Lovey Bird!

Here's my new painting! I don't quite know what to call it yet but for now it'll be Lovey Bird. Maybe it could be "Into the Great Wide Open!" hmm.... I'm not sure yet.

There' a water drop back there and a Lady Dew Angel, and then she turns into the cherry blossoms.

This is Chippie and he's holding a bubble wand with ribbons.

Before I started this painting I had a dream. Wanna hear it? I hope not. It's absurd. But o well, sometimes it's nice to read a weird story. I typed this out two weeks ago in the dark morning and thought I'd paste it here....


It's just before 3:30 and, well, here is my dream. I woke up at 2am from a dream where Steve was trying to bring home a green python. He moved next to me in the bed and I shot up with a yelp thinking that the snake had found me. I got up and drank water, feeling scared and thought maybe I'll just go downstairs and sit on the couch- but I saw the emerald python wrapping around my neck and swallowing my head, and fearing that it was waiting for me downstairs, I went to bed instead and snuggled Steve's back. As I drifted back into the night feeling, the snake raised its head and stared at me, and terror rose again. I said- Are you friend or foe?! Are you friend or foe?! The python stared with its green steely stare, seeming to become larger and larger. The snake was neither evil nor good. I realized that it was not going away, so I looked up to its unblinking eyes and asked- do what you came to do.

At that moment a white owl perched north in the trees above our heads, and then another owl of the brown sort behind. Then from the west a rainbow feathered owl alighted on a branch, making me smile. There with the looming python overhead, who was now standing twice as high as me, I lept out of my skin! I was a five year old bright and light. I hopped in between the body and wing of the rainbow owl. He put me in a little pouch he had. The little pouch was a leathery nut shell with gold trim. As I looked down, the snake ate the rest of me. I was howling miserably (the old me getting swallowed) -it really was unpleasant- this me that I primp and pluck and evaluate for problems. The python just unhooked its jaw and began the long elegant slippery swallow. Before my body of accumulations had been fully eaten, the owls flew away with me. Hafiz was echoing in my mind saying, "Why doubt the future of a clay bowl that has been flung into the sky?" Then I remembered us and dolphins. I said, "See? everything is ok now, watch the dolphins. They were actually porpoises from our beach growing up- surfing in the waves, leaping for joy and eating fish, swimming in circles high and low. I woke up in my dream on the beach, stretched out naked as a young thing, curiously atop a mellow and soft green tree python. We were both relaxed and drowsy in the sun, my feet and head lengthwise on her, lounging on a stone wall near the beach sand of the porpoises playing. But then the sun was blocked out, and a giant giant scaly serpent rose up- the likes of which made my green python look like a garden snake. It stood as high as a building, seething. My body in the bed was a storm of terror. In the eyes of this snake were yellow fires. I felt like it was evil and had to be killed, but it was too big. I yelled, "Navratri! Navratri!" Which doesn't make sense I guess, yelling Nine Nights! But Durga (I guess?) swooped in, glowing white and golden, and with a curved machete swiftly decapitated the thing. She was in the clouds and yelled, "Watch for the blood!" like the snake blood was dangerous. She bid me hop onto her blade and go with her. I hopped onto the blade, but by the time she had drawn me on top of the blade near her she shifted into another being. I was about to say thank you but I peered at her face and asked, "Wait. Who are you?" She smiled a crooked smile, and a drop of black blood, the tiniest bit, oozed from her canine tooth. Chills ran through me, and I lept off the blade onto the ground, where inexplicably all of the buckets of dark blood that had been spilled from the snake gave birth to innumerable progeny of the exact one that fell. We were in some in-between world. Half up and the other half slithering, the massive snakes traveled in armies towards our people. It was like they were not on earth, but were making their way quickly.

I thought to pray, but the snakes would have smelled a prayer, so I wrapped myself inside an egg as they went past and wished for winged snakes of the seraphim variety. Soon a trumpet blast cracked the earth and a rumble shook the ground, and a trumpeting elephant the power of 1000 elephants led a charge of its family. They stampeded the snakes without spilling blood. It was a fiery battle that lasted a long time. At some point early on a mother elephant put me, the egg, in the crook of her neck, then later inside a songbird nest. The sulfur storm of smoke and fire continued and the elephants went about madly, and the friendly nest was a soft cocoon. The breeze swayed the branches and a kind bird twirtled nearby. I pealed open the tiniest bit of the egg shell from inside to see the blue sky outside and the cherry blossoms blooming. Seems everything worked out alright.

"About the woodlands I will go
To watch the cherries hung with snow."

Steve woke up in the night too so now we are both in his office. I read him this story and he said, "I'm glad the elephants came with their trumpets." Me too! :)