how to float

I am a visual thinker.  For the most part, I can't understand or learn anything without seeing it. When I was trying (and failing) to learn Spanish, I had to visualize the words and sentences in my mind in order to comprehend them.  My teacher, who was very good, cautioned the class against doing that, but I couldn't help it.  Consequently, I got as far as the conjunctive tense and felt like I couldn't go any farther.  Maybe someday, I'll try again.

So, I have a tendency to mentally see things in visions or imagery, but not in a predictive or supernatural way.  Not even usually in a dream, although these things come to me sometimes just as I wake up.  It's just the way my mind functions.  It's how I understand and process things, lots of visual analogies and metaphors.

This is the vision from the weekend.  I pictured someone in the bottom of a well.  Terrible.  Dark, slimy mossy walls, damp, a circle of daylight and sky above faraway out of reach. Cold. Then the well started to fill up, water seeping in at the bottom, wafting around her shoes and creeping higher and higher.  Touching her hem, rising, rising.  She panics, starts to claw at the walls, trying to get a grip, but the rock and the moss are unyielding to her fingers.

The water gets higher, more volume, so it's swirling around her, and she's frantic, and suddenly I realize!  Don't panic!  It's water!  Don't struggle!  Just float, and it will raise you closer to the top...  float...  FLOAT... please...

I realized later, this is what I hope this Buddhism study does for me.  I hope it teaches me how to float.

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I have started listening to some lectures that are offered by a local Tibetan Buddhism center online.  I liked what I heard, so I have gone ahead and contacted them about a meditation class. I start next week.

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The rowboat is the result of a similar vision.  I'll go into detail about that one when I finish it, and post it for sale.  As I move forward in this charm business, I have the feeling that many of my pieces will have stories like this attached to them.  I have already added a "well charm" to the list - the ever-expanding list! - of charms I need to carve.

A bit of a backwards step working on the rowboat over the weekend though.  I attempted some texturing, I'm not entirely happy with it, and I may have made it too thin for casting.  I may have to start over.

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