Afternoon on the Porch

Today I was sitting on the front porch trying to edit this book that I’m working on.  I kept seeing a male black swallowtail sailing back and forth over the lantanas and rue.  I believe he was “protecting his territory,” because every time a giant swallowtail would enter his airspace, he would chase it away.  He kept it up for hours, and I finally snapped a picture of him as he took a short rest.

     There were almost no butterflies this spring.  The spring was long, but it was also cool.  And butterflies love the heat.  Now that it is hot, there are butterflies everywhere, especially giant swallowtails attracted by the orange trees.  I saw some giant swallowtail caterpillars on an orange branch the other day.  There are also gulf fritillaries, variegated fritillaries, black swallowtails and the occasional pipevine swallowtail, sleepy oranges and other oranges and yellows, cabbage moths, various blues and greys, and the occasional mourning cloak (their larvae like to make chrysalises on the apple trees).

     

     The male black swallowtail ended up distracting me, as I watched him soar about and chase the giant swallowtails.  There was also a very tame hummingbird who kept flying around the porch visiting trumpet vine flowers.  The top of his head was covered with pollen.  And great rain clouds appeared in the distance, but we didn’t get any rain.

New Story

Waterfill and Frazier was one of the whiskies that was distilled in the Valle de Juarez during prohibition

This year, I’ve been working on two novels, and consequently, I haven’t sent out too many stories.  But here’s one that was just published:

http://www.heartandmindzine.com/short-story---entries/a-priest-a-horse-and-a-mayordomo

I’m very pleased with it.

Dharma

Today I was thinking about an old friend, a musician, and how failure and rejection fueled his depression, which he self-medicated with drugs and alcohol and other destructive behaviors; and how the intermittent success he experienced supplied the resources that allowed him to pursue those addictions and behaviors.  A terrible cycle.  Heaven knows, I’m not judging him.  This is the man who gave us some wonderful music, music that I still love and honor.  His ravaged life couldn’t obscure his honesty, or his genius as an artist.  And when I think of the hurt and fear and pain he endured . . . But it’s just a reminder to me that we are not made for success or failure.  We are made for dharma--or destruction.

The Things That Are Caesar's

They handed him a denarius, and he said, “Whose head is this?  Whose name?”  “Caesar’s,” they replied.  He said to them, “Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar—and to God what belongs to God.” (Mt. 22: 19-21)

 All money bears the image of Caesar, because all money represents “the things that are Caesar’s,” power, arrogance, affluence, idolatry, imperialism, materialism, and greed.

The Prophet

The prophet who is stoned is not a brawler or a marplot. He is simply a rejected lover. He suffers from an unrequited attachment to things in general.                                                                                 --G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant

Psychogeography

Has it ever been your fortune, courteous reader, to rise in the earliest dawning of a summer day, ere yet the radiant beams of the sun have done more than touch with light the domes and spires of the great city? . . . If this has been your lot, have you not observed that magic powers have apparently been at work? The accustomed scene has lost its familiar appearance. The houses which you have passed daily, it may be for years, as you have issued forth on your business or on your pleasure, now seem as if you beheld them for the first time. They have suffered a mysterious change, into something rich and strange. Though they may have been designed with no extraordinary exertion of the art of architecture . . . yet you have been ready to admit that they now “stand in glory, shine like stars, apparelled in a light serene.” They have become magical habitations, supernal dwellings, more desirable to the eye than the fabled pleasure dome of the Eastern potentate, or the bejewelled hall built by the Genie for Aladdin in the Arabian tale.

                                                                                                 --Arthur Machen “N”

Philipp Otto Runge

I was thinking today about Philipp Otto Runge, the great Romantic artist.  Like Novalis, he died young, and also like Novalis, of tuberculosis.  He also shared with Novalis a deep religious and mystical faith, which inspired his highly personal and original (one might even say idiosyncratic) forms of art.  His paintings and etchings move me tremendously, especially his allegorical compositions like “Night” and “Dawn.”  Like Novalis, he left us only a few years of work, but in that work there is something truly invaluable, something that is eternally evocative and fresh.  I find his work, like that of Novalis, so consoling; such an overwhelming reminder that our strivings truly matter and endure.