In the next few weeks there will arrive in my mailbox a most interesting book I have ordered. I can hardly wait! It is called “The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science, and Secrets from the Middle Ages”. Here is the description from Amazon.com:

“The Alchemy of Paint is a critique of the modern world, which Spike Bucklow sees as the product of seventeenth-century ideas about science. In modern times, we have divorced color from its origins, using it for commercial advantage. Spike Bucklow shows us how in medieval times, color had mystical significance far beyond the enjoyment of shade and hue.

Each chapter demonstrates the mindset of medieval Europe and is devoted to just one color, acknowledging its connections with life in the pre-modern world. Colors examined and explained in detail include a midnight blue called ultramarine, an opaque red called vermilion, a multitude of colors made from metals, a transparent red called dragonsblood, and, finally, gold.

Today, “scarlet” describes a color, but it was originally a type of cloth. Henry VI's wardrobe accounts from 1438 to 1489 show that his cheapest scarlet was £14.2s.6d. and that scarlets could fetch up to twice that price. In the fifteenth century, a mid-priced scarlet cost more than two thousand kilos of cheese or one thousand liters of wine. This expense accounts for the custom of giving important visitors the "red carpet treatment."

The book looks at how color was “read” in the Middle Ages and returns to materials to look at the hidden meaning of the artists' version of the philosopher's stone. The penultimate chapter considers why everyone has always loved gold.
And about the author:

”Spike Bucklow trained as a chemist. He worked in the film industry, creating puppets using prosthetics, including Ronald Reagan in Spitting Image and Jabba the Hut in Return of the Jedi. He became an art conservator, at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge where he restores mediaeval art. He is an expert in craquelure, fixing the cracks in oil paintings”.

I will do my best to wait patiently, but it will be very, very hard.

A little bit of jingle...

For the past few years I have dabbled in belly dancing off and on. Lately I have been trying to take it a bit more seriously because it is such a beautiful art form. Currently I have been trying to learn Oriental style which is quite different than the Egyptian style I tried to learn in the past. It is far more feminine. And far more difficult.

For me, it is like learning a new language. When I learned basic ASL, or American Sign Language, while in university, I remember attending a local lecture and watching the interpreter. Her signs were unfamiliar to me; I could not understand her as easily as I could my own sign language teacher. This was because for the first time I was seeing a different sign language- that of SEE sign, or “Signing Exact English”. It had a more staccato look and seemed harsh. ASL is beautiful. It flows and looks like music to my eyes. The new sign language I was seeing somehow jarred my visual sense, and surprisingly, it touched me at a more visceral level. I never knew it could be like this. But there is was before my very eyes. I had learned there were different languages and different dialects even, but to experience it took me to a place of understanding that went beyond the weekly lessons.

And so it is with dance. My body loves to move in rhythm to music. Truth be told, I am not a strong dancer by any stretch of the imagination. I can only do one thing, one move at a time. But nevertheless, I so love to dance. So learning this new style of Oriental belly dancing has been a great challenge. I am aware of what my body feels it wants to do, but in order to stay true to the style, I must do other things that feel a bit awkward. But slowly, with time and patience, I am retraining the large and small muscles of my body to move in a new fashion. I love this new language, that lets me speak with my body. And if you are ever thinking of trying this form of dance, splurge and get yourself a coin scarf! They are fun to wear and even when you move a little bit, they make a sweet jingling sound that encourages you to keep on trying. Plus, as you move to work both sides of your body, they give good auditory and kinaesthetic feedback to ensure your movements are developing symmetrically.

Some bunny loves you...

This bunny came into my life recently in a most unexpected way. I was travelling for business and was once again sleeping in one of hundreds of hotels as I have done thousands of times over the past 10 years. But this particular night was different. I had a dream that brought to my soul the deep love a mother feels for a child. This is quite remarkable as I have no children of my own and have never felt the call to be a mother. I love and enjoy others children, and have devoted a significant portion of my professional life working with children, but there are no children of my own to love.

However, the dream I had while sleeping in this hotel, the one I wrote of here in this blog under a post titled “The girl from nowhere…” was a most amazing experience. The love I felt was so profound, unlike any feeling of love I have ever experienced before. When I awoke, I had to write down this most remarkable dream, so I pulled out my laptop and searched for an outlet to plug the power supply into. When I moved a chair out of the corner of the room in search for the outlet, I found this long-forgotten white bunny rabbit. This discovery made me come to a complete stop. How odd… a white rabbit. This discovery brought tears to my eyes, those which I had been holding back all morning. And so for a some time I wept for the child I never had.

After pulling myself together, I thought of the child who had left this rabbit behind… and wondered how much this floppy toy might be missed. I contemplated turning the rabbit in to the “lost and found” but selfishly decided I needed this rabbit more than the child who had lost it. I was going through a difficult time and took the rabbit as a symbol of promise, rebirth, and balance. Long associated with fertility, I found it remarkable that the rabbit appeared to me the morning after my dream which evoked such maternal longings. I have never felt that way before. I hope I never feel that way again. It was lovely and painful all at once. I wish it had never happened. Because now there is the sense of emptiness.

Set me like a seal...

“We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with sore feet supported himself on his neighbour’s arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly “If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.”

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understand how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honourable way- in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory”.

In front of me a man stumbled and those following fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoners existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.

“Stop!” We had arrived at our work site. Everybody rushed into the dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.

“Can’t you hurry up, you pigs?” Soon we had resumed the previous day’s positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb.

My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing- which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. “Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death”.”

~Viktor E. Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”


Image: Artist Scott Church, http://www.churchcreative.com/

The girl from nowhere...

Her hair was golden blonde, wispy and fine, falling across her slender shoulders. Her laugh was genuine and her eyes were brown. From within her came a spirit and love of life that was impossible to ignore and radiated outward, touching me in a profound way. She was of the age when a young girl is budding into a woman. She was the daughter of someone I knew. And for one wonderful weekend I spent time with this amazing young woman, learning about her and sharing some about me.

We hit it off like two long-lost friends, despite our age difference. We spent time talking, as all girls do. We shared our hopes and fears. We spoke of our dreams and planned our respective futures. We walked in the afternoon sun, rode bicycles, explored the garden at her home, and all the while I marveled at her kindness, her compassion, her intelligence, and sense of hope.

When our time was over it was hard to say goodbye. I vowed not to cry. I wanted her to remember our time together with happiness. We had bonded like sisters but I had grown to love her as a mother would love her own child. Saying goodbye was so very hard. Luckily, I did not have to do it. I awoke before I had to let her go.

My shoes and me...

As I often do, I took a very long walk the other day. Autumn mornings are among my favourite times to walk as the sky is a brilliant blue, the air is cool, and a bright sun brings warmth and a promise that the day will be beautiful. As I laced up my hiking shoes I reminded myself how very lucky I am to have endless trails just beyond my back fence. I can choose to walk through the parks and neighbourhoods of my suburban home, or I can make my way down to the bottom of the coulee and walk along the river, or I can go into the forest, sheltered by a canopy of trees, full of the ever-changing wonder of the seasons.

As I laced up my hiking shoes I decided I would make my way down to the river and then into the forest. I was in no rush and felt like a long, long walk. The morning air settled on my bare arms and I wondered briefly if I should return to get a jacket, but I reasoned I would soon warm up. In the shade, I could feel the cool on my skin; it was even a bit tingly and quite refreshing.
When I stepped from the shade into the sunshine, my arms were warmed by first rays of the day.

There are many runners in this city. Some of them are pretty hard-core. They have all the latest in running gear and are very dedicated to their sport. I admire these athletes as training for their half and full marathon goals is not easy. They must not only log the miles, but they must work on their techniques and timing. Some runs are LSD (long slow distance) while others are tempo runs, where the timing is varied with the distance. There are the fartleks, a fun sort of play with running where one runner chases another (or runs against the stopwatch), catching up and then trading who is the next to take off as the leader, a little like being “it” in a game of chase. All of these techniques help them fine tune their bodies so they can successfully complete what has for many become the Holy Grail of running: the full marathon. Having been a former competitive runner myself, I can appreciate all of this.

But I am happy to be me just as I am. Sure, someday I hope to run a half or full marathon, but only if these knees of mine can take it. For now, I simply slip on my shoes and I am out the door. There is no heart rate monitor strapped to my chest with its accompanying wrist watch to record the beat of my heart, only to signal back to me if I have slowed too much to be below my ‘target zone’. I do not wear a personal stereo with a play list of music specially selected at some pre-determined beats per minute to get my heart rate into the target zone, then move to the anaerobic zone, then back out again. It is just my shoes and me.

It is so simple, really. All that is needed is to just go outside and experience all that nature has to offer with all my senses on any given day. I like to feel the hilly terrain as it challenges my leg muscles to use their power to move me up and down the hills. I like to feel the crunch of the gravel path under my feet. Sometimes I like to walk on the prairie itself, through the ankle-high grass, listening to the soft thud as I strike the earth; it is a nice contrast to how my feet sound on the rolling paved trails. I love to hear the sound of the river, the wind in the trees, and the birdsong all around me. These are the sounds that remind me that the earth is alive, with a rhythm and pulse all her own. Best of all is when I walk fast and my heart beats its own rhythm, reminding me that I am alive. A simple walk, begun with just one step out the door, can bring much joy and optimism.