REVERB10: ARTFULLY REFLECTING the HERE and NOW in FIXED IMAGES

Hallelujah for images that capture the human spirit! Hallelujah for SYMBOLS in these images that provide meaning and courage to each and every one of us. Today, to meet the REVERB10 December 25^th CHALLENGE, I have chosen one of the images I made at the beginning of my JOURNEY along the Dinosaur Trail in Queensland, Australia.

This image, “Stepping Out with Black Cockatoos and Fruit Bats,” began in the tropical city of Townsville along the northeastern coast of Australia. Because it was the end of June—winter—the cool comfortable temperatures permitted me to sit out on our modest balcony with a view of the Coral Sea, a cup of coffee, and traveling art supplies.

The night before, we had watched Fruit Bats, or “flying foxes,” drop from their roosting trees and fly into darkness, their heavy mammal bodies lifted by fleshy webby wings. In the morning, noisy mobs of lorikeets had roared by our windows at sunrise. The Townsville environment percolating around me was rich with seen and unseen fauna. From my perch overlooking the sea, I asked myself the following question: “What does my SOUL want to express about BEING here right now?”

“Stepping Out with Black Cockatoos and Fruit Bats” emerged, with me, Hallelujah Truth, entering the world of SEA and AIR. I am not alone in this adventure. Wallaby, my VULNERABILITY, accompanies me. Flying foxes pull me into the UNKNOWN. From the corner of this UNKNOWN, black cockatoos hover under my feet, singing of approaching nurturing rain. Change is at bay. I am being summoned to an ADVENTURE.

Later in the morning, Chiboogamoo and I drove west, leaving the tropical coastal environment and traveling into the Mitchell Grass plains, flat treeless expanses of rolling grass. Each morning along the Dinosaur Trail, I began a drawing/painting reflecting my state of BEING as I studied fossils of living forms preserved from 100 million years ago.

Since I was accompanying a brilliant paleontologist—my husband—but am not one, this ARTFUL REFLECTION expressed in daily drawing/painting is a stimulating tool for maintaining ME, for integrating my art with my husband’s science (read about Townsville in his blog, The Great Cretaceous Walk)! How fun! How stimulating!

Therefore, “Stepping out with Black Cockatoos and Fruit Bats” is an image which reveals what I love most about LIFE. By BEING PRESENT to our SPIRITS, we can make discoveries about ourselves wherever we are—physically or spiritually! Hallelujah! (Here in Georgia, I have returned to work on this painting twice, and I still consider it “not” finished! I see myself revisiting the fruit bats and cockatoos until I feel the image holds the “energy” I need it to.)

SOUL BLOG with Hallelujah! Share your response to the December 25^th REVERB10 PROMPT: Photo—a PRESENT to YOURSELF—Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

REVERB10: EVERYTHING is OK: ReEnvisioning Reality through the Stories We Tell in Science and Art!

Hallelujah for REVERB10 challenging me to remember a symbolic moment of OKAYNESS in 2010! Based on NOTHING and EVERYTHING, I chose to recall Lark Quarry, a famous dinosaur trackway in central Queensland, Australia. This “hotspot” along the Dinosaur Trail illustrates beautifully how SCIENCE, ART, IDEA, and STORY TELLING collide to create a REALITY we can understand.

Okay…it all begins about 95 million years ago with a high-pitched roar and thunderous footsteps along a riverside! A monstrous two-legged carnivorous dinosaur approaches a large flock of small two-legged herbivorous dinosaurs, causing them to scatter in a chaotic frenzy. Who would be dinner? More than 3,000 of their fleeing tracks were preserved in the muddy soil, leaving an intriguing puzzle to be pieced together by 20^th century SCIENTISTS.

Based on evidence and the understanding of that evidence in 1979, Tony Thulborn and Mary Wade explained the predation story above. (Click on this link to see a short video of this tracksite and hear my Chibogamoo narrate this now-well known story.) To sum it up again: There was a meat eating theropod, close to the size of a Tyrannosaurus rex, that was in search of a meal and went to the river to pick up a small ornithopod or two. A stampede ensued.

This 95-million year old story has been repeated and illuminated by ART. Hearsay is that when Steven Spielberg was making the movie, “Jurassic Park,” his consultant, celebrity paleontologist Jack Horner, referenced Lark Quarry. Another example is the movable metal dinosaur sculpture in the exhibit at the Lark Quarry Interpretative Centre. Exhibit viewers can push a button which causes the mechanical sculpture to open its toothy carnivorous jaws—jaws convincingly capable of consuming a dinner of small dinosaurs. Other art illustrating the story are the wooden cutouts representing fleeing two-legged dinosaurs the size of chickens. The educational material at the centre even goes so far as to give one of the vulnerable ornithopods a name, “Ollie.”

ART is wonderful for holding ideas—until these ideas change. Welcome to the 21^st century and a different way of interpreting the evidence! Based on measurements and complex calculations, paleontologists can now better determine if the fossilized tracks are those of an ornithopod (a plant eater) or a theropod (a meat eater).

Last July, when we saw Anthony Romilio, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, standing on the Lark Quarry floor in his stocking feet with measuring tools, little did we know that he was about to TRANSFORM the long-standing predation story. And he has!

Using current methods of calculation, he has startling evidence that the large dinosaur, which caused the stampede at the riverside, was not a carnivorous theropod! It was a large herbivorous ornithopod, which was not looking for a meaty meal. (Read the news story at this link, to learn more.)

The Lark Quarry site most be RE-STORIED in ART. What will the new images look like? Will the large moving metal dinosaur sculpture have to be removed? Will the educational images on the signage at the interpretative centre change? Will the dinosaur museum at the Corfield and Fitzmaurice building on Winton’s mainstreet have to change its dramatic Lark Quarry diorama showing a victimized ornithopod?

SCIENCE and ART! IDEAS and STORIES! REALITY! I am OKAY now and forever as long as ALL of us PILGRIMS travel with open minds and hearts—changing our stories as we need to in order to reflect REALITY as we understand it NOW! Hallelujah Truth!

Hallelujah welcomes all PILGRIMS to soul blog with her on December 24^th’s REVERB10 PROMPT for today! Everything's OK. What was the best moment that could serve as proof that everything is going to be all right? And how will you incorporate that discovery into the year ahead?

Chiboogamoo has written about Winton and paleontology in his blog, The Great Cretaceous Walk, and has an upcoming blog specifically on Lark Quarry, so stay tuned!
Hallelujah Truth right outside the Lark Quarry Interpretative Centre in Queensland, Australia

REVERB10: TRAVELING as a SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM, EVERY DAY and EVERYWHERE

The Min Min finds you. You don’t find the Min Min. So goes the explanation of the sudden and mysterious appearance of an extraterrestrial ball of yellow light in the outback of Queensland, Australia!

As TRAVELERS on the Dinosaur Trail in the Queensland outback, my Chiboogamoo and I learned about the Min Min phenomenon when we came to the small city of Boulia (an Aboriginal word for watering hole). With a population of about 300, this one-street town possesses a tourist center including a Min Min exhibit, so CURIOUS VISITORS can listen to recordings of locals retelling their encounters with this bewildering ball of light.

Down the street from the Min Min tourist center and a couple of blocks into one of Boulia’s neighborhoods, there is another tourist destination—the Stonehouse Museum, which amongst the local British pioneer artifacts and photographs of Aboriginal interactions, is a building dedicated to fossils! And “Dinosaur Dick” will explain the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs to you!

Hallelujah for TRAVEL! Hallelujah for LEARNING! In 2010, I traveled every moment of the day as a SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM (SAP). As a SAPer, I seek MEANING and desire to express my understanding in an ARTFUL way! When I TRAVEL from the “routine” ARTFULNESS of my domestic life in Decatur, Georgia, my goal is to continue living ARTFULLY.

In today’s blog entry, I am joyfully explaining what I mean by living ARTFULLY while TRAVELLING. I have included a piece of my art, “Hallelujah Truth Flying with Dick’s Dinosaurs in the Min Min Light,” to illustrate. The morning following our sightseeing in Boulia, I made myself a cup of tea and spent an hour drawing my response to BEING in Boulia. Tuning into my heart and gut response, I “channeled” the Min Min, a plesiosaur, and an ichthyosaur using watercolor pencils. Our travel itinerary afforded me enough time to paint the entire background. As part of my SAP practice, I did my sketching and painting without judgment (not good, not bad, just is). Then I had to stop with the painting unfinished and unthought out.

Until today, I had not returned to continue this image journaling my TRAVEL in Boulia. Inspired by REVERB10’s December 22 prompt about TRAVEL, I chose to work towards completing this particular image. In doing so it allowed me to think about “how” I TRAVEL along my SPIRITUAL ART JOURNEY.

I TRAVEL with an open heart, a love of local myth, and a fascination for science. It is with these qualities that I approach my daily 15 minutes of creativity—which with inevitable grace expands to an hour or hours. In 2011, I plan to continue TRAVELING as a SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM, to discover more about the GREAT MYSTERY of BEING.

And you Fellow Sojourners? Hallelujah invites you to Soul Blog with her and share your response to today’s REVERB10 Challenge below.

REVERB10 PROMPT: TRAVEL. How did you travel in 2010? How and/or where would like to travel next year?

REVERB10: HALLELUJAH FOR the GLORIOUS 2010 MEMORIES!

Hallelujah for MEMORY. Hallelujah for both surface and deep time. Hallelujah for ways of KNOWING and BEING here on this GLORIOUS EARTH. I will not forget the color pink, Chiboogamoo’s 50^th birthday celebration, holding my 16 year-old feline Misha every day and appreciating him in his late years more teddy bear than tooth and claw, and the one solid month of teaching English to extraordinary and dedicated Korean executives at GT.

I want to REMEMBER winter explorations along the Victorian coast of Australia—the pungent woody scent of resin on my hands from grasping shrubs along the cliff face, the pounding ocean hammering the gray Cretaceous rocks along the shore, the utter freedom and playfulness of being with the “boys” on a treasure hunt looking for life traces from 100 million years ago.

Still in Australia, but in Queensland, I want to REMEMBER endless hours of driving on one trackroads in the outback seeing kangaroos hop under scrubby eucalyptus trees as we dodged oncoming mammoth roadtrains. Exploring a culture both on the surface and in deep time. Enjoying “cowboy” towns and their saloons, bush poetry, and XXXX beer. At the same time, imagining the vast ocean that covered this expanse of earth millions of years ago and the large marine animals that lived, died and left their bones to be found by curious sheep musterers.

Back in Atlanta, I want to REMEMBER the good 8 months that we four Spiritual Art Pilgrims intensely interacted with each other through our art, yearning to expand our connection with the GREAT MYSTERY. How we succeeded in BEING present to one another and using our art as vehicles to deepen our understanding.

I want to REMEMBER the JOY I experienced “being” HALLELUJAH and “doing” 15 minutes of creativity EACH DAY—even while I was in Australia! I want to remember collaborating with Cecelia Kane, Lesly Fredman, and Jesse Bathrick to make “Sally” prints on my birthday for Sally Wylde’s memorial parade. And the other collaborative art making with Robey, Sally, Jesse, and Karen and all the senior artmakers at the Clarkston Community Center and Sally’s writing group.

I will REMEMBER last moments with Sally imagining her future pilgrimages and holding Luis’ hand and smoothing the hair over his brow. Sunday brunch to say goodbye to Kiona and Syd as they headed off to California to start their business, Curious Cup. I am thankful for and will REMEMBER the deepening friendships with Judy, Jane, Robey, Cecelia, Jacq Marie, Edna, Jesse, and Karen. And how I sparked new friendships with Lisa, Sylvia, Kimme, Kathe, Mary Jane, and Gal in our Decatur community. I will REMEMBER Trixie, Darlene, Tina, Gale, and Rob connecting with me on Facebook as well as how Facebook brought me back in touch with cousins Karen, Annette, and Paul!

Hallelujah for REVERB10 for giving me the opportunity to REMEMBER and HOLD DEAR those very important events from 2010. MEMORY. Hallelujah for ways of KNOWING and BEING here on this GLORIOUS EARTH. SOUL BLOG with Hallelujah and tell me what you want to REMEMBER from 2010.