Ideas or Insight?

I started this illustration with the idea of expressing time and the owl with a clock and a key were born. In my imagination I saw a little girl locked away in the clock and an owl flying away with the key.

The symbols of time taken from the, "Penguin Dictionary Of Symbols," explains time may be symbolically expressed as a wheel, 12 signs of the zodiac, and how they move in a circular motion as life and the center as what does not move but exists. Now that is a mind bender, time that does not move, moving but not moving.

Maybe here in the desire realm this means moving without desire. Because if I think about movement, whether thoughts, emotions, or physical action, desire is the fuel. Desire isn't good or bad, it's just a vehicle. Like my body is made from desire, without this body I cannot move in this realm. So I guess the unmoved mover is one who can travel through time without desire. So having a body while living on this planet is really important.

I looked at this while in meditation retreat, everything I do is coupled with desire. I saw coarse desires like anger, lust, jealousy and envy, but I also saw kindness, compassion, patience, with just a touch of wisdom. I really need wisdom to walk with my subtle desires like compassion or kindness because without wisdom the subtle desires become coarse, colored with greed, hatred, and so on.

Squares symbolize space, our earth and matter. The temporal movement does not negate the circular motion and so we have time that seems to move. But does time really move?

With the infinite and finite , the book I'm reading says there is no common ground. But I think there is, it's a the center of the wheel, the breath can take your attention there and equanimity can keep your attention in the center. Just like standing in the middle of a merry-go-round. I think the center is unbounded awareness that has nothing to do with matter. So I don't give time any matter of thought and I'm free! Wheeeeee hahaha.

So the new characters in this story will be equanimity, awareness, breath, and attention.

The symbol of Sid (the owls name not the owl itself), comes from Ireland, the difference between time and timeless is inconceivable by the human mind can be broken, like breaking a habit or pattern, that causes a doorway to open into the (otherworld or worlds), like the land of the fairies in Celtic myth. So the owl in this story is a doorway.

Sid the owl has a ton of symbols attached to it's form as well. The owl in this story represents wisdom, the sacred bird of the wisdom goddess Athene. The owl in this aspect is also related to the moon, which gets its light from the sun, having no light of its own. The light of the moon is equated with rational thought unlike the suns light which is attributed to direct perception and insight.

So that's what I've come up with so far, orange and blue have symbolic meanings as well, I'll go into that latter.

Watercolor, pen and ink, mixed media paper, 11x 14. I still have a lot of detail work to do but most people won't notice the extra work. This piece is basically done.

outline

progression

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