The Rookery

Think Like A Raven

Corvidos are known for their intelligence, adaptability and powers of cognition. They also have an excellent abilty to communicate. Birds have developed a part of the brain called the hyperscriacum. This structure is not present in mammals. Birds use the hyperscriacum for higher reasoning. Cordvids are among the birds with the largest hyperscriacums. In addition they have very high encephalization quotients (the ratio of the size of the brain in comparison to the size of the body) close to that of humans and dolphins.

Meet Alexis Lozano

Alexis

I'm a girl who has grown up and lived in a world of words. Numbers make no sense to me, the only counting I actually enjoy doing is counting how many books I already have or how many books I want to read.

Physically, I live somewhere in the greater Manila area, Philippines, and attend school at a small school often stereotyped as a school of spoiled rich kids only. But in my mind, I live in places real and imaginary...or rather, imaginary to all non-initiated but very much real to those who know how to use their imaginations. Depending on my moods, I've lived in Middle Earth, traveled thru the Vale, Riva, Drasnia and other Eddings lands, relaxed in Avonlea, P.E. Island, struggled thru Cutter Gap, Tennessee, roamed various random castle towns in England and Wales, visited Winterfell and King's Landing of Westeros (but don't tell anyone else that I visit these places!!) and wandered thru the many other places that have captured my heart.

Riversleigh and its environs are where I go to exchange little gifts and stories with my fellow Imagination travelers that come to roost here, where we can bide a wee, away from the mad and maddening world. While it is always nice to travel the worlds by ones self, it is even nicer to find kindred spirits to share these worlds with.

Books and travels, the search for new places and new people to be friends with, those encompass who I am, beyond my physical appearance of a short, coppery haired loner student.

My blog is my little online "magick box" where I can store my tries at various creative efforts and share the little everyday stories of my life as an intellectually wandering gypsy, a la Sara Stanley or Anne Shirley, if even if I don't do it as eloquently as those two girls, (yet).

In my blog, I also love sharing music, quotes and poetry that catch my heart. Looking at the list of things I share, my tastes may seem to be all over the place, with no particular single theme, but the over all unity perfectly describes me as a person. I take aspects from the many possibilities that a person may have and using these disparate elements, I make my own identity.

Christmas Cards by Alexis

card

The Rookery - Day Six

ornament

A Room of My Own at Riversleigh
from the MagickBox

Windows
a poem by Alexis Lozano

jester

Oh windows, how I love them so!
Big ones, small ones,
square ones, round ones,
windows that open out to let the fresh breeze in,
windows that stay shut to keep the driving rain out,
I could never do without at least a window or two.

Windows let the wide world in
and illuminate any dark and lonely place:

A world walking by,
rushing by, dancing by,
laughing, crying, shouting,
rumbling, sighing, beeping;

A world of people, cars,
trucks, buses, bicycles,
sidewalks and tress,
concrete and grass;

A world of
bright, soft, harsh, warm sunshine
and dancing, howling, sighing unruly wind..

With each passing human and machine,
and the occasional stray cat or dog
(or the odd horse and carriage!)
and the constant shifting of light and shadow
the scene transforms on and on and
the windows forever show something new.

Oh windows, how I love them so!
Windows to let in wit and brilliance,
and bring imagination to life.

Now you know why
I could never do without at least a window or two.
~~~

To an often bedridden child, windows more than doors are the way to the outside world. Doors, you see, don't really offer a way to escape because that way leads to the doctors and nurses who want to keep you in. And open doors tend to show only the unchanging walls of the corridors beyond. Windows, on the other hand, show an always changing view to the outside world. Nothing really stays the same outside, and its easy to imagine many stories to go with the different things you see thru the window.

The windows I've grown up liking are not restricted only to the physical windows in actual rooms, but to the many books I love as well. After all, don't they say that books are the doors or gateways to knowledge or something like that? But in my version, books are the windows to knowledge, because in reading you discover the important insights by observing, thinking and imagining, unlike just merely stepping into to the other side which is precisely what you would do with doors or gates to anywhere. You need doors to get to the other side but you need windows to show it to you and to help you put things into perspective.

An extended stay in any room without windows and/or books at all is absolute agony for me, and I do everything I can to find ways to get out even for short periods of time. I remember when I got sick and ended up in the hospital for a whole month; my room had what would physically be called a window but only looked out into the blank wall of a corridor that hardly anyone passed the entire time I was confined. I couldn't even read because I was too weak and feverish to understand a single word I tried to read.

The agony, the torture, the pain I felt! Never mind the body's aches and pains, my mind felt trapped and confined as well. I took every opportunity I could to have people wheel me out on a wheelchair to where the windows where, in the area between the elevators and the stairs. I didn't even care if the view was obscured whenever it rained, because the fact that I could tell wether it was raining or not felt amazing. I may not have been able to see the buildings very clearly but just watching the rain and the wild wind and streaks of lightning that came with it was enough to lift my spirits for a while.

Making Christmas Cards

Everybody loves to receive, and give, hand made Christmas greeting cards. Pull out all stops and set aside some time to make your own Christmas Cards and tags. Use natural materials such as seeds, dried grass, ribbons, coloured papers, paints, cottons and fabric, with glue, to create unique and special Christmas greeting cards.

And, for a difference, dip back in to the 2004 Advent Calendar and make collaged boxes to gift wrap in a new and different way.