Ja. I've been thinking about trans-formations lately. A very obvious thing that I never pay too much attention to. Night changes into day. Big deal. Happens so often, that to think about it seems unnecessary. I just get out of bed and as quickly as old age allows go to make coffee. At least.
But when you think about it, it's really magical. So smoothly natural. Every instant a change is occurring. Imperceptible, you could say. Until it's so obvious that you go "oh! Time to get up!". Actually, this is only partly true. Living in the New Mexico dessert I've come to getting up way earlier than sunrise, so my routine's adjusted accordingly. Since it's dark and cold, I start a fire outside. Sit around and gaze at the sky for a while. Then, put the water on for coffee. That's also a transformation of sorts, a change from a city routine.
So this thinKING about changes, it jumped over to my work. All of a sudden I'm changing a sculpture that for all practical purposes didn't need to be changed. But I went, ja, this one too can go, will go, through how many changes before it becomes dust? So why not see some of them? And it wanted to be really strange. Way different than it was. I was surprised. Alarmed. Tried to understand what happened. But, how to understand something like this? Curiosity always wins out over doubt.








































The torso goes through really beautiful transformations just from the change in light. I end up shaking my head in disbelief. I see her all the time, and suddenly it's as if we're on a different planet, never before seen. Stops me right in my tracks. Makes me think. And when I saw the colors in my shadow, I thought, what's the changes occurring in me? Are they just the natural and obvious approach of death, or is there something else going on in there all the time which is so subtle as to be unnoticeable? What started this whole process, seemed to indicate that the possibilities of really radical inner changes are an unnoticed fact, something we don't normally think about. What it was, was this goofy little insignificant bug, which also went unnoticed for the longest time. When I first saw the empty shells of these critters in my small "pool" ( just a medium-sized old satellite dish, about six feet in diameter, filled with water.) I knew they were the remains of bugs that turned into dragonflies. Didn't think too much about it. Then one day, as I was carving, I noticed this water bug just swimming around, diving and disappearing under-
water for a while, then re-appearing to swim around rim again. So I decided it was time for a cigarette, and sat down to watch this guy. Much later, fascinated, I discovered that in this stage, these guys are called nymphs. As I watched it swimming gracefully about I'd thought of sting rays. Mermaids. But they're nymphs.