Our greatest glory is not in never falling,
but rising every time we fall.

-Confucius

1 and 2

Little Gray

This little squirrel has taken up residence in a bird house in my yard. He has it all, two exits for safety, all the food he could ever want with some variety to it, and a warm dry house. Red squirrels are not the most common squirrel here, mostly I have the larger gray squirrels, but this little guy chases them away. He is not even afraid of the crows that steal the suet cakes from the feeder (they fly away with the entire suet cage). He used to be more gray brown but he is turning the more customary red ochre. He sometimes will run around the snow piles in a seemingly random pattern and it never fails to amuse me.

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping,
I dreamed I held you in my arms,
but when I woke dear, I was mistaken,
and I hung my head and cried.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
you make me happy when skies are gray
you'll never know dear, how much I love you,
please don't take my sunshine away.

Words and Music by
Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell

ghost hawk

a pale red-shouldered hawk

My First Memory of Her Face

Warm little destiny in my arms
silent at the dawn of day,
watching closely to memorize me
Soft you nuzzle in
like the light floating from the window
Encompassing us
in the quiet air
I sing to you, my old voice often catching
as you look unashamedly at my face
Who are you?
So serene in this place
in my arms, as if you know the future
something in the eyes
following nothing but my soul
as we rock back and forth
greeting time.

-for Florence, my grandmother who 13 years ago tonight left this world, my first memory is of her rocking me by an open window.

Shake your thing

Snow Dog

So I have seem to have a bit of trouble with the tendons in my right hand. This is problematic for all the work I have to do this weekend. I will do my writing work tonight and then hopefully it will not be so painful tomorrow. As it is my brush grip is weak which for an artist is utterly crippling, but I will work anyway if I have to push through it.

The Lost Dances of Cranes by Juliet Wilson

Your fields are empty now.

Only your ghosts dance

while cranes of another kind

dance cities into being.



All that remain of you are

a fading crackle of your energy

and some grainy video footage



that people in the new cities

will watch to marvel

at the wonders the world



once held.

Feathers "shingle" over one and another within each feather tract and this overlap may vary from tract to tract, such as the middle versus greater wing coverts.
-Don Eckelberry The Art of Bird Painting

First and most important, if you are serious in developing your talent in this direction, you should (indeed you must) get to know your subjects in life through observation. Naturalists know in an instant when an artist is inspired by field experience, and they are not fooled by a lot of detail which often bespeaks a dependence on mounted birds or photographs...

-Don Eckelberry From the Art of Bird Painting

More deformities

I am not sure why this local population of alien mute swans (they are European in origin and should not be here) are having bill deformities. Perhaps they are inbreeding-and a recessive trait is showing up, or there is a nutritional deficit. I originally thought they were injuries but they seem more like deformities. Hmmm....

what's cooking

A good lentil and rice recipe

6 cups of water
1 cup of rice
2 cups of lentils (I like the dark green-they taste a bit nuttier)
salt
add to pot and start it boiling
turn it down and simmer for 40 minutes

in another pan soften
1 cup of onions
3 garlic cloves (less if you are not a garlic fan)

add the onions and garlic to the lentils when they are done
add
two pinches of cumin
two pinches of corriander (ground)
some soy sauce
black pepper
drizzle some lemon on it
-a dash of hot sauce *not for the light palette

I like to serve it over a flat bread surrounded by greens with a bit of red wine vinegar on them and olive oil. It helps to have some good blues music playing while you cook to add some flavor.

~yum~ makes enough for 6 or lunches all week and it is preservative free!

Beautiful Deformity

The More Loving One
by W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

O bless me.
Am I going silent now?
O have I overnight been emptied?
If I could call these thoughts to come,
to stand on this paper
I could read what I mean
May I? May I?

O bless me.
Now I seem to come apart,
to sink
inside this overwhelming, What can I do?
What have I made of all of these new days?
And forgive my despair.

Where is color this hour?
Where is music this hour?
Are they still going on somewhere?
But where now, in this hush?
Where are words in this hush?
And what am I?


-Now in this Hush -Innocence Mission

Bird with unbarred wings disappeared
Rock with weighted heart returned
And rock became her anchor
And bird became her dream

-Rock and Bird- Cowboy Junkies

to love:

Edited for content -too personal to leave up for long

My kind of heart shape

I give you one loud, huge, warm and inviting smile.

Good news, good news!!!

I am braced and ready for any news. My heart is heavy as the things around me break apart with steady efficiency. This time I do not have as many resources to draw upon, this time I have seen the panic greeting your stare, this time I hear a different catch in your breath as you speak of it. All those who should hold me are fading away, so I have to pull myself up.

How can I be strong enough? I will not whine, I will not fall into a stupor of grief, I am made from stronger stock then that.

I can only push for your unrealized dreams and clasp a steady hand over yours. We will fight this again my father, I will not flinch away.

To shoulder this burden
while waiting in vain,again
Your strength is the weakness
On which your enemies prey
Then bury your conscience
let memories fade, away

Given the choice, I'd rather be anyone else
Given the chance, I'd rather be anywhere else

Let all your misgivings whither and fade
our humble possessions remain

Could all be forgotten
if nobody cared?
The weight you have carried
will crumble and fall, today

Given the choice I'd rather be anyone else
Given the chance I'd rather be anywhere else
Let all your misgivings whither and fade
our humble possessions remain

let all your misgivings whither and fade
Our humble possessions remain.

-I am Cuba -Finalyson Maize from Dark Hollow

Sunday Couch Potatoes

The vultures in India and Pakistan are disappearing, read a good article on it here

"But these wild vultures are disappearing so fast-up to 99 percent of the population is now gone.."Just 15 years ago Gyps vultures were thought to be the most numerous large raptors on the planet," Cuthbert says in a single decade they've undergone the most rapid population collapse of any animal in recorded history."

-Susan McGrath Feb. 2007 Smithsonian Magazine

I have been a bad blogger lately, mostly I am in an odd limbo. My painting looked good at the gallery tonight. They hung it well and it had a nice placement in the gallery. I felt secretly proud of it for a moment.

Now here I am just confused and horribly smitten. I am trying to remain rational and good, really I am... but then there is a BIG part of me that wants to well...

I wonder what would happen if he knew how attracted I am to him?
Ah, but how can I possibly even begin?

Stars may always guide our way~From desert sands where the winds blow harsh and long
Here's where, where our hearts will pray~And all our loves will slumber with a song

So now, if our hearts be true~And like a pool of truth reflect the sun
We will find right honour there~ And keep us safe and lead us from all harm

So come love, let us dance all night~Until the birds they waken at the dawn
Then come love, let us sing all night~And all our loves will slumber with a song

-The Gates of Istanbul -Loreena McKennitt

Retreating Glacier

"Sweetness is a desire that starts on the tongue with the sense of taste, but doesn't end there. Or at least it didn't end there, back when the experience of sweetness was so special that the word served as a metaphor for a certain kind of perfection. "

-oh so sweet....

-From The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

At once a voice arose among
    The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
    Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.

-From The Darkling Thrush -Thomas Hardy

-from Wikipedia

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.


-If You Forget Me- Pablo Neruda

bridge

A sad day for Whooping Cranes, 18 known losses-potentially more...
The ones I saw may have been affected by the tornadoes last night.

The day is bitter~sweet, good news on a grant and I am in a show next weekend. The gallery owner was excited about my painting. So it is a mixed bag, because I hate to think something has happened to those magnificent birds I was lucky enough to spend time with. They are so few in number, and bad luck could mean the end of them. What a tragedy that would be, they are just so utterly magical.

Unflinching eye to which I have hands to grab at hawks and eagles without trepidation-by no means a wallflower-iron core-sharp taloned foot-gold eye-hooked beak-sliver tongue
I miss it more then air-in this so conventional-lost nerve-flighted soul

how can I be patient enough?