I've been getting ready to offer students the chance to split wood. Maybe one Monday the wrestling team and I will both here at 6:30 in the morning but it hasn't worked out over the past couple weeks. It makes you contemplative to be out early in the morning with the sun and the trees, you come to feel like the communications snafus were fate and no matter what you'll work out a way to avoid this being a waste of time and effort. Just noticing that the netted-in field is surrounded by Kurogane Holly クロガネモチ trees has been nice. And the one growing over and around an old wire reminded me of why I like the FukuRokuJyu 福禄寿 wooden figures. All gnarly and wounded but growing, blooming, enjoying anyway... One of the stumps for chopping (A base, second from right, with two smaller stumps on it) is a section of Kurogane Holly. The other sections are Ginkgo mostly and a few OoAburaGiri. Just in case 30 or so people want to swing the ax these woods that require a lot of work will give everyone a chance. For a while videos of an Russian arm drag wresting move came through my FB account. I'm wondering if holding the ax with one hand while yanking up the 4.5 kilo sledgemmer to drive the ax-head deeper into the wood, maybe that yank could translate into training for that outside arm drag? When I was biking by the field at 7 in the morning the wresting team was doing interesting exercises with their bodies. It looked fun in spite of Monday Morning("Tell me why! I don't like Mondays..." --- BoomTown Rats) That's what gave me the idea but the times and places haven't matched up yet. It's kind of involved to load the wood (3 trips) into my little K-car, so 'll work out a way to make use of the chunks where they are.. one way or another... Is in these vague, ambiguous stages where all the potential is right? The sage is confused.. As Paul Goodman writes of the Taoist LaoTse writings..
#薪割り #クロガネモチ #福禄寿 #KuroGaneHolly #薪割り準備

Someone on Mastodon shared #DavidGraeber's review of #CarlosSeveri's The #ChimeraPrinciple. Now I want to read the book and wonder more about the roots of the #Tanuki #RacoonDog figures and the #ShichiFukuJin figures, Especially these wooden #FukuRokuJyu figures.
> Much of what we have considered “primitive art,” the author argues, were not meant as self-contained objects in their own right, or even as elements in some larger performance, but as memory cues to texts—usually to be performed in some sort of ritual context—whose exact nature is, often as not, entirely lost to us. These images were never meant to exist apart from words. Yet those words were a form of artistry in and of themselves. The conclusion immediately shatters half a dozen complacent assumptions we normally bring, unthinkingly, to any analysis of comparative aesthetics: the assumption of a simple distinction between “orality” and “literacy,” for example; the notion of “picture-writing”; most of our assumptions about the relationship between icon, ritual, and text. And that shattering of assumptions, in turn, proves endlessly productive.
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-concerning-mental-pivots-and-civilizations-of-memory?v=1676743668

#七福神 #福禄寿 #たぬき #タヌキ

Today's eggs, with #FukuRokuJyu. He's my fashion-leader (role-model?) among the #SevenLuckyGods. I think of them as Spritis of Abundance, A recent David Graeber article has me thinking maybe they are like words. I.A. Richards wrote that words were the missing parts of contexts, or experiences. Words help us complete ourselves and experiences. Maybe all the different representations of the Seven Lucky Gods work[ed] like that for people.

After a year or so struggling with cheap incubator machines the Silky hens just increase the flock. We just make sure they can eat during the day and be safe at night and we keep getting more an more birds. The task now is to find adopters. More people are showing serious interest now that eggs are getting expensive here too.

It's not hard to keep the birds fed and happy with culled plants from gardens and fields, old un-hulled rice from neighbors, free beef fat from supermarkets, BSFL maggot-like critter from compost piles, baked-sweet potato skins, left-over fruit, various weeds... And we end up with eggs and more birds. This earth of our is a place of abundance, we should be enjoying "plenitude" is the feeling I get from these birds and their eggs.

So that's why I feel that it's appropriate to take photos of the eggs next to one of the Spirits of Abundance, #福禄寿。
#eggs #BackYardChickens #Silky #SilkyEggs #Chickens

#FukuRokuJyu with wilted #CommonHenBit. The chickens like eating this grass named Buddha's Seat in Japanese.

#福禄寿 と 草の #ホトケノザ

#FukuRokuJyu, one of the #SevenLuckyGods now holds flowers in place of a staff. A sister in Virginia shared the epiphany.
#福禄寿 #七福神 #SpiritsOfAbundance

We went to a park with coffee and sandwiches this morning. The little hot-sandwich and coffee place run by nice young women had too many people in it, and the weather was nice. So we stumbled into a flea market. At first I was going to skip it and just lounge under a shady tree and read, but... I ended up finding a nice #FukuRokuJyu wooden figure, and another scarier wooden figure that shares some characteristics. The wood is fun to look at and eventually someone else is interested enough to take them... I like the simpler wood that still has a lot of area left as is, unsculpted... But the other one is interesting. I'll have to ask a Chinese student if the designs on the big figure mean anything...
#SevenLuckyGods #七福神 #福禄寿

#FukuRokuJu in #Aoshima.
#福禄寿　#青嶋　#宮崎市