A strange paradise -

"Sunset Island"
digital collage by Mick Mather

"... come watch with me
the shaft of fire
that glows in yonder west ..."
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Illustration Friday: Stay -

"Mister Existence Teaches the Dog to Stay"
digitally manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

"... I named my dog Stay so I can say
'come here, Stay, come here, Stay' ..."
- Stephen Wright

NEW from The Mister Existence Series -

"Mister Existence and His Dog Scare the Fish"
digitally manipulated fractal flame & drawing by Mick Mather

"... the dog went running and splashing and thumping,
I helped him scare fishes there, leaping and jumping ..."
- Mister Existence

Happy Mother's Day -

"Mother's Day 2011"
digitally manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

"... before a day was over,
home comes the rover,
for Mother's kiss - sweeter this
than any other thing ..."
- William Allingham

Unrealized single -

"Triangle"
digitally manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

"... I'm with you and you're with me
and so we are all together ..."
- British Folk Song, "Marching to Pretoria"

Illustration Friday: Entangled -

"Entangled"
manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

"... empty handed I entered the world
barefoot I leave it;
my coming, my going -
two simple happenings
that got entangled ..."
- Kozan Ichikyo

Gone fishin' -

"Throwing the Nets"
digitally manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

"... may the holes in your net be no larger than the fish in it ..."
- an old Irish Blessing

Dim and darker days -

"Dusk of Autumn"
digitally manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

"... it was one of those perfect autumnal days
which occur more frequently in memory than in life ..."
- P. D. James

Not quite out of season -

"Winter Wheat"
fractal flame collage & digital drawing by Mick Mather
Oh, I have walked in Kansas
Through many a harvest field,
And piled the sheaves of glory there
And down the wild rows reeled:

Each sheaf a little yellow sun,
A heap of hot-rayed gold;
Each binder like Creation's hand
To mold suns, as of old.
- Vachel Lindsay

Mr. Holmes has retired -

"A Damaged Literacy of Bees"
manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

"Hallo," Holmes said. "See here, Russell, it must be more than complaisance applied to the saving graces."
"How do you mean?"
"It's quite apparent that there's more than a shift of a mannered semantic. I see a complete paradigm shift of the literacy," he asserted.
"I don't mean to be repetitive, Holmes, but..."
"Observe the cells, Russell, especially the cells," he went on, "they've abandoned the hexagon. See how they've been squared away? Even the botched wax sealing aspires to the new shape."
"Of course!" his illuminated partner agreed, "including a haphazard attempt at checker boarding."
"Exactly," said Holmes over peaked hands, "elementary to a new literacy."
"I should think it much too early for assigning new text to a single, dead hive," Russell posited.
"Quite so," Holmes relinquished after many minutes of thought. "We shall keep our eyes sharp, then."

Illustration Friday: Strong -

"Testing the Strength of the Nets"
digitally manipulated fractal flame & digital drawing by Mick Mather

Commander John J. Adams:
What is the Id?
Dr. Edward Morbius:
Id, Id, Id, Id, Id! It's a... It's an obsolete term. I'm afraid once used to describe the elementary basis of the subconscious mind.
Commander John J. Adams:
Monsters from the Id...