fox | The Direction of Intention

Look-At-Me-Look-At-You [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on May 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It struck me that as the crowd gathered to watch the family of foxes, the foxes, in turn, gathered to observe the rabble of humans. Look-at-me-look-at-you. I wondered if they thought of us as wild, uncultivated. I know they were delighted that a makeshift fence stood between us and them.

The mother fox leapt onto a stone and seemed to pose for photographs but I was certain she was drawing attention away from her brood. Look-at-me-not-at-them. She knew how to make her frolicking children disappear. And they did. Once safe, she stepped off her platform, no rush, and also disappeared.

A local woman walking her dog saw the crowd and asked, “Is it the foxes?” I nodded. “Thought so,” she said and nonchalantly continued on her way. A family of foxes in the center of town. Nothing new. For her it happens every day. For us, passers-through, it was a surprise. A delight. A family of foxes have never rollicked on our street at home. I may never see this again. She will see it again on her stroll tomorrow, just like yesterday. Thus, the power of perspective.

I read that foxes are observers. They easily meld into their surroundings. They vanish so they can watch. So they can see. “If Fox has chosen to share its medicine with you, it is a sign that you are to become like the wind, which is unseen yet is able to weave into and through any location or situation. You would be wise to observe the acts of others rather than their words at this time.”

Tom Mck told me that as he aged he felt that he grew invisible. I feel much the same way these days though my encounter with the foxes has made me realize that I have mostly lived my life as an observer of others. Like the wind. I much preferred coaching people over the phone: I could listen purely – no negotiating of image – and easily hear the message behind the words. Perhaps I have not grown invisible but am only now fully realizing the truth of one of my gifts. Weaving through any location or situation: Look-at-me-look-at-you.

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read Kerri’s blogpost about THE FOXES

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor, Seeing | Tagged: animals, artistry, AS IT IS, becoming, breckenridge, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, every breath, fox, fox medicine, gifts, hear, invisible, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, listen, nature, observe, perception, perspective, see, short-story, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, vanish, wildlife, witness | 1 Comment »

Weigh The Actions [on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 28, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Look K.dot!” I said, “Everything will be ok!” We saw it writ large on a wall as we drove into Chicago.

I’m generally a positive guy and usually side with DogDog but lately I’m lining up with BabyCat. Because we read it on the wall, because we wish it was true, does not make it so.

These days I think we are in trouble.

Never in my life did I think I’d see an entire political party stoop to the 3rd grade level of “The Dog Ate My Homework” style excuses. Their Big Lie, as we all know, as was witnessed by the entire world, led to an insurrection, a violent attempt to overturn our election. Apparently the crowd was infiltrated by rabid liberals, there’s heaps of evidence of election fraud if only the dog hadn’t eaten it. The wicked cabal of baby-eating Democrats that dug a maze of tunnels under the Capitol – one spoonful at a time, Shawshank Redemption style, so no one noticed, is to blame.

It’s an accountability-free-zone with nary a brain cell to be found anywhere. Or spine. Or ethic. Or reality.

It would be fantastically funny were it not so scary. It’s a plot that John Grisham would have tossed out as too absurd yet, here we are. Childish minds hang onto lies when confronted with truths. They double down. I did, when I was ten years old and was caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I swore to the end that my older brother made me do it even though he was not home at the time. I’d maintain my excuse to this day except that I grew up. I learned, in growing up, that it is best to address the truth rather than double down on a lie.

Yesterday we saw the Grand Old Party fall yet another notch. Blame. Demonize. Their lie-loud-or-go-home pact is very much intact. Even an insurrection, an assault on their very lives and the Constitution they swore to uphold will not leverage an iota of responsibility or truth from their ranks. “The neighbor kids came in the house and broke the vase! It wasn’t me. I swear it.”

James Russell Lowell wrote that “all the beautiful sentiments of the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”

Do not get lost in the words. Pay attention to the actions.

The Oregon legislature joined the Arizona legislature who joined the Republican Senators in their “false flag,” it’s-not-our-fault, “Elvis-made-us-do-it” campaign. Action: to blame. Action: to excuse. Action: to deflect. They magnify their excuses through the fox. The dog ate my homework. The socialists are coming! We, the righteous, were infiltrated, by evil-doers and not responsible for our actions. They made us do it!

Lying is an action.

And the child-minded listen and fume and point their fingers, erect their gallows, and beat the police with their flags. That is the point of the lie. Action: to incite.

Action: to retain power at all cost.

At all cost. The cost is mighty and it is not okay. Just because it is writ large on the wall does not make it so.

I’m with BabyCat. I think we are in trouble.

read Kerri’s more uplifting post about OK

shared fatherhood 2 ©️ 2017 david robinson

Filed under: DR Thursday, Edges, Perspective | Tagged: actions, Capitol insurrection, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, deflection, excuses, fox, James Russell Lowell, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, Republican party, Shawshank Redemption, words | Leave a comment »

Try, Try Again [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 5, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

This morning, as I looked through my stacks, I could find no more relevant painting for this day, for our times.

Ironically, I made two runs at this painting. Both times it evolved into something else. It started in violence and ended in shared fatherhood. In the final paintings, you cannot see is the inception, the original impulse, the story that made me pick up my brushes. Polynices and Eteocles. Brothers fighting for the control of the kingdom. Both die. They kill each other rather than share.

The story is ancient. Like all Greek stories, it’s a cautionary tale. It’s a story of fate. Oedipus’ children. An original sin playing to its inevitable conclusion. It’s been one of my metaphors for these now-ridiculous-united-states. Brothers fighting for control, forgetting that they are brothers. It’s a lose/lose story. Hubris kills all.

The mystery to me is why – in both attempts – did my if-wishes-were-fishes subconscious kick-in and transform this horror story into something positive? Out of the fire, I argue in the naive recesses of my being, we will forge a union.

I’ve always known that I am an idealist but, this morning, listening to the trickster fox whip its gullible crowd into an election fruit-smoothie, amplifying the bloviated rants of a shyster, creating fraud-fantasies from thin air, I recognize that I am perhaps the most foolish of all, the blue ribbon winner of witless. Perhaps not.

I will make a third go of this painting. I have the drawings. This time, my realist might punch through the wall of hopeful idealism. The tale is cautionary. It is ancient. It is worth telling. To look with clear eyes at “what is” does service to “what might be.”

Kerri just reminded me that, on our walk yesterday, I waxed poetic about how what we focus on matters. It’s true. Possibility needs to be firmly rooted in reality.

Bubbles always burst.

The brothers kill each other rather than share a kingdom. Is it their fate [our fate]? Is it inevitable – human nature – to be so blinded by the lust for control that we plug our ears to possibility, that we refuse to see the promise we lose in our petty penny struggle? Do people always need to sacrifice the greater for the lesser en route to waking up?

The pandemic rages. The Fox feeds lies to hungry-angry listeners. The brothers fight over something as silly as a mask. The map sprouts virus-red. The populace dies in the struggle.

Is this merely a chapter in the story of becoming? I guess we’ll see.

read Kerri’s blog post about SHARED FATHERHOOD. With any luck, her thoughts will be more hopeful.

this is my second run at my subject. Shared Fatherhood 2

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Possibility, Seeing | Tagged: blue, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fight, fox, human nature, Idealism, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, Oedipus, painting, pandemic, polynices and eteocles, possibility, realism, red, shared fatherhood, story. sense making, vote | 2 Comments »

Check The Acorn [on VERY Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

voter freud copy

Apparently Sigmund Freud has a dangerous and ill-intended descendant named Voter. Splashed all over the conservative Henny Penny is a frenzied warning: watch out for Voter Freud! He is running rampant! Threatening the nation! Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky, and the entire cast of hysterics-with-microphones are gathering other like-minded fowl to amplify the message of a would-be king. Voter Freud is on the loose and if not stopped, he will corrupt your Drakey Lakey!

This is why I adore stories. Even the simplest folk tale has the ominous capacity to reveal us to ourselves. And, if we are wise, we listen to what they might teach us. Variations of the Chicken Little story have been around for centuries.

Times have changed but human nature is surprisingly consistent. Henny Penny was hit on the head by an acorn and thought the sky was falling. Hysterical, she decides to sound the alarm of imminent disaster and clucks away to tell the king before it is too late. Along the way she whips other unquestioning fowl into a panic and they join in her frantic chorus. Depending upon the ending – there are many – but mostly, she and her gaggle are eaten – each and everyone – by the fox [I take pause here for a moment of reflection so the uncanny closeness of the story to our times might sink in].

The multiple screeching voices currently re-enacting the Henny Penny story did not intend to invent Sigmund’s evil descendant. It is only through the magic of spelling errors that voter fraud donned the villainous persona of Voter Freud. And, I confess, I love the character!

All good stories have a moral and that is true for the tale of Henny Penny: traditionally, the moral is to not be a “chicken” but to have courage. Hysterical chickens get eaten by Foxes. The current moral-of-the-story might go something like this: be wary of acorns dropped on your noggin. It is not a falling sky. It is a set up. A modicum of research will spare the entire hen house of yet another hysterical outburst. In the United States of America, voter fraud is very rare. The current fox guarding the hen house would like all the fowl to cluck with fear of Voter Freud. The purpose, of course, is to make it harder for many citizens to vote. Or, stated another way: keeping the chickens hysterical serves the fox; voters exercising their right to vote does not.

Voter Freud is made up. So is voter fraud.

read Kerri’s blog post on Voter Freud

Filed under: Education, Flawed Wednesday, Language, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fox, Henny Penny, hysteria, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, moral of the story, Sigmund Freud, technology, voter fraud | Leave a comment »

Look Before You Bite [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 30, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

where you stand copy

When John said, “Penny wise, pound foolish,” I would always stop and reconsider my options. John was wise. John was concise. He was a master furniture maker and spoke like a man who necessarily made exact measurements.

If I could slap a label on this era of the USA, I’d call it the penny-wise-pound-foolish-age. Perhaps my label would also apply to the human world at large? I think so. Short term gain is rarely a healthy criteria for determining long term health. Anyone who’s ever experienced a hangover, lashed out in anger, dumped their waste into the drinking water, or jumped into a get-rich-quick scheme will understand.

I read this phrase the other day: Fox is feeding misinformation to an angry populace hungry to consume it. In most mythologies, the fox is a trickster and I couldn’t help but grimace and chuckle at the layers-of-veracity implied. A maker of mischief feeding misinformation to people hungry to gobble it down. Of course, there are two points of view in every fable and it is true of our fable, too: there is the fox and there are those who eat the gruel to fuel their angry point of view. The fox is never without agenda. Control of the point of view of the angry populace is the fox’s agenda. In other words, the fox is not a friend. The fox is like the witch offering the poison apple. Take a bite; it won’t hurt you. Really.

Reds and blues. Post fact era. Foxes in the hen house. Tribes eating tripe. Penny wise, pound foolish.

read Kerri’s blog post about WHERE YOU STAND