Goats are always eating, night and day.

I painted this about sixteen years ago. Back then, I had dreamed about having a small dairy goat operation in the hill country (the rolling chaparral in central Texas). But I think I may have outgrown it for the want to live aboard a roaming sailboat someday, when the kids are in college. Talk about opposites.

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I’ve never seen a bear do this in the wild. In fact, I’ve never seen a bear in the wild. For that matter, I’ve never seen a wild beehive, either. But I’ve read The Story of Pooh many times before. This is exactly what I believe bears should be doing all the time: raiding beehives and foraging blackberries and slapping salmon out of the water. Of course, bears eat what they can, because honey and blackberries and salmon aren’t always in supply. Have you seen Grizzly Man?

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Scanner issues, again. I save my patience for my children.

Illlustration Friday.

Did you know that sea stars have light sensors on the tips of their arms?

Have you ever watched a sea star somersault?

Have you ever felt one cling to your hand?

More robots at Illustration Friday.

On the granite coast, I kneel down to see layers of round shapes in a tidal pool: the glistening curve of blue beach glass, ground shell, bits of marl, littoral litter. It is the texture of a cold and unhemmed coastline, a study in extremes.

Here, you have to hold on to your life. You have to blend in to avoid being hunted, unbruised by the pounding waves, while managing to stay wet in the face of sun and wind, maintaining your heritage by staying pretty in order to attract the opposite sex. Your existence is hinged on the passage of time, good genes and pure luck: will you survive until high tide?

This little intertidal oasis, paradoxically gorgeous, has a rainbow of life crawling within it: red, brown and green tranlsucences, bumpy lumberers, glittering gems, but it is growing stagnant by the minute. At noon, the water is warming up under the intense sun; in fact, it’s so sensuous to lie in the small ripples at the rim of the pool that you can hardly tell, with eyes closed, where the water ends and the balmy air begins. Then a breeze reminds you, as a shadow sheds some cool on your skin.

The estuary beyond the dunes, nursery for marine life, reminds me less of motherhood than these beautifully unprotected cavities. Here, time is compressed. Weeks become seconds. With little time to think, intuition develops. I slowly begin to trust my intuition as it gains conviction, but the experience that feeds it is time that’s lost: will I still be here by high tide?

Here’s Ford anxious to staqrt adding his special touch, always a collaborator:

having user-end issues with scanner, grumble grumble. this will have to work for now, the kids need more of my attention.
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