Editrix’ note: This blog post contains mostly religious content, concerning Tibetan Buddhism. If that isn’t your cuppa chai, or your own religious beliefs require you not read this, then feel free to skip this post for something a bit more entertaining.
“Kali-kali” is perhaps the second Tibetan phrase I ever learned. The first, of course, was “Tashi Dillek” (”Hello”). “Kali-kali” literally translates to “slowly-slowly,” and it’s one of those everyday phrases with 101 uses. When a Tibetan driver goes too fast on the mountain roads for Western sensibilities, a “kali-kali” will get him to reduce his speed. If you’re walking along a rocky mountain path to visit some of the cave nuns in retreat, they might gently encourage you with a cheerful “kali-kali” to take your time and step carefully among the stones. With our Dharma teacher Wangdor Rimpoche, “kali-kali” can have a variety of meanings, depending on the situation. Whenever he answers “kali-kali” to the question “Would you like such-and-such done?” it could mean any of the following:
- Yes, but take the time to get it done right.
- Yes, but not right now.
- Yes, but don’t trouble yourself to get it done right away; take your time.
- Doesn’t matter to me, but go ahead if it’s not too much trouble.
- No.
So you see how this simple phrase can carry a world’s worth of meaning. For the most part, though, “kali-kali” is used in the sense of “bit by bit”, or referring to something progressing in slow but steady increments. In Tso Pema, as I write this, is a massive project of Rimpoche’s that has been proceeding “kali-kali” for the last six years, and still has another year or so to go at the same pace. The purpose is to construct a Buddhist pilgrimage center, topped by an 84-foot tall statue of Padmasambhava (Guru Rimpoche). There’s more info about the project here.
With Indian construction methods, where everything’s done by hand, the site’s foundation alone has taken 3 years to complete. These days most of the work is focussed on the statue. A certain percentage of the work is of a religious nature, carried out by an everchanging volunteer cadre of monks, nuns, and laypeople. They are all working on preparing dzong, the holy texts that will fill the completed statue, and bring it to life.
Kali-kali…
The holy texts arrive in huge bundles. They are a variety of mantras printed on big sheets of yellow paper.
The next step is to cut the sheets into long strips containing a couple lines of mantra apiece.
The strips are rolled up, two at a time, around a short piece of incense.
The tiny package is rolled along the work surface with a block of wood to tighten the wrapping.
The ends are tapped to line up the paper edges so they’re flat.
The end of the strip is glued into place.
The “head” of each dzong is then dipped in red dye.
Some dzong are larger than others. This is the most common size. Others may be the size of a pinky finger, or even palm-sized. Bear in mind that even at the larger size, we’re still talking about making millions of dzong. It takes more than just a couple dzong to fill an 84-foot tall statue. Kali-kali. Moving on…
Yellow fabric is cut into small rectangles to be wrapped around the dzong.
Other volunteers wrap each dzong with a piece of fabric, and glue it securely.
The first stage is done. Now for some serious heavy lifting….time to take the dzong outside for putting into tsa-tsas (small religious statues)!
Groups of young men are given sticks to beat clay mix with boards, to remove any lumps that have formed. The clay is mixed up and doled out to other volunteers in several-kilo lumps.
The clay is portioned out into a lump the size of a fist, and kneaded a bit more by hand to ensure smoothness.
The lump is oiled, and then pressed into a brass tsa-tsa (religious statue) mold. The oil prevents the clay from sticking.
On the other (non-oily) side of the lump, a dzong is pressed deeply into the clay.
Then the lump is placed on a board, mold side up, and the mold pounded with another board to force the clay into all the crevices of the mold.
The mold is carefully lifted away, and any clay tag ends are trimmed off.
The finished tsa-tsa is gently moved to another board, which will be used to carry it…
…and all of its many siblings…
…into the statue.
The various mantras that power the dzong have slightly different purposes. So , the tsa-tsas are sorted into different areas of the statue (head, arms, legs, etc.) to bring it to life.
Rinse…
and repeat…
until statue is full.
The people who work on dzong tend to chant or recite mantras as they work, adding to the efficacy of the texts. Everybody and anybody willing to spend some time cutting texts, rolling dzong, glueing fabric, or molding tsa-tsas is welcome, even if it’s just for a hour or two. The construction crew at the statue has its own cook and requisite chai-wallah, serving up Tibetan tea, black tea, sweet masala chai, and gallons of thukpa and thenthuk to keep everybody going. I’ve already gone up a few times, to sit with the nuns and drink tea and roll dzong.
This is an invitation to any and all of you Buddhist practitioners out there to come out and help with the dzong over the next few months. We really need your help–we’ve got a statue to fill! No special talent or even language skills are needed. Just a willingness to roll paper, glue fabric, or stamp clay is really all that’s required. Once you’re in Tso Pema, just have any taxi or bus wallah drop you off at the path to the Guru Rimpoche statue. Smile as you enter; any number of people are sure to smile back and make a place for you.
January 15th, 2007
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I just hadda share this URL from Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox. Nielsen, for you readers without sorceror-geek tendencies, is pretty much the Godfather of Internet usability. Whenever I wonder why a web page I’m looking at sucks so bad, he usually has the answer, backed up with hard statistical evidence.
Anyway, he recently released a column on computer usability in the movies. If you’ve ever wondered why something like Minority Report looked so fabulous and so totally unrealistic all at the same time, or if you never could quite swallow the pirate hack in Independence Day, here’s your answer:
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: Usability in the Movies — Top 10 Bloopers
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/film-ui-bloopers.html
“This is a Unix system. I know this.” Classic stuff, that.
January 13th, 2007
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Tech |
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All of the details are over on Joy’s blog. For those of you with short attention spans, here’s the instant replay.
- First, have your partner, who’s a doctor, take on a new pro bono patient who’s absolutely crippled and bedridden with rhematoid arthritis.
- Have her realize that her new patient hasn’t seen the sun in four years because the arthitis has moved into the spine as well as deformed both legs.
- Then watch call local doctors to price wheelchairs. Learn that in Himachal a wheelchair costs as low as INR3000 used (or about $75), while a new one runs about INR 8000 (or about $US200)
- Decide that the wheelchair’s certainly affordable, but maybe a few folks could help defray the costs a bit. Anything left over can go for stuff like antibiotics, pain meds and vitamins (the most common stuff Tibetan refugees often need but can’t afford.)
- Take your little problem to the fiber arts community.
- Watch in stupefaction, as an incredible number of not-wealthy people send in $5 here and $10 there for a total of over $700.
- Meantime, take many phonecalls from your partner the doctor as she shops for wheelchairs and argues taxi wallahs into transportation logistics.
- Watch your partner the doctor come home in triumph from dropping off the wheelchair and filling a camera full of pictures of a smiling patient who will be able to attend the big Losar celebration this year.
January 8th, 2007
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General, Emergency Medical Fund |
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How’s the Weather?
One disadvantage of living in a small Indian town in the Himalayan foothills is this weather-related thingy called “winter”. We’re talking seriously low temperatures. Since buildings here are not constructed with any kind of central heating, the temperature differential between indoors and outdoors isn’t that large. This morning, for example, I got up and checked the temperature, which turned out to be 8° Celsius. Indoors. For you indjis on the other continent, that translates to 46° Fahrenheit. I can see my own breath as I write this. With a heater, we’ll eventually raise the indoor temp to a practically balmy 11° C, or 51° F.
Jumping jeeberin’ Jeezus, it’s cold here.
During the day, anyone who can do it stays in the sunshine as long as they can, where it’s warm. The average Rewalsar housewife will truck housework, knitting, kids that need looking after and all to her rooftop, where she can perform a woman’s usual multitasked duties and keep her core body temperature above freezing, all at the same time. Other folks spend their day in the street in front of the chai wallah’s, drinking glass after glass of hot chai while gossiping and enjoying the sun.
This is all by way of saying that both Joy and I have discovered the cold to be a marvelously efficient motivator for beginning and quickly completing knitting projects. The prospect of UFOs* is much less likely when that second sock or glove is what will allow you to retain all feeling in your fingers or toes. Joy, for example, made the happy discovery that a pair of size 12 socks made with wonderful wooly singles from Nepal can be made in four days:
Meantime, I learned that just above freezing temperatures will provide wonderful inspiration for completing a Fair Isle mitten in two days:
The Dreaded Fiber Arts
Making hats for people with dreads is something of a whole artform in itself. It’s not just a matter of “making a larger hat”. Whatever headgear solution is being concocted by the fiber artist has to accomplish some things. The brim has to fit the head of someone whose headsize is effectively 1/3 larger than normal while looking somewhat in proportion to the rest of the wearer’s body, and corral the dreadlocks causing the increased headsize problem so they don’t wander around and interfere with the hat while it’s doing its job.
I’ve been thedreadnyondo for about 8 years now. I’m not a real big fan of the Rasta bag-style hat, which is what most folks make, and had pretty much given up on the whole hat-wearing concept. Then winter hit Rewalsar, and I changed my mind in a hurry. There’s something about doing kora around a lake at about 7:00 in the morning in 30 degree weather that really provides a lot of instant motivation for the hat-wearing thing.
My good friend Ellen last birthday provided me with a stylish dreaded hat in bright yellow felt. As a bonus, its cheerful dreads were about the length of my own. However, it was a bit formal for those first few uncaffeinated laps around the lake, and I looked around for a solution I could wrangle onto my head while still half-asleep. So I turned to the needles and created this monstrosity…
The dreaded….tube!
And the tube in action:
If the color and cabled band style look a little familiar, they should. This is basically Knitty’s Coronet hat pattern, adapted for dreads. This bad boy accomplishes all the things a dreadlock-wearer’s head might require. It fits, keeps the hair somewhat constrained, and even can be pulled down aound the ears. It’s constructed out of cheap-o acrylic yarn (Caron’s Simply Soft, for you inquiring minds), machine-washable stuff that can be sent off to the dhobi-wallah with impunity. And it’s purple, colored like no other article of clothing I own. How cool is that?
Next up: things not to do with your Starbucks commuter mug
We went to the trouble of packing Starbucks commuter mugs and plunger pots to India, so that we could not only make fresh coffee, but keep it warm long enough to be enjoyed during the cold. While setting up our little room heater, Lena discovered that exactly how much heat-related abuse a Starbucks mug can withstand, and still remain usable.
Kids: don’t try this at home. The name of this site is “Blog-o-licious!”, not “JackAss.”.
*UFO: Unfinished Fiber Object. This is a pejorative fiber arts term referring to projects that have been started, and then set aside for easier projects/prettier projects/weddings/funerals/school graduations/dentist appointments. The most notorious generator of UFOs is SSS, or Second Sock Syndrome. Having completed one sock, the knitter fails to cast on and begin knitting its mate directly afterwards. If you’re wondering why most knitters consider this a problem, see this blog entry.
January 4th, 2007
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Fiber Arts |
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Those of you who know me also know that I’m not much of one for the hard-core femme, girly-girl thing. Yes, I’ve had my moments with wigs and lipsticks and corsets and heels and what-not. And yes, one of my favorite colors at the moment is pink. However, it’s not any kind of gentle, feminine rose pink; it’s more of an in-yo-face, whachoo-gonna-do-about-it pink. And cute? Unh-uh. You’re reading the words of a woman who for eight years had a button on the dashboard of her car reading “Cuteness should never go unpunished.” And lacy stuff? Fugeddaboutit. Ribbons, frills, fripperies and lace are all things that happen to other women…women who don’t ride a bus alone for three days with a bunch of drunken, dancing Nepali men, for example.
As you might imagine I suffered a bit of a shock when just the other day I realized that my attempts at the fiber arts were undergoing a kind of sea change.
Exhibit A: Tatting.
I can hear y’all now: tatting–WTF? I know what it looks like; but the thing is, I’m not really responsible for that bit of traditional fiber arts there. See, what happened was, eight months ago, there I was in Berkeley, SOCKMOB*, when This Dude** just runs up on me, grabs my purse, and stuffs some tatting shuttles, two tatting books, and four balls of DMC #10 cotton into it, and runs off. That’s what I get for going anywhere near LACIS. My friend Sylvia was there and she not only saw the whole thing, she enabled it later by showing me how to tat while we recovered over a cuppa coffee at her parents house. So the tatting thing? Totally not my fault. Blame the Beadlizard.
Exhibit B: Lace knitting.
Yes, I did buy a whole skein of Baruffa merino laceweight to commit this heinous crime. And yes, that was me printing out the pattern for the Snowdrop Shawl. And yes, those are my circulars supporting that incriminating bit of lacework you see there.
Okay. I can explain, y’all, I really can.
See, what happened was, I was just surfing the Internet (this was before getting to India), when I made the mistake of turning to the Yarn Harlot’s blog for some mental amusement and relaxation. And she’s got this shawl pattern, which just happened to load up on my monitor screen, where I couldn’t help reading the damn thing. And it’s written in such a straightforward, you-can-do-it style that I just couldn’t help myself. The next few moments I can remember about the whole thing are kinda blurry. Somewhere in there was a trip to Stash, in Albany…my friend Tien standing by and helping me to fondle skeins…a swipe of the debit card…hogging the store’s ballwinder for a while? Something? I dunno. And recently I was digging through the travel stash (yes, Joy and I packed yarn stashes to go to India, so yes, you can laugh) and the merino laceweight came into my hands and exerted this um…hypnotic force style of thing. So, you see, the Snowdrop Shawl isn’t my fault either. Blame the Yarn Harlot.
* SOCKMOB: - Standing On the Corner, Knitting, Minding my Own Business. A fiberly variation on the SOCMOB stories most Emergency Room medics deal with. These tall tales usually start with “See, what happened was…”
** This Dude: Of the legendary Dude brothers. You know, “This dude, he just up and hit me.” and “Some dude started talking trash, so I hadda…” and the ever-popular, “Those two dudes over there started it all, Officer.”
January 2nd, 2007
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Fiber Arts |
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