This is closer to the orriginal of that photo, but still not raw.

This is a picture that I took of a weird wooden angel sculpture that I took and then fucked with.

experienceingtechnicaldifficulties.....

So we seem to be experiencing technical difficulties that don't have anything to do with the large quantities of rum that we consumed earlier. Honest. I have a post ready and waiting as soon as I can figure out why the picture won't upload...

strange anatomyical study

I did this while I was taking a figure drawing class. I had a lot of fun figuring out how the joints would work and how they would attach to the body,

ok now what the fuck is that?

I found these on the Martha Stewart website. I think that she is now advocating a modest proposal...

after a long break a token post

I am currently watching my 5 month old puppy run wildly in circles around my apartment. The truly beautiful thing about this is that she can amuse herself with this for nearly an hour before collapsing and a heap of thoroughly tired puppy.

Would that we could be so easily amused...

And now on a lighter note

since the last one was so whiney, I thought that I might put up the begginings of a beautiful corpse excersize that I have been playing with Winter.


I am not sure how long I sat and stared out the window at the wind and snow. It’s not like you could see anything else out there. The window cast a rectangle of light into the swirling chaos of the blizzard. It had blasted for the past 10 hours, wind buffeting the house and snow piling up against the side of the house. I was alone in the house, just me and the wind. It was a miracle that the roof hadn’t been ripped off or a window hadn’t shattered yet by the force of the gale.
In the living room the wind was the loudest. All of the old Victorian windows, single paned and wavy, rattled with the storm. The winds circled the house, whistling through the columns of the large wrap around porch. Occasionally I could hear the swing crash into the side of the house or rattle its chains like and old ghost.
The corpse swung lazily from the balcony, in and out of the light from the window tracing small circles in the air. The blood dripped down in little circles on the porch floor before freezing there. Snow and wind swirled and howled around it. Soon it would be nothing more than one more shape out there in the gathering gloom of evening.



( \/)
(0.o) oh and don't forget
(> <) Bunny says you die now.

Peter Pan and other thoughts

So in the interest in being a more open and communicative person, and in the need to whine just a little bit to no one in particular, I give you this. I hate my job. I REALLY hate my job. I know that you are supposed to hate you job and it’s all just supposed to be waiting for retirement, but really that just sounds soul-sucking to me. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t paying me diddly on a cosmic scale (11,000 a year, before taxes). But really I could and have lived with that before, if only the people weren’t such assholes. I don’t mean anyone in particular, but really when you are doing something that you really don’t want to be doing, everyone who you interact with in that setting immediately becomes the biggest asshole in the whole world, and it doesn’t matter that they are relatively nice about it. Or that they love their job and I’m sure are quite good at it.

Anyway, that’s not really what I want to be talking about. Everyone hates their job just a little. If nothing else every time that you would really rather be doing something else, but THEY (whoever they may be) says “No, because I’m not paying you to check your email, and loaf about outside!” At that moment, no matter how much you loved it the second before, you hate it right then.

At what point did I grow up and stop getting to be a kid? At what point did I stop saying “No I want to do this and I will because I can.”? When did the bills suddenly get so big that I said, no I won’t get that new piece of body art, the rent is due. Was I ever that person? Maybe that’s what I am really pissed about. Maybe I never was. I have said that I am a spooky spirit worker in my bio. Well if anyone happens to read this who I don’t know personally, I swore service to my Lady (Goddess, Bitch, Drill-Sergeant) in my first year of college. After that it was all training and teaching, and going to class. Trying to graduate from college while spending every other minute that wasn’t spent writing papers learning and creating a whole new discipline of magic. Now I wasn’t alone in any of that, I did it with a partner, but still. When did I get to be a college student?

Yesterday I had the pleasure of a visit from my Lady’s Warrior face. Let’s just say that she can be nice, but wasn’t really choosing to be and my side still hurts from a short demonstration of just how out of shape and slow I have become. Much of the rest of the visit consisted of her sugesting that I should get off my ass and do all of the things that I am not adequately doing right now. Is she right? Probably.

But really how much time do I have in a day? 24 hours? I do need to sleep at some point, so that’s about 7 hours there if I want to be a reasonable person when I wake up. Now I have 17 hours. Well if that’s a week day then anywhere from 8 to 10 hours will be spent at work, so that leaves lets say 9 hours. 1 hour spent in transit. That leaves 8 hours to the rest of the day. 8 times 5 is 40 hours in a week. Now that seems like a lot, but really what are the expectations on that time. Keeping the house clean, eating and the associated chores, doing my best to find a better job than the one I have now. Working as best I can for our business once I get home. Taking care of our various animals, one of which takes up a great deal of time and energy as she is a 4 month old puppy. So all of that leaves about 4 hours from the time I get home to when I need to go to bed if I am going to get that 7 hours of sleep that I mentioned before. 4 hours. 4 hours to do anything that might strike my fancy or I could just spend all of that time doing my real job. Being the Clan Speaker of Tashlin. Directing the troops so to speak. Doing any of the ten different tasks that she so gently chose to remind me of last night, almost all of which seem to take up large portions of a fast shrinking paycheck that really in the "real world" should be going to paying off the various bills that we keep getting calls from collection agencies about.

So that gets me back to my earlier question, when do I get to be a kid? I am now 26 years old and fast approaching 27. Do I get a time to be a college kid and just have fun? Do I get to just fuck up and say “oops”? No. Did I ever? Sometimes I don’t think so. So when I say that I hate my job, do I know which one I am talking about? Not really. Do I love my Lady? Most of the time, ok almost all of the time. Do I like her? Most of the time, but not much right now. I just want to run for the hills, yelling “Ha ha ha you won’t catch me and make me a man!”

as per request

the undoctored version of these two images.

blah

These are a different take on the classic triple moon design. It was just a quick sketch, but I was trying in vain to make the triple moon thing not look like a biohazard sign

Season's knot

so this is meant to be a lower back peice that i will get eventually. Its all about cycles and stuff, so I probablywon't be getting it too soon. Sigh.

heavy metal chick

So really I am getting very sick of the foibles of blogger, but I won't bitch about it too much. It is free and all. So this is really just a doodle that I did during a boring part of a conference that I was attending. Winter pointed out that it would make a good tattoo.

Curt Cobain and Courtney Love Married Us

So yesterday Winter sent me a link to a news site that said that Curt Cobain had now surpassed Elvis in sales and revenue after death. This is the link to the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/24/people.cobain.top.reut/index.html

So tonight during dinner we were talking about this article and Summer said that soon you would be able to get married in Vegas by a Cobain impersonator. Now really my brain thinks about odd things all on it's own and I take no responsibility for this, but the first thing that popped into my head was that just Cobain as a priest of Jesus etc. just wasn't right.

Despite the fact that Courtney Love is still alive I pictured a pair of officiators in a pagan ceremony with Love playing the part of the Lady all in greens and blues and old needles and candy wrappers instead of flowers. Standing beside her would be Cobain as the sacrificed King, John Barleycorn etc. You could even go so far as to have barley or wehat sticking out of the hole in his head. This would of course be the perfect pair to marry one of us in Vegas.

grr

This is a design for a tattoo that a woman I used to know asked me to design for her. The major criterion for it was that she loved western style dragons, but had never seen a picture of one that she didn't think looked stupid. So with that in mind I designed this for her. It was designed to go on the back with the wings of the dragon across the shoulder blades either just the one or two opposing eachother with something between them. I don't know if she ever had it done as we lost touch not that long after I gave it to her.

a very early sketch

this is an very early sketch that I did of a multi armed something. It was in highschool as I was very into hindi art at the time, specifically the Shiva Natraj. This was actually a challenge to see if I could draw one with an odd number of arms.

Mermaid

This is a short story that I wrote after reading some of Raven Caldera's descriptions of his Nine Beaches trip, dealing with the Nine mermaids of Norse lore. I wanted to write about modern sirens, about what kindof lure they would use and on whom.



The sea washes over her feet as the sun sets in a bloody fire over the horizon. The slashes of red and gold flow over the horizon in long streaks. She stares out blankly and lets the water flow up and over long thin her legs, letting the cold sea water carry the sand from beneath her and out to sea. She is dressed in graying ragged jeans that fall around her in threads and strips. Her sweater is green and baggy, hanging off her thin shoulders, the hem unraveling in places.

I stand at the back door of the beach house and watched as the tide comes in, slowly swallowing her up as the sun sets. As the water rises the scraps of her clothing float up around her like kelp, the water tugging and pulling at her arms. I know that soon the water will be high
and she will be gone, leaving no trace of her long vigil on the beach below.

"Are you coming!?" Melissa calls, exasperation making her normally clear voice harsh. My wife never could see her, and goes about her evening as usual, preparing dinner as if a young woman doesn't die in our backyard every night.

I wait at the door, tense, waiting for the body to wash ashore, just like last night and the night before. I tell myself that tonight I will go out there and find her. I'll go out and save her. I'll go...

"Jerry! I've called you three times, didn't you hear me?" Her hair is limp and blond, and it seems to float up before the waves swallow her, leaving no trace.

"Jerry?" I turn and go into the kitchen, ready to wait another day to see her fair shining face and limp sagging clothes walking down the sand to the sea.

"Hello, are we all still here? Dinner's been ready for ten minutes already. It’s getting cold." Melissa is short and plump, with chestnut brown hair falling in fine waves and curl to her shoulders. We had been married for fifteen years now, living just us. Since I had retired 1 year ago from my practice in the city, we had lived here at this beach house just enjoying each others company. Having not seen her for the first fourteen years of our marriage, I had assumed that upon retiring we would like each other that much more. But I suppose that having a stranger in the house is better than having no-one at all.

"You're quiet tonight, did you do anything interesting today? Mary at the store says that we'll be getting that big shopping mall contract down the road. I can't wait to be able to get out a bit and do some shopping without having to drive for an hour each way. I don't know what's worse, seeing you moping around all day doing nothing or having to drive halfway across the county just to buy groceries."

I wonder who she is. Thoughts of her preoccupy me throughout my day. Melissa has gone to her book group, or was it her church group. Does she still go to church? I don't even pay attention anymore. I certainly don't go I would have to leave the beach and the girl in the surf. I don't go out much, hoping that she will appear one day. Maybe she'll look over and see me watching her. Maybe that day will be the day that she steps back and walks toward the house, away from the surf and the water and doesn't disappear in the waves.

I've never called the cops. I don't know what I'd say. At first when I saw her I just thought she was some kid who like to go swimming at night, but I never saw her come back and its the same every night. The first time I saw her, I almost opened the screen door. Almost went out there to run her off or something equally home-ownerish. I don't know what I was going to say, maybe "Hey kid! This is private property!" or "Hey you, get out of there, it's not safe!" I never get farther than the screen door, never quite get it open.

Evening again and I am waiting for her. She appears, coming over the dunes from the south like yesterday and the day before. Today I am going to go out, today I am going to catch her and keep her from going into the sea. I am going out the door. I feel the sand under my feet, hot from the day's sun. It drags at my feet, running and falling over the dunes down to the water line. The salt grass smells pungent as I plunge headlong over the crest of the dune, and I see her. I stop, panting and gasping for air.

She comes down the dunes and I see her face for the first time. It is long and lean surrounded by her floating golden hair. Part of me pauses, perhaps for the first time and wonders why I have never seen her face before this. The sun reflects off of the gold of her hair and I forget, stumbling forward again.

She doesn't look my way she just walks slowly as if her feet pain her, slowly towards the water line. We are only two dunes away now and I can see her more clearly. Water and salt crust the sweater and I can smell the rotten seaweed from here. The hem is ragged and I see a slimy sheen to it that doesn't look quite right. Her pants that I had thought were jeans are gray and wet looking, hugging her thighs and caressing her ankles like tendrils in the foam of the surf.

"Jerry?!!" A far away voice calling from behind me. I can't remember who it belongs to.

I walk slowly towards her, and she is now only a few yards from me. The sweater is made from woven kelp and it stinks of rotten fish. The pants are something that I can't even tell, but they writhe. She is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. Sunlight shines off her golden hair as she turns towards me for the first time and smiles. Sharp white teeth are all I can see and I follow her into the surf as the tide comes in.

So I am sitting at work, typing on a beautiful brand new laptop that belongs to the school that I work for. And yet I feel horrible. All of the people here are good at their jobs, they are sincere and they love what they do. I on the other hand am here to fill time. I don't really care about education. I like the fact that it's a worthwhile job and that I am not just wasting my time at Sears, finding overweight retirees the right pillow for their summer home, but still.

The truly pathetic thing is that really all I want to do is be a peirced and tattoo'd freak. I would like nothing better than to have a job that allowed me to have all the facial peircings that I can think of, and to hell with what my grandmother would say. But I have yet to find that nirvana. I would settle for not getting to peirce my lips, ears, etc. if I was being paid more than a pittance.

Ok I am done whining now.

Dark Wings

This is a poem that I wrote about my Goddess, it is also a form called a Sestina. I find that doing poems in very rigid forms are almost more like puzzles than figurative writing.

Dark Wings

I feel the sweeping breath of dark wings
The feathers are soft and shine like stars
Eyes like a field of stars sparkle
Over hard leather and shining steel
White hair wispy with snow and ice
Weaving and cutting a tapestry of fate

Do weathered old hands determine my fate?
Am I to sound in the dark and be called on wings
That sound soft but cut like shards of ice?
Look up to the endless stars
And wonder when I will be one with their shining steel
Polished to a hardened sheen and with their inner light will sparkle?

Or perhaps my thread with drops of dew will sparkle
As young hands weave my fate
Hands not yet calloused and roughened by steel
With wide soft white wings
That hold the light of the moon and stars
Captured and frozen in glass clear ice.

Say that maybe I will flow with the ice
In a sea of cold and fear while the sparkle
Of souls and pin pricks of stars
Are but a note in a symphony of fate
Surrounded by the ocean of soft wings
All edges and curves and spines of steel.

Will work roughened hands hold scissors of steel
Caressing a figure carved of abalone and ice
Carnelian feathers and opal bones and wings
Formed with edges and sweeps that sparkle
With the threads and strands of fate
Woven in with all their own stars?

I see the sea of shining stars
Like holes cut in velvet black by steel
Who holds in her hands my fate
Frozen blue and held in ice
With shining black frozen chips that sparkle
And flutter on her wings

Holding gently the fate amidst the stars
Rushing winds past wings made from steel
And soft tines of ice, all edges and sparkle.

3 of 4

This is the water knot

2 of 4

This is obviously the fire of the set. My personal favorite.

1 of 4

this was a picture that I did digitally when I was first playing about with photoshop and other programs

it was elementally themed, and the ones to follow are more of the set.

hmm not so sure about this whole blog thing...

So, upon reading my partner Winter's blog at barkingshaman.blogspot.com I thought I'd give it a go, so here goes.

As I am primarily a visual artist, not a verbal one I imagine that most of my posts will be different forms of art or other stuff like that. Or maybe not, who knows...

So yeah, here we go.