The doors of perception/hanging onto meaning
- kaydee777
- 17 hours ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 14 hours ago
We don’t ask to be eternal beings. We only ask that things do not lose all their meaning. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It’s been a good season for Madame Moonflower.

Sacred datura even popped up outback, where the Lizard Lounge is slowly taking shape, in spite of an overflowing rain water barrel which caused a lake which led to a bit of subsidence which means I will be redoing that section of the newly laid paving. One of these days.

When it’s too hot to do anything productive outside, like attending to a mysterious sinkhole, I have been carving new printing blocks inspired by the petroglyph explorations of a few months ago.

This rabbit was discovered at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site in the Tularosa Basin . My February 2025 visit was documented in more detail in this blog post.

Now the rabbit design is ready to hop out into the world on kitchen towels in a whole array (one could even call it a very large array) of colours, both background and ink

3 Rivers Rabbit also spirals on library/market totes.

It will be joining turtles, dragonflies (also petroglyph inspired, see this blog post from January this year) and more, on aprons and table cloths too.

Possibly the most well known petroglyph at Three Rivers Petroglyph Site is not the rabbit, but a quadruped with a couple of spears in its side. Ouch! The sacrificial beast.

Quadrupeds, probably Big Horned Sheep, are common subjects for petroglyphs across the southwest.

I found at least seven on my pretty-much-sticking-to-the-path wander through Three Rivers earlier this year.

Full disclosure: I was looking for them.

In the Zulu culture, which was adjacent to my youth, a white goat is slaughtered to facilitate a conversation with the ancestors.

If you are very rich, or the matter is very important (dire), then a bull might be necessary.

(Hence the saying: “for you, I kill the bull”) But for most things, slaughtering a goat is enough for an ancestral feast.

I finally assigned the time to carve a bokkie printing block today, something I’ve been meaning to do for months, if not years or my whole life. My father, who spoke Zulu fluently, liked to call me imbokwe imhlope. The little white goat. It sounds sweet and endearing, until you think about the role white goats play in Zulu culture.

A test print shows some few areas of the block need cleaning up so ink doesn’t clog the lines.

With my new designs this year, my intent is to honor the Mimbres pottery and Mogollon culture artists and visionaries who lived and dreamed on this part of the earth long before me. Mediating meaning from sense of place.

Maybe Madame Moonflower perfumed their dawns too, as She does mine.

It seems some kind of magic to me that Datura Wrightii aka Sacred Datura aka Madame Moonflower endorses my simple, amateur projects on this little piece of Chihauhauan desert. Is this how the Ancient Ones speak?

The petroglyph sites and pottery shards are doorways for me. Doors of perception. I am lucky (and grateful) to have such easy access.
In the ringing silence of the desert, I listen for an ancient echo.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-1793)
Thank you for your artistry, history and imagination.