Pictures, Patterns, and the Power of Television

Sitting at my kitchen table I dream of patterns in green. I have several photos of trees and blossoms in front of me and try to match them to Bears already knitted, but not yet finished. It is my favorite time in the process. Accessorizing!




From the living room comes the voice of a reporter, saying something about the International Garden Show in Hamburg. I look up and see the back of a young boy, hunched over a work bench. He is putting tiny dabs of paint on a tiny figure. I realize that this is actually about Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg. My mind wanders. What a big, wonderful, sometimes sad, but mostly astonishingly positive influence German TV has on me! I watch Deutsche Welle for at least two hours every day, and have never felt that I am waisting time. For one thing, I knit teddy bears for the Mother Bear Project while I watch, and quite often I get inspired by what I see - to knit faster, to be more aware. To go places.
Whether it is a student's internship at a buffalo ranch, a meeting of rural women who cook for each other, with the best meal winning a prize, or an update on Michael Wigge's 2,473 kilometer trip across Germany in eighty days on a scooter, they all add to the enrichment of my life; they invite me to dream.
Being German, I love to observe the changing of the language. I have not lived in Germany since I was in my early twenties and many words are new, especially technical terms. Different dialects are noticeable too, and the use of colloquialisms on TV make me smile. And who could resist the clever jargon of politics? The words "Macht Mensch Merkel" for instance; I think it says what there is to say about the German Bundeskanzler, but it leaves open the question that asks: is she mighty or is she craving might?
The stories that deal with green energy, with global cooperation, and with travel of all sorts make me hopeful for the future. I especially adored a segment of the show " Job im Gepäck" (Job in Luggage) in which a German midwife spends time in Ghana and learns to make do with less without complaining. I am already looking forward to next month's essay on "Grüne Tomaten für Mao's Erben" (Green Tomatoes for Mao's Heirs) in which a German organic pioneer discusses animal welfare and farming in China.
Of course a report about problems that develop between locals and immigrants in Berlin over a new housing unit is sad, unsettling, and yet, more and more immigrants become politicians, gain influence in business, show their talents as artists.
World news, sports, culture, environment, globalization, business, science - I love it all.
Watching Deutsche Welle makes me want to dig deeper, research what I have seen, maybe even go to some of the places that speak to my interests.
For instance, I would love to visit the tiny garden world in Hamburg. 150,000 flowers, hand-made and glued in by volunteers and employees. Just like a real garden landscape, the area includes buildings, benches, watering cans, people, signs, and everything else one needs for a garden. You can see pictures of it on Pinterest if you search for Miniatur Wunderland, then pick the board "It's a small garden world."
I notice that the place has been repinned to several "Bucket List" boards. I am not alone.
Suddenly I am reminded that I once had glued my own little garden together for an Easter project. I had spray-painted a large piece of foam to look like garden soil, had glued plastic grasses and bushes and tiny plants into it, had added a small tree, some rocks, and a little shellac stream. Where is that poster, I wonder.
Which brings me back to the pictures on the table. The patterns. The flowers. The trees.



















The Bears. I must finish these Bears by September 3, the 67th day of my Mandela Day Promise. I have knitted much more than 67 minutes a day, but there has to be a final accounting for the 67 days. How many bears have I made?

Blossom - Bear Fruit - Blow Away

I thought about trees today. The kinds of trees I like to photograph. The ones I want to play with. Or think about. Touch. Ask questions. Listen to. Smell. The trees of my early childhood, that gave me comfort and entertainment. Trees I watch as an adult in my neighborhood. And finally, trees I met on my travels in countries far away.

Like beloved, long gone friends, the horse chestnut trees of my early childhood are etched into my soul. Their vivid spring displays and their shiny brown bounty of playful fruit made them ideal companions. I grew up between a red poppy field, a wooded salt mine, and a parklike spa environment with perfectly groomed flower beds and a bubbling fountain. Beyond my everyday playground a vast high plain of rape and wheat fields, dotted with oak trees, extended to the horizon.

We girls spent our summer afternoons outdoors, in the shade of trees, building and crafting dwellings for our dolls with chestnuts, daisies, leaves, moss, sticks, and stones, while boys climbed and hid between branches - to attack and destroy. It was a perfect world.

Now, living near a creek, I often walk among deciduous trees, flowering brightly in the spring, thickening with leaves in summer and showing their graceful, bare designs during fall and winter. Near my house I pay attention to an ever-growing palm tree and a redwood tree that towers above it all. And recently, when I sit in my living room, knitting Bears, trees come to visit me, one by one. I suppose it started with the tai chi practice and my search for a peaceful place to "sink my chi." I have almost finished the first bear for this group. As I hang him over the canvas above my bed, he demonstrates perfectly what the process means. I can see the chi sinking beyond the edge of the photograph and new chi replenishing him from above. His loose ends are the connectors.




Searching my imagination I see that blossoms, pink blossoms, want to be part of the next Bear.







But what about the tree that shows its bare branches? Can I incorporate him into the group?



Or the scar, the outburst, the riot? Will I be ready to "Bear their souls".








I often photograph bark. And stumps. Will they be part of the story?






When all is said and done I sometimes just want to get quiet, empty my mind, rest.
Wow. Did I just say that? I sure hope it isn't a metaphor!

No! It is a purposeful ending for a post that has already gone on far too long:)

Happy tree dreams!

Wait for me!

"Wait for me!"
The request came from the bottom of the bag on the kitchen chair.
When I pushed aside a big yellow yarn ball and a skein of hot pink I discovered a flat, faceless Bear.





True to my irreparable impatience I had already decided on a new color scheme and though there is plenty of ice cream colored yarn left and I am sure a few more stripe patterns are tumbling around in my brain, I was done with Gelato. When a new thought strikes I usually run with it.
"Where is everybody?"
"The project is closed. Why were you hiding?"
"I wasn't hiding. You tossed me in the bag because you couldn't decide on the color of my scarf."
"Well, let's sew you up and give you a face. I'm sorry I forgot about you. I'll make you a pink scarf and give you a flower and a headband."
"Will you take my picture in the Piazza?
"Of course. And I will announce you as

Juliette - Bear Number 269

Sinking the Chi

The man in the video tells me to gaze far into the sky while I sink my chi. I am boxed in between bed and TV, trying to extend my arms gracefully during evening tai chi. "Easy for him to do," I exhale, "he is gazing on a beach in Maui where the sky is perfectly blue and distance is what you want to make of it."



But it is absolutely necessary that I sink my chi; it has been polluted and must give way to new energy. Ten after five; I just came home from shopping. A driver had given me the finger after he had sped past me on a 25 mph stretch. A few blocks later a young man walked purposefully, slowly, across the street, looking at me, daring me to do what? Ignore him? Pay attention to him? And in the Safeway parking lot a woman parked in the space that I had my eyes on. She came from the opposite direction and made a sharp left turn in front of me. My chi is very uptight. My chi is stuck. I have to sink my chi.

This morning I had pulled the tai chi video cassette from the bottom drawer of the book case. I've had it for years, but only occasionally play it. In my bedroom is an old TV that still accepts this outdated format. My urge to practice tai chi comes shortly after the retreat in the Oakland Hills; apparently my cleansed and well fed soul has run dry already.

I'll have to improvise, imagine a far away gazing point. I imagine that my chi has to be sunk into a forest - into a soft and fertile ground. My gaze will seek new energy in the deep green of a never-ending forest. That's when I turn and look at the landscape above my bed. Perfect. Well, maybe I should have a mirror to be able to follow the instructions of the tai master on TV.



While I add my own periodic "turning from tree scape above the bed to Maui sky on TV" movements to the program, I realize that I am not in the moment. My mind wanders. It tries to put together a group of green yarn balls. The mind's eye is a funny thing; like "the gut feeling" it has its own agenda. Mine follows, blissfully, a string of interrelated thoughts on shades of green, knitting, Bears, children, fir trees, birches, oaks, a baobab. Oh! Haven't thought of that magic baobab for a while.

Did I just sink my chi? With the baobab? Suddenly I am excited. That's what I need - Arrivederci gelato in the piazza! Bear 267, Hanna, and Bear 268, Iphigenie, you are it, the tail end of the ice cream escapade in lovely Roma. I need to go green for a while.