mayaland
Sophie (7) and I watched a terrific documentary last night about origami, and before your eyes roll back in your head, consider this: Sophie and I probably gasped a genuine and synchronized “WOW!” at least thirty times during that 54 minutes.
Folded from one piece of paper!!!!!
The film starts with origami as art, moves through extreme technique, into free-form postmodern pieces, and then slides right into higher math, all the while remaining tremendously accessible, interesting, entertaining, amazing. It blew my mind, honestly, and left me feeling positive about humanity. Imagine! It made Sophie run for some paper to fold. She’s quick the practical applications.
But I dare you to watch this film and not come away inspired.
People doing strange things in the name of art always make me happy.
Oh, and we cheered when it was revealed that the last person interviewed, this charming mathematician and the youngest professor at MIT ever, was a homeschooler. Homeschoolers Rule! His quote at the end was terrific, about how he did origami because it was fun, because the math of it was fun, but also just folding the paper was fun. Why do anything if it isn’t fun? Yes!
Here’s the preview. Seriously, check this one out, it’s on Netflix as a dvd or streaming. Wonderful film.
Paul started getting annoyed the other night at Luc who kept changing his mind about what he wanted to eat. Finally Paul said, “Get over here and eat this or I’m going to whup you.”
Luc, with zero hesitation, growled back, “BRING IT ON.” Little five year old guy with cherub cheeks and long blond hair, hands in fists, stomping towards his father with a ferocious, thrilled, look in his eyes. Fearless. I fell off my chair laughing.
You want a piece of me?
Then, later in the week, we’re getting ready to go to the dentist, and I, scattered as usual, am calling out instructions, searching for my glasses, my wallet, snack supplies, etc., while Luc plays legos in the middle of the floor, oblivious. Finally I say, “Luc, we’re getting in the car to go the dentist. I need you to come now!”
He answers in this friendly voice, “Okay, Mom, I’ve just got to get my battle-ax.” And, indeed, he came out of the yurt with his battle-ax and a smile. What exactly do you need a battle-ax for at the dentist, I’m not sure, but it seemed self-evident to him that it was a necessary item.
Speaking of legos, a new batch came in from the thrift store the other day—when you get legos from the thrift store, you never know what special pieces might be in there. In this case, it was a lego Dora. I found him hitting Dora with a lego hammer. “How’s it going there?” I asked. “Oh, we’re going to build a cage to put her in, torture her, and then dip her in lava,” he said. Sounded pretty happy about it, too. He looks so cute, and then he says something like that. Normal little boy? Or budding psychopath?
Only time will tell.
Look at my muscles, Mom!
And finally, one from Paul, best comment I got all week about turning 40. I was trying on my skinny jeans, looking in the mirror, thinking of how these jeans looked ten years ago, yes I had them ten years ago, and I asked that killer question, “What do you think? Too much muffin top?”
To which Paul replied, “I’ve always thought the top was the best part of the muffin.”
Aw, thanks honey.
If I’m going to epub a book, I need to be able to see what it is I’m selling. So I got a kindle. Actually, I cashed in a bunch of amazon rewards points and got a kindle for $14. But now that I actually have one, I must report that I’m really not that impressed.
Let me back up and say I adore ebooks. I read kindle books on my ipod all the time. I love paper books, too, and I’m sure if we removed the weight and structural support of my floor to ceiling bookshelves, and just the stacks of books everywhere, our yurt would fall down. But ebooks are wonderful and my ipod is full of them, so of course, I was psyched to finally be getting one of these kindle thingies. Woo hoo, thought I. I’m going to love this.
But no. What is this gray thing? Gray words on a gray screen? This is the wonder of e-ink? It sucks! They make all this fuss about “You can read in direct sunlight!” but the truth is, you can’t read on it unless you’re in direct sunlight!
Kindle e-ink makes my eyes bleed.
I can’t believe how bad this is to read on, when all the hype is how nice it is. Who are they kidding? Do I just have a bad one? It’s gray on gray, who thought this was a good idea?
Okay. A couple of years ago when the whole “download books in under a minute, whispernet, take hundred of books with you in your pocket, woo hoo” was new, I would have adored the kindle. As it was, I fell head over heels for my kindle-for-ipod. But I think the kindle itself is a device designed to hold the hands of people making the leap from paper books to digital—and I have already made that leap. I have no problem reading on a screen, in fact, I often prefer it (no light source needed in the middle of the night, for example). I already grok the whole ebook phenom. I don’t need the training wheels a kindle provides. And my kindle for ipod gets all the good bits of the kindle, with none of the grayness. The kindle concept rocks. The kindle itself, for me, not so much.
It does have a nice feel in my hand. Maybe if I get some kind of clamp-on light it will be better. But it still won’t give me evernote (for the random, writerly, thoughts I tend to get when I read, typed or voice—evernote is the BOMB), or games to distract the kids with (thank god), or movies when I’m stuck waiting for aikido class to finish (my guilty pleasure). And while you can listen to audible books on a kindle, why would I do that when having the tiny ipod in my pocket is so much easier then the relatively bulky kindle?
While I love ebooks, and adore my kindle-on-the-ipod experience, I guess the kindle-device-itself peaked for me before I got one. I have been reading on it a little. In bright daylight. And seeing my own book on it, as I get the copy-edits back from the copy-editor, that’s pretty cool. It’s not a total loss.
But I’m glad I paid $14 bucks for it.
I’m up ridiculously early, about to get in some writing. Shhh. Everyone is asleep. Except the cat who is staring at me. Why is she looking at me like that, like “you suck but it’s beneath me to care.” Cats.
I’m working with an editor on one of my novels, I’m so excited. And terrified. Of course. I’m always an emotional roller-coaster of looping torment when it comes to writing. But my deadline is Friday, which means I have to do a quick pass on the thing by this Friday, holy crap, why Friday, why did I have to agree to Friday? So, you may ask, what am I doing blogging about it at 5:30 in the freaking morning? I should be working!
Just, you know. Stalling.
… and Sophie is seven. Seven! Forty! How has this happened?
Luc helped with the wish-blowing. Sophie had on a fabulous hat and a purple boa. My mom made her wonderful cheesecake. All this after a huge sushi feast with all the aunts and uncles and great-grandmothers, which I might have a photo of later (I forgot my camera battery—DOH) if someone else took one. Cross your fingers because that sushi platter was amazingly gorgeous.
Happy birthday to us! And may I say, having Sophie seven years ago was my best birthday present EVER.
A while back I bemoaned my injured hamstring attachment. I went off all yoga for a week, then found I still couldn’t do any kind of forward bending anything, so switched to Intermediate (much Swensized). I added the Bow sequence from Vinyasa Krama Yoga to flesh out the beginning a little, dropped the leg-behind-head poses (for the hamstring), and I did that for a couple of months. Then, when I had had no daily aching in my hamstring for a week or so, I hesitantly tried a Primary-lite (‘forward bends’ consisted of no more bend than hands on knees) and still, no pain. Woo hoo! So I have returned to Primary, slowly lowering the hands in forward bends. I’m down to shins now.
But sometimes that hamstring aches, still. Sometimes after practice, yikes. And it particularly hurts if I move it cold, like getting out of the car at a red light the other day to run over and drop some netflix movies into the mailbox on the side of the road. When I got back into the car, just as the light turned green, I noticed my hamstring complaining. Nothing major, but the kind of thing that makes me nervous. I want it healed, and if it’s still aching, it isn’t healed, not all the way. The original injury was not from yoga, although I think the attachment was weakened from over-stretching in yoga and primed to get hurt. I am super careful in my practice, and then I do something crazy in my off-the-mat life and break something. Or re-injure that which isn’t yet at full power. It must stop.
So I’ve been giving it a heat treatment before I practice. I have one of those Inferno Wraps from a while ago when I had trouble with my wrists. I open it out flat and sit that sit-bone right onto it, running the length of it down the hamstring. Holy cow does it feel good. I sit there toasting my bum while I drink my coffee and then it’s passively warmed up before I hit the surys. This has been helping immensely. No pain after practice. It makes sense. Warming up before working it, rather than warming it up by working it. I’m hopeful. I think a full recovery is possible. If I’m careful.
I’m reporting all of this because when I first got hurt and was looking at losing my practice altogether, I was combing the net for clues, and blog reports of what various real folk had actually done to heal themselves were really useful. I was not alone! Why is it misery always loves company?
Anyway. Now we turn to other fast breaking yoga news, namely this: I have, finally, at long last, gotten into a FULL LOTUS. Not since I was seven and made entirely of rubber has this been possible.
Obviously, this is not a nice tight, pretty padmasana. It’s a kind of scrunched, barely there, knee-doesn’t-like-it padmasana. That right foot is just about to be sucked under, haha. But that’s okay. Just the fact that that left foot can get up on the thigh at all is so exciting, evidence that change is occurring, even at glacial speed (I’ve been at this a year and a half now). Woo hoo!
When I started, not even half-lotus was possible. Lifting either foot off the floor was excruciating in the knees. Any kind of lotus at all seemed ridiculously unattainable. But here I am.
Give it another year and lotus might go from possible to even actually enjoyable. Hey. It could happen. And my hamstring will be perfect, and I’ll be able to hold Navasana without sinking like the Titanic, and there could be world peace, and free chocolate at the chocolate store—
We went to the giant candy mega gourmet sugar emporium today, wowza, I love that place. We bought foil wrapped chocolate hearts, sampled chocolate truffles, and got two small bags of candy by the pound. Sophie chose licorice mix and mary janes, Luc opted for jellybeans and buttermints. On the ride home, listening to them trade and discuss (“the green one isn’t really booger flavored,” nom nom “well, duh. Do you want to try this red one? It’s licorice flavored.” nom nom “Well, duh. All yours are licorice flavored.” nom nom “I like licorice.” nom nom “Well, it’s better than boogers anyway.” etc.) all was right in the world. I love the sound of contented kiddos.
Actually, I love Valentine’s Day. A whole day for thinking about love and chocolate, what could be better? We got Paul a fancy ceramic coffee to-go mug, filled it with chocolate hearts, and got home and wrapped it with lots of crazy red paper and heart stickers. A cup of love, awwww. I hope he likes it.
I am talking to a couple of artists about creating a cover image for Conjuring Raine. This is really fun, and also ridiculously stressful. But anyway, the current idea has both Raine and Joshua on it, and thus, I’m having to explain something of what they should look like, beyond the deliberately vague physical descriptions I wrote in the book, and, well, it’s hard. Hard, I tell you.
I make physical descriptions in my books pretty vague because I want readers to fill in the blanks on that. Also because a character, to me, is what’s on the inside, not the outside. A few cues on clothes and general hair comments and I pretty much leave it at that. Raine is early 20s, starts the book with long (unspecified how long) multi-colored hair (due to a bad break-up), has pale-ish skin and ‘dark’ (brown? black?) eyes. She wears a lot of black. Joshua thinks she’s pretty and she can wear his jeans, which says something about her size, since he is described as fairly skinny. But that’s it. That’s what we know about what she looks like.
Have you listened to the book? Did you have a picture in your head more specific than that?
Of course, for an artist to actually draw/paint/render-in-some-way-visible an image of Raine, it has to be a lot more specific. Okay, she’s pretty enough—but how pretty? How does she stand? How big are her boobs? Are her teeth straight? Exactly how long and how thick and how curly/straight is her hair? How close together are her eyes? Etc.
ARRG! I don’t know!
I’ve taken to combing the net for photos. Stock photo warehouses, google-image searches, stills from movies I’ve seen with characters who kinda sorta look right. At this point I kind of think of Raine as being a paler, less pretty (or less groomed) Nora Jones. Maybe. You know that kind of mixed-race look. Only not as confident. And no heels.
But really, some other face could work. It just isn’t one of those thin, intelligent, sharp faces. She’s rounder to me, more emotional of feature. And, I suppose, it’s my book cover, so I get to pick.
But Joshua? Well, shoot, I practically describe him as ugly in the book, while still trying to write him as kind of hot, so hows that going to work made flesh? I knew this guy a decade ago, a passing acquaintance, who had this super thick, straight blond hair, came to about his shoulder tops, cut blunt, that he wore slicked back into a stump of hair at the nape of his neck. He had that super translucence to his skin, too, the kind that turns bright red in the cheeks when he got mad. I always thought of Joshua looking like that, I have no idea why. Only Joshua is awkward and weird, where that guy was pretty charming. I can’t find any pictures of a guy like that to show cover artists. I mean, Joshua is stuck at 19 and he came from Eastern North Carolina almost 200 years ago—he’s got to be kind of…plain. Made interesting by his personality and the whole vampire thing, but still, there are no male-models native to Eastern North Carolina for a reason.
No offense to any Easter North Carolinian dudes! It’s just a different kind of face is all. And typical book-cover face is not what Joshua looks like. To me. In my head. If that even matters. Which, maybe it doesn’t.
Because you can’t put a plain looking guy on a book cover, can you? And anyway probably lots of readers don’t see him in their heads as plain. Raine doesn’t see him as plain, but of course, she doesn’t care what he looks like. Hm.Maybe I’d sell more books with a Californian guy on the cover? Like maybe that Smith from Sex and the City, he had a blond pony tail and a kind of bony face.
No, no! says a voice in my head. Joshua DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT.
Fine, I say back to the voice. What does he look like then? And be specific, please.
ARG! AGAIN!
What to do, what to do. I need a photo of a guy with a kind of bony face, too tall and skinny, super intense expression, with super thick blond hair, blunt chopped at the shoulders. Yeah, right. I’ll get right on that.
Any of you listened to Raine? Got any star-casting suggestions for character looks? Cause I’m all out.
THIS is the most hilarious thing I’ve read lately.
Go now. Read. Laugh. I promise.
What are you still doing here?
Rubyfish is our new hand-dyed and decorated clothing venture, coming soon to an etsy shop near you. Sophie is head designer, while I do the back-end grunt work. For example, Sophie painted this lovely logo and chose the font, while I did the scanning, cropping, and uploading.
Together we will rule the world!
- MAYA LASSITER is a writer of fantasy novels, an unschooling mom, a yogini, a former goat keeper, a yurt dweller, and an all-around cool person. Except when she's a boring ninny. Hopefully she won't post on those days.
Buy my books!
Toby Streams the Universe now available on amazon and smashwords!
A psychic in the big city, trying to stay sane....
Conjuring Raine, now available on amazon, B&N, and at Smashwords.
A girl, her vampire, his demon...
You can also listen to the Conjuring Raine free podcast. Enjoy!
coming next: the nightmare novel
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(24.44%)today's yoga practice
- friday
May 11, 2012 | 10:09 am…and now we come to lady’s holiday. the weakest week of yoga that ever barely happened.
- thursday
May 11, 2012 | 9:09 amprimary to navasana. can’t seem to get past freaking navasana this week. at least I’m on the mat.
- wednesday
May 11, 2012 | 9:08 amprimary to navasana with Maria’s vid.
- tuesday
May 11, 2012 | 9:08 amSKIP. Shame.
- monday
May 11, 2012 | 9:07 amprimary to navasana. am I back in the saddle?
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Archive for today's yoga practice »
- friday
"Dusi's Wings" April, 2003. . . .
"One thing fantasy can do for us is to give shape to the mysterious in the world; another is to make emotional yearning concrete. The early sections of "Dusi's Wings" do just that...there was a strong grasping towards the spiritual in fantasy here that was very promising, and I look forward to reading more by Lassiter." --review, Tangent Online.twitterage
"the maya report, continuing civil war and unrest, cloudy with an excellent chance of tears: For Mother’s Day we ... http://t.co/YdPYTfRQ"2 days ago"obsessed with lounge pants: It’s probably the Katwise thing (see yesterday’s post), plus Sophie doing a bunch of... http://t.co/Uuv0m9Dt"6 days ago"the technicolor fairy coats of the amazing and inspring katwise: I adore rummaging around Etsy, I always find co... http://t.co/Fi0d7kmN"7 days ago"botanicula — review: Around here we are HUGE fans of Amanita Design and their wonderful games. I have written be... http://t.co/j5H7nAuf"11 days ago"the surprising and convoluted history of a novel, plus some gorgeous cover art: I just got the last editor lette... http://t.co/CPa7AeYb"15 days ago
