Thursday, October 25, 2007

New work: The plague doctor


"Plague Doctor"
18" x 24
oils
finished sides/ Ready to hang
Hi ya'll!
I finished a new painting...a plague doctor mask from the 1400's.
Hit the link to find out more about the history of Plague Doctors.
Here's the quote that inspired me to find a subject to paint: (I am still trying to figure out why it was this subject myself...don't worry...it'll come to me *grins* I just go with it when it comes...no apparent rhyme or reason these days, I am going where it takes me.)
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Prayer for You
I'm happy to announce that this is a perfect moment.
It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer for all of you. I've been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of you -- even those of you who don't believe in the power of prayer.
And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods ... the God beyond all Gods ... the Girlfriend of God ... the Teacher of God ... the Goddess who invented God.
Dear Goddess, You who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads this benediction.
I pray that you will give them what they don't even know they want -- not just the boons they think they need but everything they've always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.

Dear Goddess, You wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:
Many of the divine chameleons out there don't even know that their souls will live forever. So please use your blinding magic to help them see that they are all wildly creative geniuses too big for their own personalities.
Guide them to realize that they are all completely different from what they think they are and more exciting than they can possibly imagine.
Make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic and totally tasteless for them to be in love with anyone or anything that's no good for them.

O Goddess, You who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:
I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed the wise and sexy virtuosos out there.
Remove, banish, annihilate and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to them, no matter how long they've suffered from it, and even if they've become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.
And please conjure an aura of protection around them so that they will receive an early warning if they are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague or voodoo into their lives in the future.

Dear Goddess, sweet Goddess, You sly universal virus with no fucking opinion:
I pray that you will help all the personal growth addicts out there become disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.
I pray that you will teach them the difference between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control, awaken in them the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.
Arouse the Wild Woman within them -- even if they're men.
And please give them bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.

Dear Goddess, You pregnant slut who scorns all mediocre longing:
I pray that you will inspire all the compassionate rascals communing with this prayer to love their enemies just in case their friends turn out to be jerks.
Provoke them to throw away or give away all the things they own that encourage them to believe that they are better than anyone else.
Show them how much fun it is to brag about what they cannot do and do not have.
Most of all, Goddess, brainwash them with your freedom so that they never love their own pain more than anyone else's pain.

Dear Goddess, You psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:
The curiously divine human beings reading this prayer deserve everything they are yearning for and much, much more.
So please bless them with lucid dreams while they are wide awake and solar-energy-operated sex toys that work even in the dark and vacuum cleaners for their magic carpets and a knack for avoiding other people's hells and their very own 900 number so that everyone has to pay to talk to them and a secret admirer who is not a psychotic stalker.

Dear Goddess, You fiercely tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:
I pray that you provide everyone out there with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws and traditions that keep them apart from the things they love.
Show them how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract them from their daring, dramatic, divine desires.
And teach them that they can have anything they want if they'll only ask for it in an unselfish way.

And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these mysterious moments you have begun to change everyone out there in the exact way they've needed to change in order to express their soul's code.
Amen. Awomen. And glory halle-fucking-lujah.

Rob Brezsny
Source: http://www.freewillastrology.com/beauty/prayer.html
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Have a wonderful day!
Lemme know what you think, I love hearing from you all.
Heather

4 comments:

dinahmow said...

Well, I thought you were the author and I was going to ask permission to quote. Then I got to the link at end.
It's beautiful!Not being "into" organised religion and finding most of the alternatives to be quackery, I was surprised how this resonated.
A vacuum cleaner for the magic carpet...hmm. I like the touch of whimsy!
And the Plague Doctor. Interesting history, isn't it?
Thanks for the read.

San said...

Free Will Astrology comes out in our alternative weekly paper. I started reading that ferocious prayer and I thought: that sounds like Rob! Thanks for sharing, I hadn't seen this.

Also, the plague doctor mask painting is great. A couple or so years ago I saw some of the masks in person. They are fun and creepy--would be a great Halloween costume too.

I got to your blog from Ed's.

Heather said...

Dinah...you crack me up!

San, so nice to see you here, thank you for stopping by. I hope to see you again. Thank you for the kind words about my work on the mask...it was fun learning about it's history and then doing the work itself. I think of it as my new mask for dealing with plaguing self doubt.

Anonymous said...

The prayer was deep. I feel as though your talking to me. As I read all your quotes I get the same feeling...lol I Love it keep on keeping on I do believe that in some way I'm being coached along by these messages. Keep up your great work. Carolyn N.J. (Summers Goddess)