this
is part of the reason that butterflies are what they are to me. i am outside, going in/out of the albatros, the giant shed/garage thing out there, loading the truck with stuff that has accumulated for a couple years. stuff i have dragged home because it's interesting, or i MIGHT need it, use it. but i haven't and it's all covered with layers of dust. anyway, so going back and forth, suddenly i become present enough to notice something just to the right of the back and forth pathway.... and it is this Monarch butterfly. really, quite .......intact....... and this would have been at Least through last fall and this winter. it is lying there...just in the middle of an expanse of sand, just singularly there, so exposed to rain, Wind, the elements and so still amazingly perfect. How can this be?, i wonder?
and i have been looking at the Diaries Cloth while i am stitching the SideOat Grama grass clump. thinking. what all do i still want to include? and i keep thinking butterflies and i keep thinking Many Butterflies but i can't find a way to depict a butterfly that seems right. but there still remains the desire for Many.
and in the mail the other day, was the current issue of Buddhadharma mag. an article in it about a young artist, Ang Tsherin Sherpa who was born in Kathmandu and studied Tibetan thangka painting with his father, Master Urgen Dorje, a renouned thangka artist. 5 years ago, he began focusing on nontraditional Tibetan Artwork because he is, to paraphrase, curious about how the Tibetan people's culture will maintain while merging with others. these experiences are explored through the use of his "spirits" iconography. "In Tibet, it is believed that local spirits are associated with specific geographic regions, its land, and people. I am interested to know how they continue to adapt now that their original landscape and people have changed or moved on. I picture them following the Tibetan people around the world. I have them adapting to their new environment just as the Tibetan diaspora must do as they travel and begin to set down roots in new, foreign lands. Not only will the spirits be exposed to symbols of modern culture but also to artistic techniques that are new to them." and he painted this:
and i immediately thought that this is how i would like the top of the Diaries cloth to be....SO MANY butterflies....along with the arc of Black birds going east to west, west to east, simply because they can.
