again following a specific pattern, counter-clockwise around the mandala, a section at a time.

When the brushing was complete Tashi offered each of us some of the sand from the mandala to take with us as a blessing. He said that traditionally a little of the sand is sprinkled on the top of someone’s head (around the crown chakra) in order that, when that person dies the sand, which has been blessed by being part of a mandala, helps the spirit to depart to the next world so there is less of a chance of being stuck in this one. It also acts as protection against evil spirits.

Next we moved down to the west bank of the Grand River where Tashi perforned the final steps of the ceremony: casting the sand into a river. This serves multiple purposes: the sand can never again be used in a mandala; the mandala of which it was a part can never be re-created; and the sand itself is an offering to the spirits of the river, and are said to help still angry waters and make for safe journeys. Each of the different colors of the sand represent different gems and precious metals — yellow for gold, white for silver, red for rubies, etc — so this is truly a precious gift.

After a final few minutes of prayer Tashi cast the sand into the river — carefully making sure none of it blew back onto the bank — and washed out the cup from which he had cast the sand. Then he performed a final, short prayer, and the ceremony was over.

The Venerable T.T. Tashi is currently touring the United States in to raise funds for the Buddhist Mind Training School in Mongolia, where children can receive a good education in a safe environment. For information on tour dates and locations, contact Heidi Ragchaa at heidi@ziacreative.com.

Namaste.

Posted in LifeTagged Buddhism comment on Impermanence

Seems like I was here a year ago…

2006-04-24 John Winkelman

I am currently sitting in Room 429 of Kendall College of Art and Design. Today is the first day of finals week, and the last day of my career as an Adjunct Professor of Web Design. I am in the middle of performing post-mortems on the final grades of my students for the semester. They handed in their final projects last week and I spent the weekend tallying grades and writing critiques. Now I am telling them why they got the grades they got.

The semester ended at the perfect time. Work is ramping up to the point that I no longer have time to duck out for several hours in the middle of the day. I expect this will continue for at least the next four weeks, at which point I will, I think, take a much-deserved and much-needed vacation.

I have been thinking about re-designing this site. Nothing too extravagant; just make it look a little more professional. Despite the fact that I am a fairly hard-core programmer I do have some small sense of aesthetics, and right now the current design bores me.

Now that I have the whole summer ahead of me without the oncoming storm of the next semester as motivation, I find that I really just want to be lazy, sit on my porch, and read and write. I look forward to the days I work from home, sitting outside with my laptop and a tall glass of beer iced tea, watching the world go by.

Posted in LifeTagged Kendall College of Art and Design comment on Seems like I was here a year ago…

Currently Reading: Borges

2006-04-20 John Winkelman

Last week I picked up the Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges, and have been reading nothing else since. The guy is amazing.

How to classify him? To compare him to authors with whom I am familiar, I would have to say that he exhibits the simplicity and humor of Evan Connell, the poetic strength of Cormac McCarthy, the precision and aloofness of Edgar Allen Poe, and the cosmic overtones of H.P. Lovecraft or the earlier works of Umberto Eco.

This is not to say he is in any way derivative of any of these writers; he very much has his own style and sensibilities, and I am thoroughly enjoying every minute I spend reading his work.

As for genre, I would call him a magical realist of the highest order. He writes of labyrinths and time and mirrors, and twists them all together until it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

If any of you have read Borges I am interested in hearing (reading) your thoughts on the subject.

Posted in Literary Matters comment on Currently Reading: Borges

It Is Ended II

2006-04-19 John Winkelman

Today at 5:00pm I received from one of my students the last of the final projects for this semester. I am done. The teaching is over. All that is left is some grading, and then fourteen short post-mortems on Monday.

I have decided to take the next year off from teaching. I have too many other places where that time could be better spent, and given the choice between the time or the money, right now I would rather have the time.

For my students’ benefit, I will leave the class website up, and maybe even add the occasional tutorial as the mood strikes me. And of course, I am still available to them for advice and references and what-not.

Will I miss the experience? Absolutely. Teaching is fun, and fulfilling, and very entertaining. And apparently, some people think I am pretty good at it.

So: what to do with the new free time? First, spend a couple of weeks loafing. Once I have that out of my system I have a few things which require my attention. Like my house and my social life. I would also like to (re)design this site, and rebuild Master Lee’s site. There are a couple ideas for games rolling around in my head which I will take a closer look at when I can stand being in front of a computer on my off hours.

And I need to practice more.

Posted in LifeTagged Kendall College of Art and Design comment on It Is Ended II

I Don’t Have Time for This

2006-04-07 John Winkelman

The diabolical Bock — who just launched a new version of his website — recently introduced me to a wonderful new game: Travian.

Travian is a free, browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG), in which you are the ruler of a small tribal village (Roman, Gaul or Teuton). The first part of the game involves resource management and building construction — think the first couple of hours of Warcraft — aaanddd that is as far as I have progressed.

The world is persistent, and couple that with it being browser-based, means that you can start building something, go surf the web for a while, then log back in and see how your tribe is progressing. This is a good thing, because building construction generally takes in the neighborhood of 30 minutes. The more powerful/important the building or unit, the longer it takes to build, the more resources it uses, and the more prerequisites it requires.

Once you have a good base set up, you can begin trading with/raiding your neighboring villages, or building new villages. There appears to be a finite amount of land, which means you need to sign up NOW NOW NOW!!!

I have two user accounts (which is expressly against the rules) : “Levendis” and “Zartog”. You can only have one user account per email address, which can be a pain unless (like me) you have a domain name with a catch-all email address, and (like me) you might be inclined to do this sort of thing, and (unlike me) you have time to play this thing all day.

Many instructions and helpful tips can be found at the Travian Wiki.

Remember: It takes a viking to raze a village.

Posted in LifeTagged games comment on I Don’t Have Time for This

True Dat

2006-04-04 John Winkelman

This morning Rick said that a great deal of what we call spirituality boils down to “don’t be an asshole”. We discussed it for a moment, and decided that not being an asshole is probably the most difficult part of trying to be a good person.

Posted in LifeTagged martial arts comment on True Dat

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