Laghail Posted Friday at 08:17 PM Report Share Posted Friday at 08:17 PM Friday October 18 Katabasis, by Alexi Marshall Spoiler In Katabasis there is a recurring highly symbolic fruit, the pomegranate, which embodies both sweetness and bitterness and has a symbolic history of fertility and death across many different cultures. In this work, Marshall explores these themes, drawing from the Greek myth of Persephone, who is bound to Hades by consuming pomegranate seeds, resulting in her cyclical journey between the underworld and the earth. Marshall's lino paintings blend personal experience with mythology, portraying the pomegranate as an emblem of the cyclical nature of life and the interplay of pleasure and pain. In her works she juxtaposes ancient symbols and contemporary elements, creating an exploration of memory, mythology, and rebirth. Welcome to almost the end. The oak king, the sun, and Persephone herself are saying their first round of goodbyes, and Halloween is barely two weeks away. I've spent most of 0 week tinkering with a structure for what I'll be observing and asking of myself for this challenge. The answer? Mostly nothing. Mostly I want me to thrive. Mostly I want my days to be a gift to myself and a blessing to my future selves. In the name of life and gentle thriving, I have a weekly punch list that I'll continue using on this challenge to externalize my own self-observations. No failure states possible. I'll also be abusing using you lovely folks by play a game called "can laghail enjoy 3d modeling projects without hyper-focus if the assignments are creepy and fun and incremental??" Expect weekly/daily assignments but they aren't touching the observational punch list because assignments can be failed. Also I'll be posting art and music related to the theme of katabasis, or journeying to the underworld. Audience submissions are cherished. Emoji Key Spoiler 5 2 Quote Level 38 [Raveling Bard] Link to comment
Whisper Posted Friday at 08:55 PM Report Share Posted Friday at 08:55 PM Are you familiar with Punderworld? Spoiler 1 Quote We are not sinners trespassing in the garden of an angry God. We are prodigals come home; fully seen and deeply loved. Spoiler Unused for now, Quest Log: Not Silence in the Library but a Whisper in the Academy Link to comment
Sovalis Posted Friday at 10:05 PM Report Share Posted Friday at 10:05 PM Here for this! 1 Quote Past Challenges: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16 Current Challenge: #17 “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Link to comment
Laghail Posted Saturday at 07:48 PM Author Report Share Posted Saturday at 07:48 PM 22 hours ago, Whisper said: Are you familiar with Punderworld? Reveal hidden contents Amazing. We are friends for other reasons too, but recommendations like this don’t hurt. 1 Quote Level 38 [Raveling Bard] Link to comment
Whisper Posted Saturday at 08:29 PM Report Share Posted Saturday at 08:29 PM 38 minutes ago, Laghail said: We are friends for other reasons I added the pomegranate just for you. Original plan was strawberries. Spoiler Some final touches remain to be added. Today was just the pomegranate and red grapes. 2 Quote We are not sinners trespassing in the garden of an angry God. We are prodigals come home; fully seen and deeply loved. Spoiler Unused for now, Quest Log: Not Silence in the Library but a Whisper in the Academy Link to comment
fleaball Posted Saturday at 11:42 PM Report Share Posted Saturday at 11:42 PM lurking! 1 Quote Level 69 Battle Kitten Battle Log | Current Challenge MyFitnessPal | Fitbit | Duolingo Ici je vis la vie que j'ai choisie Je suis partie pour reconstruire ma vie C'est dit, c'est ainsi Link to comment
Harriet Posted Sunday at 06:30 AM Report Share Posted Sunday at 06:30 AM Gentle thriving sounds amazing. What is a punch list? 1 Quote Let cheese and oxen and mead crowd out our secret desires for power and domination - Harriet the Viking Just be bold, fluid and unapologetic, not small, hairy and indecisive - Harriet the Artist You can absorb me! - Harriet the Contextless Guru Link to comment
Mad Hatter Posted Sunday at 07:27 AM Report Share Posted Sunday at 07:27 AM On 10/18/2024 at 10:17 PM, Laghail said: Mostly nothing. Mostly I want me to thrive. Mostly I want my days to be a gift to myself and a blessing to my future selves. In the name of life and gentle thriving, I have a weekly punch list that I'll continue using on this challenge to externalize my own self-observations. No failure states possible. I really love this! Quote Link to comment
sarakingdom Posted Sunday at 09:46 PM Report Share Posted Sunday at 09:46 PM 15 hours ago, Harriet said: What is a punch list? Well, first you make a list of things you want to punch. Next, you check things off the list. Or possibly that's just me. 3 1 Quote I felt like I could run forever, like I could smell the wind and feel the grass under my feet, and just run forever. Current Challenge: #24 - Mrs. Cosmopolite Challenge Past: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11a & #11b, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23 Link to comment
Laghail Posted yesterday at 06:55 PM Author Report Share Posted yesterday at 06:55 PM On 10/20/2024 at 1:30 AM, Harriet said: What is a punch list? The purple/green spreadsheet that I'm dropping this month. It was orange and black last month. Probs punchlist is an inaccurate title, as that tends to refer to one-time tasks to be completed, and the green/purple thingy is a daily tracking sheet, but punching tho..... On 10/20/2024 at 4:46 PM, sarakingdom said: Well, first you make a list of things you want to punch. Next, you check things off the list. Or possibly that's just me. Yis! Because punching! On 10/19/2024 at 6:42 PM, fleaball said: lurking! On 10/20/2024 at 1:30 AM, Harriet said: Gentle thriving sounds amazing. On 10/20/2024 at 2:27 AM, Mad Hatter said: I really love this! Literally you folks make these challenges possible. I'm very grateful. 1 Quote Level 38 [Raveling Bard] Link to comment
Laghail Posted yesterday at 07:59 PM Author Report Share Posted yesterday at 07:59 PM Tuesday October 22 "The Wedding Song" by Tomato Bird New Forum, who dis I promise that I'll have more braiinz tomorrow but the forums just popped up and my brain is a smooth gray slurry after a long day. All good stuff, but braaainz 🧟♂️🧠🧟♀️🧠 3 Quote Level 38 [Raveling Bard] Link to comment
Laghail Posted 3 hours ago Author Report Share Posted 3 hours ago Wednesday October 23 "Grendles Mōdor" by Joseph Ratcliffe Skelton Atropos, Scissoring, and Grumpy Old Men Still remapping how to achieve naps under my meth micro-dosing regimen (that was a joke about Dr. supervised ADHD medication, actual meth looks p bad, just say no). I added a new mental health trackable for napping, using the ✂️ emoji. Lately I've been reading "Fall: or, Dodge in hell", and Stephenson has his self-insert curmudgeon character speculate on naps as a reboot where Atropos the Norn wields her scissors and snips the thread of consciousness, but just for a moment. I'm not supposed to love Stephenson as much as I do, he's an early Gen X white dude who writes about Gen X white dudes saving the world - but. But he captures what it means/meant to be one of those cyber-cowboys in that particular moment of the West Coast tech boom-and-bust, and I find him a warm blanket of remembering every member of that breed that I've learned from over the years. Including my current work dad who just retired as of today (I'm not emotional, you're emotional). I would be honored to be executed by a leftist firing squad someday, and in that better version of tomorrow, my fondness for authors like Stephenson is probs one of my many -isms that earn me my eventual sentence. Panopticon, Personal Growth, and Stubborn Self-Kindness I have mentors coming out of my ears right now and that's not a complaint. Moral of the story is I have a plan locked-in to promote into a new role by June 2025, partially due to the fact that I've been hoover-ing up job duties like Mrs. Packman on Fleet Week, with all these retiring Gen X colleagues executing their retirement succession planning. ADHD meds, productivity tracking, and some of the core conceits in NF have me running different combos of observation and heightened self-expectations (these fucking challenges), trying to husband along the ineffable process of my own growth as a person (new challenge title: "F-ing the ineffable"!). In one sense, it's working, I'm skinnier and have a job promotion coming, so let's die fucking happy. In another, I'm trying to understand a long term process of self-knowledge and steer between fits of hyperfocus/sub-clinical mania, towards steady mindful growth, and a fucking blip of a few months weight loss or whatever is only a data point, not an end game state. To this end I play my first intellectual boyfriend card in the attack position (I'm not poly, I swear) - turning James C. Cook face up, he warns that poison-pill of high modernism is the arrogance to assume trackable metrics and force legibility have captured the entirety of what are deeply complex organic processes. This false and forced legibility only re-sculpts the phenomena into a stillborn, or game-ified, version of the life that I hoped to husband into deeper thriving. See also, the ecological catastrophe that are timber farms, as the eventual result of attempts to impose legibility onto tracts of wild forest. See also, past NF versions of Laghail that were stressed out and sleep deprived and enjoying a slow nervous breakdown, but successful in his challenge goals and the skinniest that he's ever been. Cool cool, cool. Cool. NF Laghail 2.0 is offering passive tracking to externalize my own self-observations, and self knowledge isn't artificial legibility, right? Intellectual boyfriend #2, he certainly isn't suggesting that observing a phenomena isn't the same thing as forcing compliance on a subject, right? After all it's not like we torture or enslave prisoners in the US anymore (awkward answers actually), we just subject them to passive tracking of their every waking moment in cells, on CCTV cameras, in the omni-present warden, in the unknowable whims of parole boards and officers. Surely subjecting the self to simple observation is a neutral thing, right?? Quote In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is this fact of being constantly seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection. ------------------------------------- The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements. ------------------------------------- "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault All the dramatics above to say I'm still probing the below schema for gentleness and fit before I settle in. I think this is a gentler take on previous challenges. I think. I think the observation points are ones I hope to grow into and I'm not sacrificing important parts of life to grow into them. I think. Fucking Fall Magic Holy Hill is a basilica in southeastern Wisconsin that gives visitors 410m of elevation to take in the fall leaves spreading around the four surrounding counties that you can view from the high tower. You also have to trek past endless cider stalls and pumpkin patches to reach the basilica. Maybe Sunday? Borzynskis is a 10 acre corn maze with somekinda complex because every year it's huge and complex in new ways. Maybe Saturday? Samhain drum circle is the high holy day for this circle. Should be a lite dumb supper, a community ofrenda, and a sea of candles and storytelling. I'm bringing shitty folgers coffee and cake donuts, In honor of the Morris women who've passed. Quote Level 38 [Raveling Bard] Link to comment
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