Black Cats, Super Novas, and Flux

The Road before me
tree-lined, meadow-flanked
and upheld by blue mountains
that shift and fade
to blue sky.

My Mind before me
expansive as sky
clouds roll by
I watch
Truth beheld intermingling,

twinkling like pinpoints
of starlight exposed.
Sky goes dark
then one can see 
what could not be seen in daylight.

It alludes, best seen
when not looking directly
simply being
shows it all,
gives it all.

Like the mountain I sit, though moving.

The Universe casts her spell 
upon me
Knows Herself through me
holds opposites at one time.

The convoluted truth touches our skin
but briefly 
and is gone.
Transfigured.
A black cat in the night
eyes twinkling.

Gail Force: The Irrefutable Invitation

The call
The caw
It issued forth
          from the Crow's mouth
          but it was prayer
               on my lips.
It pierced the morning
          separating night from day.
I clung to its echoes
     the way a bird clings
     to a ferocious wind
          no choice
     as it cleaves its space from the air. 
          Slicing the indivisible
               the way a moment
               slices future from past
     yet changes in each instant
     always different, always the same.

I knew the day'd be bright
     whether or not the sun shone
for I'd spent my ~time~
     in the blackness of that night. 

 

Nature's Stunning Abstracts - Masterpiece "Paintings"

 

"Each man’s necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of; though he converses only with moles and fungi and disgraces his relatives, it is no matter if he knows what is steel to his flint."

  -Thoreau journal entry; excerpted in Thoreau and the Art of Life

 

 

"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."
 - Julia Margaret Cameron

 

 

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, 

for I have seen the shadow on the moon, 

and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church”

- Ferdinand Magellan

 

"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand." 

-Thoreau journal entry; excerpted in Thoreau and the Art of Life

  

 

"Life is much too important to be taken seriously."

 - Oscar Wilde

  

"Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows."

 - Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - 

the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science"

 - Albert Einstein from Living Philosophies

 

 

"One is never so strong as when one is broken."

 - Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

 

 

"Hand over the controls to the universe and go along for the ride. 

When you're a passenger, 

you can appreciate all the beautiful scenery that you might otherwise miss."

Author unknown

Contemplating Collapse

'Contemplating Collapse, 2015, full collage

Upper left

Upper right

Bottom left

Bottom right

“The test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring.”

 - Willa Cather

Take and Eat of this Body: a collection of words and images

"If one doubts the walking of the mountains, 

one doesn't even yet know one's own walking."

- Dogen

'Primordial Herald'

"The further a society drifts from the truth, 

the more it will hate those that speak it."

 - George Orwell

The talkative Wren

"Everyone has talent.  What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads."

 - Erica Jong

'The Birth of Death' 

“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” - Isaiah 42:14-16

Firewood Rainbow

"I feel and think much as you do, 

care about many of the things you care about, 

although most people do not care about them. 

You are not alone."
- Kurt Vonnegut

'The Future's Provenance'

"It is ironic that, while concentrating 

on the defense of our country from enemies 

who would destroy it from without, 

we should be so heedless of those 

who would destroy it from within."

- Rachel Carson

 

​

Rippling Out Through Eons:  A Rock Found at Work

"Those who don't feel this Love pulling them like a river, 

those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water 

or take in sunset like supper, those who don't want to change, 

let them sleep." 

- Rumi

Cars that used to be - on their way to being something else...

“I’d rather be whole than good.”

 - Carl Jung

Gravitas

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, 

but in having new eyes."

 - Marcel Proust

'Cataclysm Radiance' 2015

"Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter."
  - African proverb

'Passages of Listening' 2015

"Semen is Latin for a dormant, fertilized plant ovum-a seed. Mens ejaculate is chemically more akin to plant pollen.

See, it is really more accurate to call it mammal pollen. To call it semen is to thrust an insanity deep inside our culture: that men plow women and plant their seed when in fact, what they are doing a pollinating flowers. 

Now, doesn't that change everything between us?"

 -Stephan Harrod Buhner 'Secret Teachings of Plants'

'Prolific' 2015

"Though men possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so."

 - Edward Abbey 'A Voice Crying in the Wilderness' 


~

Solace and Growth

 “When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be — I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” – Wendell Berry

Sunshine through Muhlenbergia grass - in the Fall Garden.

"No greater thing is created suddenly, 

any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. 

If you tell me that you desire a fig, 

I answer you that there must be time. 

Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen."

 - Epictetus

What I made at last month's Monthly CraftNight.

     

"Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave."

 - Constantin Brancusi

Birth of an Oak Tree.

"That which does not destroy us makes us stronger."

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

~

'Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out'

"Do not try to save the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life
and wait there patiently,
until the song that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue."

- Martha Postlewaite

'Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out' 2015

Extinction (and Tattoos, Grieving, and Health)

Health in the Garden.

I often get asked what my tattoos mean, so I decided to blog about them.  I'm going to start with the latest and in the future will write about some of the others...

A similar tattoo to the one found on the Ice Maiden, one of the most elaborate and well preserved tattoos found on an ancient person.  Read more about this interesting story here.

On my last visit back in April, I chose to get 3.  This was to make up for lost time since I hadn't gotten a tattoo since getting Lyme back in August 2011.  I hadn't gone that long since getting my first in 1995 and they form a special ritual for me; their mark being permanently on my skin as a representation of my life at the time is important to me.  It felt good to be well enough to do it.  So these tattoos represent that to me too.  They represent life and health in the midst of extinction.

The Extinction Symbol.  I like that I have it where I would have a watch because THIS is what time it is and it reminds me that NOW is all that matters.  Be Here Now.

And I say extinction because we are in the sixth greatest mass extinction right now.  Not only are insane numbers of creatures going extinct daily because of us humans, but we will likely follow suit before it's over.  This is a big deal and I mourned and grieved for years about it.  I feel I am now on the other side of that for the most part and now "simply" attempt to be in the moment, find joy, do what is important and good, and prepare as I can for the coming collapse.

'The Dancing Shaman' - a 10,000 y.o. cave painting - also representing Dance and Art in this time of needed Shapeshifting.

I felt the extinction symbol went well with the two other tattoos that are tied to primitive peoples as I think those peoples have a lot to teach us and that we will have to return to a more primitive way of living in the world to be sustainable, especially considering Peak Oil and other Peak resources.  We will need more community, more egalitarianism, more simplicity, more frugality, ....and less greed, selfishness, and shortsightedness.  I'm not sure that it's not too late; but I nonetheless do what I can, just in case. 

I hope you will join me.

​"At the stillpoint of the turning world

there the dance is.

And without the point

that stillpoint

there would be no dance

and there is only the dance."

- T. S. Elliot​

Telling the Truth through Rorschach Collage

"Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know." - J.R.R. Tolkien

'Cosmic Mitosis' 2015

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

 

'From Dust, To Dust' 2015

 “You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.” - Beverly Rubic

"Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake." - Francis Bacon 




~~~

Indian Trail

Have you seen any of these? I come across them occasionally in my woodland wanderings.
Click link to know more...

Indian Trail Trees

1994 in George Washington National Forest

~~~

The Orioles of Childhood - a poem

The Earth
The Earth she spoke to me
on wings of orange and black
not seen
but for memory

She spoke too
through the trees
     who cry out
to those who listen

of times to come
Times when the ravages
will no longer
be able to be ignored
for the sake 
     of comfort
     and convenience
                          for they will strike
                 our very bodies
                 as they have Hers.

"But if he is not rich, if he lacks inner wealth, he will crave what is outside him, and materialism, the driving force of the worship of progress is born."  - Thoreau 'Walden'

How does one gain inner wealth?  How do you?

Click here


~~~

Collage from the Archives

I am giving a talk tonight at Shenandoah Arts Council on Collage as a tool for healing 

and am giving monthly upcoming hands-on workshops on the same at Mountain Mystic Company, 

If you're local to the DC, MD, northern VA, and WV area and interested, 

check out this Facebook group for details.

Some of my collages from the archives for inspiration...

(technically they are mixed media assemblages; they are 3D)

Mindfield 2007

Tecknowledgy:  Take a Byte  2007

Fuel  2009

 Ants ended up invading the last one to eat the candy.  I loved this as it added so much to the concept I was attempting to capture, with the collage being about food.  It was interactive art with the ants crawling around and eating it.  Now the candy is long gone.  :)

~~~

Near Term Human Extinction

Short of an immediate and complete sessation of ALL industrial processes planetwide
(which unfortunately is not going to happen)...

In dealing with this, I have been collaging.  It's a hard thing to come to terms with, and a hard reality to live.

The collaging has helped; what do you do?  I have worked through much thought and emotion and cathartically come to a better place in the production of each of these, a month or so apart.  I offer collaging workshops, here in northern Virginia.

'Dichotomous Balance'

"You were born in a human form, and you find joy in it. Yet there are ten thousand other forms endlessly transforming that are equally good, and the joy in these is untold." - Chuang Tsu

'Stardust in the Eye of the Beholder'

Overall, I think the point is to find joy and to do what we can to help the Earth, as She will be here long after we are gone.  I have a Facebook group to this end.

A Bountiful Crop

After a single digit night, I look outside at the snow covered ground and dream of the garden...

My green babies...foot long green beans, though some reached 18", anyone want to barter neat seeds, let me know...

LOVE

 That being said, I'm grateful for this time of rest and renewal.

"Take a rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop." - Ovid, from Ars Amatoria

I rest with extra reading, meditation, and baths and I renew with creating.

Lately I've been collaging Artist Trading Cards...

It took me a few years to collect and cut out all these small images.

The start of the organic process:  allowing the cards to come together!

Here are a few from years past:

I'll share some of the new ones soon.

~ How are you resting and renewing? ~

 from House of Belonging by David Whyte:

 "When your eyes are tired
The world is tired also.

When your vision is gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you."