Week 3: Ages of Japan

Two things... The scroll book Ages of Japan and healing energy. I spent last week working on the sample book for this week's Bento Box of Books class. Its the scroll, one of the oldest book forms in existence. Egyptian antiquities as well as the ancient Chinese have examples of the scroll that date to the 3rd century BC and before. The Japanese got it from the Chinese.. rather late in the game... maybe 12th century AD. The oldest Japanese book (in existence) is a scroll... The Tale of the Genji written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu between 1120-1140AD. It's all written (very small!) on my scroll, Ages of Japan... my book for Week 3.

The scroll is made of strips of kozo with suminagashi background which are glued end-to-end for over 6 feet then glued to a small handprinted Japanese paper wrapper with satin ribbon. The strip is glued to and wrapped around a shortened round wooden chopstick. The ends of the chopstick dowel are paper beads. Once I finished marking the Japanese cultural timeline from the present back to 10,500BC in 1-inch/100 year increments, I was afraid the thing would resemble a roll of toilet paper rather than a lovely scroll. But, it didn't, thank goodness, and is quite sweet.

Now about the healing energy... I attended my first qigong workshop this weekend. Titled, The Healing Energy of Qigong, it was led by Kert Peterson of Eastside Qigong in Burnsville, NC. We practiced the sitting modes of movement. Actually the first 10 of 30. One of the other 8 students asked me if I had fun. "No." I said rather emphatically. But on thinking of it now, the reaching our hands up, rotating them in a circle, wiggling our fingers, sweeping them gracefully from side-to-side or floating them up and down, breathing in and out, and counting it all... it was fun. Or will be fun... when I'm not concentrating so much on following the directions and mimicking the others. Paulus said, "Just don't think about it so much." He is right about that. And I was wrong, it was FUN, I just didn't realize it... You can read more about Kert Peterson's form of qigong by checking out his website at www.eastsideqigong.com

With (more) energy,
Kathy