March Hare marches on to go meet April

 










Here in sunny
Southern California,
March leaves
like a lamb,
came in as
a boisterous lamb,
not quite
the lion.

Painting: Lura Astor

Gratitude Attitude

This is the dawning of the

Better Lazy than Crazy

A student once said

better lazy than crazy

 

 

I replied, Yeah, cows look lazy but they're making milk

- like crazy.

Reading The Introvert Advantage 

click here

and here

laziness, daydreaming and lounging can be preludes to intense focus of energy, creativity and brain power.

Without my lazy I might be crazy!

Your Nose Knows - Improving Concentration and Learning

There is evidence that fragrances may also
improve concentration and learning. 

from The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D.

 

"Unlike our other senses, our sense of smell has its very own short pathway from the nose to the brain. Have you ever whiffed bubble gum and a memory of childhood floated through your head? We have an immediate reaction to fragrances because they are processed right next door to both the emotional center and the memory center of the brain.

Since our sense of smell registers on our most basic systems, it has an effect on our Throttle-Down System. When smelling fragrances we like, we take slow, deep breaths and so we also take in more oxygen. As we have seen, these two processes increase our energy level. There is evidence that fragrances may also improve concentration and learning.

In one study, two groups of subjects were asked to do connect-the-dots puzzles. One group was then asked to sniff a fragrance. Then both groups were asked to redo the puzzles. The group that had sniffed the fragrance finished 30 percent faster.

In another study of stress response, subjects who were showing signs of stress were given a whiff of spiced apple. This was followed by an increase of alpha brain waves, which indicated a relaxed alert state."

I love finding tidbits on smell and scent in unexpected places!

This from Koku TV the Ballet of Bubblegum

watercolor: Sideways Snake Lura Astor

photo: Big Apple Cafe New Zealand Brisbane Pom 

introvert extrovert

Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D. de-pathologizes introversion with a look at the history of psychology, the differences in how introverts and extroverts re-energize, socialize, think, produce and create. 

Laney shows biological evidence of the different pathways neurotransmitters take through the brains of introverts and extroverts:

Extroverts enjoy more adrenaline and dopamine
Introverts utilize acetylcholine and its longer brain pathway

In her books Laney explains, in simple terms, differences between introverts and extroverts, as well as how to better interact and understand each other, personally in professionally, and the gifts we each bring. Laney also includes some right/left brain dominance work.

When part of the community on Caltech campus, when there was still a Women's Center, we offered Massage Tuesdays sponsored by the Center for anyone on campus.

For 10 minutes each, students, staff, administrators, researchers could come in and bliss out on my massage chair as I worked out their stresses and aches, listened, suggested changes (computer height, how to take breaks, change the computer mouse, etc.). Some sat on the couch and chairs and while waiting, met each other, talked life, read from the book shelves.

Some on the massage chair spoke of their latest findings: nanotechnology, millions of light years into the stars, why epsom salts really relax muscles in the magnesium exchange.

We grew an organic grapevine and sometimes were able to put information together to see a bigger picture of what was happening on campus. (At the time, insomnia, TMJ and budget cuts were on the rise.)
 
One day the Assistant Director asked me if I was left handed.

She said I spoke and behaved as a leftie. That got me thinking. My grandmother, whose father had homesteaded in Nebraska, was a leftie and had been forced to write as a right-handed proper lady so as not to do the devil's work.

Being born a certain way yet accused of being of the devil deeply affected her. There were also accusations that she was therefore not as smart.

This young redhead rode the prairie on a horse to teach in the one-room schoolhouse, at a time when not many women were teachers. I had to remind her of that when she turned 100 and still felt she was not really smart.

When 100, Grandma looked at me and laughingly said she didn't know why she didn't die, heaven don't want me and the devil won't take me.

She lasted just shy of 105, my namesake, who called me her chickadee when I was a kid, both of us looking at the birds in the apple trees. She always grew what we now call an organic garden, something passed on to me through her daughter.

 












Also recommend: dominant/non-dominant-hand exercises offered in books by Lucia Cappachione, Ph.D., ATR, Visioning and The Power of Your Other Hand.

These exercises address specific queries, externalize internal dialogue, and come up with unique, surprising, humorous, practical results.

Many of these techniques integrate into my Workshops for Accessing the Senses, Dreams, Creativity, Inspiration, Imagination, Theater Games, Fun and Play.

Illustrations: Hand Series Lura Astor

Seahorse Fire Dreams

what a day for a daydream


Illustration: Flame Seahorse Lura Astor

Dan White Eagle passes - this message to you

 








click here
thanks to David Barker

Illustration: Lura Astor

your heart dreams, so do you

What is the Future Saying TO YOU?

author in 1967 or '68
part of a photoseries/art poem
for an art project
to a Ferlinghetti poem

Pound Ridge Tree Reservation CT

Portlandians (Oregon) check out the love

painting to left
of slumber & disaster
by Michelle Daly

4th Annual Love ShowOpening Party Friday, February 13, 2009 7 PM to Midnight, Olympic Mills Center, 107 SE Washington Street, Portland, Oregon Please bring a canned food item to donate to your fellow Portlanders in need! Partial proceeds of Love Show 2009 benefit The Oregon Food Bank and Buckman Arts Elementary School. more info at: Michelle's site

transform time

anything that has sap has singing

- Clarissa Pinkola-Estes




















Illustration Butterfly Dreams Lura Astor
Photo: Victoria, Australia/AP

Question of the Week

Where is the quietest place on earth you have experienced ?



answers to lurana22@gmail.com

Illustration: Sea Plant Lura Astor

Fulling Moon/Lunar Eclipse

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. -Vermont Proverb

 


Smelling back and forth:
Ananas Fizz/L'Artisan / Une Souris Verte/Molinard

Illustration: Lura Astor
Moon Mask Series: Lura Astor

Integration

We sail on winds of change that whisper,
integrate the Human Heart, the animal heart with the Technological Heart, the robot heart!




 






Illustration: Art is Food/Food is Art Hand Series 1997-99 Lura Astor

Geeks of a Feminine Persuasion

Caltech Women Rock!

Picture: Before
(Express on South Lake, Pasadena, CA)

the Goddess, the Lover, the Ballerina, the Diplomat, the Fashion Model

Picture: After the Mischief
(Express, on South Lake, Pasadena, CA)

the Chemist, the Astronomer, the Electrical Engineer, the Neuroscientist, the String Theorist, the Geologist, the Chemical Engineer

Once upon a time
in a land of golden sun
there lived some scientists of the girl persuasion and I was witness to some funny doing.

As the on-campus massage therapist offering chair massage and workshops on Stretch: Gain & Maintain Flexibility, a class I had developed incorporating Tai Chi Chuan, body re-education, sports performance, body rehabilitation, stress reduction and energizing and classes on preventative health and health management (a lot of insomnia and TMJ on the campus at that time) 

... I met and conversed with people from all areas of campus life ... ... One day the gossip and giggles were going strong ...

The night before some gal students responded to the window dressing of the local Express store, which caters to their age range, with some creative window dressing of their own. True! Wonderful!

The geeks of the female persuasion got a talking to; the school paid the fine and I thought Express was ridiculous. They missed a massive marketing opportunity. Within walking distance they had a built-in clientele. The $100 or whatever it was Express made on the antics missed many thousands of dollars revenue, they just had to offer 20% off to all Science Girls, or Caltechers, or come on, think of something. 

More importantly, they sadly missed a true message of real life happening in front of their windows. Brilliant, sexy, gorgeous Caltech women with Incredible Minds and Imagination ... and to think, they could've been wearing Express. We all boycotted the store when we could have been girlcotting and spending.

Tip o' the Hat to those Courageous Geeks

quite a few years have passed and I just came across the photo again

world vibe

 





Thunderbolt Tea in a Bone Cup

Greasewood after the rain
lightning blue and metallic
a taste of silver ozein
a Greek word for smell
prickles on the neck

The lightning is out of the bottle.
Lead and stardust transformed become our skeletal structure.
Aquarius leaves footprints in metallic sands and lead-weighted cares
We get a way out. The U-turn? It's good! We had to retrieve ... the mojo ... get another chance.

Do the yin-yang dance, laugh forever.


"It's been a long time comin' ....
you must hear what the people say ....
You've got to speak your mind
if you dare
It appears to be
a long
a long, long time
before
the dawn!"       - Crosby, Stills and Nash

Illustrations: Lura Astor

Hyacinths & a Mechanic

The smell of New England soil thawing as winter crusts break was something I loved as much as crunching the sheets of uniquely patterned ice. I would lay belly on the earth and smell. I smelled Spring coming through the soil and I knew the sequence, and where to look, for the bulb blooms. The muskiness of tulip stamens, the gods’ eyes peering as crocii, grape hyacinth, daffodils and narcissus, subtly different, sitting in yellow tunnels of forsythia, hunting for lily of the valley, and dining on hyacinth smells. I still swear each color smells differently, the light purple, the deep purple, the magenta pink, the paler pink, the white.

I would smell the colored hyacinths like some play a piano, memorizing their colors and nuances their subtle differences and chord changes.Hyacinths seem fragile in that their fragrance peaks in a short period of time. They don’t hang around for you to smell over a long time like the Concord grapes with their autumn musty overwhelming sweetness. Throughout my life I’ve smelled hyacinth oils looking for a find that could capture the hardy, fragile, elusive fragrance in a jar. I still think it is a difficult note to bottle.
Anticipation

I receive The Bottle! (see previous post below)

The first smelling of Hyacinths and a Mechanic places modern me in an old photograph to retrieve some classic goodness. Watercolor greys, the purple grey cloud that surrounds lilac, violet, hyacinths emerge. I see autumn pumpkin orange glow in darkening night and smell cinnamon. There is the haze of ocean walk, the vanilla of powder, but what I love is the sting that reveals. It’s a mature scent, tenacious with its subtlety, Spring Cloud soft, with a feel of the aftertaste of violet pastilles.

This one has presence, baby, the bouquet blossoms, especially once you get to know it. You want, not more, because a bit is powerful, just it. It talks and haunts and hangs around until you acknowledge it and put some more on, another day.

I don’t always like it, there is that older world scent that disturbs and then I’m fascinated and want another sniff.

Loving the sting that I get nasally with Tabarome/Creed and Mahogany/Etro, though not scents I wear often, so, I wouldn't mind turning the volume up on the sting and lowering the volume on the powder.

More technically, I got the powder and voluptuousness of Femme/Rochas, the vanilla powder of Omnix, the sting of Tabarome and Mahogany and the grey moor peat of Cumming.

Original black and white photos from Old Pictures a fantastic site you may end up spending hours perusing.

Now to Share This Over Some Tea!

If you are cold tea will warm you
If you are too heated it will cool you
If you are depressed
it will cheer you
if you are excited
it will calm you

- William E. Gladstone, 1809-1898
British Statesman, Prime Minister

... I feel the same way about perfume.

To meet and test drive Hyacinths and a Mechanic, a new fragrance by Andy Tauer of Tauer Perfumes  I choose Chassom Tea Salon, in the historic Green Street area of Pasadena, California.

Owner Diane Yamamoto Skowron created a beautiful environment to sip and restore. After 19 years working with HIV patients, pharmacy and healthcare, she expresses creative facets of herself, bringing a gentleness, beauty and energy, offering a true respite from the homogeneity of today's retail culture. This new Salon is a vortex of creativity!

photos:
Tea bouquet,  Evelyn Kuo, founder of Essence of Motion, located half a block away from Chassom Tea Salon.
Evelyn is one of the first Pilates teachers in the region. Her beautiful studio offers Pilates, mat classes, craniosacral, massage, meditation circles, workshops, Tai Chi and more.

above right: smelling the delicious choice of Chocolate Sencha tea, is Stephanie Bowen of International Medical Corps., a humanitarian organization providing sustainable long-term training for local healthcare practitioners.

Diane can blend teas for your health and pleasure, which is what Evelyn chose.

far right: Autumn, with the red hair! drinks Ultra-Violet. Autumn Doerr is Supervising Producer of Greensburg on Discovery Channel's Planet Green.

back right: I'm smiling because I found a new tea, Canadian Ice Wine. The liquor brings in the taste of Concord grapes and brings me home to a magical place of sunsweet memory.

We begin!

I love the look people get when they are sniffing and analyzing a fragrance. In the middle, above, Chassom Tea Salon owner, Diane Yamamoto Skowron.

Qualities the scent evokes for this group:

spicy beginning
musky
flowery
complex, amber spice
exotic
old in a classic sense
feminine

bites like sexy biting (like when you eat wasabi)
powerful
weathered picket fence
brisk winter day
golden, amber, yellows

brainy, intellectual

an older woman or

a younger woman into things retro

a more experienced woman - no virgins here! (it's too multi-dimensional for that!)
modern yet takes comfort in old things
complex

needs attention

eccentric

keeps changing, experiencing

reminds of Abano bath oil mom used!

reminds of Joy parfum

reminds of a mother's parfum

a little smoky

Karen Coogan works at Chassom Tea Salon and we discover that Hyacinths and the Mechanic is Her Scent!

A true match that we will talk about more. Perfume Lovers, you know the signs, the next days obsessed by the fragrance, wondering if you will ever smell it again, will it still be available. And, I find out, Karen has been a Jicky girl!

Hey, the smell changes!

After sharing our impressions, we smell the results on each other and laugh at the differences.

Diane smells my wrist, and on my skin also gets
the watercolor purple greys I spoke of.

Thank you Andy Tauer

of Tauer Perfumes for sharing your art with us.

"Who will wear Hyacinths and a Mechanic?"

We discover she is fun, adventurous, has traveled, respects quality made to compete, she wants to be different and is on the cutting edge.

Contact me for workshops on
Accessing Creativity and Imagination.

lurana22@gmail.com

P.S. I also love the photograph accompanying artist Kelley's review of the Bottle Journey here where it had made its way to Mexico. His heartful blog peacefully serene is here.

Bottle on a Journey!

I have been a recipient of a Message in a Bottle. 

Perfumer Andy Tauer's bottle left Switzerland filled with one of his new fragrances, the scent is being passed around the world from perfume lover to perfume lover to test drive and give feedback.
 
Andy Tauer here Tauer Perfumes. Follow the Bottle Journey link to see the map and read reviews from each participant.
I called in some friends to share tea, experience the concoction and share the wealth before sending The Bottle on its way. I wanted to add some "newbie" responses.
Photo: L.T. Piver's bottle courtesy of Philip Goutell of Perfume Projects

sillage

reviewing a scent in pre-production soon

Clue: spring flower, something you drive














Illustration: Perfume Bottles in Blues Lura Astor