Day Hikes and Nature Walks

The cover of the handbook features the author atop the Monolith, if I'm not mistaken

I got my copy of "Day Hikes and Nature Walks from Manila: Itineraries and Backpacking Notes" by Gideon Lasco. A friend coordinated the order for 5 books, and we got free nationwide delivery.

Signed to "Kaye of the Mabuhaykers" 

Gideon Lasco is a licensed physician, and was apparently my sister's junior at PGH at one point. He is more popularly known as the Pinoy Mountaineer, and his blog at pinoymountaineer.com has become my #1 reference before hitting up the trails. His blog is not only extensive with details on altitude, difficulty, and trail class, but has beautiful descriptions of the terrain. 

Sample pages and itinerary

The chapters are based on topography, like tropical rainforests or seascapes. Within these segments are lists of mountains or water forms, and each of those include short narratives  that paint a picture of what to expect. Tips, sample itineraries, and sometimes estimated expenses are recorded as well. 

I wish I had gotten this sooner, because the rainy season has really put a damper on my hikes, literally and figuratively. For now, I'll have to read about the remaining summits on the lists, and wait for a perfect, sunny day to get back out there.

Practice Makes Progress

Almost a week since I did the first drawing exercises, following instructions from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I'm now on chapter 4. (I switched editions, and "The Definitive, 4th Edition" is a friendlier, less scholarly read.) This chapter has the exercise that Chris had described and got me curious: copying an image upside down. The book proposes that seeing an image right-side up automatically triggers our Left Brain to assign labels to everything, and with those labels come our own interpretations of things based on personal experiences. What it wants is for the reader to try engaging the imaginative Right Brain, ignoring the analytical Left Brain, so that we draw what we see, just as we see it, free of our own opinionated interferences.

SPOILER ALERT

If you want to try reading the book and doing all the exercises, you may not want to see what I drew, so you'll be a clean slate when you do it yourself. Although, the author did share an anecdote of a student who did it twice by mistake, still producing the desired results even if s/he had already seen the original image. Proceed with discernment =)

The book presented a portrait of Igor Stravinsky, drawn by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, oriented upside down. My brain immediately tried to recognise the picture, but I tried to suppress it. So although I knew it was of a person, I tried to see it as nothing but lines and curves, as I was supposed to. The average duration of activity was 45 minutes, but I took almost 2 hours, starting at 11:37 am and ending at 1:20 pm. I made two attempts, the first I discarded almost halfway, because I was unhappy with my attention to proportion. Being more cognizant of that weakness, I tried again. When I was finished, I turned both drawings and looked at them right-side up for the first time. I was pretty pleased with the similarity I achieved... I mean, that's a freaking Picasso!

My version of Picasso's Igor Stravinsky

The original: Portrait of Stravinsky by Picasso (photo taken from Wikipedia)

Having now done the first few exercises, I realised that my biggest disadvantage was and is my impatience. Considered a Left Brained trait, I was just too aware of time ticking away, thinking about how badly I must be doing, and I gave up on the tasks very quickly, not wanting to fix parts I could see weren't precise.  As mentioned, my spatial abilities are not very sharp and I have difficulty with proportions; so in my drawing, Stravinsky's (anatomic) right shoulder is higher than the left, and the hands became chunkier to compensate at that point (I copied from top to bottom of the lopsided image.) I also made him look mad, oops! 

But like Dory said, "Just keep swimming;" and yesterday, while talking to Macy about calligraphy, she was encouraging me (as she so often does) to keep practicing. Practice, indeed, makes progress. 

Reading Dangerously

That morning light and tree-cast shadows

It was a combination of I-Couldn't-Put-It-Down and The-Traffic-Is-Stressing-Me-Out that made me whip out the book I'd been reading. I had reached the plot twist, and it was making me antsy. At the climax of most books, I have this bad habit of glancing ahead, wanting to find a word or phrase to lessen the weight of not knowing what's about to happen... and then I feel guilty the moment I glean exactly that, regretting I did not wait for the proper build up. 

I finished it this afternoon. I really liked this book, "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" by Robin Sloan (you can find it on my Shelf in the sidebar,) maybe because it hit close to home, despite it bordering on fantasy. Those first couple of pages describing the protagonist, Clay, was painfully familiar, because I saw myself in his shallow day to day; and then his dull life transformed slowly, just when his life needed an upgrade. I'd like to think that sort of thing could happen to me, but then I don't think I have the curiosity and daring to get involved in an adventure like he did. 

Many parts were actually too predictable, too convenient for my taste, especially how each character was set up to respond to Clay's every obstacle, but it soothed me. The author blended books, languages, technology, a little bit of history (however fictional,) and even knitting (very briefly) -- all things I love -- so effortlessly and humorously, that I remained in that world for a little bit longer, even hours after putting it down. 

Now, all I can think about is immortality...