Frenemies
When cat and dog and sheep and goat, yea, fox and hen and hog and stoat
Befriend each other, work and play like boon companions, night and day,
It’s time to question if the world as we have known it is unfurled,
Unraveled, undefined, undone–if we should pack our bags and run–
For such behavior’s a disgrace and flies in Mother Nature’s face.
So, be alert! The fox and hen, sheep and the goats, like gods and men,
Belong apart; the stoat and hog must not be friends, nor cat and dog.
Count me among the millions enamored of those strange birds Mother Nature garbs in the most exotic finery yet makes the comic relief when it comes to songbird status. Peacocks are hardly the scaredy-pants of the menagerie, but you’d never guess it when you hear their guttural squawks of Help! Help!! across the way. From what I’ve seen, this propensity for sounding the alarm does in fact make them rather handy gatekeepers for herd and flock, but as for any timidity, that seems to be far outweighed by their curiosity, which instead makes them as bold as their colors would imply.
The Love Song of Alfred J. Peacock
All of this makes them quite fascinating to me, and not only so because of my persistent attraction to all things gloriously colorful and iridescent. It also, serendipitously, makes them relatively approachable when they don’t feel threatened, so besides being photogenic they are also photograph-able. So I have a small but nice collection of peacock portraits and closeups of their dramatically beautiful details from which I can make playful peacock artworks. I share here a trio of my ‘recombinant peacock’ digital pieces using the same elements I’ve shot to create slightly different effects.
Psychedelic Peacocks
The peacocks gave their tacit permission. And I, magpie-type bird that I am, can’t help but oblige. Help! Help!! Help!!!
Peacock Moire
It rained.
We’ve been waiting for it a rather long time. No shocking records set here: there have indeed been worse droughts in history, not just in the fabled devastation of those parts of the world we in the United States tend to think of ever after as expanses of desert and the lost worlds of the permanently starved and impoverished, but even in the annals of the region here, where there have been longer and more immediately cruel periods of dry-roasting. Endless iterations of “hot enough for ya?” aside, there are certainly serious consequences already being seen and felt from the current drought: the desiccated crops, the herds being thinned or entirely liquidated, and yes, farms and ranches closing. So many aspects of the damage will only be seen and felt over a very long stretch to follow.
Now, it has rained.
Desert. Dessert.
It hasn’t rained a whole lot. There’s nothing “cured” in a true drought by a couple of sparkling, sprinkly moments of respite. Much remains to be salved and salvaged and, hopefully, soaked–but not too much, I beg you. An excess of water is so clearly as dangerous and terrible as being horrifically parched, and following the remaking of the region into a vast basin of concrete, there’s plenty of danger that whatever rain does come will be unable to find a safe way into its intended locales.
But still, there’s that welcome urge to join the sky in a little cathartic crying when the unwilling skies finally relent and shower a little love on us. I am ever so glad and grateful that our Gaia, our lovely Mother Nature, has seen fit to grant us this kindness and am ever hopeful of still more. Call me a cry-eyed optimist.
Rain, love, hope . . .
Be ever with us!
Art-Colored Glasses 