Delighted to announce a new website which consolidates my art, healing for animals and a new blog.
Besitos and many thanks to Lori, Wendy, Antonio, Dale and my other readers for all your support.
Hope to see you all again at my new cyberspace place.
xox
MaryK

orca DUH

Leave it to a critter to bring me out of blog semi-retirement.

Too many hours spent longing to live in a mansion overrun by wild ones
just like Elly Mae Clampett
no doubt did this to me,
but so it goes.

I don't dare walk near my semi-feral Bear-boy with so much as the tie to my robe hanging loose. No ribbon-dangling for my Boy: no sirree; he immediately goes extreme, from play to prey before i can move away. After hand-raising him from orphanhood, before he was eating solid food, i had great hopes for him becoming the kontented hauskitty of my dreams.




Dream on. Wild roots run deep and it is arrogance or lapse in judgment that denies their existence.
A trifling ignore-ance of .1% is bowing to nature for only 99.9; not enuf in Coconino County where animals rule, or anywhere outside of Disneyland.

Ask any cat owner how it goes. In less than an instant, eyes turn to
saucers and ears pin back like he's facing a half-pipe booter.
Energy of the game shifts and i'm not in charge any more, and this ain't
Kansas. Fun turns to teeth sinking deep into calf muscle real fast.




Admittedly, the Bear-man is like other cats and also not. Extremely instinctual, independent and very easily bored, constantly inventing games to entertain himself. He appears, disappears and reappears as a bridge from the wild to the domesticated and back again about a hundred times a day.

In the case of Tilikum and trainer Dawn, it went in a heartbeat from life to death.
Cat = 17 pounds, whale = 12,000.
The yin and yang, totally tragic.

Watching the swooshing ponytail was extremely distracting to my amygdala,
like a kid swinging their legs as hard as they can in my classroom, as if to launch themselves backwards or even into outerspace if possible.
It made me want to reach out and grab hold.
The reptilian part of my brain doesn't know whether it wants to grab the annoyance in order to shut it down or to join the party. Now that's a frightening instinctual dilemma.

Is redemption of the death possible? Absolutely, if it turns toward the light by making us look hard at the practice of capturing for captivity. Didn't we stop that with the slave trade?

While vibrating at lower levels of consciousness back in the day, i visited Seaworld to be awestruck by the beauty and majesty of the orcas.
Disgusted as far back as i can remember by animals trained to perform tricks, the show sure felt condescending to the performers. The argument is of course, the whales are "happy and eager" to perform.

If i were confined to a series of at best, interconnecting jacuzzis (several analogies of "bathtub" have been cited; i'm giving Seaworld the benefit of the doubt) for most of my life, I sure would jump high if someone came by and threw me a bar of 70% Dagoba chocolate.

Too bad animals continue to lose.
Are purposes of "education" worth what is taken away from these highly attuned powerhouses.
Just watch a video of them really performing in their own space at sea.
The contrast of real vs. fake existence makes me embarrassed to be human.

Keeping them in tubs doesn't seem to make us understand them any better; quite the contrary, even without considering that some of what we see is no doubt aberrant behavior due to captivity.

The impatience with and frustration of not completely comprehending the fourfoots i live with were surrendered to the universe some years ago when I heard someone really brilliant say:
"They exist at a different level of consciousness than we do, that's all."
Higher or lower, no matter; those words don't include the multi-dimensionality of possibilities, anyway. Perceptual differences and energy are what art and culture are all about.


All i know is once i opened my mind to this new reality, i began to see some things as they do. I felt the alignment of all of us with each other and my own internal alignment to my self. I became aware of the gift of allowing nature's consciousness to permeate my truth, and it has been life-alteringly priceless.

Tilikum gives notice: as diverse as the sea that birthed him, he's no one trick pony.

As I write the last sentence, Bear-boy enters the room with great stealth as usual. For the first time in his life, he crosses the room to jump up on the couch and lies down next to me. We are 1/2 inch apart. He maintains stillness, staying for several minutes; a new world's record. Then he jumps down, runs off like a flash to flee to freedom through his cat door, as if it were all a ruse.

For me, it is a miracle to witness the wildness subside even temporarily, and to watch as he slides back into his bigger world of rhythm and instinct as quickly as he chose contact with mine.

Thanks, boy. Duh.

away

with waning blogging energy,
i have reached the inevitable and
painful crossroads
of taking an indefinite hiatus from
love letters to ignatz.

i am so grateful to those who have
followed my writing and pics for
the past 4 years under 2 consecutive
blog sites.

with no definite return date in sight,
i leave with a link to the latest show i am in,
The Sketchbook Project.
organized by Art House Co-op out of Atlanta,
soon to be located in Brooklyn, it is a huge undertaking,
with 3,000+ artists from all over the place participating.

this exhibit features sketchbooks which are checked out, library-style,
to provide a tactile and personal experience for the viewer.
the topic “How to Save the World” was randomly assigned me,
then i had to work like mad to fill a Moleskine sketchbook
in the approx 3 1/2 weeks i had to complete it
by the time i found out about the show, entered, and paced at the mailbox daily
for the blank book to arrive.

the eventual goal of the project is to house the sketchbooks in a permanent collection library
in Brooklyn in 2010. the show opens in Atlanta and travels to Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Saint Louis and Chicago.

a little gallery of images from my sketchbook submission are posted
online, as well as a portfolio of about 60 of my works.

blessings to you all. and to all the chupacabras, seers, visionaries, imaginers and dreammakers out there,
i know you're real.

blues

thanks to Iryna on etsy for including my moon in man painting in her gorgeous blue treasury; it will be active till late on Tuesday, the 29th.
merci!

happy

happy holidays

11 11 + 2009 = 11

salem:
perhaps best put by a thoughtful visitor
2 'weens ago.
"Touristy, tacky, sophisticated, historic, beautiful, shabby quaint."

'nuf said,
ditto for me.
but being there
in the afterthroes of the ween,
on Nov 1st which happens to be
mi cumpleaños
was still a thrill.

despite the
colorful real witches,
little costumed
dogs in the streets,
and flores at
the witch memorial,







Día de Muertos
'twas not.
unfair to
compare:
undoubtedly.

repelled
as if by unseen
force at the entrance
to the psychic fair
in the downtown mall,
i couldn't book a reading
if my life depended on it.
the rank air of
commercialism had
curdled all enthusiasm.

so i began a meander,
taking
wrongturns
feeling lost
until i found
the perfect sinner's
café selling slices of
7-layer chocolate cake so
decadent,
it took 3 days to eat.




the majikal scent
of torte must
have reawakened
canid instinct
b/c i made a beeline
to the burying place w/out knowing how.

feeling at home
finally
seeing the tacky blue
flashing neon
ferris-type-wheel
foiling graves
in grim foreground
to its
frivolity
with no apology



particularly given
the puritanical bent of the 'yard,
i wished hard
these stones could
pulse warmth
on this cold cold day
spared for a moment
from majorculture
judgment.






blessed bea.

life in the moment