Animal Skulls for Trade
July 22, 2009
I have decided to release some natural history relics that I’ve collected over the years. These animal skulls are available for trade – make an offer for all or just one. (I like antlers, small handknitted objects, nice stones and other raw materials…I’m a picky but enthusiastic trader with diverse interests.) All skulls show some weathering and are not uniformly colored, but they are in very nice condition considering that they were found in nature. For spiritual use, curios, models for nature drawing…you decide.

Opossum, Raccoon, Red Fox, Gray Fox
1. Opossum Skull (Woodford Co., KY) – very old, large male. Missing some teeth – still has one canine and a few others.
2. Raccoon Skull (Cheyenne, WY) – big male, excellent condition with all teeth.
3. Red Fox Skull (Richmond, VA) – missing one canine; no lower jaw.
4. Gray Fox Skull (Tucson, AZ) – missing a few teeth from lower jaw.
I have a few other bones etc. as well. If interested, please reply by e-mail through my website, NOT in the blog comments. U.S. trades only, please. Thank you!
Letting in the Light
April 23, 2009
I’ve been sidelined by illness for a couple of weeks, but am back at work now. I looked for ways to restore balance around the house, and decided to cut a window in the door to my studio. I keep the door closed because some of my more primitive cats will spray and wreak all kinds of destruction if they are allowed to enter unsupervised. Now I can keep out the naughty cats and still allow air and light to flow freely. Photo shows the skylight over my desk, viewed from the hall.

Skylight Window
How to Draw Fire
April 1, 2009

Scapulimancy Fire
Here is a rather stylized egg tempera painting of fire glowing in the earth, surrounded by charred thorns:

Fire and Thorns

Copper Fire Bowl
Healing Impy
December 26, 2008
Impy, our seven year old “Black Cat #1″ , got very sick a couple of weeks ago. He has already used up several of his nine lives – he was a rescued stray who had lived outside for several months before we trapped him in 2003. He arrived with an abscessed bite wound on his shoulder that needed surgery, and was partially blind due to taurine deficiency from malnutrition. A year later he survived a near-fatal bout of pancreatitis. His recent illness was just as frightening, since he quit eating and showed signs of dementia, worsening blindness, and depression. He tested positive for toxoplasmosis. After a few days of antibiotic treatment, he is much better, and we have our happy, active, loving, mischievous kitty back!

Impy
In Memoriam: 2004 TSUNAMI

Dark Moon
November 27, 2008
Beluga sleeps beside me at night, with my arm around him so I will know instantly if he has a seizure. He usually has them on the Dark Moon and Full Moon, and last night was no exception. We were half awake anyway, listening to the rain, when he started twitching. I keep a towel and an extra pillow beside the bed, so I quickly wrapped up and cushioned him while he thrashed and hissed for a couple of minutes. After he calmed down, we went back to sleep. He’s very quiet today, but the cool, cloudy weather makes all the cats sleepy. On some nights I am able to follow his dreams, which always lead down into earthy places, mysterious dark passages, and eventually towards a twilight landscape that shares aspects of my own inner world and his unique feline perspective. He is a master of the Underworld journey. This place appears often in my dreams at this time of year - a compelling and intensely familiar place to disappear from the world, half forbidden and accessible only with “permission”, both a refuge and a trap, comforting and frightening, filled with inviting visions, yet bearing the dusty finality of the grave. It is a shaman’s view, a long way from the typical (and to me, alien) religious ideal of celestial light and detachment that is celebrated in major religions and New Age thought. The Upper World is cold, crystalline, spacious, and terrifyingly empty – a place of awesome power, to journey occasionally for specific reasons, but not anywhere to live or leave one’s mind for long, and certainly not an ultimate destination. The Underworld draws its warmth and complexity from the secret patterns of life, including one’s own body, which is why it feels like Home.
I am fortunate to have found a true Teacher in a tiny black cat whose life is a miracle. I recently bought several CDs of Medieval pilgrim songs and dances, mostly written in the 1400s in honor of the Black Virgin at the Spanish monastery of Montserrat. Beluga likes them and listens very carefully to the rhythms…and he “walks time” very quickly around the outer edge of the maze, sometimes following the square edges, and other times in a circle. Odd to watch him placing his little paws very deliberately, almost running as he follows the drumbeat with steps as precise as a windup toy, pausing to find his walking step again when the song ends.
A few months ago I bought a moleskine sketchbook. I had thought them simply a pretentious fad item until I actually saw one. I realized that this is the kind of drawing book that I had been wanting since I was in middle school and first became seriously interested in scientific illustration. The smooth, cream-colored paper takes ink lines without tearing or bleeding, which is essential for ink drawing but nearly impossible to find even in “professional” drawing paper (it was no longer an issue once I switched to scratchboard). The whole notebook has a 19th century air – a combination of simplicity and “ivory tower” refinement that I found irresistible. So I bought a couple of them, and am filling one with cat sketches, like this one of Beluga circling:






