RED XI

"Red." Clockwise from upper left: Butterfly flower (schizanthus); red hook sedge; mossy saxifrage; Martha Washington geranium.

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The mindfulness of late autumn blows across the cold of winter and into early spring.

Even though unnoticed and without announcement.

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In the name of the Bee —
And of the Butterfly —
And of the Breeze — Amen!

—Emily Dickinson (F1 Sh1)

MERIAN

"Merian," number 6 in The Grand Armada series of the Inktopodes. Original: watercolor ink, India ink, gouache, and iridescent calligraphy ink on 8" x 10" watercolor paper. Scanned reproduction: in digitally colored frame.

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Merian is inspired by late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century illustrator and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, as well as her watercolor works depicting pineapples and attendant insects, especially "Ripe Pineapple with Dido Longwing Butterfly" and "Pineapple with Cockroaches," both printed in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. Merian appears as an inverted pineapple with the body of the pineapple making up her mantle and the fruit leaves transformed into her arms. The colors of Merian are rich and vibrant, more so when the original is viewed, since some of the color is dulled during reproduction. The natural vibrancy of the Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor inks—rich gamboge that glows against Hansa yellow medium and brilliant sap green—is a wonderful background for the India ink maps drawn upon them.

The inked "boxes" on the mantle are inspired by a map of Berlin circa 1900. The patterns on the arms are reminiscent of the contour lines of topographic maps, especially of those representing peaks of the Cascade Mountains. The orange gouache eyes simulate the caterpillars that climb up the sides of the pineapple in Merian's painting.

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"Merian" appears in the Strange Gliding Things show by Troy Kehm-Goins, which is on display at Puyallup Valley Dental Care during April, May, and June 2019.

FORTITUDE

I'm six episodes (of ten) into season one of Fortitude. I'm just starting to get my footing.

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Implications. Infidelities. Loyalties and shifted loyalties.

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Visual rhymes. Visual slant rhymes. (Emily would be proud, if she could imagine television.) Pushing toward things. Pulling us from things. But not always necessarily where we should be. Subterfuge.

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"For an instant I thought the Gulf Stream in my head was whirling me away to eternity..."
—page 98, WHITE JACKET by Herman Melville

(This is what I'm reading. Somehow it feels like it fits with what I'm viewing.)

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The scene between Sheriff Dan Anderssen (Richard Dormer) and Detective Chief Inspector Eugene Morton (Stanley Tucci) in the hotel restaurant over a bottle of whiskey is absolutely bonkers. Just watching Dormer's face in close up was worth admission to the entire season. The entire landscape of his face is tectonic.

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Blood on the ice. Blood on the snow. Blood on floorboards and clothing and potato peelers.

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Why is it that we are so fearful of the polar regions, the Arctic and the Antarctic?

I'm thinking of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. 2018's The Terror on AMC. Ivan Doig's "Winter of '19." The Endurance. John Carpenter's The Thing.

Perhaps because there is so little life in these regions, but much of it consists of apex predators—polar bears, whales, and the like.

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Long buried things now thawing and emerging once again. From the ice. From the people we once were.

Thousands of years of ice. Seven years of atoms being replaced.

Warming of a world. Warming of passions.

Is there a connection?

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Rilke just won't let go. The angels cry out to be noticed, recognized, categorized. A Monster Manual for the heavenly and infernal realms. (And The Duino Elegies have nothing to do with Fortitude, but Fortitude has brought them to the forefront of my imaginings again.)