How did the Goose cross the road....?

He called some friends to help...
May you have a Wonderful New Year

Lovely lady please
let me borrow him through this winter
I will return him come spring
when the flowers push up through
this blanket of snow
what comfort his lips
his eyes that follow me
let me dream lady
place my head there on his chest
and dance away this darkness
I did not chose to love him
but lady, I promise
love him, I do.

by the Corby

And ready-witted Prometheus he bound with inextricable bonds, cruel chains, and drove a shaft through his middle, and set on him a long-winged eagle, which used to eat his immortal liver but by night the liver grew as much again every day as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day. That bird Herakles, the valiant son of shapely-ankled Alcmene, slew; and delivered the son of Iapetus from the cruel plague, and released him from his affliction -

-Theogony

A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

-Lord Byron From Prometheus

Polar Bear

His hunger drives him on
over the ice searching in the endless white
he goes ever forward to the edges
and returns again empty
His body begins to slow
senses dull and mind races
over illusions rare feasts
to greet the crunch of his steps
as they break below him
He decides to slide into the open water
sucked into its black pools around him
He swims in desperate hope
hour by hour his strength fades
into the endless ocean.

-by the Corbyhawk herself

Prometheus Bound

Peter Paul Rubens

Prometheus

"Prometheus having his liver eaten out by an eagle" By Jacob Jordaens

Zeus please
send your eagle to me
spare my Prometheus
who slowly eaten day by day
faces the fight for his life
Prometheus my sweet father
who carried me
let this eagle swallow
all your pain and make you whole
once more...

-By a sad little Corbyhawk herself

May you be able to spend time with your loved ones...

and may you find the Christmas joy you are looking for....

Snow Day Dogs

I had this type of dream again and I hate to wake up when they come. This was like the last one, a gentle dream of hands. A connection, sweet and warm with our regular banter of conversation. It made me feel quite good this morning. At least I can have these little moments in life. Snippets of what may only happen in dreams, but there for me none the less. They come unbidden into my nights. I can never know ahead what will trigger them but they are so vivid I can see every detail later and the feelings are very intense. Lovely and there he was....

Two Sided Horse

All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year
And welcome the nights that double delights
As well for the poor as the peer
Sweet blessings attend each merry man's friend
Each does but the best that he may
Forgetting all wrongs with poems and songs
To drive the cold winter away

Tis ill for the mind to anger incline
To think of small injuries now
If wrath be Jusee, don't lend her thy cheek
Don't let her inhabit thy brow
Cross out of thy books malevolent looks
Both beauty and youth decay
And spend the long night in honest delight
To drive the cold winter away

When the Yule tide comes in like a bride
And holly and ivy clad
Twelve days in the year must mirth and good cheer
In every household is had
The popular guise is then to devise
All manner of holiday play
Both women and men do best that they can
To drive the cold winter away

This time of the year is spent in good cheer
With neighbors who gather to meet
Just sit by the fire with friendly desire
With others in love to greet
All grudges forgot are put in the pot
All sorrows aside they lay
The old and the young do carol this song
To drive the cold winter away

To drive the cold winter away

-Traditional

Happy Solstice and Chanukah to all!

Owl in the Snow

if you wish to make a good friend,
Just look at the pine and cypress woods.
Amid the frost, they do not fall to earth,
Without disloyalty when the year is cold.

Yuefu

cold starlings

the view out back

lost in snow

We are having a pretty bad snow storm event today, which has lead to a bliss filled stay at home, no work, kind of a day. I am not rushing around, I am not freaking out about all the work I have to do, I am taking it easy. I refuse to worry and fret. I am home in warm clothes in my warm house enjoying the snowfall. So I am enjoying myself in the silent house, grooming the dogs, getting gifts ready. A nice little gift of a day. I am snacking more then usual but I have decided that there is no point in trying so damn hard to look good all the time. For what anyway? All my efforts are generally wasted so why not enjoy myself and indulge now and again. I feel pretty accepting of my fate today, so be it. I have run out of energy finally. The tank is on E. Someone else can pick up the slack today, I am taking the day off from care.

For all this, what is the mountain god like?
An unending green of lands north and south:
From ethereal beauty Creation distills
There, yin and yang split dusk and dawn.

Swelling clouds sweep by. Returning birds
Ruin my eyes vanishing. One day soon,
At the summit, the other mountains will be
Small enough to hold, all in a single glance.

-Du Fu Gazing at the Sacred Mountain

A young student of mine exclaimed today as I drew a picture of a tree. "Oh you can draw a squirrel who is looking for his nuts!" It was hard not to laugh.

Yep, here I am and I am feeling antsy and rather pathetic. There is so much I need to do and should be doing and I am just plain blah and frustrated. Hence the over use of the word and.
Pathetic, really. Dull and pathetic with a slight dash of frustrated. ANTSY, impatient, waiting for life to begin, not taking charge, ineffectual, blubbering, pathetic. The weather is more exciting then I am today. A bore, a snore, a weeping willow, a sob barrel, a whiny something or another. Not a take charger nope. pathetic.... how did that happen? The solution may not be pretty. Til another tomorrow then, then another, another another til I am old. The idea that there is time is a complete illusion, I know this and still I am pathetic. Too nice, nicey nice gets a pat on the head and sent off packing. Pathetic. I tear my hair at my frustration, I shake the windows, I rouse the dogs and walk endlessly on to nowhere at all.

Yesterday had such a lovely dream like quality to it, as if I imagined it to be. I don't want tomorrow to come because it will lead me further away from it. Joy is so rare in my lonely little place and this year as my regular readers may be aware was pretty damn bad. So when these great and wonderful things happen make me a bit afraid. Tomorrow may easily snatch them away with its fears and routine and all the things I have to do. Today I painted and it was so successful one of those paintings that do not make me ask any questions, they just come out and have their own magic. It is not finished but it is so far along it is a rather stunning two days of work. I have such peace tonight, like everything is just going as it should. I am excited about who will see it, that always seems to help. I feel the motion of where I need to go, I am so directed, so focused. Yesterday someone pointed out some stairs on the way up the mountain I am climbing. I am taking them two at a time. You can always hope someone is climbing up with you and will share the view with you.

Crows Calling at Night

Yellow clouds beside the walls; crows near the tower.
Flying back, they caw, caw; calling in the boughs.
In the loom she weaves brocade, the Qin river girl.
Made of emerald yarn like mist, the window hides her words.
She stops the shuttle, sorrowful, and thinks of the distant man.
She stays alone in the lonely room, her tears just like the rain.

Li Bai

(but actually she paints in emerald tonight)

Fromt the Ivory-Billed debate (courtesy of birdchic blog)

I dreamed of owls
dusky white against the falling sun
I watched for them endlessly as the day turned
to catch a glimmer of wing beats
twisting through tree limbs
in view then gone
past echoes of blue black nightfall
the sky seems too vast empty
two stars unmoving over me
wait as sentries for the moon
tonight I do not see his secret culture
his gold eyes finding fields
the sunset reflected
with a low who who he greets the rising moon
and my words disappear.

-by the Corbyhawk who has not sighted any owls lately

Separation by death must finally be choked down,
but separation in life is a long anguish,...

Caught in a net,
how is it you still have wings?

-Du Fu

Who are you calling fat!

I am so busy now, working three careers will keep me out of trouble, no doubt!
So blogging may be light for a while...
Check out this photographers website here

Life has really changed in the last few days, I am not quite adjusted to it yet. Something I thought lost is not and I am not sure of the possibilities. It hit from left field and I am still awed by how things are shaping in new ways....

I will be very busy soon and may not have as much time to be here, but it is for good reasons. A career dream of mine is coming true, but with that is lots of good old fashioned hard work.

I can do it though, I am certainly more then capable! What an odd day, I think I really need to get out there and do this thing even though it is easier not to, and I get a phone call about 3 hours later offering it to me. wow, I am rather humbled by this, someone is rooting for me.

Tomorrow is a BIG day so I will probably go to bed early. If I can even sleep.

touch...

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea

-Virgil from the Aeneid

Two Herons

One of the rare times I have seen two herons together...

I saw a dead heron lying on the side of the road today. In all my driving, injured bird recovery and work in wildlife rehabilitation I have never before encountered a dead one. When I was little I would speculate where herons would go to die. An odd wondering, but it just seemed like this magical looking regal bird would have some sort of dignity for death. That it would fly off somewhere lay it's long neck down and sleep in its beautiful dreams. I would ponder finding such a place and walking among the bones and feathers of this noble race. So I stopped the car of course, I mostly always do if it feels right and is safe, just to be sure the bird is dead and not suffering.

The funny thing is that yesterday, I was moping around my studio and looking at old books I own. I found myself discovering the pictures within them again and looking at the careful technique given the bird paintings. I paid particular attention to the heron page, enjoying the obvious delight and mastery that the artist had for them. So I got out my gouache and began a painting of a heron.

As I approached the heron I looked up into the gray sky and saw the shape of another heron flying off. It was so odd that for a moment it almost looked as if it were a ghost of the heron's spirit heading out to the sky. Or more romantically, a lost mate unable to leave the body of it's partner until my presence flushed it away. Yet herons do not really tend to hang out together. I have only seen them near each other at the nest itself. Generally they hunt alone and it is not even near breeding season and most of the herons have left the north by now. It was so strange I can still see the image of the bird flying away in my mind's eye, but was it real?

So I felt a kind of reverence as I bent to look at the bird. I examined the way its beak pointed out one way from the face and then flattened into its sharpened spear tip. I looked at the wings, which folded so neatly in, that the coverlet feathers were the only ones exposed with all of the primaries disappearing beneath them. They were a perfect design, long and rather narrow. The wings did not have the compact power to them as a raptor's wings do. They were attenuated and lean almost delicate. The legs were like rods with giant spoking toes. This bird was so perfectly beautiful and heartbreakingly destroyed.

Perhaps that gray ghost shadow was my heron's spirit flying away. I cannot trust my senses, my logic to really seeing it. He is traveling to that secret place that herons go to when they die. A special place I will someday find on a granite island somewhere, where the river flows blue green . For now they keep that secret and send out a throaty cry for the one who will never lay among them.