ILLUSTRATION FRIDAY - Memories

Here's another contribution to the upcoming book, Somewhere in These Days of Morning by Bonny Belgum. Collaborating with Bonny on her book is such a treat, because my peculiar illustrations seem to fit her peculiar style of writing, and when a peculiar visual artist meets a peculiar writer - well, it's MAGIC! And you as a reader don't have to go to all the trouble of being peculiar, we will do it for you. All you have to do is come along for the ride - and it will be an adventure! You will look at your world a little differently - it will be a wider, wilder world , infinitely more interesting for the reading.

The chapter that follows spoke to me of memories that we all carry with us in our ancestral history, in our scrapbooks of our cultural heritage, in our DNA. Our pasts are a jungle filled with improvisations and mistakes and fleeting joys. We can't see the future, and if we are lucky or have lots of therapy, we don't care if we crash, because we know the landing is not that bad and we'll be in the company of so many who have crashed before us. It's a chapter filled with optimism. One of the advantages of a winter in our life is that we can see the world more clearly without those beautiful leaves getting in our way.

The chapter in its entirety:

She hears all the bird's songs, from all over the world, at once.

The voices from the jungle sound the most familiar. She may have lived there from before time. The birds where she stands, the birds she can see with our human eyes, are the most muted in the chorus. The jungle birds, the loudest, like to improvise. This is strange for a bird. You must trust your call as you trust your wings. The jungle birds don't care if no one answers, don't care if they crash down out of the sky. The jungle bed is thick and comfortable and never lonely.

The muted birds seem happiest on bare twigs, where you can see through the tree. They dread the coming of spring and new life. It plunges them into confusion until far away when the leaves fall and they regain control.

-excerpted from Somewhere in These Days of Morning by
Bonny Belgum, copyright 2008