Solstice, June 20

SUN, mixed media

Not a very good photo, see my shadow? I cast a shadow on the sun, how's that ; )

This longest day of the year sure feels like it. 

The spay-neuter clinic I've been working at is on hiatus until the new Vet arrives; 

when he gets here there'll be plenty of New and To-Do, likely changes to the anesthesia meds (which suddenly became my department due to pay cuts) and back into the swing of things, but for now there's nothing, and I miss the routine and the busy-ness of that good work.

My hands need work to do, meaningful work, making and mending, loving the living and dying. 

Since leaving the shelter I worked at for 5 years I've felt slightly unmoored. It was time to go, no question about that, but finding the next thing is an ongoing challenge. My previous job was janitorial work; I liked the zen of it, the bringing order to chaos, and the small Saints found tucked among the lifer custodians, the resoundingly human crew of night shift cleaners.

Henry Darger's artwork. Big Fan.

I miss shelter work, though I'm not sure I'll ever return to it. The never-ending tide of lost and unwanted and broken creatures was much to bear, but it was good to help and to hold, to comfort and care.  My friend has dived into it with love and grace, and I'm grateful to her and all the others who continue this work.

I'd like most of all to find a place for the things I make. Literally, as in not having to make little paths around the paintings and clutter in my burrow.

So far the only luck I've had is painting the local sports mascot on river stones.

votive offerings for the Cult of the Big Red Pig

Good thing it's local, the shipping charges would eat me alive. 

This

Because it's true. 

And 90% of TV is shit.

I can't imagine the shape of my life if the parts I'd found in books were missing.
If there were no heroes's quests, no stories of There and Back Again

TYGER VOYAGE, Richard Adams and Nicola Bayley

If I hadn't found Art tucked in between their pages,
or madwomen's poetry, songs of kindred souls,
I'd have far fewer words to speak.

there are precious few poems floating about in the world

plenty to be found safely bound,
words not to be met anywhere else

 {ebon ichor incarnadine viridian}
Wisdom not spoken aloud :

"Sometimes a man's love is like rich dark chocolate-too much, too cloyingly sweet- and one must away to the wild woods, and eat cold clean rice and clear broth, to avoid being fat with emptiness"(paraphrased badly)

Think of all the stories no-one would tell
without the anonymity of a page,
without the span of attention unfurled between covers
in all the odd moments where one may read.

What a Hell, without Books.

Here is Fastitocalon

His tale is much longer than it appears.

I first found him in Tolkien

Look, there is Fastitocalon!
An island good to land upon,
Although 'tis rather bare.
Come, leave the sea, And let us run,
Or dance, or lie down in the sun!
See, gulls are sitting there!
Beware!


But he's in an even earlier Bestiary, 2nd century, under the name of Aspidochelon.
(there seems to be some confusion as to whether he is a turtle or a fish)

William Blake even painted him!

My Dad saw an Owl

can you see him?

how 'bout now

O God he ate my soul....O.o

Know thyself

nothing to excess

The morepork is native to New Zealand. No word yet if it's actually pork flavored.

The morepork's call is, in Maori legend, an omen of death.
A useful tidbit to store away in my Cabinet of Oracular Wisdom

(so far I've only made the doors)





everything's been coming up owls lately.

My new friend Red Hawk told me about the Stigini ,
big scary Owl shapeshifters

and then I found This

it looks rather owlish if you squint

Many Mothers

  When I was born, the Powers that Be said, "This one's gonna need all the help she can get..."

So.
Some of the most fabulous ladies in all of Creation

aligned themselves to shine in my Life.

This is their Day.

My birthmother is one tough mother.
(she mugged Mr T for those chains)

 At 16 she had the strength and grace to give me her best,

though it meant letting go. She's only 5'4" but she stands proud,

speaks truth & doesn't take crap from anybody. 

Mom was a stunt double for Sally Field.
All those fight scenes & explosions in "The Flying Nun"? That's her. 

 Mom & Dad were living in New Zealand on their Grand Adventure when they adopted me.

He's back there, now. I still live with Mom cuz I'm cool like that. 

And it's good to live with people who love you.
She's been a nurse for 42 years now. Holy. Crap.

my firstest Stepmom, Patricia

She always had a story, and even more exciting, kids. A whole new world opened up, full of adventures and heroes- Robin Hood, Peter Pan, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We weren't all together for very long, but that's how the story goes, sometimes. I'll raise a glass of red Kool-aid and a bologna sandwich in salute to those grand summer days. 

One of my fave photos ever. Look at those cheeks!
The wee Bean, age three days, & Gram Pam.
(she invented graham crackers, ya know)

I should put in here that step- isn't a prefix ever used except to explain the Family Tree & its many branches to those from other parts of the forest. These are all mothers of mine; this Lady was next. 

She had the perfect hands for her work in neonatal ICU, the best words for teaching, the patience for the long and stumbling road that she didn't quite choose in these latest years. 

Catherine the Great
(no relation the famous equestrian, she's a lady proper) 

I went back to New Zealand for the first time a few years ago, to remember it anew, and to read at Dad & Catherine's wedding, "Blessing for a Marriage". I was raised better than to add, I hope he bloody well gets it right this time, but I do hope so. Many Blessings.

This Shit Is Bananas

extend a Hand to a Friend in Kindness
for Life is a Far Journey across the Howling Desert

But seriously, great gift for the Gwen Stefani fan in your life. Buy it HERE

This is the first thing I've painted in many a day. 

Been slightly distracted by The Best Boyfriend Ever

he's actually much taller than this

and my new job, one whole day a week at the Spay & Neuter clinic. I wasn't sure I wanted back into non-profit, but hey. It addresses the source of so much suffering. And, the people there are not guano loco!

Rumination on the Shape of things

iud

broken spoons and pictures from the informative brochure, coathanger (of course), floss, wishbone, indecipherable plastic bits. Probably a fishhook in there somewhere.

Old dead roses and strange new blooms.


token offering of the sexual parts of plants

The pitcher has a crack in it where the light comes in.



I found this on F*cebook, before it infested my internets with a nasty virus - the kind that eats money - LAME. I'm back now.

“Stories are masks of God.


That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brothers Grimm.


Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceivable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth.

Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God.

So it seems to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.”
― Melanie Tem, The Man on the Ceiling

the Storyteller