Nature As Teacher

One of the reasons religion and its limited concept of spirituality never found a home in me is because my soul has always been tightly woven with Nature. I've always felt myself in the flow of the river as it wound its way through canyons and valleys and lush, abundant mountain ranges. I've always seen myself in the depths of a lake's many layers--the silty gray of thawing ideology, the multi-hued greens of new growth and maturing spirit, the blues of ice and sky and blinding insight so intense that my heart found new heights to test its wings. I've gazed at the ocean as if it were an oracle with answers to all the questions worth asking.

I am not separate from Nature. We are one entity with many hearts all beating in a rhythm of different places in the same time. We are a breath taken one thousand years ago and reborn as the whispered sigh of a creek dancing through a break in the rocks. We are a drop of rain that falls one thousand years in the future as the tear of a love so profound, one can only weep from the intensity of emotion and feeling. We are the crash of a wave against the rocks as we ebb and flow and sweep over the man-made obstacles of being alive.

When I sit in silence in the depths of a forest, the soft rustle of scurrying feet mix with the song of birds, trees shake their leaves and whisper secrets with the wind, the scent of change dies and grows and evolves to a new form, a new reality, a new growth.

I change with the seasons. I die and I am reborn in harmony with the death and rebirth of Nature. I am the waves of the ocean forming new inroads into the shore of my understanding. I am the mist and the cry of the seagulls and the call of geese flying through the fire glow of a setting sun.

In all of Nature is a piece of my soul, a part of me that was shaped and formed and created by processes that are nothing less than a mother giving birth to a child.

Is it any wonder that I find religion and its unholy intermediaries irrelevant to who I am, who I am becoming, and who I shall be?

The Van Gogh quote and design is available HERE

Nature As Teacher

Breaking Free From The Herd

Have you ever noticed while driving along a highway that clumps of cars travel together, leaving empty spaces in front and behind them? It's as if everyone is afraid to be the lone car, the sore thumb raising it's damaged appendage to draw the highway patrol's attention. Ticket me! Ticket me! I'm outside the herd and therefore bad bad bad.

You see this same behavior while walking along the sidewalks of Anytown, USA. If you stop and look inside a shop, sure enough, within moments, there will be a sudden crowd of slack-jawed gapers joining you. Go for a hike on a public trail and people will slow down or speed up in order to not be left alone where they can be mauled by wild bears or the "authorities."

We have become a nation of puppies suffering separation anxiety from the collective feeding sacks. When you consider that one of the many traits America once prided itself on: rugged individualism, has virtually disappeared in the frenzy to look like everyone else so you won't be picked out of the crowd, it becomes more than a casual observance. It points to a fundamental change in character.

There are several places to focus on as being responsible for this herd behavior. Of course the easy ones are the churches. Dissent is frowned upon. You join a church because everyone thinks like you, acts like you, behaves like you, and most importantly, believes like you. The hive of sameness is comforting in this ever changing and scary world, and believe me, the unholy intermediaries know it is in their self-interest to keep you huddled together. It is easier to pick your pockets...and your souls when you are all in one convenient place, both physically and mentally.

The less obvious one is the growth of the politics of mean. It has no purpose except to divide people into groups that can be manipulated for personal and political gain. It works especially well if you implant the evil seeds of "us" and "them" to keep the different groups from co-mingling and finding out exactly how they are being manipulated.

So go ahead and hate people for their sexual orientation, their politics, their ethnic identity, their legal or illegal status, their religious beliefs--or especially their LACK of religious beliefs. And once you make all that part of your collective soul, give up language and just bleat bahhhhh bahhhhhh bahhhhhhh every once in a while because it is the only fitting response to how you've allowed yourself to be stripped of everything that makes you unique.

And once you no longer stand out in the crowd, once you no longer think differently from the herd, once you no longer have the will or desire to stand up for yourself or for what you believe, then your life ceases to have any special value. You become cannon fodder for the war party. You become a pawn in the game of death. You lose everything and never miss it because you no longer remember what it was like to have value as a human being.

This is how the revolution happens. Not by violence. Not by dissent. Not by fighting for liberty, freedom and democracy. It happens by mutual and blind consent. It happens because you sold yourself like some cheap whore to a political party, or a televised religious bigot, or the promise of things and money and glittery, shiny toys, and especially for the promise that no one but people who looked and thought like you would ever enter your gated community mind.

You might as well kick some dirt over yourself because you are pretty much dead.

Breaking Free From The Herd

Wiretap This!

Privacy is a strange thing. In many countries it does not have the importance it does in America. It is not unusual in some cultures to satisfy one's curiosity by opening someone else's purse or backpack and examining the contents. Privacy in such cultures equals secrecy and secrecy equals bad. Friends don't have secrets from each other, therefore they should not mind if one examines their most intimate items with total and complete interest. To claim the right of privacy is to immediately draw everyone's suspicion.

This uniquely American "right" is on an equal footing with individualism, the right to live free of government intrusion, and separation of private vs. public lives. This country has always prided itself on the lack of evil entities such as secret police, faceless spies who tracked every move of its citizens. It cherished such things as private property, private and personal beliefs, private time, private thoughts, private conversations.

These cherished rights were the fabric of an America envied by the world over. It was one of the things that gained us respect and honor and the desire to be America's friends and allies. It is what set us apart from those awful totalitarian regimes, dictatorships, and puppet governments we were told were very different from us. We were told they were very bad governments who SPIED on their own people, LISTENED IN on private conversations, and INTRUDED on every aspect of people's cherished lives.

Now we have become what we once opposed because of power-hungry and greedy bastards who care nothing about this country. They care only to enrich themselves, to steal what they can and control everything so they can continue to lie and cheat and steal without exposure.

This design is for them, those bastards who for years told us the enemy would break down our doors and steal our privacy. However, they neglected to tell us that enemy would be them.

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You can buy this design at Ursine Logic

Wiretap This!

Green Bears Discuss Immigration

No matter what you think about the immigration issue, the impressive thing is the number of people who turned out who weren't immigrants, legal or otherwise. It makes me think what people really protested against was the disenfranchising of everyone who isn't part of the Stepford Elite that the Republican party has become. Most people in this country are very much like those of several decades ago who were not Fascists, Nazis or Communists. They are apolitical and never gave their vote or party affiliation much thought. Punching that card or screen became a tedious task that one had to do but that meant very little emotionally.

The Bush Theocracy changed all that. People woke up and realized the nuclear trigger is in the hands of a madman who thinks some imaginary playmate is whispering in his ear to nuke the world for jesus. If he wasn't president, he'd be heavily medicated and kept somewhere he couldn't do any harm except shout at ghosts occasionally.

But this is the leader of the country, the head of an administration that has cultivated fear, suspicion, division, and war for the sake of greed. And the congress is worthless either because they've had their silence bought through dirt uncovered in those illegal wiretaps of American citizens, or they are so stunned at the extent of the greed, madness and corruption that passes for the presidency these days that they literally cannot summon up the words to describe their outrage.

Either way, this country is moving closer to choosing a third party rather than the War Party or their accommodating minions in Congress. It's time to clean house, and the senate, and the presidency. It's time to open some eyes.

I made this design after the immigration rallies because I am certain the whole issue began as this election year's wedge issue, the gay marriage button pusher of 2006. It backfired on them. But they will keep trying because to lose any of the elections is to move closer to the jail cells that await them for being the thieves and war criminals they are. All they are left with are the cheap tricks of last year that fooled only the most moronic of their base: throw two dudes up on the tv during prime time, have them lock lips, and the screams of terror will propel the horrified populace to the ballot boxes to cast votes for more Republicans.

Only this time the lip-lockers will be Mexican because that way they won't completely lose out on the immigration issue.

Peace

Green Bears designs available at Ursine Logic

Green Bears Discuss Immigration

I Hear Stupid People

I'm beginning to believe the human species is too stupid to survive. Every day we are hearing the same old crap we heard about Iraq, and every day more and more people put their brains on hold and think well yeah, this crazy guy in Iran hates us and so we need to take him out. Hey guys, everyone hates us these days.

If that was a reason for war, then we'd be taking out Greece who just let Condoleeza Clueless know they weren't going to die in Iran for her. Or any other countries who think that Bush is a madman who responds only to the voices in his head. Read some of the crap he's been saying about those voices in something other than the state-run media.

It doesn't even have to be extremist to get a clear picture of what's going on. Here's some sites I read with my morning coffee: Huffington Post , Antiwar.com , Daily Kos , Raw Story .

These sites have a mix of writers who cover all sides with reasonable arguments, instead of the simpering White House Whores over at Faux News morons who wouldn't know a real news story if it snuck up behind them and yelled "Fascist!" to get their blood warm enough to reach their hearts.

And if you never read anything but crazy madwomen's blogs, at least stand up for peace. Let your voice be heard. Teach people that peace is strength, that peace is power, that peace is all that will save our stupid, warmongering asses of a species before it's too late.

Peace

and you can buy the rose peace design at my store on t-shirts and other stuff: Ursine Logic

I Hear Stupid People

The Lies of State

Back in the days when oppressive regimes were the enemy instead of our own government, every bad country had its own propaganda minister. He was eviscerated by American media and those who were our friends, back in the days when America had friends, as a symbol of oppression, as a tool of the political machine, a useful idiot whose only purpose was to spread and disseminate the lies of state. In other words, they did the job that Scott Mclellan did for Bushco.

Underlying the hypocrisy and gallows humor surrounding America having become everything it once opposed, is the pathetic fact that lying has become an American value. We no longer expect honesty from anyone. We expect people to lie, to manipulate us, to cheat us, to do us wrong in the name of politics, religion, making the sale, and love.

This is what the culture of lying that surrounds and permeates the current administration like the smell of rot and decay lingers long after the offending source of the stench has been removed, does for our country. It makes lying normal. It makes personal attacks on people and their loved ones normal. It makes going to war for oil and unresolved daddy issues normal. It makes being mean and cruel and arrogant and selfish normal.

If there is one legacy other than all the unnecessary, awful deaths caused by Bushco's greed, it will be the culture of lying. They will go down in history as the most dishonest, the most manipulative, the most cruel and selfish administration ever.

In light of that sad truth, the new Propaganda Minister for the White House should be our old friend Baghdad Bob. He, above everyone else, exemplifies what Bushco really is all about.

And this design, like many others on this blog, are available at my store: Ursine Logic

The Lies of State

My Kitty

I decided to go ahead and expose some of my stranger art to the world at My store And because I love my cat, I think she looks beautiful in whatever I dress her. :-)

I'm also working on more Green Bears as people seem to like them a lot.

My Kitty

Green Bears

I've been collecting bear-related stuff for Ursine Logic pages for awhile now, so it wasn't a problem of enough material, but rather one of choosing the best material for what I wanted to say and do. So today I finally settled on the green bears. They are where I've been putting my political stuff.

The reason I chose these guys is because I wanted to establish myself firmly in my political identity of Compassionate Liberal. I wanted a way to comment on politics and politicians that wasn't mean-spirited. I wanted humor, caring, and an honest sense of bewilderment that people are not as smart as the average bear when it comes to making up their own minds.

This was never made clearer to me than on Easter. I saw little kids running and crawling around in the wet and muddy grass after the rains of the day before. They were all decked out in miniature wedding finery--with ears and without, and they were engaging in some ancient fertility ritual of stuffing eggs into baskets as they hopped all over the damn place. And all this while their parents proudly filmed the whole thing.

It's a weird sort of kiddie porn when you look at it from one angle, the same angle that looks at religion and sees it for what it truly is--the biggest bucket of damn excuses for human behavior that was ever created. If someone commits a socially acceptable act, then god made them do it, the angel's hands (or wings, as it were) guided them, they were blessed by saints of all shapes, sizes, and stages of demented philosophizing. On the other hand, if the act was socially unacceptable, such as spending the afternoon seducing the neighbor's wife, or taking an ax to that annoying guy who insists on exposing himself every day...well, of course, that was the devil's fault wasn't it?

So the green bears will be discussing stuff like this in more depth over the coming weeks. Do check back often and see what they have to say.

Green Bears

Wild Creatures

I am a solitary creature who enjoys my own company. I'm not anti-social or overly weird or too scary. I do have friends, great friends, loving and loyal friends. But after a long time being together, we are like old married people who desperately need a break from each other.

And there are also times when I love my friends, but as people...well they let me down every once in a while. They reveal themselves to be mere mortals. They commit the worst sin imaginable...they reveal themselves to be ordinary! Just like everyone else on the planet...demented, weird, wanting, longing, and so damn needy I often feel bled dry by them at different times.

Because they've been my friends for a long time I am willing to step back, give us all some room, and then hope everyone shape shifts back to the charming, intelligent, witty, tolerant and accepting creatures they are normally.

But on some issues the cracks are exposed and I'm not sure they can ever be patched back together again so that no one notices too much. One of those issues is immigration. There doesn't seem to be a neutral ground in this argument. It's yet one more polarizing issue brought to us by politicians so infected by greed that anything human gets by them completely.

In a perfect world, one I dream about, one I hope to see in my lifetime, there are no borders. But the world is not perfect and the reality is that if this country shuts out immigrants we will not be any safer, any more secure, any more prosperous. The looting of our treasury and resources to fund a madman's war, has created a whole new class of poor and desperate people.

I live in a neighborhood where people's jobs are car prowling, identity theft, drugs, and stealing anything to survive to the next meal or next fix or next month's rent. How do you build a fence against that when all the money to do so has been stolen by our criminal government? How do you protect yourself against the next generation, the one that is fed Ritalin as if it were candy or are so tranquilized because overworked teachers can't cope with them if they aren't perfect little kids? Do you have perpetual wars and just kill them off as they get old enough to do serious damage at home to us?

I also feel that if someone wants to come here so badly they are willing to work crap jobs for less money than anyone legal would get for the same job, they deserve a chance to stay. They've demonstrated the kind of work ethic that built this country. They are willing to do the hardest, crappiest work and even die in our perpetual wars as green card soldiers. Isn't that the kind of resolve that made this country something special in the eyes of the rest of the world?

Sadly, I think immigrants are the new distraction for the failed Republican policies. As long as quack radio and whacko white people news actors keeps hammering home the idea that these people are the problem, no one will look at the real problem of those greedy, selfish, fanatical, lying, thieving, cheating, murdering war and hate mongers who have created conditions in this country that makes us all illegal aliens. They care about us about as much as they care about something on the bottom of their shoes. That is the real threat, not a bunch of Mexicans who work their ass off for shit wages.

Wild Creatures

Compassionate Liberalism

One of the sad mysteries that I'm trying to understand is what happened to make people so mean? Everywhere I look there is someone making life miserable for someone else for no good reason that I can see. Sure, life is hard for a lot of people. Just being alive is a challenge sometimes. But why has the mean quotient risen so sharply in the last few years?

Of course I can point to some obvious things such as "talk radio" that should more aptly be called "yell radio," or the equivalent on TV where highly paid morons insult each other with the most ridiculous of empty arguments on a daily basis. Or that this horrible war without reason creates an underlying sense of anger in people that drip drip drips from them on the roads where they scream and flip each other off, in the stores where they bump into each other's shopping carts with guttural grunts of indignation, and in relationships where love is slowly eroded by disillusionment, boredom, and outright hatred.

But what I suspect is the true reason is a mass feeling of outrage over being used, abused and manipulated by sleazy lawyers who stepped on and backstabbed so many people they finally made it to the halls of power in congress and the white house. Every day they prove that ethics and the legal profession are never uttered in the same breath. Every day they decide issues on what is legally permissible instead of what is morally and ethically right. All that hairsplitting and their consciences, the little they had to begin with, were lost in the trash heap of legally right but morally wrong manipulations.

When lawyers became so great in number that everywhere you looked one was running something or other, it became a matter of a very short time before our leaders would stop being drawn from the public servants who wanted to do good, and were instead drawn from the scheming hordes of absurdly wealthy and powerfully connected lawyers who sleazed their way to the top of the shit pile.

Think about it...all our vital decisions such as war and peace, death and dying, birth and life has been placed in the hands of those who know only how to lie, cheat and steal their way to a win in the courtroom. We only have to look at the decisions being made to know these people don't care about us, or about the planet, or about each other. They care only about winning, about accumulating the most gains, the most prizes, the most rewards.

And if you think this is bad, the group coming up behind them who are just as large in number and just as greedy? Real Estate agents. Whatever ethics and consciences were left will soon be up for auction.

Therefore, the only sane way out of this mess is to fight back with weapons completely unfamiliar to either groups: compassion, love, peace, caring about people instead of their incomes or places of residence or the labels on their clothes or the size of the cars they drive. That is why I created the design for Compassionate Liberal. It is one I plan on wearing myself quite often and giving as gifts to my friends and family who understand what it means.

If we are too nice to yell and be mean, at least we can still make ourselves read if not heard. And it is like people say...the dog you have to worry about is not the one who barks, but the one who sneaks up silently behind you.

Compassionate Liberalism

The Meaning of Friendship

Some days I end up feeling as if I'm a strange kind of alien creature that holds values far above what people can realistically attain. I tell myself that I am some kind of freak because I believe that friendship is such a valued and cherished part of me that I can't compromise on what I believe. I tell myself that I hold back until I am sure because I know once I give it, it is for life. I tell myself that friendship means acceptance and tolerance and unconditional love. Anything else, and it is NOT friendship. I tell myself this is the natural order of things and anything that falls outside those lines is a poor and unsatisfying imitation of the real thing.

This is why, when someone does something that tells me not only do they believe differently than I do, but something about my beliefs makes them want to cut me down, much as those who walk through a forest think only of which trees are the best to slam into with a chainsaw, I end up locking myself in my bear den in stunned horror.

I know there is evil in the world. I know there are bad people. I know there are sociopaths who can lie as easily as they speak the truth. I know there are people who live to take vengeance on others for reasons known only to them. I know such people exist. I just don't expect to find them among people who profess undying love and friendship for me. I tend to believe them when they say such things.

I also tend to believe that once you give your heart to someone, once you say the words I love you, then you can never hurt that person, no matter how the relationship ended. To do so would make a mockery of love. It would cheapen it. It would make it seem something weak and easily wiped away as if it were some meaningless speck of dirt.

I also believe that when people split up, neither has the right to put an extra burden on their mutual friends by demanding they choose sides. I have spent my life trying to be fair in such situations. I can always see both sides of the issues in every relationship. I can empathise, sympathize, listen attentively and respectfully...and still not take a side, no matter who I believe is at fault. This is what it means to be a friend. This is what it means to have friendship, once given, be non-negotiable.

That is why I am always so stunned, so deeply wounded when anyone goes against this, or worse, when they use it against me to get back at someone else. People know how I feel, and yet that doesn't stop them from demanding I choose sides. It doesn't stop them from taking sides in my own relationship paths. It doesn't stop them from going against everything they once said in such sincerity that I feel a fool for believing it now.

And yet, believe it I must. If I allow myself to take sides, if I allow myself to fall apart because I learn friends I cherished walked out of my life because an ex partner made it a condition of continued friendship, then I fall to the lowest level of the basest act.

That is the split in the human condition, the two sides of ourselves we are always trying to reconcile with being alive. No matter what we believe, there will always be someone who will try and take it from us. Strength is therefore defined as not letting them do it, no matter what evil and disgusting methods they use to do so.

The Doggess of Unconditional Love is another one of my designs from my store. My Store

I also started a blog over at myspace that is going to focus on things like the politics of peace and respect. I only have a couple entries in it so far and some of my more political art. I'd be honored to have people visit there as well.

My home at myspace.com

The Meaning of Friendship

This Immigrant Thing

I started a new store today to add my political and semi-political and on the edge of acceptable stuff.

Immigrant's Landing

Mostly I wanted to express my feeling that this whole immigration argument is an extension of the divide and conquer argument that seems to be the Republican's entire party platform. If they can't win you over with ideas, then the next best thing they figure is to divide people against each other, feed each group a measured amount of bullshit until they barf it back at each other and call it democracy.

And while everyone is at each other's throats, then they sneak around behind our backs like the mean little cowards they are and start another war.

Isn't it clear enough that unless we all get along with each other and learn to treat each other with respect, then we will continue to be ants in their demented antfarm?

If you hate, if you preach intolerance, if you practice vengeance, if you are just a plain old mean person, then you play right into their hands. You help them cover the planet with a blanket of greed, and hate, and perpetual wars. Is this what you want? Aren't you better than that?

As far as the immigrant issue, if you aren't a Native American, then you are an immigrant. All we are really arguing about is the timing of our arrivals.

Peace.

This Immigrant Thing

Thoughts for Earth Day and Beyond

I wanted a place to put my poetry and stories, but I didn't want to crowd this blog with them as it has a purpose all its own. So when I got the google page maker invite in my email, I decided that would be a good use for it. Ursine Logic, the Poetry and Prose Page> Please do take a look and check back frequently, because like this blog, it is a work that grows and changes and becomes as I grow and change and become.

So far there are only a couple poems on there because I want to do with it what I have done with this site --combining my words and my art into its own shape. There's too many realities to consider lately, too many layers of life that keep unfolding, that just art or just words becomes limiting for what I want to express.

And I have a lot to express. For the last year it seems as if I have been in some kind of accelerated growth spurt mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The mental part of it is easy to understand--the world has become so simple-minded, so jingoistic and annoying, that my mind is starved for more. It feasts and feasts and feasts on everything. I want to know everything. I want to study everything. I want to do everything. This is my rebellion against the stunted growth of thinking ability that is becoming a universal illness.

The emotional growth is also simple to understand if you measure it against the years I've been on the planet and what I chose to do with them. More and more I realize that maturity has nothing to do with age, but with the quality of experience. I have this strange sort of confidence in myself lately that would have served me well when I was younger. It would have opened my eyes quicker to those who could wound, and it would have directed my heart more toward those who had something to give instead of an unrelenting hunger to take.

But the old argument creeps in as always that without the pain, the bastards, the love defectives, the users, abusers, creeps and crawlies, I'd be someone else and probably not someone who writes and draws and survives by her own wits and skills and abilities.

The spiritual part of it is strange to me. By no stretch of any crazed imagination does it mean I am tending toward religion or any kind of imaginary playmate. What it does mean is the more disconnected people around me become as a result of their struggles to find meaning in god and religion, the more I go toward my literal and metaphysical nature roots. There's nothing more holy to me than the cathedral formed by the majestic embrace of an old growth forest. This is where I find wholeness. This is where I am completed.

Is it any wonder these morons running the country want to chop down every one of my cathedrals and turn them into financial gain? They took one look, let a little bit of the majesty enter their greedy and cynical souls and saw there was serious competition for their empty, mean, cruel, intolerant brand of spirituality. They knew if people had a choice, that their ugly buildings with their evil intermediaries would rot away from disuse.

The forest is their enemy. But it is my church. And it was here first.

Thoughts for Earth Day and Beyond

Scaring The Sheep Into Submission

People live in fear of an enemy they can never completely escape--each other. Everywhere they look, someone or something really scary lurks that wants to do them harm.

They know this as surely as they know those steel-helmeted talking hairdos dressed up as news commentators are the ultimate and final authority on everything from car chases to scary person of the week.

They know this because those superficial and empty people tell them so, those people whose hair never moves and whose faces have that putty colored orange cast of wrinkle filler, or worse...that pallid and that pasty pale look of a spackled wall. Those pitiful and empty bags of human skin and fetid hot air are the people they trust to never lie, to never exaggerate, to never cover a real story as long as there is a car chase, a missing white woman, or some hate to monger here and there.

The tragic thing is that these news-actors are merely puppets reading from a script designed to keep anyone from thinking too hard about who the real enemy might be. The easiest way to do this is to talk the prisoner (i.e. me and you...the ones who are still walking around outside the cage...) into not only building his or her own prison, but to also surround it with very large walls, throw up some heavy-duty metal bars on all the doors and windows, and pay someone with a uniform to stand at the entrance and look mean. This is called "being safe."

But the average idiot isn't all that easily fooled. They ask how can they feel safe when every time they venture out of their little Stepford Kennels, the monsters jump out at them and scream "Give me your car! I want to be on the evening news just like OJ!"

Or their daughters decide to go vacation somewhere really scary where the real enemy is not the dark stranger lurking in the shadows, but that nice, white rich boy who gets away with killing people because everyone knows only poor people would do such a thing. And his house is surrounded by walls and fences and bars and he carries around a whole bunch of keys.

He must be safe. And did they mention, rich? Doesn't money cleanse all sins and make the bearer of it squeaky clean safe? So they trust him the same way they trust the news-actors because he lives inside the kennel with them, just as they do, just as frightened little rabbit people do all over the world. They obediently built their prisons, moved in and kept out all the monsters outside the gate.

And now they feel so safe, so protected, so secure in the knowledge that anyone coming looking for them will get lost in the warren of perfectly manicured landscaping and houses that are so similar, even they get lost sometimes. They laugh about it. Ha ha. I got lost in my own neighborhood. Ha ha ha.

But this nice young rich boy offered to help them find their way home. What is there not to trust? Of course they let him show them the way home. He had such a nice smile, and did we mention that he was rich?

Scaring The Sheep Into Submission

The Art of Color

I've been working with color lately on the designs at my store, Ursine Logic . Like a lot of people, I was very amused and disturbed by Bush's remark about "human-animal cloning." I saw this as one of those design opportunities just screaming to be transformed into a t-shirt. However, I ran into a problem whenever I started to work on a design.

The problem was not a shortage of ideas, but that I tend to avoid the political in my shop. So much of what I read every day and talk about has to do with politics of some kind. I am a junkie for stuff like that. I want to know what crazy thing people are swallowing, what distraction they are buying to avoid hearing whatever truth is being buried in the news media's primetime backyards. Politics is the ultimate ant farm with ants who compete to tell the biggest lie, fight the light of day to cover up the biggest secrets, and run around in the dark pretending to believe whatever will allow them to steal the most. I can't stop watching in appalled fascination.

But my shop is my break from all that. It is a place where I can focus on my love of dogs and cats, where I can appreciate the frail beauty of flowers, and where I can try and capture in images the ever expanding search for personal individuality, the many layers of spirituality that grows from nature and from within. It is my therapy in a world where others rely on antidepressants, recreational drugs, and alcohol. My strange art calms me in the way pills calm others. It gives me a solid center in a chaotic world.

Usually my art stayed pretty close to the line I learned to draw from for web graphics. I didn't get risky with colors. I didn't stray into the realm of the "true artist" as I perceived those mystical beings who could pick up a paint brush, a piece of chalk, a pencil, and create so easily what I could only do on a computer.

But it has been gray here in the Northwest. It has rained a lot. It has been cold. Color is my rebellion against the continual onslaught of one idea. I am like that. If you give me constant instead of variable, I rebel.

I am afraid of only one thing in life, really, and that is stagnation of the species. Without change, we rot badly. We go to our end without dignity, without honor, without any purpose but the willful annihilation of a species that spent a lifetime being led by the nose to feed on government crap.

Color is my voice against that distressing eventuality.

The Art of Color

Pity The Emotional Cowards Before They Eat Us Too

I am always astonished at people's unwillingness to think about anything difficult. By difficult I mean anything that will require them to set aside what they already believe for the possibility of believing something else. In other words, to admit that maybe, just maybe, what they've spent a lifetime putting together is wrong.

Most people feel it took so much time to accumulate those bits and pieces of experience, much as some savage creature puts together a pile of debris left over from various kills, that they have nothing left to start over. They might as well say their brain is full, that nothing else can be shoved in there. They might as well say that the heart has reached its limit and never again can it feel the foolish empowerment of love. They might as well say they are only half alive and waiting for something to fall from the skies and put them out of misery forever.

They can say all that, but yet, they cannot see the truth of what they believe: if it can no longer be eaten with a wild and savage hunger, if it no longer feeds you heart and soul, if it no longer makes you stop in the middle of what you were doing and say huhhhh...then maybe it is of no more value than that pile of wild animal debris.

Pity The Emotional Cowards Before They Eat Us Too

Why We Need the Furred Species

I am probably one of the most optimistic people I know. This is not to say I don't have my moments of sadness or depression or just plain old disgust with the human species. But on average I tend to see the world in a more positive light.

I still have hope. I still believe that humans are basically good except for those nasty, bad influences and training that neglected the human side of being alive. I believe in altruism and compassion and the power of love. I believe in myself instead of something outside myself.

And the one thing all these beliefs have in common is that they were shaped by my lifelong relationship with dogs, cats, bunnies, anything that could be held and cuddled and loved to abundance. My pets saved me from the dismal realities of life and showed me there was at least something good about living.

It is no accident that so many of us share our lives with a furry bundle of love and amusement. I think that the uglier the world becomes, the more we retreat into this innocent love that doesn't expect us to be anything other than we are. A dog accepts us a member of the tribe, a cat accepts us as a member of the pride.

In the middle of our busy lives and crazy existence, the one constant is our dog or our cat and the pure love we share for each other. This is something we can count on day after day. Our dog will love us even if we are evil and lazy and will never amount to anything. In our dog's eyes, none of that matters. They love us and we love them.

A cat doesn't care what you do with your day. When you come home, you are inseparable realities. The trust of having a purring bundle of fur in your lap erases anything awful that happened during the day. As you pet that vibrating little creature, the bad things in the world melt away and become one soft moment spent with a creature who knows all that matters is love, touch, food, a shared sofa and bed, and maybe a bit of string now and then.

How lonely and empty are those who do not understand this. If only they went to the shelter and adopted a companion, their world would lose some of its ugliness and it would take on moments of sheer beauty. And in the same way that seeds spread their wings upon the wind, so would our love. The world would blossom at last.

Why We Need the Furred Species

I Am My Own Savage God(dess)

People often make the mistake of assuming that because I don't believe in a traditional theologically based spirituality that I am some kind of savage with no ethics, conscience or sense of morality. They could not be more wrong.

In many ways, I live under a spiritual code that is far stricter than those who believe something like god is going to come and whack them for their behavior. I know that no one except me is going to sit in judgment of my actions. I am my own critic. I have to answer only to myself. If I do something outside the realm of right and wrong, I have to answer to myself. I am a court of one and I have a solid core of ethical and moral laws that is often above and beyond that of the average person who believes god is going to get them.

For example, I suffer if I hurt anything, whether it is a bug or another human. This is because I don't believe I am better or worse than any other sentient being and because I allow myself to feel whatever I feel. I don't block it out by saying god will take care of it. What I feel and what I am is completely my responsibility. No one outside of me is going to take care of what I do and am.

I know there are bad people in the world. Don't mistake my compassion for a la-la-la type of unawareness of my world. On the contrary, I am very aware, sometimes too much aware, of what people are like and what they can do. My point here is that I cannot put myself in the position of being their judge. It is not my job. And since I also believe evil is a cumulative effect, I also don't want to pile more crap on the already tall mountain of bad things people do and say and feel about other human beings.

As far as spirituality, I don't think it is something that can only be practiced through organized religion or traditional deities. For me, nothing matches the heightened sense of being part of a greater whole than when I am out in Nature. I truly feel part of the whole, and isn't that what people seek when they speak to their own gods?

I Am My Own Savage God(dess)

Love is a warm Kitty

I'm often surprised they haven't come for me yet. Or maybe the last few years of Bushit have so blurred the line between reality and hallucinations that we all walk around in an extended state of WTF about everything and everyone. I do believe that is what is called being close to godliness, right? And as an Atheist who believes that nature made me, I have to agree that we all come back as something, specifically...fertilizer of the kind that grows fantastic roses. If we must have a purpose, let it be that.

And I'm convinced that we are living and breathing everyone who every lived, and that our fate is to become what they are: dust mites. It is the only reason that dust mites persist, no matter how much we try and get rid of them. And the very evolved, the truly deserving of benefitting from something called the afterlife, why, that would be cockroaches. When I gaze into the eyes of a cockroach, I just know I am gazing into the eyes of god. And I can't help but wonder, how did we go so wrong?

Love is a warm Kitty

A double Dose of Memory

Legend has it that we all have a double somewhere in the world. It was always one of those things I kind of, sort of believed but also had my doubts about. I finally chose what side of the fence to sit on regarding this subject the other day.

I was sitting in a coffee shop and as I sipped my double tall latte my heart almost stopped. Seated across the small room was the man I dated eons ago. He had the same dark rust colored hair, the same streak of gray promise just beginning its existence through unruly strands falling over his eyes. He sat in the chair, or more precisely, he let the chair cradle him as he had done all those many years ago. The image was imprinted on my mind the first time I saw him sit on a chair the same way he sat on the earth. Chair. Earth. It was all the same to him. No one else in the world could possibly sit the same way.

I loved this man deeply and passionately so very long ago, but he still had the power to force all those emotions to the forefront with just his presence. I didn't know whether to run screaming from the coffee shop, or to throw myself in his arms and start all over from the beginning--that magical time before he went from loving me to hating me. I focused on his hands, those beautiful hands with the long, elegant fingers, the soft skin of a man who had never labored at anything more strenuous than a keyboard. I remembered how it felt to hold them, how they felt on my body, how I loved to touch them with my skin.

All the emotions came flooding back and I wanted to put my head down on the table like I did as a child in the classroom. I loved those moments of invisibility when I and all the other kids disappeared from each other. I wanted just a few of those moments to grace my present, to allow me the dignity to escape from the inevitable confrontation of unresolved emotional issues. It ended badly. I wanted it to stay safely buried in the past where it couldn't mess with my vulnerability and talk it back into trying again, whatever the again was then.

Neither one of us knew, and that is the truth of why we parted. Everything else was just an excuse. And then it became hurtful. And then it became mean. And then I ran and ran and ran as far and as fast as I could. And now he had found me again. It wasn't that I was physically afraid of him. It was that he knew my emotional weaknesses and would not hesitate to exploit them as he did then. He was a master of this. He excelled in saving his victims from himself.

I heard the chair scrape and shuddered as he stood up and started toward me. I was astonished at how he still looked the same, how he still moved the same...and then it hit me. Too much time had passed for this to be true. The man who walked past me now and nodded politely, unseeing as strangers do in passing, was much too young. The amount of time that had passed since our parting would have left at least some mark on him.

My hands shook as I tried to drink the rest of my latte and decided that yes, we all do have doubles in the world. But I also knew that most of this stranger's similarity was not in his physical presence, but in the memories inside my own mind. I saw one small piece of familiar memory and it became the whole memory. In that sense, we have more than one double. We have an endless supply.

A double Dose of Memory