this is not a key deer

 


What is art in the age of reproduction? Does the image of my majestic key deer not make you want to go out and paint one yourself? This painting is not mine, it is a photo of a painting found on a website. How inauthentic can you get. But it symbolizes what the deer represent. Their calm and friendly nature. But then again, it's not them, it is a website of a photo of a painting of a deer. Something is lost along the way, something was lost in the first translation. Their essence is not there.

We're close to Cuba you know, here in the keys. But, that's not the Havana we're talking about. These deer came here from the north, they traveled down through the states, through Havana, through Tallahassee to get to this place, their new and old home. Now destroyed by us. Burning, burning, burning. It's hotter here than it was up there, but they adjusted. They accumulated and became one with nature, as they always were. As we were supposed to be until our genes mutated and mutated and mutated and here we are. Natures biggest enemy. 


We take for granted what Barthes called the 'aura.' The key deer in their mangrove dens, oblivious to all that has been killing them and eating up this genes, are pure. 


That aura can be found in its most purest form, nature. 


Go out and experience it. 


Image by DePaula

another day, another nightmare - let's end this cycle

I have nightmares too, but mine are real. How am I supposed to forget all the sadness when it's beem building up within my genes for generations? I've been mapping out this problem you see - this problem within ourselves. I know what our purpose is in this life, but I'm not going to tell you. You need to figure it out yourself. How else can you grow? We pit our emotions against our instincts when they should be working together in harmony. It's always this constant CONSTANT struggle to find balance. I'll tell you where balance lives. It lives in our subconscious. 


The moon up there is full. It has achieved it's cycle. But once again it will wane until it is nothing, then it will be new again. Like a season, like a life, like a species. Do we all come back again? Do we reach our full potential only to drop back down again like a fountain, rushing up and down, over and over and over...


The deer come out at night when you have your nightmares in your dream world. Maybe you should try to live like them, hiding during the day and coming out at night when it's safe. People are usually afraid of the dark because they are afraid of the unknown, but not them, no. They are afraid of the known - they know who causes the horror. It's us.


I'll give you some advice: burn your map. 

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.

How did this happen? How did we get to the point where we're wiping out a population of animals? The scary thing is they're not even scared of us. They're curious and hungry. We're the ones that did this to them and they want to be our friends. We tried to make them a reservation, but you can't force a group of animals to stay in one place - that's what zoos do. That's what sadistic people that keep snakes and turtles in little tiny tanks do. We tried to make the best of a situation, we tried to tried to make up for moving onto what little land they had. We said HEY YOU CAN HAVE THIS LAND, WE'LL TAKE THE GOOD STUFF. How do you fix a problem your ancestors started? How do you say sorry for something you had no say in? How do you make it right? Some people think they're just animals, that we're better than them. That by some strange universal order we deserve to displace them, hunt them for their meat, put them up on display. I think we can do better than that, don't you? We were put on this earth for a reason weren't we...maybe it's not us that's the problem, but what we've created.

So let's brainstorm. If someone bulldozed your house and built a hotel on it, what would you do? Don't be passive like the key deer, you'll get wiped out.

fauna fauna fauna (but just one)

There's so many deer here. You think deer and you think north, but at night they come out from the mangroves. They do deer things like getting into the trash and they play with cars. But they are so damn cute. NOT like the ones up north, no they look like babies, baby Bambis. Slender, with big brown eyes and little legs and white and honey speckles all over them. I'll post a picture sooner or later so you can see. They'll like you. They're wary at first, but then it's like HEY LET ME LICK YOU. They'll lick you and it's gross, but they're so cute that you let them. I think they just want food. They're endangered too, you wouldn't think it by how many come out at night, but they only live on this one key. 
They used to flirt with my boyfriend. He would call me and tell me about it. Then I met them and I understood. I used to be jealous, call them whores, but I got over it when I met them. You understand.
I feel bad for them sometimes, because they're endangered and all. Everyone's gettin the keys disease and moving south, wiping all my key deer out. 

Did you see the bridge? It's right behind me, maybe up a little, I don't know. There's lots of them here. And the mangroves too. That's where they live. Those people, they like the key deer too. They were drinking that day, I think they cleaned up their mess, I can't remember though.