A Mysterious Symbol

Swallow the Sea

Today's Animal of the Week is a sea slug

glaucus atlanticus

Also called the Sea Swallow.

It's pelagic, which means it lives anywhere there's an ocean, except for the deep or sandy or cold parts.

It's hermaphroditic, hence the neutral pronoun ("morphodite", as the locals say).

It has counter-shading, which means when you look up from beneath, it's light to match the sky, but when you look down, it's blue to match the ocean. The up-side is the creature's belly; it floats relaxedly in the surface tension.

They get about as big as your hand (depending on the size of your hand) and eat jellyfish, saving the stingy bits for later use.

Saradwyn Does Dali

To Be Carried All Unwilling Into A Nameless Future

 ...by way of Edward Bullmore, googleworthy NZ Artist, who also liked using amorphous human figures.

Dali has always been one of my favorites, and not just for the moustache.  He imported many of his paintings from the faraway land of Hypnagogia, summoning dreams into wakefulness with the chime of a falling spoon.
He was utterly and unapologetically absurd and made a living at it. Quite a talent in itself.

Those are definitely my feet, solid and earthen, though my toes are less mandragorean.
Those are my toothbrush-splatter stars, which find their way into damnear everything lately.
Those are my snapping pennants, because the future is a grand place.

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work

and when we no longer know which way to go,

we have begun our real journey."

Wendell Berry

...which I found at another favorite blog, Donna Watson's Layers

Word of the Day a few days ago

Weltschmerz
Sounds like something to be spread on dry toast and choked down between sobs.

Means "world-weariness", or "the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind". Boy does it never.

I need things like this in my vocabulary; just knowing there's a word for it makes so many things so much better.

Also a favorite because it has a sort of a phlegm sound in it.

New Painting

The Pursuit of Joy

Finally got this one done after shuffling it from one side of the room to another. Now it can live in the car with the rest of 'em:
This may not be the final iteration, but it's a good point. Pursuit with outstretched arms is the heart of Joy; Joyfulness at rest is contentment and I'm not sure there's a fruit for that. Maybe rice pudding.

The rest of 'em:

Freedom

Love

Kindness

Animal of the Day

An eight-legged bear dressed in a painter's tarp and sporting a gas mask,
shrunk down to itty-bitty size and sprinkled liberally over the Earth's surface
(especially the wetter parts)

He or She is a Tardigrade, which is fun to say.
It means "slow walker"; Also known as Water Bears, go figure.

Resistant to heat, cold, toxins, dehydration, radiation, pressurization and Outer Space.
Tough little buggers. 

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.