A Little Life Wisdom

Writing about Professor Hallock's book in my earlier post reminded me of the time he invited me to visit his class and speak to his English Majors about the post-college life of an English Major. Ah, what fun it was to be surrounded by others who love literature that much! 

One of the stories I told them was about my initial inclination to be a Business Major. I had a vague idea that a career in the world of business would provide the income so that I could pursue my reading hobby on my own time. Get money, then buy books. Not a bad plan, I'd say!

However, when I attended freshman orientation, they quickly divided us into different advisory groups based on our majors. The person who spoke to us Business Majors handed out a schedule of  the classes we'd be taking and proceeded to tell us, "During your first three semesters, you'll be taking all your required courses. In the second semester of your second year, you'll get an elective. We suggest you take Typing."

I put up my hand and asked, "Where is Literature on this schedule? Where is Humanities?"

She said, "You don't have time for that."

I stood up and handed the paper back to her. "I'm not a Business Major," I said, politely and decisively. And I walked out the door.

I landed among the Undecideds and stayed there a while before settling on English and International Studies (two degrees, since I loved college and had enough credits for both).

Through a twist of fate I wound up in the legal world, and I've never looked back, even while living in various places, going back to school a few times, and holding a variety of jobs. It's all been good.

The theme of my talk to the English Majors was: Don't Be Afraid to Zigzag. 

Thanks to my focus on literature and art, I've known how to live, not just how to make a living. There's always been plenty of money for books.

And I already knew how to type, anyway!

A Little More About Naturalizing

Anthropocentrism: the belief that human beings are the most important entity in the universe; interpreting the world in terms of human values and experiences; viewing the natural world as having value only in its usefulness to or for humans. 

As I mentioned before, I had a little trouble with the fieldwork in my Master Naturalist class because I was very empathetic toward the creatures we were studying. For me, going out in the woods to look for things is fun. Catching them by their wings and/or putting them into specimen jars, even temporarily, is not.

Case in point: our guide caught some very tiny oak toads and was holding them while talking to us. I know he was being gentle, but they were perched on top of his hands and held by one hind leg. They seemed pretty comfortable -- they weren't struggling or anything -- although I imagine they were scared from all the pairs of eyes focused on them, when their main defense is camouflage.

Photo Credit: University of Florida

While explaining things, our guide was gesturing with his hands. I immediately wondered how it felt to the toads to be zooming around in the air like that. First capture, then a rollercoaster! I certainly wasn't learning anything while focused on what they might be feeling. 

To his credit, when I mentioned it, he immediately held his hands very still for the rest of the talk. I was relieved. I bet the toads were, too.

Photo Credit: Eric Shashoua

(This one is actually bigger than the ones we saw. They are often teeny tiny!)

After he put them down, I stood near them while the class walked away. Otherwise they might have been stepped on. Even among these students of nature, I don't think anyone else gave them much thought after he put them down. It was kind of, "Okay, we're through staring at you for our own reasons. What's next?"

It sure made me think about anthropocentrism.

I know it's just two little toads but still. Every life matters when I can do something about it.

Naturalizing

Things I learned in the Florida Master Naturalist class:

It's fun to spend 6 Fridays in a row learning hands-on about Florida.

In September/October, it's still a little too hot to spend the whole day outdoors, no matter how much water you drink.

When the road gets muddy, sometimes you have to walk.

As long as you're expecting them, you can't see too many snakes on a hike (7 pygmy rattlesnakes in one day!).

Catching and examining insects, amphibians, and reptiles is interesting, but if the little creatures seem stressed I feel too much empathy for them to enjoy learning.

Meeting others who're interested in wild Florida is awesome.

Holding a baby gator is even more fun than you'd imagine.

Title Alert

When I was in the Master of Liberal Studies program, it was an ongoing phenomenon that whenever anyone floated a really interesting, slightly (or majorly) offbeat theory about a particular work of art or literature, a murmur would run through the class.

"Topic alert! Topic alert!"

All of us, even those of us who were years from graduation, were obsessed with the idea of writing our thesis. We knew we needed a really thrilling topic that would sustain our interest for an entire semester and allow us to produce an 80-page paper that didn't cause our faculty advisor to doze off in the first 5 pages.

So whenever anyone said anything good, we would seize on it immediately. Some of us would even write the ideas down.

I don't know if anyone ever used those half-baked ideas that came up at random moments, but it made us feel good, just knowing they were out there.

I don't write many papers anymore, but I'm still practicing a similar way of acknowledging a great idea or a really clever turn of phrase. It's become a running joke with my most literary of friends, and we are having a lot of fun with it.

Now we say, "And that's going to be the title of my autobiography."

I think I'm going to start a log of them, just in case I need them someday.

I suppose I could explain how they came about, but that might spoil the fun. After all, a good title should stand on its own, shouldn't it?

So far we have:

And I Didn't Die That Time, Either

Sugared Up for the End of the World

Dunce Caps for Giants

Feel free to suggest your own in the comments! Who knows? I might like your idea even better.

Mask Class

Here's the collective result of two Saturday mornings spent with Vaseline, plaster, and clay. We all started with our own faces and as you can see, with the decorations we became even more different!

Now that it's too late, I kind of wish I'd "opened the eyes" of my mask (middle row, far right). But at the time, there was something kind of creepy about digging around in my own eyes with a sharp stick.

Mask Making, Part 2

Here's the mold you get after the whole Vaseline and plaster experience:

You roll out a big glob of clay like a pie crust, press it into the mold, and coax it out again (hoping you don't rip your nose off in the process).

Then you have to pick out all the little white bits of plaster and sculpt all the parts that don't have enough detail, like around the eyes and nose.

Then you make leaves and berries and whatnot from other pieces of clay, decorate the mask with them, and bemoan your lack of artistic talent. (Well, that's what I did.)

Here's the finished product, ready for firing. C.S. says this is C-R-E-E-P-Y. He thinks it looks like a death mask.

Don't tell him I'm planning to slather it in buttermilk and let it get all mossy, a la Martha Stewart. Growing moss in Florida is a snap. No artistic talent required. Thank goodness!

Mask Making, Part 1

This weekend I went to the first of two workshops to make a garden plaque based on the Green Man motif. Although the teacher works in clay of all kinds, her classes at the garden must be "garden-related." Hence, we're taking our inspiration from this guy:

(image from http://www.mythinglinks.org/ct~greenmen.html)

The Green Man is a well-known pre-Christian figure, frequently depicted in medieval architecture (he's in all the big cathedrals, like Chartres and Salisbury), and an archetype of our oneness with Nature. Really. Go ahead and Google him if you don't believe me.

The plaque-making process began with creating a mold from our own faces. Next week we will make the terra cotta clay impression from the mold, and decorate it with leaves and berries and perhaps glazes and paint.

Making the mold is quite an adventure. We were warned in the class description, but still . . . .

First we donned large trash bags as a kind of smock to protect our clothing. Then we put on a shower cap to cover every strand of hair. Then we slathered our entire faces--ear to ear, forehead to chin, including the lips--with a thick layer of Vaseline, making sure to rub it thoroughly into our eyebrows and any facial hair (there were two men with full beards in the class, and I can't imagine what they were thinking!).

Meanwhile, we were all trying not to hyperventilate, because of what's coming next. We had seen a video, so we knew.

When it's your turn, you sit down and lean back, and at the last possible moment you seal your eyes closed and cover your eyelashes with a couple of big dollops of Vaseline. Then your partner applies strips of gauze soaked in plaster the consistency of pancake batter all over your face. It's goopy and drippy.

After the application is complete, you sit for about 3 minutes to let the plaster finish drying. You can kind of feel it pull away from your face when it's dry enough. Then you scrinch up your face in various directions and in a perfect world, the mask just lifts off. This is the moment of truth for your Vaseline application. You will quickly discover whether you used enough.

Even where I missed a spot, it wasn't that bad. It's a lot like the old band-aid dilemma: better to remove it slowly and tweak each hair at a time, or just rip it off? But on a larger scale, and with your eyelashes.

Oddly enough, sitting under the plaster isn't too bad. I thought it would be very claustrophobic, and that my nose would itch, and that I would be nervous the whole time. It was actually kind of soothing. You can hear everything everyone is saying, and imagine them bustling around the room, and you don't have to react or interact at all. It's kind of like being invisible.

Of course, making hand signals to my partner about how to use the camera probably helped pass the time, too.

Afterwards I was so relieved and we were all so busy yakking about how much fun it was that I completely forgot to take any pictures of the mold itself. Next week, for sure.

And you should see how dewy and soft my skin is! All that Vaseline produced better results than any lotion, potion, or professional facial ever. I may have to do this more often.

Without the plaster.

Back in the Classroom

It's been almost a year since I learned anything in a classroom setting and, lifetime learner that I am, that hiatus was certain to end eventually. Today I signed up for the perfect class to begin my next student phase.

The Myth of the Green Man Mask (clay sculpture)

Have fun creating your own green man mask by using a mold cast from your face. . . . Students must be comfortable with putting Vaseline on eyelashes, brows and facial hair and having a thin layer of plaster bandages covering the face for about 20 minutes. (The nostrils will not be covered.) . . . [D]ress for a mess.

The Green Man is my favorite motif, so they had me at hello. If I ever got a tattoo, his image is probably what I would get. I like him that much.

He's mostly medieval, but there are many, many examples of his face in many, many cultures and times. This one's my favorite: the Green Man of Bamburg, Germany, c. 1237 (photo courtesy of nlpagan.net). He appears on the base of a statue known as the Rider of Bamburg, which has been interpreted as representing the triumph of civilization, reason and law. Meanwhile, the base of the statue is supported by the decorative leaves and face of the watchful, powerful, wild spirit of nature. Very cool.

I haven't a smidgeon of artistic talent, but am still up for the adventure of trying to make my own feminine version of a leafy mask.

And I really appreciated the clarification that I won't have to hold my breath for 20 minutes while encased in Vaseline and plaster bandages.

Even so. Law school, it ain't.

Yoga This Week

Something unexpected happened this week at yoga, and I'm still pondering it.

We were sitting on our mats making small talk before class began. We have only been meeting once a week for four weeks, so we don't know each other well. Our teacher is a college student who sometimes talks about her classes and how hard she is studying for exams.

When someone asked our teacher how her week was, she started to cry as she told us that her boyfriend of three years died in a motorcycle accident last weekend. She told us about the kind of person he was, how much he loved nature and the garden we were in, how she hadn't done much of anything since then but make arrangements, how she had thought about canceling class but there is no cancellation policy (it's a new series, so they are just working out the details), and how she didn't want us to think she was a bad teacher if we didn't have an energetic session. We were all wiping tears away, witnessing her grief.

I was so proud of the way we all reacted. Several people went up and hugged her. One person went up to the latecomers as they arrived and told them what was happening, so they would understand what we were talking about. Others shared stories of losing people they loved. One of us decided to set an intention for our practice that evening to remember her boyfriend, and others agreed to do that, too.

Then we all sat quietly for a long time, just being present in the evening. It had been quite hot all day--we have finally turned the corner into summer and 90 degrees, after a long, slow mid-80s spring--but as soon as we started to meditate, a very sustained, very fresh breeze came blowing across our faces. The garden was full of cardinals, males and females in pairs, and they were flying over us, hopping around in the grass, and singing their hearts out. Somehow the garden had never been more beautiful, more lively, or more peaceful.

I hope our teacher's boyfriend would have been happy for us to remember him that way. And I hope it was comforting to our teacher that we were all there for her, even for that brief time. I'm glad we have more classes ahead, and more chances to show her we care.

Yoga in the Gardens

Is this a great location for a yoga class, or what?

I got there early so I could take a few pictures.

What doesn't show in the pictures? The soft breeze, the songs of the cardinals, doves, and mockingbirds, the tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker somewhere nearby.

My tree pose is not nearly this steady.

But when it comes to savasana, the pose of total relaxation, with this view overhead . . . I'm all over it.