For El Capitan

So I have been working with two main styles, the Headband and the Do-Rag.  They both start here:

The Do-Rag then gets folded anywhere between here

(Shorter tail over neck)

And here

(Longer tail over neck)

From there it is as simple as placing the folded corner to your forehead

And let the tail droop down and away to make it easier to tie without tangling the tail

One knot

Two knot

Cool

The Headband style just takes a couple more folds...

Try and keep it pretty symmetrical at this stage

Then double one side over

And again.  

Its in the above fold and this one where you really determine the width of the Headband, the more folds before getting here, the thinner it will be.

Then take the bottom-left portion and fold it over everything.  It is integral to the process you don't end up with a symmetrical fold on the last one.  The little lip folding over gives you stability and integrity (of shape) throughout a day's wear.

Lift it directly to your forehead so the lip is on the inside.

I generally lean over because I want as much of my hair to stand out in as many weird directions as I can coerce from it; hair gel helps.

One knot

Two knot

Cool!

Autumn

Autumn means Apples!!!

The estimates of what we picked ranged from 1,300 to 1,600 in the early afternoon.

Once we hauled them all back in a truck to the house I am unpacking into the four of us got an assembly line that was more like a hypercolor zigzag around the kitchen in order to juice the apples.  We had three juicers in the rotation, multiple chopping stations and an intimate understanding of why people invented the apple press.  

I finally got a handle on the Beast of a juicer, a commercial juicer that has an engine so strong the entire thing waddles around the contertop and sometimes roars like a jet.  Hence the ear and eye protection and why they had me outside on the porch.

So I finally got into a routine with the Beast, feeding it apple slices as fast as I could manage while the three folks in the kitchen are outchopping and over-supplying me with apple pieces.  Finally the juicer's engine winds up to a loud scream and the shaking stresses the nuts holding the cover on, which cracks one of the support metal pieces. 

I can tell something is wrong!

But it works out because we switch over to the other juicers that had a rest during that time and finish up 11 gallons, half of which we pasteurize and add yeast to and half of which we will ferment raw into ciders.

Detour

The work in Athens is almost completed.  I have met a few awesome rockers and we've had good times.  Also I met a fellow into Green Energy venture capital (for lack of a better paraphrase) and we have talked extensively about some synergistic ideas.  This alwasy gets me in a mood of talking ownership percentages and ROIs.  

With the economy becoming real and not dreamt up by the Fed's last fifty years of creating money out of nothing and lending it to banks it could be the perfect time to be invigorating companies, helping them bloom and working without Wall Street ('s banks).  

(PS don't worry about China owning the US Treasury, they're selling their children to Marlboro they won't last long)

Ashevillin'

So I have packed my little 'Rolla full to the lid and even strapped Shifty on the trunk.  Its probably a third of what I own, but the cream of the crop.  It took most of the day because I had to unpack everything to find the things I needed, juggle some of them, try some of it on, launder some of it, then repack it all and finally tetris it into the car.  

I didn't mind hanging around my folks place for the day because, well, because my folks are great, I got to watch a couple of good soccer matches and I was hoping to catch my 'little' brother who is in town because his girlfriend's mother passed away.  I don't know the details but what I can piece together seems to be something like they took her off life support...not unexpected.  I wanted to sit and talk with him.  I have never been through such a close death before and hope he is well with it, and wonder what he is feeling.

No real breakthroughs with the musculature, but lifting things all day integrated the changes i've been making into a position of strength as I was able to move from my loose hips and manage heavy boxes at all angles using my new-found abdominal muscles.  

Upside Down and the Outside goes In

Inverted on Sleg's inversion bar for a few minutes this morning.  I recalled something the massage therapist was telling me about muscle cells and how, scattered through every muscle are spindle cells whose function is to seize up if the muscle is over-stretched, to keep it from tearing.  To get into the deeper stretching - at which level it really feels like releasing the years of never-stretched tightness, you have to slowly settle to bypass the spindle cell reflex tightening.  I'm sure i'm off on the details but this is the picture I have in my mind and am navigating into the deeper channels using it as my map.

So me inverted, Mindfolded and finding the focus of tightness to be in my hips and groin and as I breathed into these places, i could slowly feel my skeleton separating, opening and closing with my breath.  Even as I sit on the floor typing this i can feel the pelvic bones tentatively settling into a slightly more open position.  Now the next thought is how to continue to engage these muscles which have been held tight in compensatory positions for years without over-doing it and injuring myself...how does one strengthen the psoas?

Stereolaboratory

It is official.  Stereolab still has it.  And they were giving it away last night.  I was even impressed with the opening act Atlas Sound which was a soundscape created by one geeky guy.  

Stereolab did only have the one female lead singer but they played some of the songs they both sang on, which was awesome because they are some of my favorites. During these it sounded as if they were playing a recording of her singing in the background - that or one of the guys was impersonating her voice quite well. 

Prana

There's something about waking up drunk at 11am, feeling a bout of panic and to alleviate it scribbling out a rent check and mailing it to a town two states away.  I am going to go do a headstand to Moby's 'Ambient.'

So that headstand turned into an hour and a half of yoga.  Had to switch from Moby to Art of Noise (Moments in Love is a secret place that only few know about).  The yoga was a payoff for all the years i've been working with my body to keep it bodying...it was the single greatest session of yoga i've ever done.  My psoas muscles released opening my hips and relaxing my pelvis.  I can't put into words how this makes me feel, its like receiving a new body, the sensation of the inner pelvis stretched apart what might not even be measurable in milllimeters and the consequences of my legs turning inwarder is so strengthening/releiving/releasing/refreshing that I walked around the house like David Bowie for half an hour rolling my femur balls in the hip sockets and feeling my pelvis work in symmetrical halves instead of as a fixed unit.  The sensation of my frontal groin bone being moveable is both eerie, for its sudden differentness, and like coming home.  

I laid in corpse pose for ten minutes, listening to Moments in Love again, breathing into my now-opener skeleton and the muscles all twisted around it.  Having received a most spectacular massage two days ago all my muslces were primed for this session of stretching.  The connection made obvious between the deepness into the core of my body and the awesome massage (i'll gladly recommend her if you ask me) has me pining for regular yoga instructed practice and more massages!  Also I can't help but notice this occurred on a day after a night of a good deal of alcohol, lets be honest, and how it acted like a dye put in the body sending toxic flashes where it was most concentrated, in those deep tight recesses, and that instigated me to want to move my consciousness deeper and deeper into my sensation, like scratching an itch.  

Having come out on the other side i'm in a post-elation downer, but am gonna keep moving towards the Stereolaboratory being constructed in the Variety Playhouse tonight.  This could make it into the Book of the Greatest of Days.

Stereolab

This is why I love Stereolab and why we are gonna Ride the Sharks into the ATL tomorrow night!!!

Dialogue in the Dark

So the Rogue Therapist collective got together to attend Dialogue in the Dark.  After purchasing tickets at the booth where Sleg said "they will pull this student I.D. card from my cold, dead hand" as we both got discounts, we began debating on whether we should Mindfold into the building or not.  It ended up with Ishkur and my's elf Mindfolding into the exhibit with Sleg playing Seer.  We actually got some cheering and applause for our entrance, which led me to believe the lights were on in the building so far.  

Surprisingly the people who came to usher us to the lockers and take our tickets were not very adept at working with sightless people as Sleg described later, 'it was pretty funny because she had a look on her face as if you were stupid for not taking the ticket from her when you couldn't see her holding the ticket stub at you.'  

So there is an interesting validation of the Mindfold training, our acuity of sightless interaction lends perspective when not Mindfolding/seeing things.

I don't want to spoil the actual exhibit by describing it here so let me just say that it is a pretty well-crafted set of experiences that you are guided through in an hour.  

At the end of it we three talked about how easy it was for us to move through.  The canes we were handed were more in the way then helpful, but that was probably from the close quarters and being in a group of people.  They take you in in groups of seven so if you can gather a crew of like minds attend in that fashion.  

Overall a great intro into being deprived of sight.  And something we will undoubtedly pull from in future Mindfold introductions.

One thing I particularly noticed was that most everyone seemed to be upright when moving (judging from where people were when I bumped into them) while the Mindfolding we've played with has led us to move lower, crouched or even on all fours for more safety and efficiency when exploring unfamiliar surroundings.