Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

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Monday, January 30, 2006

Blue Cats, Why Not?


From a scientific standpoint, why aren't cats blue? I really sat and wondered this. Of course, most grass is green, most prairie fields are brown / earth tones, so blue cats would have stuck out in the wild and been preyed on and the species would have perished. But it would have been lovely...So, I wondered why not green? Green cats would have blended in very well in many tropical areas as well as the woods. Green stripes with earthtones...it's just an interesting thought. I think it is all fine how cats turned out however, and I can stare for hours at our many barn cats and their coloring...

Tomorrow is Huckelberry Pie's first birthday. It dawned on me he will only live to 9-11 years, and this was such a horrible thought. But I am almost 48, and many people I have known my whole life are in their 80's and I am entering this incredibly tender period of recognizing the inevitable passings of certain people. I have to get Roseanne Cash's new album, "Black Cadillac". She was interviewd on NPR this weekend, and was so eloquate in her responses to questions. She mentioned that when someone dies, it is not the end of your relationship with them, you just have to change the terms. This was comforting, but also reminded me how death is so surreal when it happens, and shocking, even if it is someone that is very old and sick and you know they are going to die - when they do, it is just so shocking. No matter what your spiritual beliefs, their physical body is gone, their voice is gone, but their energy lingers and it is just a different form. Why isn't it easy to grasp that? We hang so much on the physical connection...Roseanne Cash went on to say she had an epiphany a few years ago, well into her 50's, that she too would someday actually be dead, and it was a lite blub moment, and she laughed telling it - but I know what she meant. Martyn and I were talking about all the trees we were planting, how in 100 years they will be this big or that big, and it was a lite bulb moment. I won't be here, he won't , the sheep will long be dead, no Huck, no pug with one eye, no parents, Neil Young, everyone..all gone. How odd.

Please go rent the movie "Millions", a little British film from 2005, and buy Neil Diamond's [YES, Neil Diamond] new CD "12 Songs". Death and life and the yin and yang of it are expressed there better than I can do here...Meanwhile, I am still living, and I have a painting to do, and the ewes need their vacinations, and I will prepare a poem or something for Huck's first birthday. Plenty of time to die later down the road...