Visceral. Oracle. Tangible.

When I got home from work yesterday, I pulled out the 7 books I have on the subject of visual journaling, marking any pages by Juliana Coles. For an hour, I sat outside with the showing-up-again hummingbirds, two bees, and an overabundance of BIG mosquitoes enjoying our yard irrigation -- I looked at each page, looked more, glanced at them sideways, thought about them, turned to the next, went back, absorbed what seemed to be the 'techniques' without concentrating on images or color, then I focused ON the images, the colors, then I read everything I could make out on each page.

... got up, went into my studio, and came back out to pop the top on a Bud Light.

Sat still in the very windy but staying-light-longer late afternoon, sipping my beer, dodging one of the bees who had turned inquisitive (must've been the Bud).

Finally, I opened my new Cloth Paper Scissors magazine to the article by Juliana Coles, and read all of it, mainly focusing on the prompts. One of the prompts said to 'ask the Oracle' ... and I got stuck there, because my familiarity with oracles is pretty much the word used in mythological stories I've read, and more recently, Carolyn Myss on a CD program saying that the oracle is used to request wisdom on a world event scale, not a personal one. So I wondered. I made a mental note to do a little personal research.

I finished my Bud Light, went inside, fixed something to eat, watched 20 minutes of TV drivel, got in the tub to read, went to bed early.

DREAMED OF MY LONG-TIME FRIEND [AND PERSONAL SYMBOL OF WISDOM]: THE WHITE FISH.

Visceral.
Oracle.
Tangible.

The words which awakened me this morning, 5:01 a.m. Only in my head, they were all in bold capital letters. VISCERAL. ORACLE. TANGIBLE. In bubbles coming out of white fish's fins, streaming behind him. He wasn't white so much as glistening, shimmering, golden and aqua.

I got up and followed the bubbles to my studio, opened my journal, and made this page. The moth fried itself on my studio light moments after I finished writing, fell onto the page exactly where I taped it down.

I got goosebumps all over my body.