Living with Spirit

I'm leaving today for the "Living with Spirit" retreat up at Ananda Village. So for the next two weeks I'll be camping, meditating, doing yoga, taking classes, experiencing life in a spiritual community, and doing other fun things. Oh, and hoping I don't miss my first tomatoes, though Cathy will be looking after them for me. See y'all mid-July!

A New Favorite Narrator

I just finished listening to Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, narrated by Humphery Bower, and I have to say I spent every one of those 43 hours completely enthralled with his voice.

First of all, he's Australian (appropriate for the first-person protagonist of the book) so everything is delightfully accented, even just the "base" narration. But it's the character voices that always really sell me on a good narrator. Most of the book takes place in Bombay, so there are umpteen different Indian characters, all with distinguishable, recognizable voices. Aside from that, though, there are numerous characters from other countries, with accents as diverse as French, German, Spanish, British (London and Liverpool versions), Canadian, American, Iranian, Pakistani, and Afghan. And as if juggling all that weren't enough, he also handles cases like British-educated Afghan, New York Pakistani, and an Australian faking an American accent while speaking Hindi. The guy is a genius.

And even beyond the accents, the overall narration is just exquisitely done. Every little shading and coloring of emotion and meaning is conveyed perfectly in the intonation. Not too much -- I've heard narrators that overdo it -- but just right. This goes both for matching explicit descriptions in the text and for applying his own interpretations to the rest of it. There have been a number of times when I could tell that I would have read something in a very different way in my head, but that Bower's version worked much better.

So if you're a connoisseur of good narrators, definitely listen to this. (Or I expect any of the other books he's read would be excellent as well.)

Peas!

I think peas really have to be just about the best plants ever. Lacey gave me a couple small Cascadia Bush Snap Peas about a month ago, and I got to pick and eat the first one last night. I love these little plants. This is how awesome they are:

• They grow quickly.
• Their vines climb with delightful little grasping tendrils. (I always think vines are wonderful.)
• You get to build trellises for them (or, in my case, tie crazy arrangements of string and sticks to balcony railings).
• The flowers are adorable.
• The peas are delicious!

I mean, really, what more could you want?

30

(Potshots #2797, by Ashleigh Brilliant.)

Well, it's a new year and a new decade for me today. Thirty still sounds like too big a number, but I've also kinda been looking forward to getting out of all the late-20s nonsense of the past few years. So I'm assuming it'll be good. :-)

I got to do several fun things this weekend, starting back on Friday with dinner and birthday stuff with Mom, Lacey, and Cathy, before going out waltzing. Then a Waldon gathering on Saturday (more of a general family reunion, but family + apple cobbler + double chocolate brownies is close enough to a birthday celebration for me). Then yesterday Cheryl and I made one of my weirder ice creams (about which, more here) and other amusing sillinesses.

So today, the actual day, will probably be a bit different. But I always like to make sure I get some quiet, introspective time around my birthdays, to think and write and such. And to plant a lot of new seedlings in my garden. And to work my way through the leftovers of five different, excellent desserts from this weekend. That'll make for a good day.

Homemade Vanilla Extract

As with many good things of this sort, this was inspired by my sister. Turns out it's actually quite easy to make vanilla extract.

1. Get a bottle of vodka.
2. Get 6 vanilla beans.
3. Slit the beans, stick them in the bottle, shake it up.
4. Put it in a cupboard for a few months.

You can take it out once in a while to give it a shake, and to watch the color deepen as it goes along. I find this kind of thing rather fascinating, actually, so I took photos at intervals:



As you use it up, you can top it off with more vodka, and if you need a vanilla bean for something, you can pull one out and replace it with a fresh one. So it can be a fun sort of ongoing thing. Yum!

And Hills for Climbing

Nightingale has a beautiful song on their third album called "Hills," which I only started really hearing properly a couple weeks ago.



It's actually from a poem by Arthur Guiterman, and apparently they turned around the last two lines, but that's the part I now like most about it:

God, give me strength to climb,
And hills for climbing.

We can pray for strength, but what is strength without a use for it? Both sides of the equation have to go together.

Those lines for me resonate back two years ago, when I saw the movie "Evan Almighty." I think it was a decently entertaining movie, but one part burned into my brain and crowded the rest of it out. Morgan Freeman, as God, is comforting Evan's wife, and says:

Sounds like an opportunity. Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, do you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If they pray for courage, does God give them courage, or does he give them opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for their family to be closer, you think God zaps them with warm, fuzzy feelings? Or does he give them opportunities to love each other?
(video clip)

It's a good reminder. If we're going through difficult times, we're not just suffering -- we're learning to be patient, or brave, or loving, or whatever our own personal lessons need to be. It's an opportunity to consciously acknowledge and accept those lessons. Sometimes it may be hard even just to tell what's going on, but we can still keep climbing our hills, and trust in the strength that goes with it.

So let me hold my way,
By nothing halted,
Until, at close of day,
I stand exalted.

Dance Limericks

In honor of Limerick Day, which I only just found out existed, I dug up a bunch that I wrote probably about 8 years ago. In Richard's social dance classes, we had to write a one-page "essay" each quarter, to justify him giving us an actual unit. After a few years of this, I occasionally had to get more creative, like when I submitted the following collection of limericks. Many of you Richard-Powers-groupies out there may recognize some of his teaching metaphors. :-)

An arrow protrudes from my chest,
And a laser beam comes from my vest,
I take the blow with my back,
As we roll, Jill and Jack;
The waltz tends t'wards violence, at best!

The hustle, as a dance, isn't funny,
Except when one hops like a bunny,
I simply can't stand,
To see a one-two-three-AND --
It just makes my insides all runny.

Occasionally persons pontifical,
Say the waltz is a dance quite centrifugal,
But whether forces act out,
Or around and about,
Is a question considered most difficul'.

There was a young lady named Cindy,
Who danced a remarkable lindy,
Her skirts and her hair
Just flew through the air,
Whether or not it was windy.

Some people may think you are odd-ish,
When the ska plays, and you dance a schottische,
With a one-two-three-hop,
And some pivots on top,
That makes their legs tangled and knot-ish.

There once was a dancer named Luke,
Who made a bet with a good friend from Duke,
That he could waltz 'round and 'round,
And around and around,
And around, until ready to ... stop.

While attempting to waltz on my toes,
I repeatedly fall on my nose.
It is quite a treat,
To get off of my feet,
But my nose flows a rose on my clothes.

Son of Contra Plus!

So if you missed out on Contra Plus!... well, you missed out. But Bob and I are going to be DJing for the first couple of hours at Big Dance this Friday, so you can come get your fix of contras + couple dances there. We won't have the incredible band we had a week ago, but we've still got plenty of good stuff lined up, so it'll be fun. Come dance! (And then stay up all the rest of the night and dance some more!)

Contra Plus!

Bob, Lacey, and I have been organizing a new dance event. It's called Contra Plus!, and will be about half contra dances and half couple dances -- waltz, swing, polka, tango, etc. The music will be awesome, Decadance will be performing for us, and Bob and I will be calling. If you haven't done contra before, just come to the class beforehand and we'll get you up to speed right away. If you're primarily a contra dancer, it'll be a fun chance to do more couple dances. Full event details are on Facebook -- feel free to pass it around and invite all your friends!

Thirteen Moons

A little over a year ago I was beginning my first Vipassana meditation retreat on the evening of a full moon. On today's full moon, I'm going to start level 1 of Ananda's meditation class series. I like the symmetry of that.