Archive for the ‘mexico’ Category
Posted by Cliodhna
First my newest embroidery. I was having artists block, feeling stuck, a bit down about my art, not going anywhere, not knowing what to do when I said Hey! I can do a picture about it. Because sometimes the best thing to do to get rid of a block is just do something, anything to get the energy flowing again. This image poped into my head and I got out the sewing machine and got to work.
Her hair is flowing looking for ideas and she has a paintbrush in her hand ready to paint and the colour green is good because its the heart chakra colour and that is where all the best images and art flows from.
I go through cycles with art. i want to paint big and loose for a while and then small and detailed. I want to do pretty purses and colourful nice things and then i want to express meaningful truths and deep meaning. I like the flow of paint and then the texture of fabric. I like writing and then thats not enough and I want to draw. I lose all inspiration and get lost in doing other work for a while. Like being a waitress for a few months or being a secretary and pure logic, organizing files and putting sense onto chaos. Then it is time to toss the order and explore the unformed and possibility again.
In the Toltec work that I do it says we are all artists that we create our lives every second, every minute, with every thought and word and choice we make. So when we create a piece of artwork or a meal or write we are extending ourselves outwards into the world to leave form on how we are as people. So for me being a secretary or a waitress or working in a shop is not abandoning my art but it is exploring me as an artist and my life as I am creating it right now. and if you think, but I am not an artist look around you at your life and see what you have created. Even the fact that we are here and have existence is a huge act of sorcery. Now if we could only stop taking it for granted and worrying about the little stuff (whats that quote.. don´t stress the little stuff.. and remember its all little stuff)
I finally got pictures of the beautiful spider outside our house. I had thought she had made her egg sac and died but no. Yesterday I saw her legs sticking out from behind the brick and then looking closer her black shiny body. You can just see a shade of red on her belly (she is hanging upside down) from the hourglass mark. She is a BIG spider. Not as big as those hairy wolf spiders but large enough and more threatening looking.
One of her babies and an egg sac. There have been two egg sacs that have hatched but apparently they eat each other and she eats them so they are lucky to survive.
as one more picture of the valleys from around here. I have sooooo many cloud and sunset pictures. This one is from early in the morning when the clouds haven´t lifted yet. Wonderful looking from the outside and grey and misty from the inside.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also subscribe to cliodhna's wave by Email Thanks for visiting!
Posted by Cliodhna
my new threadless design. From a brief about democracy. Its in the running at the moment so you can vote for it!!!!!
I figured a worldful of happy people all dancing. That would be great, wouldn´t it?
also photos from Naica which are caves here in Chihuahua. They are huge crystal caves so far underground you need to bring oxygen with you to breathe.
I would love to go.
I have been workng the past few days and now can go back to my sewing machine. looking forward to some days just sewing. i am finishing one at the moment.
x clio
Posted by Cliodhna
squeamish people stop reading right here
No 1… Tapeworms
yes, when they appear squirming and wriggling in my puppies poop. Hold hand over my nose to avoid the stench and peer closely at these white moving things. What are they… little flat worms like flat grains of rice. A search on google comes up with tapeworms and apparently these are the segments that are pooped out. They get them from fleas, sheep shit, cow shit and various other things. We can get them too, mae me a bit paranoid for a few days, lots of wasing of hands and scrubbing under the fingernails after cleaning up after her (she is resisting the whole concept of house training)
No 2… Kennel Cough
Puppy started a hacking cough as if something is stuck in her throat. Its like a dog flu or cold, called canine cough or kennel cough. It gets transmited by air and if their immune systems aren`t strong they get it. Try listening to it at four in the morning.
No 3… ants
The weirdest of the three. Last night I opened the kitchen drawer to get some tinfoil and noticed ants in the tinfoil box again. Took out the box and saw them at the mouth of the tube. Lifted up the tube and looked inside, hundreds of ants! !$%/&&%%$!!!!!!!!!! got the tube outside and banged it on the ground and out comes a mound of ants and grubs. I threw the tube away. I did think about saving the tinfoil off it but dismissed that as over zealous not wanting to waste stuff.
Hopefully thats it. There are moths coming from somewhere also though. Little moths that are dusty like clothes moths. I am wondering are they the grubs and the ants were eating the grubs. Insects are strange sometimes. There are just so many of them!
Posted by Cliodhna
Zopilotes is spanish for Vulture and these guys are turkey vultures who live in the mountains of chihuahua. I was getting the train back from Chihuahua city (awesome train ride, goes through what is called the Barrancas del Cobre. In parts deeper and wider than the grand canyon in america) and just got a glimpse as we passed of all these vultures dining on a (very) dead cow. The image stuck with me and became this painting.
These birds are incredibly common here. You can see six or seven of them at a time hovering in a circle over some distant valley. I wonder do they have a special ’somethings going to die’ sense.
and check out my sisters new blog/online portfolio Grainne Quinlan. She is currently looking for a job in an animation studio so if anyone has any ideas. She worked on El Tigre, a super cool cartoon set in Mexico city. In one episode they are being attacked by evil guacamole and the arch villaness is an electric guitar playing skeleton called Katana
Also while I am at it the company here in mexico is looking for an Autocad drawer (must be good, with experience) to draw the ramps and drifts under the ground. Pay is good and no expenses! Anyone know anyone?
Posted by Cliodhna
First a picture I have finished about here. The frogs that come out of nowhere when the rain arrives.
and as I said in my last post I took some photos of where I work a few days a week. I do translation and basic administration for supposedly three days a week but actually more like four and last week was five.
Its a mad place. I never thought I would end up doing secretarial work but there is a part of me that just adores organising things. Its a gold and silver mine in the mountains in Chihuahua. There is an open pit and the people I work for do underground mining. The first time Paul took me underground in the mine in Guanajuato I was scared, for about an hour, and then I was fine one tunnel pretty much looks like every other tunnel to me and I had imagined big crystal caves and strange rocks. He did point out some brown dirt and said that it was almost pure gold.
There is a place here in chihuahua where you can go really deep underground into huge crystal caves. So deep you need to bring oxygen with you to breathe.
Huge machinery abounds here. Sometimes I reckon its an excuse for men to play with really big toys and nothing to do with the actual mining.
The portal of the underground mine. They will connect soon with old workings that were abandoned years and years ago.
The roads into here are tight, extrmely steep in places, curvy, muddy, slippy, dangerous and I don{t know how they manage to bring the huge machinery in on them. Some machinery is so big they have a tractor behind the truck pushing it! It takes them three days sometimes to travel what takes us three hours in a jeep. They camp out along the way and go extremly slllooooooowwly.
We were driving home one night and saw this guy standing by the side of the road. Cominvi is the contract company we work with. We have no idea who put the hat and safety vest on him. There are so many donkeys on the roads here, with a wonderfully zen attitude to life. They fall asleep where ever. Paul came across one in the middle of the road asleep, he drove really close to it, no movement, he honked his horn, not a blink of the eye, he inched very slowly up to it and nudged it with the bumper of his pick-up. Not an inch did this guy move until finally he ambled ever so peacefully off to the side of the road. Amazing attitude to life wha!
Amazing cloud formations this time of year, I just keep taking photos of them.
And on the way to the mine in the morning
and on the way home that night looking back over to the mine
Its all blue skies here at the moment although supposedly there is a storm on the way from the ocean. Have to see what it brings with it!
Posted by Cliodhna
… is a long slow messy process. Once again I am cleaning up piss at 3 in the morning and getting all stupid and baby talky when he actually does it outside.. who’s the good little puppy wuppy!!
I am of the stick their noses in it, shout NO and throw them outside school. As he gets older a slap on the but gets added. It seemed to take ages with Cubo until he quit doing it inside. I tied him beside the bed at night to teach him to ask me if he needed to go out. They don’t like doing it in their sleeping area and he would whine until I woke up and took him outside. I have to start doing that with the puppy but I am afraid Cubo might step on him (which he does frequently and the puppy squeaks, I was joking yesterday that he is Cubo’s squeaky toy). Cubo is like an incredibly clumsy enormous older brother but the puppy has incredibly sharp teeth which he uses on poor ol Cubo. They play and either Cubo is whining or the puppy is squeaking.
His name actually means ’stick’ not ’spade’ Pala is a spade but that ends in ‘a’ so it can’t be a boys name. Well, it could but I actually thought palo meant spade. I get confused sometimes!
We have moved house, away from all the spiders and alacranes living in all the cracks of the brick work and away from the pond and the frogs to the civilisation of tarmac and a shop just a block away. I did see a big Black Widow spider living in a pile of bricks right outside the house. She can stay there.
Scorpion Charm….. catch the scorpion/alacrane in a jar or something with a piece of paper underneath. Take it outside somewhere dry (they like dry places with crawly spaces) and explain very carefully that it has to tell all its friends to stay away from the house. That they will probably get squished if they come in. Then let it go (carefully.. sometimes they get a bit pissed from being caught) step away and leave it alone. Sometimes you have to do it a few times but they get the message and stay away. This works with all insects, bugs, vertebrates, and all sized shaped wonderfully coloured creepy crawly things.
rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain
did I mention it was raining?
Posted by Cliodhna
the rain starts at approx four o clock every day, the roads turn into muddy rivers, muddy rivers occupy any available downward trajectory. Its cold and wet and the thunder and lightning complete the picture.
All the creepy crawlies are coming into the houses to find dryness. Paul got stung by a scorpion. It fell from the ceiling onto his head. He sits up in the darrkness saying ’something just landed on my head’ and then OWW, something stung me, man that stings, $%#@#$, Light goes on and there it is, an alacrane, pale brown, bout an inch and a half long. Two of us sitting in the bed at four in the morning wondering was it the really dangerous kind or not. He was fine after an injection. He also saw a huge centipede in the sink and there are spiders everywhere…..
I finally saw a whole turtle today after days of just heads dissapearing under the water.
A swallow, who has a nest beneath the house, drinking water sitting on a wire.
A wonderfully coloured beetle. I actually thought it was a fake one until I picked it up. There also dung beetles with big horns on their foreheads a beautiful iridesant blue. as long as your thumb.
There are loads of lizards here, tiny small and so fast you rarely see them. This guy was doing a chest stuck out thing and I wondered what he was doing until I caught a glimpse of smaller brown one dissapear beneath a rock and this one after it. So I guess rainy season is courting season for the lizards.
Another picture of Cubo and the newly named Palo. Palo means spade and Cubo is bucket so I have a bucket and spade, perfect for the beach! Actually they both have the mange and I have stuff to inject them with for the next seven days. I tried to do it but the needle looked so big I chickened out. Paul can do it, he has emergency medical training, he has actually done injections in the past. I was feeling slightly guilty about giving Cubo mange by bringing the puppy home but the vet said he had it for longer than I have had the puppy. All the dogs here, or at least some of the scrawny ones that skulk around my house have it.
Posted by Cliodhna
I am currently living in Temoris. Its in the middle of the mountains in Chihuahua and I love it. Its on the train line for the barrancas del cobre which is a huge canyon range strtching from the coast up to chihauhau city. In some places bigger and wider than the grand canyon.
Anyway its rainy season here at the moment and the land which was arid and dusty and bone dry before has suddenly sprung to life. At night the house is surrounded by fireflies and frogs creaking in the grass and crickets out making their song also. I painted a picture about it.
The nearby pond which honestly was a cracked brown piece of earth has turned into a bog pond. I went down at night to look at it and there was a frog singing beside my foot. A tiny green frog making a huge noise. I had a torch but couldn’t see him for ages because I was looking for a big thing not the tiny greenness the size of my thumbnail.
The yesterday I went out in the rain to look at the water and there are turtles in the water. I was so suprised. They must bury down deep into the mud for the rest of the year and just sleep until the water wakes them up and they emerge again. Today the purple dragonflies have arrived.
All is sunny and hot and swealtering until a rumble in the distance announces a storm is on the way. Clouds gather behind the mountain, dark and looming. Piling high with windows of sunshine coming through.
They work their way around and through the mountains, gathering behind peaks and then spilling over.
And look at this wee thing I found tied to a tree. I asked at nearby houses and they said he had been left there. Poor little squidge. They don’t look after animals very well here sometimes. I think a lot of time the poorer families are on survival for themselves and don’t have energy left over to look after dogs. Also there doesn’t seem to be any laws protecting animals or sterilization programs for strays. I found him only two days ago. He has been sleeping a lot and eating a lot and I have been bathing him to get rid of the fleas. I am worried about him today though, his nose is very hot, I hope he isn’t sick.
This is him waiting his turn at the food bowl. He will get his own bowl soon if he stays with us. He is feisty though, Cubo doesn’t know what to make of him. Two seconds after this photo was taken he pushed his way in past Cubo and growled at him! Cubo actually looked surprised and got out of the way.
I want to go back to the river beside the train station soon. I bet theres loads of water to go swimming in now!
