Gidget, Gadget and Gizmo

 

Gidget, Gadget and Gizmo

digital painting, print, 8/2013

 

 

 

Gidget, Gadget and Gizmo, these words kept chanting in my mind, replacing the CEO approved mantra that I intended to chant.  So, I made a picture of this silly trio.

 

POP Religion

The POP Religion show that was scheduled for 9/14/13, has been postponed.  We are working on a new date and venue.  I am disappointed to postpone the show, but good things are in the works.

 

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Last week we had a wonderful family beach vacation at Gulf Shores.  Much of the peninsula is protected park reserve, so we saw a lot of wild life.

 

Here is the wildlife sighting list:

 

Eagle! Perched high in a pine tree, then it flew away on mighty wings.

pelicans, blue herons, comic sand pipers, humming birds, gulls

dolphins

shark

one sting ray and two manta rays with six foot span

jelly fish

etc. , so forth and so on

rich nature

 

 

 

I have been so lucky to vacation at Gulf Shores since I was a kid and my uncle had a cabin there. 

 

Returning there at intervals has been a high light of my life.  I still play in the surf. 

 

 

A memory cherished.  I, the child, immersed in the boundless water, rocked by the surf.  Joy, nerve tingling joy, leaping in the ocean,  playing with my sisters and cousins. Sun so bright, bathed in light.  Enlightenment.

 

Also, I distinctly remember, the seventh and most powerful waves.  I, the child me, tumbled tail over head, in the turbulence.  Legs scraped by the sand.  Beach pizza legs.

 

Sleeping, big family snoring, windows open, in the surf song night.  The child tossing, sleep disturbed by sunburn lacerated with sand.  Misery.

 

Next morning, return to the rocking waters, joy, ecstasy, outweighing misery.

 

 

 

This last week they, the family, told me not to swim in the Gulf.  "Beware of sharks, stingrays and jellyfish!"  Sandy sunburn did not stop me then, these sea dwelling creatures will not keep me away now.

 

My mature adult sensitivities are different than childish nirvana.  But, floating and swimming in the waves,  I get a small taste, a faded reminder, of how it felt to be young and holistically immersed in a peak experience. 

 

 

The last day Dave and I walked the western tip of the Gulf Shores peninsula. Where the Mobile Bay and the Gulf meet. Waters there form a rich ecological zone, where currents collide and churn the water.  We dodged blobs of stranded jelly fish on the shore. 

 

That west tip must be the best shore fishing spot around, because fisher people were there with colorful day camp carts, coolers, striped umbrellas, cell phones, lines and bait.  We chatted with the fishers,  "You catch anything?" they were delighted to show the creatures that they caught.  A twenty five pound black drum;  a shark, small, about a three footer;  and a stingray, beached by a line, the fisher extracting the hook from it's strange mouth with plyers. 

 

Hmmm, all those nasty creatures are there at the western point.  In a short walk we saw all the biting, stinging life that THEY warned me about.  I will not swim there, but a bit east on the Gulf where it should be OK??