The Oxbow

In this episode Matthew explores a replica of an Etruscan drinking cup and how it connects to a more felt sense or embodied squatting culture and some of the implications of design that is emergent from table and chair and plate culture and connects that to Asian chopstick use. He also thinly recounts the Romani history with bears and ancestry and connects that to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and the famed stage direction from it "Exit, Pursued by a Bear"

In this episode Matthew skitters widely on folklore about bees and honey, false etymologies, real mythologies, and how the bee and its six-foldedness might connect the spirit world to the living one here on earth.

The Oxbow in this episode gets a reference to a specific episode from Stephen Jenkinson's book "Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time Of Trouble". But that inspires some considerations on the history of business cards and what that has meant for commerce and community. And then the language of the business card spurs thoughts on kennings, sideways poetic language, and the many-faced names of things through a reading from the Alvissmal.

In this episode of The Oxbow the suggestion from a postcard was "rocks." After a joking chastisement of the submitter for giving too specific a suggestion (The Lessons that rocks can teach us) some considerations of how rocks inspire the phrase "rock 'n roll" which brings in a discussion of oral and literate culture. Other reflections emerge on the elder function of ground up ceramics used as temper for new clay and of course the Central American goddess Chalchiuhtlicue. And the nature word o...

In this episode of The Oxbow a Benegal Spice cinnamon tea teabag is the mailed-in suggestion. This ends up being a springboard for sourcing good spices, reflecting on offerings to the divine in texts like the Hymns of Orpheus and the Bible. And then the great tale of the emergence Sri NarasimhaDev, the lion man god of Vedic India somehow all comes up. Who is the animal that invokes the divine and summons culture? Some wonderings today at The Oxbow.