Signs in the Spring

 

 

 The spring mornings start cool and gray, and fade into warm hazy sun by early afternoon. The back yard is lush green and the Eugenia hedge is overgrown, and sagging from the rain-soaked winter. The Bolivian Torch is finally putting out some buds. The San Pedro is loaded with them, and the bloom in a few weeks will be spectacular. The peyote is going nuts with no fewer than a dozen new pups peeking out from under the buttons.

Suddenly, I'm up to my eyeballs in project work. I did manage to pry myself away from the computer for a while to get some time in on the stone. Here's where we sit on the Smallstone project:

I'm still just digging out the two teardrop shaped excavations, and I've got plans for the crown up top of the piece. I'm making it up as I go along, seeing what needs done as it arises. The goal here is to work this piece thin enough to glow in any light. The material has beautiful striations, and great translucence. It is a comfort to work by instinct. "This looks right... let's shave that part down a little.. How 'bout shaping a teardrop out of this protrusion...

This, in contrast to the newly re-opened Lost Canyon Project. I throw any and all work on Pete Hampton's art under the broad heading of "Lost Canyon" stuff, because now I have four different projects going on.

The first is getting my collection of Pete's paintings ready for the show at Whittier Museum.

 Next is the slideshow project, which now includes finding a sound man to do background music, and special effects. Then I'll have to learn how to work with audio clips. 

On top of that, there may well be something very big in the works.  I've been trading notes with the folks at Arkhaven Comics. More on this as it develops.

And I have a few requests for copies of The Lost Era Transcripts. I'm still waiting to hear from the printer.

The Lost Canyon work devours huge amounts of mental, and psychic energy. It is not enough to just dump the two hundred forty some odd pictures into the slideshow viewer. Each one has a time signature, and transition effect. Some pics require several seconds per view, others just a flash. The timing will have to be paced for drama, and coordinated with a narration that is not yet recorded. It is tedious, and exacting work, the perfect antithesis to carving on the rock.

But that sense of Mission is on me again, and I feel driven; called to do this. There is a sense of urgency with it, and I have only so much time to accomplish what needs to be done. I am the only one who can do it. It's all more than just a little spooky. And it's serious shit, too. I've worked myself into a breakdown once already on this project, and I am in no way engaging in hyperbole when I say that.

Spooky. I have long lost count of the number of eerie coincidences that have arisen in the project. Too much 'just-so' to be an accident. After the Lost Era book was finished I remember taking the bike out for a morning cruise. I stopped at the head of the Coyote Creek Bike Path for a smoke. As I sat there, a bright blue, thick bodied dragonfly buzzed up from the creek bed, and landed on the wire rope fence right by where I was standing. One of these:
 

Now, I bought this painting from Pete sometime back in the early 1970's. I had never seen such a dragonfly, and I had wondered, off and on,  if Pete was being fanciful in creating it. Now I knew. Just like when I hiked in the hills, and saw this bird that I had never seen before:

 So, right on the heels of hearing from the folks at Arkhaven, I stepped out into the back, and saw this guy:

A Pure Gold dragonfly. Never saw one like it before. He showed up Tuesday afternoon, and hung out for a couple of hours. Little guy sat nice and still for the camera. I take it as an omen.