Marigold dust all over my fingers

[mrissa]

My friend Peg has a post in which she is talking about All The Things, All the Many Many Things, and she says:

I fret about how everything, but everything, expands into a million marigold petals when I touch it. I want to scrape at the scale on my bathroom faucet with a toothpick, and to paint my living room myself, and to redo every inch of my yard. I plan to find the pillow for the cover that’s been made out of my wedding dress, and the upholsterer I’d hoped to ask about recovering my dining room chairs has gone out of business. I resent work for taking time away from studying.

And yes. Oh my yes. The world–my world–is full of things that want doing. Some of them want doing now. Some of the ones that want doing now are just not going to get done. But the biggest thing here is that I’m trying to keep the opportunities and leave the fretting behind. I don’t think we want to go without seeing all the things that can be better, the awesome things that can exist but don’t, all the opportunities that this kind of reaction to the world gives us. I’m just trying to let go of the component that fusses and keep the component that sees.

This is harder than it looks.

It’s not easy–but it’s easier–when I’m comparing things I have a choice about. “Work on story” vs. “have tea with friend”: I will choose some of each, and which one will depend on the day, the story, the friend, and a dozen other things. But the last few weeks there’s been a lot of “what gets removed from the list because ‘feel ill’ has replaced it?”, and that…I am even less good at that. Whenever I have a bad time with the vertigo, or a cold or what-have-you, I want to catch! up! I want to make up for the time “wasted.” And over and over again I’m being reminded that not running myself into the ground is not actually a waste.

This week Tim suggested that we should get a three-d ice printer*, and I discovered that my head is full of abstract ice sculptures. I didn’t know that about myself until he postulated this gadget, and then there they all were, cold curves that live in my brain without me even knowing it. And…I am so glad that it does that sometimes, this brain I got. Even with the fretting. So very glad.

*No, we know of no such thing being manufactured. We were talking about my need for baking (tangible, ephemeral) as a counterbalance for writing (intangible, lasting), and Timprov thought that ice sculptures might also serve the same need, and it is unwise for people of my balance abilities to use chainsaws very much. So: three-d ice printer. But really, shouldn’t there be one? Isn’t it an awesome idea?

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

A very cool ideal. Heh!

Yeah, I think about all the things.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

Not only do 3-D ice printers exist, you can get custom ice sculptures printed by Shapeways! http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/210-introducing-our-newest-creator-the-shapeways-ice-sculpture-creator.html Unless, of course, that's an April Fools joke, which seems likely.

There are some references to academic experiments, though: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/st_3diceprinting/

[vcmw]

Jason really wanted the playdough 3D printer, and was very sad to discover it was an April Fool's joke.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that "3D ice printer" would be tricky from an engineering standpoint, since it's easy to think about a heated water-line and nozzle with a liquid nitrogen sleeve to freeze water as it comes out, but harder to figure out how to heat the previous bit of ice enough to get the next bit to adhere to it, perhaps pulising the nitrogen to get some water on the previous bit before the nitrogen hits the next bit- ...there'd be quite a lot of trial-and-error engineering there, I think. And whichever grad student we assigned to steal dewars of LN from the lab would probably get pretty fed up with us.

But 3D playdough printer? That would be totally easy. You could totally build that now, and I bet most of the instructions are online.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

This is way more complicated than it needs to be. Add hot water to constantly-cooled ice and the hot water will freeze into a new layer. You don't have to cool it on the nozzle side.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I also wanted to make an ice sculpture this week -- I mean the thought of making a specific ice sculpture went through my mind, only to be dismissed as "I would have to spend years learning the technique".

If you had a printer, it wouldn't have to be ephemeral. I mean each instance would be, but you could print the same things again, and it wouldn't be like baking from the same recipe because they would always come out the same.