Dark then Light, Rhythm in Hues
What could be the furthest thing from your mind right now? Here's a guessing game:
What can regenerate a detached limb? What has three hearts? What grows from the size of a grain of rice to the weight of a man in three years? What can taste with its skin, has copper-based blue blood, and is happy at 47 degrees Fahrenheit? What has excellent vision, with horizontal, dumbbell-shaped pupils, and can also "see" with its skin? Some are bioluminescent. What first left the family tree of humans a half a billion years ago? One can walk carrying coconuts. Some, when pissed off, turn bright red and raise horns above their eyes. Got it yet? What has two-thirds of its neurons outside of its brain? What can change the texture and the color of its exterior at will to be indistinguishable from its surroundings, or mimic a mass of predators or a rock, or simply pulse rhythmic color?
21/Borisov is an interstellar visitor flying in a hyperbolic trajectory around our sun right now, only the second object from outside our solar system we have seen. It looks like a comet but it came from outside our small(ish) neighborhood. I imagine that at the controls of that spacecraft, it it were one, there might be something like the above being. You could hardly devise a stranger creature if you tried. No bones. Can fit a 100-pound body through a hole the size of an orange. All of them have a toxin that is delivered through saliva; one is poisonous enough to kill a person. They can bore a hole the size of a large needle through calcium carbonate with a tiny abrasive tongue and then inject this venom to kill its dinner. Most have a complete lifespan of six months but the largest live up to five years or so. Hawaiian folklore believes these to be the lone survivors of another age of the universe. They breathe water but can absorb up to 40% of their required oxygen through their skin. They don't have ears but they can hear. They make ink but don't have pens.
The solstice is in two days, making today's day here in Vermont only eight hours and fifty minutes. Eight. Like the arms on an octopus. Am I alone in making this connection? Yep. Pretty much. But it's ok; I'm used to having things connect in my tiny brain that no one else connects. In fact, it's part of my job. Do something no one has ever done before. My art is exactly this. Make people use their eyes like they never have before. Ask people to consider how truly bizarre our world can be. Is it coincidental that a Hawaiian observatory crew found the first interstellar object, dubbed Oumuamua, which I wrote about back in December 2017 (Current Thinking link) AND the octopus is revered in Hawaiian folklore as the symbol of Kanaloa, the spiritual leader of the underworld. Kanaloa is associated with intelligence, flexibility, and, he is the navigator. There it is. The aliens that live on earth left over from a previous universe are probably the navigators of these interstellar objects (spaceships). Makes total sense...
Or not. If you are still with me...
Happy solstice, dear friends. Happy holidays. Light the candles. Trim the tree. Hug your assembled family. Have a feast. Invite the neighbors. Dream your wildest dreams through the longest night this year. Call me and buy art heirlooms as gifts. (My gallery director requires that sentence). Mostly, greet each day as the miracle that we get once again. They are numbered. All are precious. And share your blessings just a little bit extra around this pivot toward brighter days. Two arms we have to hug everyone we love. Giant Pacific octopuses have suckers that can lift 30 pounds and they have 1,600 of them on their eight arms. Don't hug them.
Peace and good will. Repeat...
but mostly love and more love...
