Oh say can you C

another one for the Illuminated Alphabet.

Corazon, cordis morbus, courage, cash, credit, cancer, casino,
cigarette, castrate, castigate, chasm, charmed, committed, competent,
capable, compassionate, companionate, Castle Nebulous,
charisma, cantata, catamenia, cosmic, creative, caught by the cunt

Largely inspired by a fragment of poetry

(with a nod to the wondrous work of Rima Staines)

also I currently have a Cold for which I am taking the relevant Vitamin.

and i've unpacked my winter Pajamas
which will enable me to survive anything

on the Career front, I've dived into a class for Phlebotomy which involves poking folks with needles. If you say it sloppily it can be mistaken for Lobotomy which isn't widely practiced anymore.

Phoning it in

sometimes I have interesting thoughts of my own, but today i am merely regurgitating some pilferings from the sweet time-sucking crack that is Facebook.

THUSLY.

{(a picture of a whale)}

In 2004, The New York Times wrote an article about the loneliest whale in the world. Scientists have been tracking her since 1992 and they discovered the problem:

She isn’t like any other baleen whale. Unlike all other whales, she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t belong to any tribe, pack or gang...

She doesn’t have a lover. She never had one. Her songs come in groups of two to six calls, lasting for five to six seconds each. But her voice is unlike any other baleen whale. It is unique—while the rest of her kind communicate between 12 and 25hz, she sings at 52hz. You see, that’s precisely the problem. No other whales can hear her. Every one of her desperate calls to communicate remains unanswered. Each cry ignored. And, with every lonely song, she becomes sadder and more frustrated, her notes going deeper in despair as the years go by.

Just imagine that massive mammal, floating alone and singing—too big to connect with any of the beings it passes, feeling paradoxically small in the vast stretches of empty, open ocean.

{(a link where you can hear the song of the lonely whale, and the songs other whales who enjoy well-populated lives for comparative purposes)}

...

In other news, don't buy avocados from the refrigerated produce section, even if they're only 50 cents apiece. They are all dead, I tell you; dead and brown and mushy inside.
^^^I wrote that part myself without help from social media.

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