Welcome to the V-sphere! The rebellious semi-hidden blog of an otherwise obsessively overly professional appearing, perfectionistic, female artist This is the space where you can find out more about me than you ever wanted to know. Dive in! The water is warm, but don't expect any photos facing the stern. This photo is a metaphor for how I approach life. It's not a beer ad! RSS Feed 2/27/2006 Books & Serenity song du jour: Caravan, Ella Fitzgerald mood: mmmm(!) One of the coffins found in the newly discovered tomb, KV63 Have you ever seen a more serene face? When it comes to portraying the gaze into eternity, the Egyptians remain masters of all time. Even if you're not gaga for Egyptian art, most people find it impossible not to be struck by how compelling those faces are. For me, it beats the hell out of the nonchalant, lackadaisical expressions of the Hellenistic and Classical Greek era: "Oh, look, I'm a lovely woman lounging around in my vast amounts of drapery." and "Oh, look, I'm a fierce warrior slaying Achilles." always appearing pretty much the same from the neck up. Alright, so the faces in Egyptian art don't change expression much either, but they catch the viewer up in their gaze beyond, inviting the viewer to do the same instead of just appearing mildly bored. Not that I'd turn my nose up at a trip to view more Greek art in situ, or sailing around the Aegean, or eating olives by the pound, or entertainment in the way of something tall, dark, and handsome... what was I talking about? Oh, right... art. Bets are on that the face on the coffin pictured above is that of Ankhesenamun, wife of Tutankhamen. Unless, of course, it turns out to belong to a man, or they find the name of someone else on it when the team conserves the damage. She gets my vote for now. Funny, even before I read of that pure speculation, I'd thought of her as a possible candidate. As I said last week, the tomb was found by the team from the University of Memphis. It seems to be New Kingdom, probably 18th dynasty, and I had to laugh when I remembered my last trip to Memphis. Tennessee that is. I was meeting with Dr. Lorelei Corcoran, co-director of the dig, and the professor who would have been my advisor had I not changed my mind about going to grad school at the last minute. I think I muttered something that gave away that I was less than enamored at the idea of studying the Greco-Roman period of Egypt, only for her to tell me that was her area of expertise. - I learned in that moment never to talk serious business without at least trying to research someone ahead of time. - When she asked me my area of interest, and I declared my love of the late 18th dynasty (Ankhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tut's world), she gave me a slightly patronizing though patient smile, as that era is considered so overly popular with wannabe Egyptologists and KMT thrill seekers as to be positively cliche. Well, Dr. Corcoran is up to her neck (literally) in the 18th dynasty now, in the kind of discovery that makes careers and legends. Excavations at KV63 are still painstakingly going on, with the usual mum to the public enforced by Zahi Hawass, Supreme High Potentate of the Supreme Council of Anything Old or Valuable in the Grand State of Egypt. Dr. Zahi seems to be trying to singlehandedly bring down the illegal trade of antiquities, a laudable effort in theory, by a trickle backwards method. By making museums so afraid of purchasing anything that might have ever been smuggled out, no matter how long ago (as in back when the Egyptian government and people couldn't have cared less), I believe he hopes the dealers' trade will dry up, making them less likely to do business with the poor farmers, who get lucky looking for bits of the past in the fields like diamond diggers in Sierra Leone. Unfortunately, neither the thirst of private collectors nor the complete poverty in which most Egyptians live is likely to dry up along with the acquisition of artifacts by museums. I suppose Dr. Zahi's grand plan is that by keeping everything in Egypt, people will either have to travel there, increasing the tourism industry, or rely on grand exhibitions like the one currently on tour in the U.S. Egypt is certainly making enough off this one to take care of a chunk of its citizens, but like all 3rd world countries, the problem is not one of lack. It's one of distribution, and the $$$ has to be funneled through the greedy politicians first. What was I talking about? Oh, right art... 1:41 PM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 0 comments Books & Dating the Latest Fashion song du jour: Hair, from the original Broadway soundtrack mood: tangled ;-) I just started reading Dr. Joann Fletcher's The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery I keep trying to finish the books I've started, but then Amazon keeps bringing these little brown packages to my door, and they make me giddy the way shiny things usually do. Seriously, I'm on page 67, and if it keeps up, this promises to be the best written book on Egyptology I've ever picked up, and as you might imagine, I've read many. First of all, she blows off the obligatory, educate-the-lay-masses, introductory chapter that inevitably starts with "Heroditus described Egypt as the gift of the Nile..." - How many books by well known Egyptologists do I own that start off like that? I wouldn't even try to count. - Instead, Fletcher uses the perspective of her first trip to Egypt as an enthusiastic teen to put the pieces of Egypt's history into a background, illuminating to those newer to the subject, yet completely captivating to those of us, who know that story by heart. She tells of the discrepancies in the assumptions and accepted history that she noticed even as a teenager and hints at how she will explain some of my favorite unsatisfactory explanations like who succeeded Tutankhamun and how they did so. Fletcher literally put her career on the line by not only putting forth a theory that flies in the face of the staid establishment, but also by going around the accepted protocol to present her highly researched ideas to the public. Her theory is quite plausible and rests on more evidence than has led other (male) Egyptologists to declare a few men past pharaohs. Her heroes include some of my own like Howard Carter, and William Flinders Petrie, but also Amelia Edwards, the writer and single, Victorian woman, who created the still active Egypt Exploration Society and endowed Britain's first chair of Egyptology, the first held by Petrie, at University College London. She blew off Oxford and Cambridge in her bequest because UCL was "the only university to admit men and women on equal terms reagrdless of religious belief." It was founded in 1827 and accepted students 'without distinction of color, caste, creed, or sex,' and so it became known as 'the godless and infidel establishemnt of Gower Street.' Makes me want to go take a course there. ;-) I'll let you know how the book goes. I ordered it because I caught repeat airing of a Discovery Channel special and because since it first aired, I've totally agreed with the findings she announced in a press conference in September of 2003. I too believe that the nearly forgotten mummy, known as 'the younger woman,' stashed away in a walled up chamber in the tomb of Amenhotep II in The Valley of the Kings is the mummy of a pharaoh and the mummy of Nefertiti. With the evidence she brings to light, there aren't many other women it could be, but people get upset at the possibility that Nefertiti ruled as co-regent and then as a pharaoh after the death of her husband despite all the pictorial and written evidence, showing her as a ruler. As far back as the 1960's Egyptologists were putting forth the theory that Nefertiti had ruled as co-regent and then as pharaoh based on the carvings of some 30,000 blocks uncovered under the foundations of Karnak and several mortuary temples as well as evidence from Amarna, the contemporary name for the city she helped found. We still cling to the idea that pharaohs were always men. They usually were, but not always, and the Egyptians didn't seem to mind too much when they weren't. - It's popular to claim that Tutmoses III hated Hatshepsut so much he obliterated her name from her monuments, replacing hers with his own, but that was a common way of attributing more art to the current ruler and not merely a way of wiping out the name of a ruler because (gasp) she was a woman. Despite the many women, who figured heavily in the birth of Egyptology as a formal area of study, the climate was Judeo-Christian and European, and particularly, Victorian. Women in these traditions were only permitted supporting roles, and ignoring the women of their time, who were independent, male archaeologists filtered all their finds through this cultural view. Many of the papers on Egyptology and anthropology, written by women were not published because the topics or depth they covered were considered 'too delicate' and accepted for publication only by male authors. But of course, if we're talking about the Victorian era, we're talking about a time when one of Europe's most powerful leaders was a woman! English Egyptologists were well versed in the idea of powerful queens, who, when there was not a male heir, proved, like Elizabeth I, to be among the strongest their empire has ever known. The irony is positively tedious. Fletcher's area of expertise is another thing that keeps her an outsider of the boys club. While in school, she realized how much art and evidence was ignored out of sexism. As she puts it, who the ancient Egyptians were depends on the view of the Egyptologist, so if one is primarily a boys club prof, then the Egyptians of interest are the literate, educated, male elite. That's a VERY small section of the population. Fletcher believes that all ancient Egyptians are worth studying (obvious to us perhaps, but revolutionary to the field), and so she focused her post graduate studies on artifacts of daily life, particularly hairstyles. Think about turning on one of the old movie channels. You see a movie in color with actors you don't immediately recognize, but you know instantly what era the movie was from even if it wasn't set in its contemporary time. How? The hairstyles and clothing, of course. No matter when the plot is set, if you see a woman with boufed up hair and blue eye shadow, you know the movie was made in the 1960's. It works the same with the hair and makeup styles in Egyptian art. Ancient Egyptians put great emphasis on appearance. Men paid just as much attention as women to their coiffure, wearing makeup and, at times, longer hair, wigs, or extensions than did Egyptian women. LIke Samson and Delilah, ancient cultures often associated long hair on men with virility. Not only can one use hair and hairstyles to date artifacts, they can be the key to understanding a person's rank and socio-economic status. Sadly, because men from the early 1800's and up view such endeavors as partaining to women only, they dismissed much of the most obvious evidence in front of them and often tossed it aside just as they tended to do with anything else deemed 'feminine.' While people all over the West from the pro-Aryans like Hitler to present day African-Americans have argued over Nefertiti's ethnic background to claim her as a mascot for their race, the real argument lies in our inability to reconcile a nearly supreme icon of beauty with an incredibly powerful, possibly even ruthless, world class leader. It makes our male oriented little heads spin. Part III forthcoming 1:08 PM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 2 comments Those Queens Were Kings: Authenticity and Why You Should Care! song du jour: Revolution, The Beatles mood: Jammin' As of last night, I'm halfway through Fletcher's book, and it's definitely the best written and one of the most carefully researched books on Egyptology, or history for the matter, that I've ever read. It turns out that Egypt had quite a few female rulers in her past. There were many, who reigned as co-regents until their sons or step-sons were old enough to rule, but there is more than enough evidence, titles like 'daughter of amen' and even just plain 'king,' that show women reigned in their own right. Because many male Egyptologists could not come to terms with carvings of women wearing the various types of kingly crowns, they have been recorded at best as co-regents or at worst dismissed as a time when the insignia of royals were shown less respect and importance! When the women wearing crowns and holding the king's scepter are noted as rulers, they are explained away as a time when Egypt lacked an appropriate heir and passed off as merely filling the gap in time, negating the accomplishments most of them made. This is like saying that Elizabeth I and Mary with her were just taking up the gap in real rulers between Edward VI and James I (and not forgetting, of course, poor Jane Gray). I'm wondering how most of the men out there would feel if one day Bill and W, their accomplishments and the destruction they created (respectively, of course) were given 2 sentences in history books that blew them off (no pun intended) as merely that brief period leading up to the real leadership of Hillary, because historians writing the books believed men to be generally incapable of and unsuitable for such authority. Ludicrous, isn't it? Well, it works both ways! We have such a power=male mindset in the west that queens are still thought of as supporting roles only. We assume the title 'great wife' to indicate the same uterus with a crown attached as the position of European queens, and worse, the title 'wife of the king' has been dismissed as meaning concubine. The evidence shows that queens were women with first hand power, whether or not they were official co-regents. 'Wife of amen,' a title held by many of the most powerful royal women throughout history, was an extremely high position in the priesthood. Think 'pope.' So in my love of mysteries, I'm putting forth my own crazy theory before I find out if Fletcher suggests it (in this or a future book). This one's based on a growing suspicion more than tons of research on my part, but there is nonetheless enough evidence to consider it. I think, however briefly, Ankhesenamen ruled after her husband Tut's death. She would have seen her mother, Nefertiti do the same. There is much correspondence that she was facing a forced marriage to the vizier, Ay, and so asked the Hittite king to send one of his sons to be her husband. For her to ask for one of Egypt's long time enemies to rule with her, she must have been desperate. That much is well known and accepted. What no one I've read talks about is who was ruling during this time. It couldn't have been Ay, or she would not have been in the position to offer said Hittite prince the possibility of ruling with her as she stated in her pleas. I have another theory. (Yes, I know. I'm full of them!) According to Google, I'm not alone on this one. When I was watching that Discovery Channel documentary on Fletcher's discovery, I saw something I'd never noticed. For all the time I've spent staring at photos, the real thing, and then the photos I took of the real thing, I saw Tutankhamen's mask in a new way for the first time. It's Nefertiti's face, at least it's the same one as the famous bust in Berlin. It looks far more like the reconstruction of her than of him in profile. Ever since Carter showed the objects to the world, people have noticed that there are 2 different likenesses portrayed in them and realized that, as was often the case, items intended for one were used for another's burial. Many of Tutankhamen's objects are attributed to Smenakare, whom many people think was a male ruler between Ankhenaten and Tutankhamen but who was more likely to have been simply Nefertiti under the name she took as pharaoh. (Pharaohs had some 5 required names.) The miniature coffins on tour right now bear a form of her name not Tut's, but few have talked about the likeness of the mask being so similar to that of her famous limestone bust. Above my desk hang the drawings I've done of each of them. Years apart, but you'd think I would have noticed that I drew the same nose, the same mouth, the same space in between. Do they portray the same person, or were the objects by which they were inspired created in the same artistic climate? The same school of art? Too funny if the dude, who inspired me to become a metalsmith turned out to be a fellow chick. Now perhaps instead of the masculine form, when my mom is in my living room with Skyler, she'll have to joke, "Look, it's your great great great great great great great great great grandMA!" One thing for certain: my son will grow up in a climate where value is not based on gender. 1:05 AM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 0 comments 2/18/2006 ILP Kit Now Available in Dry Roasted, but Will They Ever Have Chocolate Covered? song du jour:Whip It, Devo mood: bloody well over it already (imagine me rolling my eyes) Note: if you're about to blow off this post due to it's length, then at least do me the honor of reading the last 2 paragraphs! Thanks, V Lately, I've seen more than a little blogged on life practices, particularly Integral Institute's new and now sold out Integral Life Practice Kit. At the Atlanta Integral Salon meetings the hyper-masculinity of ILP/ITP is an old topic. I've been bugging the men in the group for well over a year now about how anything truly integral depends on including both masculine and feminine energies, and I've been heavily backed by the other women in the group. For those, who have been spared a jump down the rabbit hole, the notion of ILP/ITP is that by cross training our bodies and minds, we become better wholes. That's the masculine way of describing it. Nothing wrong with that, except that at least half of you out there are probably thinking, "Sheesh, I gotta DO something else?", or worse, "Sheesh, how utterly tedious and boring!" My hard line/embracing opinion is that if you're not engaging in activities with masculine AND feminine energies, then it ain't the least bit integral, and it certainly won't be particularly transformational. Yes, ebuddha, practice is a masculine word. You don't catch many women saying, "I've have to do my ________ practice now." It's like going to the ladies room. We don't' talk about it endlessly, find it a source of amusement, or drone on about the necessity of it. We simply go. ...and the word modules, ugh. Module is word that is best used only in sentences with such words as lunar, Apollo, and mission. Do we really buy into the idea that if it's not boring and hard, then it's not worthwhile? Why don't we just have an endurance test at 'the end?' Whoever can talk the longest about the benefits of his ILP with the most boring and hyper-masculine terms is declared the Most Integral Grand Poo Pa and the only human known to have reached 5th tier. (Yawn.) When my friend, Matt, first said, "So, V, what's your ILP?", and I went, "uh..." He asked me what I did to engage body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Now, to about half of you out there, that might not sound so icky, right? That doesn't mean everyone will want to jump on the bandwagon, but I'd bet that concept is not a horrendous boring turn off. It works like this. Draw a tick-tac-toe bored. At the top write the words body, mind, and spirit, one word above each square. Along the side, write self, culture, and nature to the side of the boxes. Now fill in the boxes with what you already do and want to keep doing. Example: in the box in the middle, which would be mind in culture, you could put the obvious, salons, book clubs, political activism, which are all great, but you might put down something as simple as "those amazing eye opening conversations I have at lunch with my coworker, Louise." Seriously. If that revs up your left or right brain in a way that inspires you, and you do it consistently, it counts. If you take a dance class at the beach on a regular basis(I wish!), put it in all these boxes: body in self, body in culture, body in nature, spirit in self, spirit in culture, spirit in nature. Put more than one activity in each box. Patterns will emerge. You will notice that many activities will fill in the blank for more than one box each. For what's still blank, you will probably realize that there are new things you've wanted to try (learning Spanish, going to a meditation group, taking a painting class), or old things you'd like to start back (yoga classes, various forms of meditation). Put them down. Stretch yourself. Engage your own intuition about what's missing from your life. Suddenly life has just opened up a little space where you thought there was no time. ILP figured out. Please make checks payable to Victoria Lansford. ;-) Hey, I'm one of the success stories. Doing what Matt showed me, cured my frequently recurring migraines! You wouldn't believe, though, how many really bright, with-it guys get stumped by that kind of matrix explanation of ILP, and so if a kit that irons it all out for them makes them happy, that's fine. Some people need to be told what to do with as few choices as possible, lest they get very confused. There area also many people out there, who've been clamoring for something other than books. It's about damned time a think tank based on the concept of embracing as much as possible ventured into multimedia formats. After 20+ books, we're all craving a little something in addition. Personally, I'm usually kind of a sucker for the well marketed kit. I won't always buy it, but standing in line at Barnes & Noble, I'll pick up and look at every fung shui, desk water garden, zen this or that thing in a cute box. I get the appeal of one stop shopping to up your life quality, but here's my big big frustration with the dryness of it all: At one salon meeting, the guys, who'd been to some of I-I's week long seminars, were saying that the facilitators told them that a consistent life practice is easy. Just "sit, lift, heal." (Meditate, lift weights, do something to help others.) With my eyebrows about a millimeter from my hairline, I looked at one of the women in the group and said, can you imagine these guys' knee jerk reactions if one of us came back and declared the official edict was "embrace, dance, heal?!?" I got a lot of blank looks from a lot of really smart wonderful guys. That's the problem. No matter how 'enlightened' most men are, there is still this culturally pervasive belief that the cut to the chase, streamlined, no nonsense way to go about everything is THE ONLY way things should be done, and by golly, if Integral Institute outlines "gold-star practices" then everyone ought to just skip everything else in favor what really works, right? Disclaimer: Although these practices have been shown to lower blood pressure and produce a sense of calm, associated with those perceived as enlightened, enlightenment is not guaranteed, and overzealousness of this product may cause arguments and potential breakups with female romantic partners. The masculine mode as the only way feeds into our clinging Puritan ideal that if you're not being disciplined all the time, then you're not accomplishing anything, but discipline in all things squeezes the life out of creativity! We can't begin to address environmental problems or world hunger until we can approach these mammoth endeavors with new and better ideas, which will only come from greater creativity, and by worrying almost exclusively about discipline, we've stripped the creativity out of life like we've farmed the nutrients right out of the foods we eat. Examples of masculine activities or practices: sitting meditation, weight lifting, analytical writing, Iyengar yoga, break dancing, some styles of hip hop dancing, reading philosophy, sports, most blogging, taking a primarily disciplined approach to anything, engaging in the purely directional, focusing on "mind over matter," focusing on emptiness Examples of feminine activities or practices: sacred dancing, Ashtanga yoga, drawing, painting, (almost anything in the arts has a strong feminine component even blacksmithing), Eastern and Middle Eastern styles of dancing, strolling in the park (on the grass not the concrete), lyrical styles of jazz and modern dancing, anything where one can revel in the sensuality of the moment, anything that focuses on opening or fullness, anything that engages creativity That last word gets left off most of the time, doesn't it, and yet what study of business or science doesn't show that creativity is VITAL to us all? How are you going to solve the world problems you like to discuss if you're only a sitting, weight lifting dude, determined to better the world by explaining that we all operate from different value memes, and everyone else just needs to hurry up and move to a higher one already? If you really only see value in transcendence (as so many so called integralite men do), then take yourself up to the mountain top already, and stop torturing your spouse or girlfriend (who likely thinks you're from Mars), or do us single girls a favor, and remove yourself from the pool of single available men. ILP by any other name is a way to connect it all not an escape!!! I find a lot of men are so caught up in trying to accomplish their goals before they die that they fail to notice that their obsessions with meditation, working out, succeeding at work, etc. are the very Atman project that Wilber warns against. As my friend and fellow integralite, Joe, is fond of saying, only the ego wants to transcend the ego. So, if you're going to die, and there's no escape, why would you scoff at opening fully to what's here? Creation, chaos, energy, primordial ooze, take a dive in it. The water's warm. It's entirely possible that the accepted notions of stripping everything away in order to feel present, such as one friend's example of eating consciously is to stand at the kitchen counter "just me and the chicken," is a way to cope with the way men's brains are ordered to focus on one task or thought at a time. Hey, if it works...just leave me the space and respect to be fully present with a 5 course dinner that requires being bitten, sucked, and savored, while languishing on exotically colored cushions in a room with sultry beats and warm laughter for, while mastery is born of discipline, sensuality and abandonment into the moment are the soil from which creativity grows, and creativity, my friends, is life. 11:14 PM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 8 comments A Box of Yummy Art and Literature song du jour: Heart of Glass, Blondie mood: :-) from Jean's lovely Valentine gift to us all It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Antoine de Saint-Exupery 10:12 PM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 0 comments 2/14/2006 Those Guys Being...Guys song du jour: Breaking Us in Two, Joe Jacckson mood: peachy From the Director's Journal on the Dance 101 website Tuesday, Feb 14th Valentine's Day: Ok so this is funny. We've had a "rush" of men (ok ok so just a whopping FOUR) all but bust through our front door wanting to buy gift certificates. They run in here all huffing and puffing ("Wow, I am SO glad you are open!"). They don't want to learn about the class cards or our packages, but rather- "Talk to me about money...how much?" So, we've had a great sales day as we've sold several 8 class cards for $200 a piece. Just kidding. We would never take advantage of a thoughful man - no matter how last minute his brain might work! But you'll be happy to know we did manage to harrass them a little - but also commended them on doing something really nice. Guys are such... guys. Well put, Ofelia! (She's one of my dance, not to mention art in business, heroes, if I haven't mentioned it lately!) I couldn't have put it any better, although lately I've certainly been putting it longer. I'm a bit behind in linking this up, but over at Generation Sit, David Jon Peckinpaugh and I have been posting an ongoing dialog about (what else?) masculine and feminine modes of, well, pretty much anything. Here's an excerpt from part 2: Victoria: Yes, it's sad to me too when people would rather focus on the end/goal than open to what is in front of them. If the 70's were 'gonna' oriented (gonna change the world, gonna make everyone love each other, gonna "buy the world a coke... and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony"), and the 80's were the yuppie gimme gimme gimme years, then from he 90's through to now, we've become the gotta gotta gotta culture. Gotta get it done, gotta get on track, gotta make more money, gotta get a practice, gotta get enlightened... nd so we view most of what comes across our desks, into our in boxes and RSS feeds, or into our lives strictly as potential for helping us get somewhere... or not. Perhaps the term 'good conversationalist' has gone out of fashion, but nothing inspires me like wild brainstorming or the expanding of ideas with another like minded soul. Being an extrovert, I'm completely recharged by such an exchange, since I spend so much time alone in the art making process. Creative camaraderie was the energy behind the agendas of all the great schools of art from the 19th and 20th centuries. David Jon: Yeah... what immediately pops into awareness for me is the Zen appreciation of what Shunryu Suzuki called "beginners mind." If we have all sorts of preconceived ideas about where we want to go, need to go... or, as you suggest the most recent cultural mindset dictates - we GOTTA GO - then how do we ever open up to the truly new and novel? How do we ever get out of our prefabricated boxes? how do we ever come across anything original and unconditioned? As the Buddha is reported to have put it over 2,500 years ago, as recorded in the Pali Canon, "If not for the unborn, ungrown, and unconditioned there would be no escape for the born, the grown, and the conditioned." Our hope resides in that which is not already formed: not already formed/conditioned in our minds; not already formed/conditioned in our awareness; not already formed/conditioned in our relationships. That is why I find it impossible to converse with you, Victoria, on the basis of those old 'stereotypes' of what a male/female relationship is supposed to be like. I can only hope several galleries across the country had the same kind of rushing men, buying many pairs of Star-Heart earrings and necklaces!!! (But it's never too late...) 10:11 PM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 0 comments I Want my Mummy! song du jour: Kind Tut, Steve Martin (yes...again) mood: thinkin' Never say The Valley of the Kings is exhausted! Here's the best video I found on the newly discovered tomb, KV63, complete with an appearance by the wildly passionate Dr. Zahi himself. (I believe the dude doesn't allow filming of archaeological sites without his getting to appear on camera.) We all think, from time to time, about the paths we might have taken instead of the ones we did. I have no regrets about my choices, but when stuff like this pops up, at least I know I wasn't the slightest bit delusional in my dreams. I spent my childhood and a chunk of my adolescence - ok, who am I kidding? part of my 20's! - dreaming of finding another tomb in that valley, despite most everyone insisting there weren't any more. The team that discovered it is from the University of Memphis, the place I was accepted for grad school in Egyptology and hoped I'd continue working with afterwards before making that last minute decision that I'd rather make art than dig it up. It's really rather nice to know that my dream was validated and quite possible. Besides, having believed for a time that live Egyptians were more interesting than mummified ones, I ended up with a little one of my own, and I sure wouldn't trade him! ;-) 12:37 AM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 0 comments 2/08/2006 'Gyna Sapiens' and Bison Tacos (yum) song du jour: Lady Marmalade, Patti LaBelle mood: smirkin' For the past month, interspersed with a few rather literary mysteries, I've been reading Leonard Shlain's Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Evolution, and I would put it in the top 5 Must Read list of 2006. Its brilliance is unparalleled. I haven't gotten this excited about a book since I first read The Marriage of Sense and Soul by Ken Wilber. If you are even slightly interested in evolution, vaguely interested in anthropology, or mildly interested in gender relations, this book is one stop shopping, and Shlain's writing is jam packed, extremely funny, and does not require learning extensive new vocabulary or having a degree in anything that ends in 'ology,' 'onomy,' or 'sics.' The book has inspired massive essays in my head every time I've picked it up. (I'm really into reading 2-5 books at a time right now, which is in no way a reflection on any of them.) I don't wish to minimize or reduce any of Shlain's theories by squishing them into once sentence explanations, but I will explain that 'Gyna Sapien' is the name he gives to early female Homo Sapiens for it is she, through her radically different reproductive cycle, who first becomes aware of time beyond the instinctive seasonal changes of storing nuts for winter. I'd never given quite such deep thought as to why humans function so differently from other primates. I've heard a lot of theories about why we should never have become meat eaters (comparatively poor teeth for the job) and marveled at how our cycles match the moon, but until now I never pondered the evolutionary advantage of the female orgasm. There's an entire chapter on the subject. If that doesn't make you want to read it, I give up. Shlain cites his inspiration for this book to be his career spanning question (he's a vascular surgeon by day), why could it possibly be advantageous for a woman to loose so much iron? I haven't come to his full answer yet (It's promised in chapter 13, which I just started), but I spent the first night reading it, obsessing over the possibility that I was anemic. Turns out I was. After adding more organic red meat, I started getting MUCH more energy. As I said, I've heard many arguments for vegitarianism, and I'm certainly all in favor of more compassionate, less corporate ways of farming and raising (and killing) livestock, however, Shlain provides the best omnivore arguments I've ever come across, namely that our bodies are designed to eat efficiently. In eating meat, we are eating the digested and metabolized vegies ingested by another animal that is better able to absorb the nutrients, particularly iron from plants. We traded producing the many of the necessary enzymes and such as our herbivore primate cousins in favor of using that energy to make bigger brains. Now before you go citing heart disease statistics at me, take a look at the correlation between the increase in heart attacks and the radical changing of farming methods, especially the forcing of cows to eat grain instead of their natural diet of grass. Other theorists propose that by farming out the needed fats our bodies use to repair and maintain healthy blood vessels, we process the next best available and less effective fats from the meat, which create plaque. That's why in my quest to get more iron from the source, I'm eating bison tacos as I'm writing. Whole Foods didn't have any grass fed ground beef, and the butcher talked me into trying bison, which is grass fed. I have to admit these are the best tacos I've ever made!!! So, you might have guessed by now that women's increased need for iron has something to do with men's hunting rituals. That's the theory. One of Wilber's favorite theories to explain the original division of labor and the subsequent move into patriarchy is the plow theory put forth by Janet Chafetz. Her idea is that women moved from equal stick digging farmers to housewives, whose hubbies were working the field with ox driven plows, because of an increase in the likelihood of miscarriage in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy. Up until recently I planned to write a whole paper on why that theory didn't explain patriarchy very well, and one day approaching a traffic light with no plow thought in my head, it suddenly hit me in one sentence. It's a flatland theory. (Ok, 2 sentences.) While there is certainly sufficient evidence that heavy labor causes miscarriage, making the theory plausible, it deals only with the social aspect (Lower Right quadrant for the integralites), making it extremely partial, and cannot account for anything corresponding culturally for it assumes that men working the plows came to view this work as being of more value (because we're looking at early agriculture through the patriarchal lenses of our own culture), and it fails to explain why there was still a shift toward patriarchy in rice planting cultures, where women, to this day, do half or more of the work. It also (ok, 3 sentences) wrongly assumes that all women are perpetually in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy. (Goddess forbid!!!) While Shlain's book (thus far) is not focused on a better single theory, it is obvious to me that whether division of labor is the cause of patriarchy or not, that division was created as soon as we were. It didn't happen thousands of years later. Jumping ahead a little, lest I write a 5 page blog entry, if men were good for bringing us iron in exchange for our favors, and we can get it ourselves now, what exactly are they good for? - If that freaks out the feminists, keep in mind they needed to do something to attract us. Being women, who walk upright, birthing babies with bigger heads increased our maternity mortality rate 30-50%!!! - I'm not male bashing here. I'm asking the question a little tongue in cheek but a little sincerely too. Ok, daddies, certainly. Confused and in perpetual existential crisis sperm donors too often though. For many, even when they stick around they are often self absorbed in their own careers and goals. The nurturing man is one, who is aware, and while I'm fortunate to know a few, he's not very prevalent. Pondering this question has made me decide that unless I clearly do the inviting, never again will I offer to pay on a date! Spare me that stupid rules book, and come on! The ritual of wining and dining a woman is literally thousands of years old, and at one time our very survival depended on it. One thing I can tell you men are not good for is salsa. Since my favorite dance studio in the universe, Dance 101, moved to its fabulous new 3 studio location, I've tried to take a couple of classes only to leave, thinking I need to stick to jazz and belly dancing. It's the same ritual every class. I go in hoping that there will be some men, who are advanced enough to challenge me and really give me a chance to dance, and at best I get a guy, who is nice but a dreadfully weak leader and less advanced than me, and at worst that arrogant idiot tonight, wearing a t-shirt with 'Buck Fuddy' printed on the front. That guy threw me into a spin barely holding onto my finger, so in order not to fall, I had to grab onto his. Afterwards he told me he was only going to let me do one spin so I didn't take off his finger. It's a double spin from an off balance position for the woman. If I didn't hold onto something I'd be intimate with the floor. "In the choice of your finger or my cracked pelvis or head, it will definitely be your finger. Be glad I didn't have to hold onto your balls." I thought indignantly. "And only in your dreams would I be your 'fuddy'." Yes, salsa is still a perfect metaphor for my single life. That "vertical expression of a horizontal desire" that turns a bit tedious. I go hoping against hope that I will have fun, feel spun and swept, get to paw a hot guy, and here's a wild idea, DANCE! I'm always wishing for a few moments, just one activity where I don't have to be the one in control, in the lead, and managing way too much at one time. Instead I spend most of the class thinking I should have taken the Hip Hop Flow Jazz class because dancing by myself always ends up being more fun as does working, reading, drawing... A little sad but true. Part of why I tell myself to stay in salsa class (as opposed to running screaming out the door 1/2 way through) is that I've considered it part of my integral life practice to work on receiving, to practice not tuning out the fact that a man I don't know well or at all has his arms wrapped around me. Yes, I've sought to maximize the potential for interpersonal contact while maintaining the polarities in an effort to increase my capacity to be the receptor. Dear me, could I get any more hyper-masculine or any worse about sucking the fun out of everything by turning it into a 'module?' Just that very word makes the creativity start seeping out of my body and into miserable little greasy spot on the floor. No, I want some gorgeous guy to make me shine like the wild effervescent Shakti that I am! Most guys don't even want to do dinner anymore. It's just "let's meet for coffee before we head back to your place." Ritual coffee is for 2 purposes: small talk with people you don't know well and in depth talk with deep like-minds between meals or when the place you had dinner closes down, and the conversation is far from over. As far as I and many other straight women are concerned, if you're hoping for contact sport not on a dance floor, you'd better make a big ritual of providing grass fed fillet mignon in a restaurant with fine ambiance. Pump that iron, baby! 11:23 PM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 1 comments 2/05/2006 Shopped...Dropped song du jour: all the top 40 hits of the late 80's to now, sung by someone other than the original recording artist, and played throughout the store mood: not yet fully recovered I could count on 2 hands the number of times I've been shopping for clothes since Skyler was born. He's not a kid, who waits patiently while Mommy tries on new things to put it mildly. I've come to hate shopping but have finally acquiesced to the fact that what I have acquired since my son gave me an entire new rib cage - I thought I had unthinkably hellacious heart-burn when I was pregnant, but, having no other vertical space to grow in his 5' tall mummy's tummy, Skyler split my ribs wider. - has worn out or just never really looked that great in the first place. If I'm going clubbing or sailing in the Caribbean I've got the wardrobe, but just showing up somewhere in jeans that don't bag on my backside and a top that does not make me appear so top heavy as to defy gravity has become I such a chore that I can no longer face my closet, or the chair that serves as my horizontal one, another single day. So after teaching the most intense day long workshop I've taught in a while, I drove to the most frightening, most dangerous part of Atlanta, the far flung northeastern suburbs, where there is one of those malls that is one mile long. (The horror!) I like malls about as much as I like shredded coconut, not washing my hair for a week, and non metalsmithing men, who want to show me how to use my own tools. Fortunately, my destination du jour was Nordstrom Rack, the outlet where the greatest department store this side of the Atlantic (or the Pacific) dumps what didn't sell at the regular (usually ridiculous) price and which is located in one of the 25+ (I'm not kidding) strip malls that orbit the suburban Mecca, so I could get in, shop, and get out, relatively unscathed. There I was, combing literally every round rack and end display in the women's and juniors' sections of the store, armed with the voices of Trinny and Susannah in my head. These women are not your average fashion do and don't naggers. They are the originators of BBC's What Not to Wear, and please, don't even try to talk to me about the stupid American version of that show. Trinny and Susannah would rip off and shred what passes for the poor excuses of the 'do's' on that show. Some say they are brutal, but really they are only cruel about the 'don't' clothes and never the women. Where else on PG TV could you see a woman grab with both hands the bum of another rather heavy woman and declare it a crime that those curves be hidden under a gathered skirt, or watch a woman yank up another's bra straps and declare, "Look, if we get your tits off your stomach, you DO have a waist?" My favorite line of all time in reference to ghastly crop pants: "Why don't you pants go all the way to the floor?" It sounds best if said with a very straight face in an upper-middle class British accent like "Why don't yaur ponts gow awl the way to the flohr?" Whoever invented crop pants and convinced women under 6'2" that they look flattering hates us, I'm certain. The Case: 5' 0" curvy woman with slim hips, 4' of hair, and 3' of cleavage. The Rules: colors: black, wine, plum, deep teal, dark emerald, indigo Wear "color with color" most of the time, and don't pair brights with black. You "cheapen" the color, or worse yet, look like a black cat that got entangled with a neon sign boot leg or slightly bell bottomed pants with side closure that skim the heel to look slimmer and lengthen the whole picture fitted jackets with no collar and reaching the widest part of hips to up that hour glass factor low scoop neck or squared neck, fitted but not skin tight tops that go in at the waist and flare slightly back out to up that hour glass factor and not make the cantaloupes appear more like watermelons pencil, A-line, bias cut, or straight skirts to show off the slim hips dresses: best of luck The last time I was in that store, I was shopping with Stacey, whom I dragged into the largest dressing room and instructed, "Strip!" Remembering how frightening those mirrors are, I looked at her reflection and screamed in horror. I would look at her and my eyebrows would go back down. I would look back at her reflection and resume my expression of said horror. It wasn't Stacey, whom I'd already seen half or more naked in enough dance studio dressing rooms to know she's a babe. No, it was the cruel sadistic mirror and lighting, confirming what I had suspected. Those evil dressing room mirrors really can add 10 pounds. The Nordstrom Rack variety would add celulite where there is none and put 20 pounds on a waif. This I religiously chanted to myself as yesterday my own flesh appeared before the reflecting sacrificial alter of self esteem, lest I otherwise skip the clothes I need in order to save space on my credit card for plastic surgery. One thing for sure, if the clothes look good in those mirrors, they'll look runway fabulous under normal conditions. I tried on over 40 garments, 10 at a time, according to outlet dressing room rules. Out 40, 10 things fit. One lavender bra (Trinny and Susannah would approve), 2 tops for dance class (exactly like one I already had, but at least I save on laundry), a fitted zip front jacket to wear over said tops, a jean jacket that had a small collar but otherwise does wildly fab things for my shape, a wine colored flared skirt, some pants to wear to dance class that I couldn't believe looked good on me and were $6., the first pair of vaguely athletic shoes I've bought in 12 years, gold cowboy boots (yes, GOLD! and they don't make me look like I'm standing in 2 buckets!), and the Big Prize: JEANS that FIT!!! Ok, so the jeans aren't side closure, but they are made for petites. That I bought jeans that look great on me and neither have to be hemmed nor rolled up is almost worthy of one of those annoying mass emails to everyone on your list just letting them know how your year has gone. Unfortunately, I still don't have any new non dancewear tops (Guys, I can guess your suggestion, so you don't need to email me.), but neither I nor my credit card can face shopping again for a while! 11:12 AM - permanent link email this entry to a friend 0 comments

Lumiere Victoria's instructional DVDs Rings   Russian Filigree   Click here to subscribe to Victoria Lansford dot com for info on gallery updates and classes If you like what you read here, your donation will help me make more time to write Chinese Calligraphy ($179.-$279.)   Temple of Love II Echo Knowledge Places to go and food for thought B-SCAN: Rommel de Leon interviews Victoria: Polysemy podcasts (Yet more of my colleagues' and my take on art): Clear Vision Studio Colmar3000 C4Chaos Hannah Dallman Matthew Dallman Dan Alison DASHH DatingGod Stuart Davis Dust Egyptology News Alex Grey Integral Options Café Integral Practice Jay Andrew Allen Jaezi Lionessroars, Willow Pearson Dana Jung Munson David Jon Peckinpaugh Polysemy Rising Up Paul Salamone The Sudnow Method Typetalk.com (MBTI info) The Woodshed   Archives August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December2005 November 2005 October 2005 Gallery Page