Time races on and the past begins to blur like a dream you want to go back to and cannot recall exactly. You only remember the feeling of it and roll it around in your mind like a sweet elixir. I want to go dizzy drunk on yesterday but time plods on. Today wraps me up in the confines of its traditional frame, a regular convention to be what is only and what can be sits on the shelf. My solution is always to work again and pick up that brush. Perhaps I can paint a new dream that breaks this drudgery of day to day, with some remembered colors. Maybe I can capture what was to give it more permanence, some substance that lasts longer then that glance. I wonder again if it was indeed real at all and so begin the thought again at the start of this little narrative.

In other news I rescued a robin who had a broken back. She will be gently taken from this world by the wildlife center I gave her to. Perhaps she for a moment would like to go backwards and change course from that oncoming car. The entire sequence of life lines up behind one simple moment if you let it change you. For good or for bad, but it is not ever the same. As I am changed and trying to fit back into some older place.

the shadow flies over

As the day dawned I found a newly emerged mourning cloak butterfly and held him for the briefest of moments. He flexed his wings in the sunlight and took off into the sky.

I left to go to another city about 2 hours away to drop off a painting for a show. The woman who greeted me was a bit reserved. She did not remark on the work or offer a friendly word. Instead she looked me up and down with a cold eye. It made me nervous about a conference I am attending and presenting at that goes along with the show. I will have to prove myself to them, that I am worthy of being there.

When I got home I found that Nella my rabbit was dead. She was laying in the bottom of her cage. She had a birth defect that needed medication and because of it was constantly having trouble. Her death was still rather unexpected. Let's all hope it is not an omen, just a passing as things do. I buried her in the dirt, laying her gently into the earthy hole. Letting it swallow her white body up with each shovel full of dirt. I realized how worn out I really am and reluctant to find sorrow again. A rainbow filled the sky as the storms passed and the sun set. A red rainbow, a day of transformations and endings.

Distracting Lavender

Flying over the water

I have been busy and am currently missing an opening I have work in, ooops. I guess I got sidetracked at the lavender festival and lost track of the time. The lavender festival was a nice distraction as I have been playing since last evening-sailing with friends, which was paradise. Now it is all work though,some things have come up and it is time to get the nose to grindstone. I am a bit sad I am missing the opening but I feel so yucko today, just not great looking as of late. Not so much and am in one of those I hate how I look places I get into and then work-out like mad to look really the same (sigh). Ah well so to hide in my studio from the world and try to get more comfortable in my skin and get some magic done for this summer.

Have a Sara Slean song here and dance around like a crazy person.

Here is an interesting website on the Texas Border fence monstrosity here

Shake your groove thing, shake your groove thing yeah yeah

ok, this is a bit sentimental and over the top. It is a difficult topic but here goes so have a laugh I guess...

I have seen the wonders in the heart
and my life is full
of the depth of joy
the soft gestures of love
great expanse of days
that cascade with laughter
I have seen so much
like a box kept within myself
full of treasure
what stories it contains
what songs it can sing
as all I have
bears itself again.

-by the cheese ball Corby herself

When in June

The Rose of Midnight by Vachel Lindsay

THE moon is now an opening flower,
The sky a cliff of blue.
The moon is now a silver rose;
Her pollen is the dew.

Her pollen is the mist that swings
Across her face of dreams:
Her pollen is the April rain,
Filling the April streams.

Her pollen is eternal life,
Endless ambrosial foam.
It feeds the swarming stars and fills
Their hearts with honeycomb.

The earth is but a passion-flower
With blood upon his crown.
And what shall fill his failing veins
And lift his head, bowed down?

This cup of peace, this silver rose
Bending with fairy breath
Shall lift that passion-flower, the earth
A million times from Death!

Sabal Palm

Those perilous climbs were frightening but they were wonderful to me and not like anything I had known before. The fright of the day was still with me in the night and I would often dream that the foot of my bed rose straight up into the air-then just as it was about to fall I would wake up.

-Georgia O'Keeffe -Some Memories of Drawings

sign for Ocelot's because of the stupid border fence idea here

An Anniversary

By Edwin Dickinson

So I spent a good half hour in front of a Dickinson painting this evening. I had seen that it was on display when I was at the gallery with a bunch of students some weeks ago and finally managed to get to really see it tonight. The passing people thought it was strange that someone would stay with a painting for so long. For me it is as if the artist is wrapping himself around me and we are having this deliciously intimate conversation. I can feel him in the manner by which things are done on the canvas. The painting and I dance about when I am so completely engrossed in it. It is hard to explain on a verbal level and I am only stabbing about at it here. So was it really black Dickinson or rather a prussian blue mixed in? I could see it where the sleeve of the dark cloak hit the edge of the hand and a slight lightening happened where the colors unintentionally mixed. Blue indeed, blue where I had thought only umbers and blacks, like liquid walnut. A nice surprise and I began to look elsewhere for it. I loved his willingness to have a wiped off nose, as if it would not ever be right so just the liberty of smearing it out. No nose for you lady. I wondered was it a lack of attention, or the need to not create the hyper detail that was the face of the centered man. Oh, and what pure genius that was, how when I sketched it I could sense how his strokes and the line of this aged face was falling downward. So the line itself within the form and the building of the form held the message aging in its very execution. A liberty of arm that had me convinced that it was effortless. Why was her foot with that sharp heel dangling precariously over that beautiful blue and white pot. How her innocence had a sharp fox like edge, along with her attenuated face and almost unformed hands. I had a time I tell you a time. People like to watch people sketch and interrupt reverie with silly statements. It is a communion I am having and rather private, because if I gave all this reflection to a passerby they would probably fall over. Ah, here I am because I am practically bursting with it.

Dolphin

She rises like the dolphin, with the sea wind in her eyes.
The sunlight casting shadows, like a painter's paradise
Her hair fans out around her, floating like a crown.
She plays on the water, lets it pull her down.

Sometimes she swims in moonlight with the stars high above.
The night sounds of the water speaking soft of love.
Her skin turns to velvet as she feels the waters glide.
She loses all her boundaries on this magic carpet ride.

You see ripples on the water and watch the shadows dance.
Then she's diving down and you're looking through a glass.
Like a one way mirror, her reflection's far below.
Where she was, she isn't now.
That's all you really know.

Kate Wolf

I push the water as I go. My muscles remember the feel of it as I tug myself forward. I watch the time but soon am lost in the rhythm. I breathe in as my head turns out of the water and look at my hands as they go in front of me. They have an odd white halo from the water as they glide making tiny bubble whirlpools. I am determined to push through to swim for at least a half-hour. I am taking care of this body and shaping it. I want to be long, lean and strong. I used to swim three to four times a week. I think as I go pushing everything away and letting all of the stress go. I love the sense of strength it gives me to pull across the pool. The blood pulses through my body and I remember the importance of breath. When I lived in Maine I would swim every morning in a small mountain lake. I was often alone except for the company of a loon who would dive around me and watch me with his red eyes. I can still be there in amongst the foothills of the White Mountains if I close my eyes. I can still feel the small round pebbles under my feet as I walked into the cold water. I would make the jump in and swim for at least an hour under the deep blue sky.

For G and A Over New Mexico

One of the Corbyhawk's paintings. It is about 3feet (wide) by4 feet (tall) in oil

But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is beyond reach, it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need-if only we had the eyes to see.

Edward Abbey -Desert Solitaire

A Turtle Dad

To my Dad

When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.

-Josh Groban You Raise Me Up

I am lucky to still have my dad around although the world has tried to steal him from us all. Still he is here and immensely strong.

The department of homeland insecurity and the great American government has put wildlife rehabilitators on notice in Texas near Laredo. Apparently they are bulldozing all of the vegetation by the Rio Grande River at the worst possible time for breeding endangered birds. They are not willing to change the date and well it sucks at any time to do something so completely stupid. Good thing this country has laws that can be bypassed so easily by the current dictatorship, oh what endangered species act? WE are the big bad office of Homeland insecurity. I will feel so much safer with a cleared river and an 8ft border fence. Whoopdy do. Goodbye Ocelots, goodbye mangrove cuckoos, goodbye sabal palms, goodbye freedoms as the fence us all in. Yep, so we can't escape the stupidity. Stupid bastards, of course they cannot wait until election day, got to get it done. Legacy of idiocy.

Green Jays are gorgeous

So, I went in to drop off a print and the gallery director is desperate to fill up the show. This turns out to be a good thing since I say well I do have this piece and it is on my website. So she goes to it on her computer and sees most of my work. She seems to enjoy my paintings and exclaims at various pieces. So tomorrow I have to get something ready to hang and bring it to her.

Then today I got a rejection letter for a show. I was so sure that I was going to get into that I am having the work framed. So I am paying for it for no reason. Ah to be an artist, up then down.

Brown Pelican

No matter how quick, how long his gait is
How supple his torso or how far
He leans away from you at evening

He will come back like a wild brother,
Linked in the syncopations of the light
As stolid theme and impetuous cadenza

Dance to the measure of the one song,
Or as a dream of flight that dares
Not leave its dreamer for long.

From His Steps by Daniel Hoffman

Why I didn't eat the broccoli

"I am the crane you once rescued, "she said. "But now that you know, I may no longer stay here with you." [Gradually the young man's wife turned into a bird]

She ran out the door on her slender crane legs, gave a tiny jump and flew off into the evening sky. As the crane circled higher and higher in the twilight glow, the young man thought he heard a sad call, "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye."

-From The Crane Wife, A Japanese folk-tale

With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, up-ward beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far into life, is-solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate --?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

Rainer Maria Rilke -Letters to a Young Poet

Whooping Crane

I wrote this and then changed it since I realized what I need to do. I am going to cultivate an attitude of fearlessness. So I lose everything so what? I am standing on the edge and looking up at the set of stairs. They are daunting but here I go, one leg at a time. I will get there believe me. I am made of some strong stuff. I did sell some work I donated to an art fund raiser and well I sold every work except one. That I think is good since there were 3,000 pieces there and to sell 6 of my 7 is pretty damn good considering many did not sell at all. It is a good sign, people want my work. Now if I could only sell some of the bigger stuff.

Red Knot before a storm

I went out to find a life-bird (a bird I have not yet seen before). It was a trip met with success, but of course a thunderstorm killed the lighting, threatened to drench my camera, and made being the highest thing on a long pier a rather precarious option. So the photos are not exceptional, merely a record. I felt bad for the red knot, it was off-course and seemed to be stressed. He was repeatedly crossing the pier, hopefully getting food I could not see. Red knots are not doing so well in terms of population. Read more here
I did not really get a chance to enjoy the bird, but just felt like I was disturbing an already stressed bird, so I watched him from a distance for a short time and then left. (The impending downpour also rushed me).

What I have been listening to here:
It is a rather funny paradox in my twisted mind, but it is a popular song with the little folks I hang out with, so I heard it several times today. They like to sing along and funkytown is also popular and can incite periodic spurts of dancing at random moments. (It is silly and makes me laugh)

Whether we come, in last imaginings,
To our earliest unremembered dream,
Or at the end it's still discovery,
Always the conquest of a a final shore,

He will be waiting for me there,
As ever second-sighted and first there:
I groping my way in radiant day,
He cleaving midnight quick as flame;

From The Companion by Daniel Hoffman

Onwards

I have decided that my case of the blahs, the mopes, being generally down is in fact a way to disguise fear. I am in fact afraid, I crave change but I am afraid of it at the same time. It is easy to continue on with the disappointments I have grown to expect in my life. Hope is generally avoided as it can lead to immense pain, but it also means that I am not taking the risks I should be. I have grown lethargic and pessimistic which is not my true nature. So easy to fall into the trap of the day to day, the expected routine, the path everyone sees your life heading down. How unexpected to go out and alter that road, which requires more effort then just listing on doesn't it? Of course one cannot see as clearly down that other path, it goes through more diverse terrain, unexpected forests and it sometimes does not seem so clear. It calls me and I will stop wallowing in my beliefs of what I cannot have and actually try to reach for what I want. Isn't it about time I showed some faith in my abilities? I can do this and I believe in it after all, so very much so. The thing is about others who want me to follow their path into oblivion, they cannot stand the idea that there can be something else beyond the routine of empty days. I see it, so hey grab my hand and lets be extraordinary together.