Lighting a Fire for the Future

Posted on September 2, 2010 by randomyriad

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

~ William Butler Yeats

I am done with filling pails. There is no joy in filling pails. Lighting fires is bright work that inspires the teacher as well as the student. Ignite the world with the joy of discovering new worlds. The flames will spread faster than anyone can fill the pails to put them out.

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”

—Sinclair Lewis

I just threw this one in to show what could happen if we don’t light some fires.

Posted in make your own world, mindworks, my life, Other peoples words, philosophy, Teaching and Learning, thinking in words | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Aranansi #13: the Hall of Puppets

Posted on September 1, 2010 by randomyriad

April 01, 2010, 19:43

The Journey to the Depths

Monkey’s adventures in the worlds beyond life

 

A sign stood on a tripod slanted a little out from the wall just inside the curtain covered doorway that led to the theater. Beyond this was a hallway that was dark except for spot lights in the glass display window cases along the walls on both sides in which a wide variety of puppets were posed. There were Indonesian shadow puppets, intricately carved and painted Bunraku heads along with many costumes and other props. In one case, Marionettes hung, some crudely carved mannequin figures and others with life like limbs and faces that had many knobs and buttons on the control wands. There were flat figures, woven in colorful radiating patterns, with hinged joints controlled by strings and rods. These were labeled Tumbellon Dreamtime Figures. There was a complete bestiary of hand and rod puppets with many human characters as well placed on wooden dowels, 10 rows of 10 dowels on steps starting with small ones at the top down to large ones that lay on the floor and looked as if they would need several puppeteers to manage them. Hanging down from the ceiling in the center of hallway were three massive puppets. One was a marionette dragon in flight 20 feet long that would need at least 5 operators. The next was a costume puppet of a cloud being that needed three operators two inside and one on the outside. The last was mechanical spider, 10 feet across, creeping around on a network of strands suspended from the ceiling and didn’t seem to need an operator. I could hear the soft clicking and whirring of flywheels and gears as it moved.

Andre and I walked silently shaking our heads at the fantastic array of artificial life displayed. In one case a mighty warrior in samurai armor stood next to a beautiful maiden dressed in a silk kimono in the middle of a solemn dance. The puppets looked as if they were uncomfortable at holding their poses for so long, and would relax into silent sigh of relief when we looked away. We stood mesmerized in front of this case for a long moment. Finally when the sound of a gong rattled down the hall. Andre pulled my sleeve and pointed to the open doorway a little way ahead.

“We better go, or we’ll miss the beginning,” Andre said trembling slightly with anticipation.

“If the show is anything like this, I don’t want to miss any of it.”

Andre was already through the door before I finished my sentence.

Posted in Aranansi, Dreamtime, Fiction, mindworks, Monkey King, Mythical and mysterious, Puppetry, Telling Stories | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Aranansi #10,11 and 12: Professor Trol’s Emporium

Posted on August 31, 2010 by randomyriad

February 28, 2010, 17:52

Andre lead Morris and I through the maze of narrow streets, hedge lined paths, and alleyways bordered by wooden warehouses, crumbling cottages and shadowy shops filled with mysterious and incongruous items. Finally we reached a narrow alley with a dark channel running down a slimy trench in the middle with plank bridges every so often. The wooden backs of warehouses like fences on either side.  Odors of spices and melancholy emanated from the water, not entirely unpleasant, but chaotic as if the vapors were bright strands tied in complex knots. At the end of the alley was plain looking building, square and bright mauve with a large, sign written with bold circus letters hanging from a pole that stuck out vertically from the eaves.

Professor  Eberhard Trol’s

Emporium of  Temptations and Curiosities

Medicines to Cure Any Ailment (including those of the spirit)

Scents, and Sundries

To Enlighten, Enliven, and Invigorate

And under it hanging from a chain a smaller sign:

The Amazing Hall of Illusions

Witness Demonstrations of Magic and Art

Marionette and Bunraku Dramas Presented Daily

under another one of similar size:

Pay a Visit to the Mystical Menagerie

Astounding Beasts Collected at Great Risk

From Distant Lands.

Andre pointed and smiled. Morris whistled. I stopped and stared. How had I missed this alley and that sign so close to my home. Andre had always been good at finding the strange little corners of the city.

“Have you been in yet?” I asked.

“No, I saw it and knew I would want to have company. “

“Well, let’s go see!” screeched the bird who had landed on the sign pole and was turning his head to the side and hanging down to read the words. He swooped down onto my shoulder. “Personally I don’t go in for menageries. They usually contain predators, and I would just rather not see any big claws and hungry jaws, awk!.”

“Spoken like the little quivering pile of feathers you are, Morris,” Andre said with a big grin on his shining face. “You have to admit, the place looks fascinating!”

I shrugged and gave Morris what I thought was an encouraging “What’s the worse that could happen” look.

He rolled his eyes and gurgled disapproval in the back of his throat as we followed Andre through the door.

My eyes had to adjust to the dimness of the interior from the splendor of the bright day. We were in a large room filled with shelves and display cases crowded with bottles, jars, bags and bins of all shapes and sizes. Wooden and metal machinery and tools hung from the walls and suspended from the ceiling. On one wall hung framed photos and drawings of people, creatures and objects with no obvious connections to each other except that they were all places, people and things unfamiliar to me. There was a door covered by a black curtain in the middle of this wall above a sign:

to the menagerie.

I turned at the sound of voices.  Andre, who had moved to the other side of the room was conversing with a thin short man with a heavy black beard wearing a long burgundy jacket. His dark hair was corkscrew curly sprouting out at all angles from his large round head. As I approached I could see he had large golden eyes like a wolf and large white teeth which flashed when he talked. His voice was soft but penetrating, but somehow I could not catch the words of their conversation even though I could hear both voices clearly.

March 21, 2010, 09:11

Andre turned away from the professor and walked toward me beaming with anticipation.
“The professor says another show is starting  in 10 minutes. We can look around in here and go to the menagerie after.”
“I’ve gotta say, this is some find,” I replied gazing around at the machines and tools hanging from the ceiling and walls. “I could spend a couple of hours in this room.”
Morris gargled and made a little creaking sound. “I think I will just wait outside. This place gives me the creeps, creeps,” he said in a throaty whisper. “I need some sunlight to sweep this gloom out of my head.”
“Very well, old friend,” I said nodding and walking toward the door. “We will see you back at the workshop.”
He fluttered from my shoulder as soon as I opened the door, and without a good-bye flew off into a day that seemed impossibly bright after the gloom of the emporium.

March 29, 2010, 21:01

After I said good-bye to Morris, I browsed around the shelves. On a shelf of dusty aged tomes, I picked a volume embossed with cartographic lines and symbols. “Geographies of Death”  was printed in raised gold letters. I skimmed through it and made a mental note of where I put it down. It was too heavy to carry with me.

On the next aisle was a shelf of large jars with ventilated lids. On the top shelf was a jar labeled “narcissus beetles”,  in it were some medium sized insects with shiny silver shells.  black lines  shifted on their into patterns of different human facesas they moved.  Next to these were glass cases filled with fluttering butterflies and moths. One large case contained deep blue moths with a stark white pattern of a grinning human skull in the center of each wing. This was labeled “Death’s Head Moths.”

Andre was busy with his own investigations and came over several times to show me his discoveries. There was still so much more to see when a bell rang signaling the seating of the next show.

Posted in Aranansi, conversations, Dreamtime, Fiction, Geographies of Death, hidden places, mindworks, Mythical and mysterious, Telling Stories, Wild Life | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Aranansi #9: Andre Bursts In

Posted on August 30, 2010 by randomyriad

February 14, 2010, 20:58

There came a lively rapping at the door of my little workshop home. Morris the Minah who had been dozing making sleepy little gurgling squawks as he perched on the elephant’s head lamp in the corner, woke with loud raspy whistle.

“It’s just the door,” I said as I got up from my work and crossed the room.

I opened the door and blinked at the light. I had been doing some small detail work, and my eyes were not yet ready for the big sun filled day outside. When my eyes came into focus, there stood Andre, an interesting awkward man, sharp and bright yet dark and brooding at the same time. I never know how to approach him, but he is always full of life and ideas. I was glad to see him.

“You have to come with me!” He burst past me into my room working hard to contain his excitement gesturing largely with his arms and hands. “I have found the most fascinating shop, and it is right around the corner from here.”

“Well I’m almost finished with the work I am doing,” I said rearranging my mental day as I spoke. “You could have a cup of tea and talk with Morris for a few minutes while I finish this up. Then I could go with you.”
He looked around, a little embarrassed at not noticing my other guest. “Oh, Hello you old squawker,” he shouted cheerily when he finally located Morris on the lamp. “How’s your Rimbaud these days?”
“Passable, but I am starting to forget some of the more obscure parts. Getting a bit long in the beak, you know.”
“It’s been a long time. Where have you been hiding?”
“I’ve been here and there and just about everywhere since I saw you last.”
” Well I suspect that is the case. I have been right here in this city trying to figure out how to make a living and keep the demons at bay.”
They talked and I worked as Andre made tea. There conversation was like a story about two friends who spend years trying to find each other and then realize they have very little in common.
“I’m finally done with that,” I said as I finished the last touches on the small piece I was engraving. “And not a bad job either. If I do say so myself, which I do.”
Andre put down his tea and came to look over my shoulder. “Very nice indeed,” he agreed a little too loudly. Andre is always very generous and enthusiastic when he wants to show me one of his discoveries.

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Aranansi #8: Green Tom

Posted on August 29, 2010 by randomyriad

February 08, 2010, 19:58

I was moving about in the workshop taking apart one thing and putting together another when Morris squawked loudly, awakening from an uneasy dream. Dreaming isn’t ever very easy in this city. It is more like waking up.
“Bad dream?” I queried.
“The worst! The worst!” Morris screeched.
“All right, all right, just tell me about it.”
“Flying, I was over the tangle forest,” He started nervously, little word noises in the back of his throat. “It turned brown like a wave starting at one side, so fast all the way across. All dead! All brown.”
He ended with a sad whistle.
“That is disturbing.” I patted his black head and gave him a peanut I found on the floor. He took it in his claw and peeled away the shell delicately with his beak.
“I remember replanting the edge of that forest. That’s when I met Leela. “Green Tom showed me how it could be done.”

A chain of memories fell like dominoes in a row that led back to the moment I met Green Tom. I was living in an abandoned factory on the western border of the city at the edge of the tangle forest. The factory was a mangled ruin full of old machinery. It was a maze of  chutes, broken stairs, and ladders to nowhere. It was a perfect place for me at the time as I was working on a flying machine powered by thought and intentions. There were parts just lying around. The ceiling and walls were good enough in some places, the places I worked and lived in, to keep the water and wind at bay. I just hooked up my little generator for light and small machinery and worked away in solitude. No one could visit me there because I was the only one who knew the safe paths through.
One day I heard a muffled pounding a short distance from where I was harvesting some valuable pieces of metal for the wing frame. I climbed through a small tunnel of twisted machinery just in time to see a door burst open on the floor above. The stair was out and chute had fallen in its place just one step inside the door.
“Don’t take a step,” I shouted up, ” Or it will be a long one.”
I could see the lumpy silhouette, roughly person shaped with odd angularities, and vines tangled all round the edges.
“What do you want?” I yelled up again, and the form above rustled.
“I wanted to speak with someone about the forest,” he spoke in deep, penetrating groan like trees in windstorm.
“Stay there I will come up to you,” I shouted again, figuring the best path through the metal maze of the factory.
When I finally navigated my way out and around to the uphill side of the factory, I was surprised to find no one there. There was a strange tangle of ivy leaning against the corrugated sheet metal wall.

“Alo, my name is Tompowjur Boa. Some as call me Green Tom.”
I found his face among the vines and told him my name. He told me that he wandered into the city from the forest to find someone to help him replant the part of the forest that had disappeared into the city. The ancient giant part of the wood dreamers took away to build houses and monuments and games. I told him what I was working on. He thought that would be useful.
He stayed at the edge of the forest near the factory for a while (He could not live with me indoors),and I would visit him every day. He taught me how to plant, and what to plant, and how to sing to the birds and creatures to let them know what I was doing. All that was necessary in the process of making the forest grow where it used to be.
When I finished my flying machine, I went and applied for the replanting job and got it. It wasn’t hard with all that Green Tom taught me. And so I went and worked and met Leela. Morris was living most of the time with Leela then and would recite poetry in the evenings for us. He knew many poets then, but now has lost interest in all but Rimbaud.
“Where did you just go?” Morris said around a beak full of peanut.
“I was just thinking about when I met Green Tom.”
“Green Tom!” He screeched. “I just saw him on my way here. Moping about the high ponds.”
“Really, Did you speak with him.”
“No, Never talk to him anymore.” Morris chortled. “He’s a bit slow for my taste. Much too stiff and rattly.”
“Well, I guess he takes a bit of getting used too,” I said as I went back to work. “Just like some birds I know.”

Posted in Aranansi, conversations, developing relationships, Dreamtime, House and home, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, Wild Life | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment