I have too many tabs open on my browser again, and my computer keeps getting stuck, for a moment or two, before valiantly trying to catch back up. Acting like it was a glitch in the matrix.
I have too many tabs open in my mind/heart browser, and my attentiveness keeps getting stuck, for a day or days, before I valiantly try to redistribute my attention to the other things that need it. No matrix glitching here, just a human being doing too much.
Being - doing.
If the days are filled with me painting, like they have been the last nearly two weeks, I am mostly ok with that.
I need a pause between paint strokes. I thought I might talk to you for a moment instead.
Weighing on my mind today are contradictions and irony:
I desperately want to develop my writing skills, and write eleventy-seven books by tomorrow, impatient as always, because (again, as always) I think I should be perfect at everything I do straight away, or it is proof of my failure. Yeah, I know, it is a thing.
Also,
I just wrote a note about the need to just keep going as a creative, to practise and practice, and celebrating my developing skills starting to catch up with my vision when it comes to oil painting.
In the words of Alanis, isn’t it ironic, don’t you think.
I am creating a series of paintings that are romantic and soft and celebrating the beauty of our wild more-than-human kin, lightly inspired by the feelings I get looking at paintings from the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
They feature blooms as well as a wild being - an acknowledgment that we often view flowers as beautiful, worthy of spending our money on, celebrating, while barely seeing or acknowledging the exquisite elegance that are our feathered and furred family. I have a lot of words and feelings about this, you may have guessed.
I am painting arguably beautiful beings too though, creatures I don’t think anyone could find anything less than, well beautiful, powerful, or elegant, though my message is about ALL of our wild kin being worthy of celebration and our gaze.
Also,
The mulberries in the backyard are fattening, glossy purple-black, plump and delicious and so very alluring to several migratory birds.
The channel-billed cuckoo made her first appearance of the year yesterday, dinosaur-like call echoing over the entire street. Kwaak-aawk-aawk-aawk. I find her incredibly intriguing, and so utterly beautiful in her own way, and yet, as much as I would like to paint her, I can’t help but make a judgement that not only will not enough people know who she is, most people will not find her beautiful, or be loathing of the very nature of “cuckoo”, despite whatever flowers I include. So, the likelihood of me selling a painting with her in it is remote.
Practicality thwarting a message I so believe.
Contradictory.
Aside from having a certain Alanis song now in my head (and a cockie screeching outside that the cuckoo is back. None of the other birds like her either, despite being mostly fruit eating - she is big, her beak is fearsome, and she is rather scary looking to them, though she poses no threat), I find myself wishing a lot.
Wishing I had more time, so that I could honour all the wild beings and their uniqueness.
Wishing I had more money so that I could feel safe in honouring all the wild beings and their uniqueness (and still, you know, survive).
Wishing I had come back to this sooner, that I had started painting when I first came back to art, that I could somehow work faster, that I could somehow be better at expressing myself in words and pigment.
Wish, wish, wish.
The wish tabs are taking up too much space in my heart browser.
And then I hear a currawong come into the big tree, the lemon scented gum. It is her nest the cuckoo are likely to lay their eggs in.
Her call does something to me. I would listen to their sounds in the early morning at my grandparents farm and find my skin prickled with goose-flesh. Later, I would listen to them pre-dawn at my Pa’s house and my eyes would line with silver. SO much emotion.
Sometimes I feel like if I could just open my mouth, my throat, the right way, I could call back to her.
Speechless and wide eyed, my father and brothers and I watched dozens of them once at the Blue Mountains, plummeting from cliffs way above us and down into the valley way below, as though late for a meeting.
Oh, she is so beautiful, swift and powerful, so full of grace in her svelte coat of midnight.
Just for a moment I can imagine tucking my wings tight against me the way she does, an arrow in the air, fast and stealthy, a single pump of strong wings, deliberate and determined, defying gravity or controlling it, a force of defiant beauty with wings.
Irony, contradiction, wishing - these are such human things.
My thoughts are too human.
Image credits: Channel Billed Cuckoo, Currawong: my own photo
I can’t imagine a currawong wringing her hands over these same thoughts.
And that is the biggest lesson, isn’t it. When overwhelmed or too in my own head, it is in connecting with a wild being that clarity and calmness come, perspective, expansiveness, and yes, even spaciousness for my own humanity. Kara, kara, kara-a-wee-kar, kar-wee-wee-kar.
Doing - being.
I cannot do it all.
I cannot be it all.
I cannot paint all of the wild beings in the lifetime I have left.
But I can do everything I can in the most gentle and heartfelt way, to share my love of the wild, to honour these incredible beings, and to find and celebrate their beauty with you.
If nothing else today, you at least know a little more about a migratory cuckoo, the largest in the world actually, and maybe you find her incredibly intriguing and more than a little beautiful too.
How will you honour your humanity, your being, today?
I love how you described this Natalie. Too many tabs open in your heart. Too many wishes. Me too. 💛
Ah yes, wouldn’t it be wonderful that everything would flow out of our pens and paintbrushes as fast as we think of it? If only! First, if you want to paint the channel-billed cuckoo, paint her (or him). Maybe not on one of your large canvases, maybe in your sketchbook, where you can delight in every line and pick out flowers to suit them. It might not be paying work, but it is necessary work even at the high level of skill you already display (honestly, I am in awe of your patience alone in getting those marvelous details) because it is about feeding your creative soul too.
Second, there’s been a new bird call on our block the last few days. I downloaded an app (useless) but I finally remembered reading somewhere that the koels come back here to breed. Sure enough, it is a Pacific koel and it has taken up residence in the red wattle bird tree. The good news at least is that this cuckoo doesn’t destroy the other eggs, so no need to worry about a decline in wattlebird numbers. They are also known as storm birds or rain birds, although neither has happened since they showed up, just a southerly.