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Ascent

Ascent

The view changed often

as I made my way

from the base of the castle to the top;

the sun beat down on me with ancient fire

and my knees nearly forced me to stop

but each step took me higher than mountains,

and birds

flew beneath me as I crossed a bridge

that led to the door of the highest tower

and the darkness and mysteries within

engraved on its stone walls, a story was told

of a life that knew losses and pain;

it might have been your story; it might have been mine,

for it seemed to reveal everyone's name

the pale orange of sunset glowed through the window

giving eerie life to the stone;

enshrouded by darkness both threatening and comforting

I'd never been so alone

I stepped out onto the perch just as a banshee's wail

sent a chill running through my whole being;

it pierced the air from a far off place,

and I gazed out with awe at the scene:

There was fire in the hills as a crimson moon rose

and a dragon flew across the sky;

it was moving slow, as if it wanted me to know

that I could ride on its back if I tried

I might have died that day, or perhaps it was death that died;

releasing its hold on me

and in one perfect instant, I heard a song

and I'm still haunted by its melody

Elephant Dream, Two versions

Dream of Strange Scene by a Pond

J, Caco and Friends!

The Golden Cobra Dream

Here is another image I did for my friend, who keeps a dream journal. In this dream, she met a magnificent being, a giant radiant Golden Cobra.

Happy NEW YEAR! 2012!

Happy Year of the Dragon! May this year be a Magical one for you and yours!

- Andy Boerger

Bell Peppers

Happy Birthday, Hinata-chan!

Surf's Up!

My latest in the series of Pet Art Portraits, here's Momo and Luna putting their surfing skills on show in Waikiki!

Girl on a Horse

An image from an idea for a children's story I'm working on now.

The Deal That Says "Splunge!"

Remember that Monty Python skit

(and if you don't, it's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v0I4OQi7CQ)

where the Texas movie producer gets a bunch of screenwriters in a room and badgers them all until they are reduced to hiding under the table? The Texas producer actually reminds me a lot of the Tea Baggers. But I digress.

Terry Jones is so terrified of getting axed on the spot he shouts out “Splunge”, and then explains that it means that the idea proposed by the producer might be a terrific idea, but possibly not, and he’s not being a yes-man. Quite a word, splunge! Anyway, saves his neck.

So this deal seems to do that. It saves everybody’s neck, it can and must be leveraged to show just what a toxic element the Tea Bagger (aka The Mice That Roared) caucus is, AND it has something for everybody to hate about it, which means it also has something for everybody to LIKE about it. Except the Bagger Caucus, of course, because they are insane.

What’s more, it’s so confusing you can pretty much spin it any old damn way you want.

Personally, I haven’t quite made up my mind about it, splungily, because I have a hard time seeing how this will all play out in the future. It absolutely MUST be played out in a way that exposes the Baggers for the unreasonable folks they are, and makes them radioactive to all but the most Kool Aid slurping RWers come reelection time.

But I’m guessing I probably never WILL make up my mind about it, because I am pretty sure in the meantime, and not too far off, somebody, somewhere will manufacture the NEXT crisis du jour to seize us all by our craniums.
So, Splunge!

Katy and Tiara Get Hitched!

The latest in my series of "Pet Art" commissions, featuring the lovely Katy and the dachshund who has swept her off her feet (with his paws), Tiara.

The Innocence of the Human Body

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
- Auden

St Francis of Assissi had, to be sure, an odd relationship with his body. As a strict ascetic, he considered it of utmost importance not to give in to its cravings for pleasure and leisure. He dubbed his own body “brother ass” and felt that it should be treated as any other domestic beast of the time. Beaten when in need of discipline, and given only coarse food upon which to subsist. He was known to curb his temptations by hurling his body into snow, or even on one occasion a briar patch which he tossed himself about in until his flesh was ripped and bleeding. However, by the time of his death, the great man had reconsidered his ill treatment of his body – his earthly vehicle – and asked the Lord to pardon him for having treated Brother Ass so cruelly. He realized that he had been indulging a fascination; an attempt to conquer that which his Creator had given him. Finally, it seems, that he who loved life and all its manifestations, had finally learned to love, or at least honor, his own organism.

Although many may feel that Francis’ relationship to his body was downright bizarre, I think it is difficult to escape the conclusion that we, in our modern age, relate to our own bodies in even more dysfunctional ways, or at least are encouraged to. We obsess over its skin layer, its most superficial aspect. Say the word “body” to a teenage male, and no doubt the image that will result is a female with Playboy-approved proportions. Or perhaps his own body, “ripped” and sculpted. It is doubtful that he will think of the intricate, mechanical wonder he inhabits, the magnificence that goes far beyond the skin layer. I’m reminded of a scuba diver, who, seated next to a friend who looked out at the ocean at sunrise and remarked at how beautiful it was, replied, “yes, and that’s only theroof!”

We indulge our bodies in exactly the way that St. Francis frowned upon, as we load up on ice cream, tortilla chips, cola, coffee and red wine. We then scan it for signs of resultant flab, and hold it up for critique alongside the impossible ideals that mass media relentlessly parades before our eyes. In magazine articles and website pages we are asked to consider which Hollywood hunk or starlet has “the best body”, when presumably the correct answer should be the one that functions best – the one that digests, eliminates, breathes, repairs, etc. most efficiently.

No greater indication of our dysfunctional relationship to our bodies can there be than the fact that we have created a trillion dollar industry that has as its sole purpose the manufacture of machines and devices that destroy and disfigure it by the millions. Our so-callled “defense industry” would perhaps be looked upon less favorably by its supporters if it were referred to, more honestly, as “the body destroying industry”. Although it has numerous competitors, perhaps the most atrocious and obscene example of this in all our sad history was the Treblinka II Death Camp in Nazi Germany. This was the Industrial Revolution meets Dante’s Inferno. For the first and only time in history an actual factory was built, with train lines leading up to it, that served no purpose other than the destruction of human bodies as quickly and “efficiently” as possible. People were carted in by the train car-load, and few lived more than 24 hours after arriving.

And these bodies that we waste and destroy so casually are near miraculous machines that are far beyond the capabilities of our greatest scientific geniuses to create or even imitate. Each cell, when it is first birthed in us, is like any other cell in our bodies, yet each knows how to evolve through exactly the right iterations so that it becomes part of our hair, our eyes, our lungs, our genitals, etc. How do the cells do this? Nobody knows, but it is likely the answer will someday be found in the portion of our DNA that biologists have lovingly referred to as “junk”.

We punish bodies mercilessly, and yet throughout the history of our species they have never sinned in any way. They serve us faithfully to the fullest extent they are capable at any given moment, until they can no longer. When they long for sleep we deprive them of it. When they need healthy natural food to stay strong, we insist that they make do on starchy, sugary, salty substances they have little use for. We keep them chained to chairs when they long to move about in the open air, as they were evolved to do. If we treated our pets the same way we treat our bodies we would be considered negligent, at best. And we punish bodies for the transgressions of the mind. I am opposed to the death penalty because I believe it is always a miscarriage of justice, as the body merely did what it was told, no matter how heinous the crime. To the body, slicing a cucumber or slicing into a human finger is essentially the same act, insofar as it merely follows the instructions of a healthy, or deranged, mind. An eye for an eye is thus two outrages, not one.

I am only writing to say that human bodies are innocent. We have yet, as a species, to demonstrate our worthiness to inhabit them. We should never harm them in any way.

Atlas Buzzed

While scientists remain puzzled as to the cause of the dramatic decline in honeybee populations in North America and elsewhere, some are speculating the cause may very much be human related; however, not technological, but philosophical. It appears that “Randism”, a trend that has recently exploded on the American political landscape may similarly have caught on among our bee brethren. It seems that the reason for the decline of hive populations is that many bees are now practicing “the virtue of selfishness”, keeping the nectar they collect for themselves and not returning to the hives they emerged from. These bees consider the notion that they should return for the benefit of the whole colony “evil altruism” and look down upon the “Hive-ists” who would act for a goal larger than themselves. They argue that “there is no such thing as a species” and that it all comes down to individual bees and their pursuit of their own happiness. When it is pointed out to them that this could result in the extinction of honey bees and have cataclysmic results on worldwide crops, they scoff and say, “and this is my problem how?”

Meanwhile, more religious-minded bees are concerned about how to carry on in the aftermath of what they regard as “The Great Rapture” that has decimated their populations. “Left Bee-hive”, the bee adaptation of the “Left Behind” series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, paints a bleak picture of life on earth after the Chosen Bees have been taken up to their Maker.

So, will it be Rand that the bees turn to, or the Good Book? “Why should I care?”, a distraught bee who agreed to be interviewed for this article lamented. “It’s so hopeless that I just may go off somewhere and sting someone!”

Satomi's Tea Party

My friend Satomi, the photographer who took the pictures of Rosie I posted a while back, is the subject of my latest pet art project, along with her two pups, Shishimaru and Momo. I managed to sneak Rosie in there too! Check out Satomi's blog at

http://ameblo.jp/buchakawa/

The Lonely Ape

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left.”
- (attributed to)Einstein

My morning yesterday was like so many others, riding a crowded train out from suburban Tokyo to neighboring Yokohama for work. As usual, I would have to wait several stops before managing a seat. So as I stood in the cramped aisle in front of a row of seats and watched the scenery change, I happened to glance over at the kangaroo standing next to me. He was reading The Kangaroo Times, and, since I don’t read Kangaroo, I could only get the barest notion from the photographs of what seems to be the chief concerns of kangaroos these days. Some sort of major kangaroo sporting event is going on, as well as what looks to be some sort of territorial dispute in a place I assumed to be part of the Australian outback. When he noticed I was poking my nose into his newspaper, the kangaroo seemed a bit miffed, and ever so slightly folded his paper as if to demonstrate to me it was off limits. Not wanting to make a kangaroo angry, I quickly looked in the opposite direction and found something frightfully interesting about the ad for after shave lotion above the luggage rack.

I’m not quite sure which is more absurd; the scenario I just described above, or the fact that for the vast majority of human beings alive today, nothing even remotely similar will ever occur for them – an encounter with another species of animal, in both creatures’ natural environment, on equal terms. We have fashioned a world that has become so people-centric that some of us go through whole days without ever seeing another species from the animal kingdom. Those of us who don’t have pets might go a few days without even thinking about other creatures, aside from the eating of them. Many will not regard the food before them as a once living animal. Hamburgers and chicken nuggets so completely disguise the fact that This Once Breathed that it is as if food originates in supermarkets and restaurant kitchens. No other species lives like this on our planet; so isolated, so disconnected from other creatures. A hefty toll is being paid for this, I believe. In fact, I believe that one of the main reasons there is so much alienation, depression and other forms of mental illness plaguing the human species is because our relationship to our fellow creatures has become so distorted. We are a lonely species.

To see this loneliness given expression, we need only look at children’s stories and entertainment. When I was a child, my television friends were Bugs Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy Duck, Scooby Doo and Bullwinkle. Especially Bugs. Now, Bugs is a funny fellow, as are the other characters I loved, but he’s nothing like an actual rabbit, even in appearance, is he? Why even depict him, or any cartoon character, as an animal? Why Mighty Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Eeyore, the White Rabbit, etc.? Couldn’t they all be people? They basically are people, just ones wearing funny animal suits.

What does this tell us? That we long to reconnect to animals. We miss them, and as long as we do, we’ll insert them into our culture any way we can. On greeting cards, calendars, animated programs, children’s book illustrations, T-shirts, etc., etc. We’ll also put them in zoos, basically prisons for innocents, and go to gawk at them in an odd and wholly inappropriate gesture of reconnection. Our popular culture indicates a deep yearning within us to restore something beautiful that has been lost.

To be sure, the reasons for our isolation are clear and reasonable enough. Animals threatened us. Whether lions, tigers or bears, whether locusts, snakes or scorpions, whether disease carrying rats, flies or birds, we built our cities and homes to shelter us from the danger so many of our fellow inhabitants of this world presented. But we’ve gone too far. We have created a sterile, barren environment. Wherever you are, sitting right now and reading your computer screen, try to imagine this same spot of land five hundred years ago, and for tens of thousands of years before that. It was very likely a lush forest with a vibrant, cosmopolitan atmosphere of squawking, hiding, howling, hunting, slithering, jumping animals. The land pulsated. The animals had an alertness we can only dream about, knowing that every move they made or failed to make could be fatal. In this threatening world of predators and prey, still they managed to mate and raise children. Surrounded by creatures utterly different from them, they shared and persevered. Consciously or simply instinctually, they participated in life, just as their descendants still do in the vast but ever shrinking expanses of forest that yet survive on our world. But for us, our world has been reduced to slabs, boxes, and slick surfaces. We see a spider or cockroach run along our walls, or a line of ants moving back and forth across our floor and we nearly freak out. “EWwww! How did these animals get in here?”

Our isolationist course has taken us to, and perhaps beyond, the tipping point. The latest hypothesis to explain the disappearance of honey bees in some parts of the world is that mobile phone “noise” is disrupting the bees’ homing sensors. Once they leave the hive to gather pollen, they can’t find their way back. The hives die. It’s hard to proffer a more essential species than the honeybee. Most of the world’s crops depend on them for pollination. So, will it be mobile phones that ultimately do us in? If so, I see a profoundly sad irony in that. Our isolated, lonely species, robbing the planet of its life force, while we go on chattering, chattering, chattering among ourselves.

Kanye West

La Fiesta en una Cantina!

Here's my latest Pet Art image, done for my friend Emari, of her two chihuahuas, Cinnamon and Milky, in honor of Cinnamon's 6th birthday. Feliz Cumpleanos, Cinnamon!

Rosie Pics!

Here are some great pictures, taken by my new friend Satomi, when we met at the Tama River a couple weeks ago. Satomi is a professional photographer, and she was snapping away like mad! So I'm sure I'll post some more of her pictures here from time to time.

Here's Satomi's website address:

http://ameblo.jp/buchakawa