Dreaming the World

I awoke to tiny pink clouds scudding eastward; soon they obliterated the sun and the sky became a very November overcast gray. There is most certainly a storm coming.

We are settling into the new house. Fewer boxes block our way and some rooms have attained a state approaching order. We are almost at the point where photos and art can go on the walls, a certain step towards a sense of home.

Here in the studio things have slowly found places. Paradoxically we have more space and less storage so the task of organizing is more difficult. Being artists, we are also, almost necessarily, hoarders. We let go of a lot of old work before the move, along with a few of the objects that lie around and make a studio a studio; there remains much that needs a home.

Above is the view from one set of studio windows. We have a proclivity for wanting nature to come into our space, sans the cold and wet. Yesterday, as I was working, birds came to the windows and peered intently in. I wonder what drew them so insistently. Perhaps our clock that gives familiar bird song on the hour? One of the visitor was a tufted titmouse, one of my favorite species!

There are good reasons many peoples say the spirits may come to us as birds, and that to feed the birds is to feed the spirits and Ancestors. As the cold settles in, and we begin feeding the birds, the Ancestors seem particularly close. Today I am reminded that the Ancestors and spirits are present, and active in our lives, whether we acknowledge them or not. They have their needs and desires, and when those hungers are unmet, much ill may result. In our current epoch, an era without history, surely there are many hungry beings in the spirit realms.

It is good to take a moment, put some food out for the wild ones, and acknowledge our debt to the spirits, and to those who generations ago began the process of Dreaming us into being.