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Here are two more works from the series of pen-and-ink drawings in black and white ink on colored French paper which i have been working on. I apologize that the sienna one (above) is arguably Halloween themed (although, come to think of it, it seems unfair that carved pumpkins are so profoundly seasonal). To me, the drawing also suits the time of winter darkness which we have entered. In terms of subject matter, the drawing portrays a puritan in a cemetery gasping at the appearance of a black rabbit. Various little elves fall prey to insects and spiders as a ghoul and a ghost look on. In the background a nightjar flies past; while the extreme foreground features some fallen store-bought candies. The entire scene takes place under a great glistening flounder moon which illuminates the Jacobean manor on the hill and casts a fishy light upon the entire troubling scene.
This second work shows what may or may not be an Easter scene featuring sacred eggs and yet another rabbit (is that guy really a rabbit?). The snapping turtle looks like it is about to snap up that little elf (which is maybe fair since another kobald is making off with her eggs). The entire scene takes place inside a cave where worshipers pray and present offerings to a Dagon-type idol. A bright flatfish shines an otherworldly light on the proceedings and put one in mind of the famous platonic allegory. Likewise the tapir (a famous dream-beast) indicates that this image has something to do with the vantage point from which one approaches reality. The nun (center) reminds us that faith will otherwise help smooth over any deficiencies in perception for those trapped in a cave.
The drawings are meant as companion pieces and it is interesting to see how the same elements reoccur in differing forms. There are two elves (one about to be eaten) in each piece. There is a rabbit in each work. Both works focus on a central religious-type woman in plain garb, and both works are illuminated by fishlight and by the stars. More than that, they are compositionally similar, with a big white scary thing to the immediate right and a field of stone obstacles (gravestones and stalagmites). Yet at a bigger level they are opposite. One work is about reality within the unreal and the other is about the unreal within reality. One work is about life in death and the other is about death in life.
Perhaps I should make some summer and winter companion pieces to make a complete set (assuming that all of these drawings aren’t one weird set of some sort).
Welcome dear readers! Happy 2000th post! The number 2000 is special because…uh…[checks notes] it is the largest number you can express with Roman numerals using only two unmodified characters: “MM”. Wow! How about that?
Really though, all kidding aside, the number 2000 is special here solely because of you. Without readers, what would be the point of writing? Even the most lustrous pearl is unremarkable if it is never in the light!
I was going to write a thoughtful post about the future of Ferrebeekeeper–which would really turn out to be an uplifting post about how we can work together to regain some optimistic energy and frame some lofty goals for a brighter future (lately such ideas have been thin on the ground in the ecological, political, and economic dystopia we have crafted for ourselves). Unfortunately (yet perhaps appropriately) my internet connection failed. Comcast came and sort of fixed the problem and told me that using the ancient modem which they rent to me only allows me to access a tiny fraction of the bandwidth they charge $100.00 a month for! As soon as I am done with this post I need to write a complaint to my congressperson about the fact that I live in one of the most densely populated and ethnically diverse neighborhood in the Western hemisphere and yet there is only one (bad) “choice” for broadband.
Anyway, because this post is already late, I am going to save the larger philosophical musings about the future for, um, the future (but the immediate future while we are still celebrating this milestone). To really celebrate the day, here is a gallery of adorable baby animal pictures lovingly hand-stolen from around the internet. That baby otter is especially cute!
Now in the real world maybe I wouldn’t trust that Pallas’ cat kitten with any of these other babies, but fortunately here they are safely held apart by digital means.
Now obviously this is a bit of a softball post so that we can all finish up and go into the garden and enjoy the beautiful June evening while the fireflies are out. Yet in a larger sense this combination of complaining about monopolistic technological hegemony, lauding the beauty of our fellow earth creatures, and then escaping into a paradisaical starlit garden is significant!
What is the significance you might ask? Well I am afraid you will have to keep reading to get the answer! But you should stick around regardless: I promised contests, pageantry, and heartfelt musings to mark this milestone and we are going to have all of those things! Before we get to them though I really want to emphasize how much your attention and comments have meant to me. In our world of millionaires, nanoseconds, and terabytes, a prosaic number like 2000 doesn’t seem like a lot, but writing 2000 miniature (or not-so-miniature) essays makes one appreciate that number afresh. I never would have written so much without you.
Thank you.
And, of course, I will see you back here tomorrow!
It’s the day before the deadline for filing taxes here in America—an ordeal which only grows more complicated (thanks, Intuit, for lobbying to keep the code as complex as possible). From sea to sea, Americans are staring in baffled confusion at heaps of forms and receipts and rules. Well, probably the organized ones are happily enjoying their calm evenings and successful lives, having filed months ago…but that certainly doesn’t include everyone! Anyway, in an ill-conceived effort to make this deadline more palatable, here are some pictures of adorable baby tapirs!
Tapirs are actually perissodactyls. Their closest relatives are the horses and rhinoceroses. Perissodactyls were once the dominant quadruped grazers of the grasslands and forests of the Miocene and the Oligocene, but in more recent geological periods the odd-toed ungulates have been fading away. We can still catch glimpses of these glory years with pictures of adorable tapirs though.
Ferrebeekeeper has mentioned tapirs before—in connection with the baku, a mysterious and compelling mythological creature said to feast on dreams. I promise to come back and talk about tapirs properly and at length—they are exceedingly interesting survivors or a great age, however today we are focused only on their adorable properties. Look at how cute these dappled babies are (the little tapirs lose their protective dots as they grow into adulthood). Good luck with your own red tapir, er, I mean red tape. We will return to regularly scheduled posts tomorrow…just as soon as I drop some documents in the virtual post-office box.
A Bronze Statue of a Baku
There are two sorts of dreams. In a figurative sense, your dreams are your aspirations and hopes for the future (for example I dream of getting a paying job, becoming a world famous visual artist, and colonizing our sister-planet Venus). However, in a more literal sense, dreams are a series of unreal adventures which take place inside your head when you are sleeping. Real dreams consist of strange phantasmagoria, troubling psychosexual images, intense emotions and memories as well as and undigested mental odds-and-ends…and horrifying nightmarish fears.
A baku inhaling nightmares
To start off our Halloween week of dreams and nightmares, here is a mythical animal which embodies the tension between both meanings of the word dreams. The Baku is a supernatural entity which devours dreams and nightmares. Apparently stories of the baku originated in ancient China, but these days it is most prevalent in Japan where it plays an ever growing role in folklore and fiction. The baku is a chimera which is said to have an elephant’s trunk, a rhinoceros’ eyes, an ox’s tail, and a tiger’s paws. The creature devours dreams by inhaling them through its sinuous proboscis.
Not surprisingly, the baku’s moral alignment is highly controversial! In traditional Japanese texts it was a pleasant and helpful spirit which ate nightmares and thus provided afflicted sleepers with peaceful & pleasant (albeit somewhat bland) dreams. However in our fractured modern world, the baku has darkened and now it sometimes eats a person’s figurative dreams (although not having aspirations, ideas, or ambitions presumably makes a person an ideal office worker).
Baku (tattoo art by hiraistrange)
Originally bakus were regarded as completely supernatural, however in recent times they have become conflated with the inoffensive tapirs–which certainly physically resemble the descriptions of the mythical baku. This fact makes the baku even more confusing. It is now both a supernatural dream eating monster dwelling in the ether…and an actual living mammal which can be discovered in the rainforests of Malaysia and South America. I have always liked tapirs a great deal and so I am going to insist they are in no way malevolent. They appear to live exclusively on rainforest vegetation, but even if they did decide to branch out and inhale some human dreams, I am certain they would take our nightmares and not our fondest wishes.
An adorable baby tapir!
Different fossil plants and animals from the lacustrine deposits of the McAbee Flora of the Eocene (British Columbia, Canada)
Today we return to the long-vanished summer world of the Eocene (the third epoch of the Cenezoic era). During most of the Eocene, there was no polar ice on Earth: a balmy temperate summer held sway from Antarctica to Svalbard. British Colombia was covered by a tropical rainforest where palm trees and cycads contended with warm weather conifers (and with the ancestors of elms, cherries, maples, and alders). Within this warm diverse forest, which thrived between 55 and 50 million years ago, lived numerous strange magnificent birds and insects. Shoals of tropical fish thronged in the acidic foaming waters (which were practically carbonated—since the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of the Eocene were probably double that of the present). The mammals of this lovely bygone forest were equally splendid–strange proto-carnivores not closely related to today’s mammalian predators, weird lemur analogs, and strange ur-rodents. This week the discovery of two new mammal species was announced. These remarkable fossil finds provide us with an even better picture of the time and place.
a reconstruction of the early Eocene in northern British Columbia: a tapir-like creature (genus Heptodon) with a tiny proto-hedgehog in the foreground. (Julius T. Csotonyi)
One of the two creatures discovered was a tapir-like perissodactyl from the genus Heptodon. The newly discover tapir was probably about the size of a large terrier. I really like tapirs (and their close relatives) but these remains are not a huge surprise–since many perissodactyls thrived in North America during the Eocene. The other fossil which paleontologists found is a surprise—an adorable surprise! Within a stone within a coal seam was a tiny jaw the size of a fingernail. Such a fossil would have been all but impossible to study in the past, but the paleontological team led by David Greenwood, sent the little fossil to be scanned by a CT scanner and then imaged with a 3D scanner. The tiny jaw was from a diminutive hedgehog relative since named Silvacola acares. The little hedgehog grew to a maximum adult size of about 6 cm (2.3 inches) long or approximately thumb-sized. Since it probably lacked spines, this miniature hedgehog was a bit different than the modern hedgehog, but it was definitely a relative.
As discussed in previous posts, I like to imagine the balmy Eocene, when so many mammals which are now the mainstay of our familiar Holocene/Anthropocene world got their first start. It makes it even better to imagine that the thickets were filled with endearing hedgehogs the size of bumble bees.
Baird's Tapir (Tapirus bairdii)
The Perissodactyls (horses, rhinos, and tapirs) were the planet’s dominant grazers for many millions of years–from the beginning of the Eocene to the end of the Miocene–but, in the most recent geological period they have been greatly outnumbered and outcompeted by the multitudinous artiodactyls (pigs, cows, deer, goats, antelopes, giraffes, and so on). The vast distance separating the Earth’s remaining tapirs illustrates how much their range has shrunk. Three species live in very different parts of South America and one live on the other side of the world in Malaysia and Indonesia. The tapir species look different as adults but their incredible similarity as calves indicated their fundamental closeness. Such a study is also a study of insufferable cuteness since juvenile tapirs, with their waving proboscises and dappled coats are very endearing. Although the tapirs are vanishing from the wild there are more of each of the 4 species in zoos every year. Here are some more of the new ones for your viewing pleasure!
Brazilian Tapir, also called Lowland Tapir (Tapirus terrestris)
Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus)
Mountain Tapir (Tapirus pinchaque)
Hooray for little tapirs!
ferrebeekeeper 