Bloodsuckered

New research by scientists in Louisiana suggests that alligator blood could serve as the basis for new antibiotics... Uh-oh. Researchers warn that drinking untreated alligator blood isn't healthy for humans, and I'm guessing not so good for the gator, either. Even though my favorite prehistorics aren't supposed to be killed--Step 1, catch gator. Step 2, extract its blood before it extracts yours--this brings up sanguine visions of shark fins or rhino horns lopped off, bull blood drunk hot from the trembling carcass right after the gory bullfight.
When did humans decide that they can torture animals and each other? Let's not forget the practice of eating the heart of your valiant enemy to grow stronger.
Wait, there is reciprocity--
Leeching, having your blood "cleansed" by live bloodsuckers directly injecting natural anti-coagulants, is seeing a revival. At least two famous actresses are sporting leech-induced bruises that supposedly add to a person's well being.

Think of the business possibilities. Artisans can create elegant little vials of gator blood to wear as a pendant. Or how about a portable fetid environment in which to carry your leeches or maggots?
Have you heard about the companies that will take a spoonful of cremains--that's the ashes of your beloved--and make glass jewelry so you can always keep Fido or mom close? Just what I always wanted--to live on as a chachkie that will eventually show up at a yard sale. There's a medieval flair, a touch of the relic, that one-born-every-minute sense of history that smacks of the Florida weirdness that writer Carl Hiaasen celebrates so well.
I'm not professing disbelief in the potential power of the blood of the alligators I spend time with on the river. But since irony is my boon companion, I definitely believe in the foolhardiness of humans.

Today's painting, which I designed from a combination of patterns of striated rock, wood, and pheasant feather, I named Fossils and later, Lifeblood, when a nurse described it as veins and capillaries, blood flowing...the essence of life. The original is available, as is Green Scattered Fossils. Trawl my blog for more wild life art and essays to meet Gator Girl and Mr. Stinky. Visit http://www.bethsurdut.com/ for your mind and body.

Darwin should see this

I didn’t hear any screams, so I guess the idiot and the gator survived.
Before I tell you that story, let me explain about my painting Circe’s Dating Pool. In mythology, Circe turned amorous sailors into swine. In Florida, aging boys litter dating sites with pictures of themselves holding big hogfish as romantic bait. To me, the move from Circe's swine to hogfish and dating seems a reasonable metamorphosis.
Now, moving from ocean to river, here's the story of that first line--
A curious gator, maybe four feet long, leaves the shore and swims quickly towards our canoe. Soon as he's close enough to figure out what we are, he swims parallel to the boat. The birds have gone silent and instead of their songs, we hear some recidivist rehab diva's voice scratching nature till it bleeds.
The young gator submerges, now invisible, as we round the bend where the air is suddenly scented with cigarette smoke. There’s one man standing--well, sort of swaying--in thigh deep water, his white skin glowing in the tannin-dense water. One hand is conducting with a cigarette, and he's using the beer in the other hand as ballast.
“There’s a gator heading in your direction,” I call to him, and the idiot, showing off for his beer can buddies in their boat yells, “Great! I’ll go meet it!” and dives under water.
I ply the paddle deep and fast, saying to my companion, “This could be a Darwin Award Moment and I don’t want to see it. Just keep paddling.”
Far be it from me to get in the way of that guy's personal freedom.

You’d think that telling “gator and the idiot” stories would be cautionary tales, but a park ranger at Myakka told me that there are people who emulate whatever bad behavior they hear. Warn not too feed gators, and picnickers are right on the river bank tossing in hot dogs. Might as well be tossing their kids and canines.
The sad thing is that any gator seen being fed is “removed” for future human safety, because an alligator not only comes to associate humans with food, but doesn’t distinguish between the food and the hand that holds it. Potentially, you’re just one big snack, bubba.

Want more wild life? Read Gator Girl (terror masquerdes as aplomb) and Raptor Rapture
(owl prowl and oh my, what big teeth you have).
Circe's Dating Pool , from my Enigmatic Paradise series, is available in print.
Idiosyncracies: Female hogfish can change sex and have a harem. (See, there is a Cosmic Jester.) Wonderfully snarky poem from Circe’s perspective in The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy.
The Darwin Awards are given "to people who kill (or sterilize) themselves in really stupid ways, and in doing so, significantly improve the gene pool by eliminating themselves from the human race."

Your wild life

Here in Florida, a place I’m convinced was never meant for human habitation, we just love to tell each other stories about the critters we’ve seen. When that rustic sphinx moth the size of a hummingbird landed on my front porch last week (this is an earlier Saturniid moth I painted called I'll Fly Away) and sat on my arm for three hours, well, the neighbors came over to take a look and take pictures. Just the other day I stood in the middle of my street listening to a woodpecker ratatatat Morse code over the drone of traffic on 41. A landscape guy came out to his truck as I turned in circles trying to find the bird. He knew right away why I was doing my dance and told me as he put away his tools how sad it was that he had to bury a little owl he found when he was working in some other part of town. So I told him about the Barred Owl in my back yard and the Caracara hawk I saw feasting by the side of the road on Bee Ridge extension and…see what I mean? Here we are, paving paradise into that big hurricane attracting parking lot, and mostly what we want is to see and hear the very creatures that we’re moving in on and moving out.
Now one thing I’ve noticed is that when someone tells a story about a wildlife encounter, especially one that has an alligator, the story tells more about the person than the gator. Just about everyone here has a story, and in the telling, I learn about Florida, human nature and the human heart. Fostering the telling brings people together to celebrate this unique place, weird and wacky as it can be. In my opinion, a lot of people move here and just kind of use the place, not really interacting with the wonder of it.
When I taught that Writing for Radio class at the Peace River Center for Writers, and no one showed up with a story idea, I asked everyone to write about gators. A song-writing environmental lawyer and his guitar –playing buddy picked up a gator—not too small but not so big that it didn’t just fit in their beer cooler-- and drove it over state lines just to be able to say to an unsuspecting friend, “Want a beer? Help yourself. There’s some in the cooler.” After an old man with two hearing aids likened the gator in his trailer park to an old boot camp buddy, the stories rolled out pretty smoothly, with lots of laughter, surprise and recognition.
I could stand up and tell other people’s stories, which I’m happy to do, but mostly, I get a charge out of fostering storytelling. Though I can’t resist a good Liar’s Contest, it’s the true stories I’m looking to hear in a way that people can share with each other. My student with the two hearing aids said to me. “I’ve figured you out. You like to wind people up and watch them go!” He’s right. I do, so I'm collecting your gator stories and facilitating group storytelling sessions.

Raptor Rapture

Big gator. Bigger than my boat, and definitely faster. Like a nightmare troll stretching across the narrow entrance of the estuary, he watches as I edge past in a rented tub-toy masquerading as a kayak. God he has a lot of teeth.

Almost three years I've been paddling, skimming, slogging, punting my way along the Myakka- the wild and scenic place that never disappoints and keeps me on the right side of sanity.

Almost sunset--two wood storks pose in tandem like a lyre of grace amidst four deer grazing in a lush green patch. An ungainly gallinule lofts from one shore to the other, reflected in the dark mirror of water before landing heavily in a bank of grass so dry it crackles.

I paddle up to where I think the bird might be, and find myself looking at three bulging pairs of eyes in gator babies so cute you might almost forget that Big Momma Gator might be close by...but truth is, I have an arrangement with these creatures of wing and hoof, carapace and prehistoric hide--they own the joint and as long as I behave myself, I get to experience the wonder of natural Florida.

I spent three nights wandering around Myakka park looking for owls. Didn't see a one in the wild, or on the birdwalk, or up in the moonlit canopy, or down by the gully, though the Owl Prowl instructor brought four raptors for a teaching purposes. "Might sound like a dove," the ranger said.

Dusk in my backyard in the city-- For the second night in a row I hear"Hoooo-hooo. Hooo-hooo-hooo." I stand under the live oaks draped with thick Spanish moss, what we call Pele's Hair in Hawaii, and I carefully mimic the call. There it is, a great winged creature flying across the twilight, a barred owl. Must've heard me asking for him.

For more art and the adventures of Gator Girl, see The Subtlety of Gators posted Oct 2007.

Looking like Benazir Bhutto

Buffalo Beth in Bali
©Beth Surdut 2007
In 1999, after a trip to Bali where I was repeatedly told I looked like Benazir Bhutto, I wrote a somewhat snarky piece called “Benazir and Cher” about the public’s desire to identify me with famous people and my desire to be known for my own accomplishments as an artist. To my sorrow, but not to my surprise, Benazir Bhutto, born the same year as I was, was murdered in the last week of 2007.
The Balinese villagers who called me Benazir and held up their children to look at me as my driver negotiated through their festival parade were not the only ones who saw a resemblance. After 9/11, juggling a dual career as an artist and journalist, I was assigned to interview a Pakistani terrorism expert in Massachusetts. Before meeting him in person, I mentioned the Bhutto connection, thinking it might help us bond. He invited me to come to his home to meet his family and to break the fast at the end of Ramadan. As the day lengthened, he told me that the reason he left Pakistan was because he was informed that his death had been ordered by Benazir’s father. So much for bonding! I was thinking that maybe I should have picked a more benign famous person—you know, like Joan Baez--when he said, “I think you’re smarter.”
A couple of years later I was at a party chatting with a Pakistani journalist who had interviewed Bhutto extensively. An American man married to a Pakistani woman said, “I think Beth looks like Benazir Bhutto!” His wife and the journalist chorused, “No!” and decided I looked like Rajiv Gandhi’s wife. Has anyone told these women that they look like me?
I was emailed by a guy in India saying he was writing an article and asking for pictures of me if I really looked like Bhutto. Having seen that someone had landed on my website by typing the search terms “Bhutto+nude+pictures”, I suspiciously asked him what periodical he was writing for and, no surprise, he disappeared.
What I wrote eight years ago, seemingly flippant about a leader I truly admire, ended with this:
“In Hawaii, after being ignored by a maître d' of a restaurant that catered to the famous and infamous, I considered renting a limo and going there dressed as Bhutto... Then I reconsidered, figuring some crazed assassin would pick that same night to make a political statement to the world. I think after all I would rather be killed for who I really am.”
May her courage and spirit continue after her death.

Plane truth

A few days after Mr. Moto sends me this rudder frame I've drawn here in anticipation for my Dream Vessel, I'm in a former airplane hangar converted into art studios and galleries at Santa Monica airport.I'm looking at a high-minded installation so minimalist I don't even realize it's there. The existentialism of it so overwhelms me that it takes a grand effort of politeness to control my Art Tourette's Syndrome. Never heard of it? It rears its ugly head when faced with bland public art or some whining self-centered visual exercise best discussed with a therapist rather than trotted out as cutting edge art.
I manage to get out the door before expletives burst forth punctuated with a combination of exclamation points and question marks. "Somebody gets paid for this sh-t!?" Once again, I have neglected to insert that filter between brain and mouth.
I walk across the street to lunch at Typhoon where aromatic Asian food scents the atmosphere as I look at the true art on the runway where small planes are lined up waiting to take off.The array of form, color, skill and imagination intrigues and inspires me. As the planes loft, I think of Icarus and Leonardo. Might as well burn up in a flash of beautiful fire than take up space in the garage.

Flying with Joseph Albers and a Circus Poodle

Da plane! Da Plane!

Mural in Zen time--go to the news page of my site for more visuals of this three-walled courtyard where I had some slapstick moments—a full can of lavender paint did the hula on my head, covering my hair and just about everywhere else while I was dive-bombed by persistently angry bees, one of which stung me before I whacked it and hastened its next incarnation. This is, after all, a tranquil meditation space I'm designing.The trained circus poodle on the property only speaks Russian and, like much of the population in retiree paradise, has lousy short term memory. Each time he sees me it's a new adventure of feints and barks.

I finished highlighting the whirring propellers, thinking about Joseph Albers Interaction of Color (the only life-changing class I've ever taken), and realized that the care I put into the shadows and light on the bamboo might well be overshadowed by the plane, placed at my client's behest. (I wonder if the famous luminist painters of the Hudson River Valley School--Cole, Church or Bierstadt--were asked to throw in Rumplstiltskin?) Hiking through bamboo and eucalyptus groves in my former Hawaii home is a delicious memory, but the experience of piloting a small plane, especially through sunset, gave me delirious contentment.
In my usual 'I can do this' approach, I attended ground school after I'd flown a few times. Learning the intricacies of engines and navigation was, for me, like dancing, loving the feeling, and then being told that I had to memorize all the bones in the foot and learn how to repair them if I wanted to be a really great dancer. To understand an engine, I made up stories of hamsters doing push ups (pistons) and lighting matches (combustion). I realized that the next time I hire someone to take me into some remote spot in the Amazon, I can fly the plane if the licensed pilot keels over, but I won't have a clue where we're going. It may really be about the journey, not the destination.

Barbie the Bigot and the Big Idea of Spiritual Stewards

Halloween’s coming and guess who’s all dressed up as Barbie the Bigot, the newest in hazardous toys scheduled to be pulled off the market—that self-proclaimed Republican pundit Ann C, who told Donny Deutsch that Christians are perfected Jews. Hunh? So, what is the Big Idea here and why did she get any air time? Having interviewed some severely twisted people myself, I understand about letting them hang themselves, but really, folks, that Republican wet dream must be slathering on makeup concealer under her pearl necklace to cover the rope burns on her neck...
So how does this tie in to what I do besides live on our ever warming planet? Consider the upcoming masquerade/opening of Myths, Masks, Rites & Rituals at Aurora Colors Gallery in Petaluma, CA. where you’ll find four of my best pieces at the gallery. My ongoing visual storytelling begins with a known mythology and adds new coloration. The painting shown here is Spirits of the Millstone. A friend came to my studio in Hawaii when she was writing a book about fairies. She asked me to create a painting to send around to her agent (who turned out to be tied into that whole little girl with wings concept), but our discussion fostered the idea of spiritual stewards of growth, like the garden devas at Findhorn, Scotland. That first painting, We Heard You Asking About Us, sold to a couple in Harvard, MA, where Amazon lilies provide a home for the eyes of the spirits. A few years later, in a quintessential New England town, a massive runic circle lay flat in my garden of peonies and nasturtiums until a well digger noticed it and told me his father collected the stones. Thanks to Archimedes and his fulcrum, the stone was uprighted, more nasturtium planted, and through the round window of the runic path I could see the pond beyond, where each year a goose couple flew in from Canada to breed, and each year the clever fox and the banshee screaming wolverine attempted (and sometimes succeeded) eating the goslings.
So in this time of need and beauty and global warming and ignorant varnished bigots masquerading as conservative intelligentsia, I contend that we are the guardians; we are the spiritual stewards of growth and the time for the spiritual warrior is now.
See you at the masquerade in Petaluma October 30th.

Cats for the Mind ©Beth Surdut 2007

Feral, gorgeous and virile Mr. Stinky courted me every night by YOWLING at midnight out front of my house. He'd go quiet as soon as he saw me, never asking for food, seeming just to want me. Two months into this nightly serenade, I began to suspect that he was one of my old bad boyfriends dressed up in a cat suit--he had all the same moves, rubbing his handsome self up against me, running away when I tried to get too close, marking his territory but still schmoozing the blond across the street, who fed him.
Breaks my heart to see homeless animals, so when I was asked recently to design an image for the Sarasota Defense of Animals Catwalk October 20 at Siesta Beach, I created Cats for the Mind and licensed it for use on tee shirts. Available from me as prints, and if you sign a big fat check, the original painting can be yours. Of course, a portion supports the kitty programs.
Mr. Stinky, so much handsomer than his name, turned out to be a good cat with bad manners, living here part-time, now nutless, still spraying, trying to get it on with the little feral spayed princess and eventually getting confused part way through the mating dance because he can't quite figure out how to get tab A into slot B, kind of like the old guys here, but cuter.

The enigma of no tits at the Ritz

The Mermaids Return now swims with ambient music of indie film composer Conrad Praetzel. Suggestions for music poured in, but we heard the dolphin chatter and hints of gamelon in the deep blue and knew we were home.

Florida, surprisingly, aims to subvert decadent public displays by mermaids. (Guess they're easier to control than those pesky voting machines.) I have been told by a representative of the state arts commission that there is a no nipple law, that this series of magical mythical creatures are considered (deleteriously) to be nudes. I refuse to add the accoutrement of clamshell bras (ouch) or strategically placed locks (read that however you want), as suggested by an apologetic buyer for the Ritz Carlton, which has a "no breasts" rule. There we stood in the spa, where most, if not all, of the clientele either had breasts or had obviuosly purchased a pair (ahem, God doesn't start them at the throat) and the buyer said to me in the hushed voice of someone sharing secret wisdom, "You know, most of our clientele is from the midwest."

Just when you think you know about your own country, like thinking your vote counts or that your government representatives actually represent you, there's a moment of enlightenment. "Oh, I grew up in New England, I didn't know that midwesterens don't have breasts!" I blurted out. No wonder the current series is called Enigmatic Paradise.

Out of the Lion's mouth

Even though I drew this, there are days when I can't tell if she's being swallowed, pushing herself out of the lion's mouth, or if it's all just an act.

In Balinese myth, a big moon faced ogre swallows the moon goddess each month until she's a sliver of light and hope, but he never succeeds entirely, because he only has a head. She always emerges, serene and beautiful, with a knowing little smile. It's something to aspire to--outwitting the ogres, knowing where the lions are-- don't you think?

Musical confluence--Wondering Where the Lions Are by brilliant Bruce Cockburn

The Mermaids Return by Beth Surdut

Paintings by Beth Surdut/Music by Conrad Praetzel/compiled by Chalchuhuitl Productions
The Story of The Mermaid's Return
After seven years spent more on land than in the ocean, the mermaid’s scales had disappeared. Not only that, she thought miserably, staring at the feet at the end of her long legs, her tail was gone. The iridescent flash of turquoise and pale pink with emerald highlights had been replaced by human flesh tones.
The transformation was seemingly complete, but whenever she caught the scent of salt water coming off the marshes, her feet tingled and she would put them together and push downward with a quick hard motion, just as if she still had her tail to power her through the water.
As an artist she was adept at transforming stark white silk into jewel-toned paintings where viewers immersed themselves. Now she realized what she should do with that magical process. She picked up her brush, opened her mind and her bottles of dyes, and began to paint.
In the coldest of winters, where she watched her breath freeze and shatter, the mermaid drew upon her memory of her family of ocean creatures. She promised herself she would paint a magical dozen mermaids, one for every month of the year.
Exuberant adolescents were the first to appear, followed by wise seers and princesses. All emerged with watchful eyes in their tails. Most traveled with sea creatures—starfish, shells, seahorses and parrotfish. The first red-haired one came forward boldly in an emerald sea, palms flowing with sensual power. Next came the painter’s strong-willed Spirit Kin with starfish in her luminous hair.
And that is how the portraits began.

Come meet the mermaids who originally took shape on luminous silk before morphing into the finest of limited edition pigment prints on paper.

Gator Girl and the Prehistorics

"Don't be scared," said the guide as the alligator lunged towards my kayak, the huge prehistoric head right next to my hip. "I'm not scared," I said quietly, "I'm petrified," I whispered as the gator swam past us, gliding parallel to my little tub toy of a boat. The waters of the Myakka river, rightly designated wild and scenic, are a feast for gators and birds--I just didn't want to be the main course.
"Whew," said the guide, "I'm sure glad he didn't get scared and try to climb over our boats."
The next day at an orchid sale, I heard someone loudly calling, "Hey Gator Girl!" It was one of my newly met paddling buddies. My behavior on the river--shock masquerading as aplomb--earned me a new moniker.
That was my first time on the river. I came back to the studio to paint this piece Myakka: the subtlety of Gators. Most of the time, in the dark reflective waters, you can't see who's swimming under or beside you. Eyes head and nose dot the surface and often sink like submarines as we approach.
Myakka, unlike other aspects of Florida, never disappoints, always enchants. Herons abound--Great Blues, Whites, Tri-colored (my favorite), Green and more; heavy bodied woodstorks whose wings whoosh loudly as they loft, goofy and gorgeous roseate spoonbills, bold ospreys, and so many more birds.
I no longer go with a guide, most often with one boon paddling companion in a canoe--I admit that I like the higher sides, especially when a gator decides we're too close and lunges up out of the water, mouth agape. A rare occurrence, especially if its not mating season when the big boys bellow "Stella" in their own version of Streetcar Named Desire.
There have been days where I've seen the spectrum of life-- big eyed baby gators with striped tails and once, a 12 foot gator corpse being feasted upon by vultures who usually amuse with their hopping, dum-de-dump, de-dum-de dum gait.
Recently I counted 14 gator heads in the water around me, and stopped counting when I got to 48 vultures in the trees and on shore with no carrion in sight or scent. I just kept moving, in case they mistook me for dessert.
This piece is sold, and in a private collection of someone who lives in the northeast and has never been on the river.
See more from this series at http://www.bethsurdut.com/harmonics.htm

Mural in zen time

September 1

100 degrees and I'm painting a mural in a client's courtyard. A dreamy bamboo forest emerges from my brush and overheated mind, blue streams and mysterious marshes now surround a zen garden. But it's so damned hot--hey, this is Florida, where a concerned stranger who loved my artwork told me I'm going to burn in hell for eternity--that now I know why Bush won here, why 18,000 votes disappeared in the last election and very few really seem to care. Brain fry. Who can think clearly in this devilish oven?

Antidote--fight the good fight from afar.