This is the art print which I gave to Gemma...it had come into my life at an artist's reception for Alice Lynn Greenwood. Alice's spiritual journey can be felt through viewing her art....for instance she has a pink rhinoserous in much of her work, its job is to help protect her boundaries....in another painting, "Dating Neptune", she is a mermaid....and one shows her exhausted by a riverbed and says something about needing to find a blackbird. This piece shows the blackbird with a broken heart in it's beak. In Celtic lore, the blackbird figures as a guide to the underworld.....

Immediately after finding this art, I was greeted by crows everywhere...and found out that they are my totem animal...I even heard them cawing softly at my son's wedding!

Gemma has the crow totem too so I know this was meant for her...at least for now!

Something to "crow" about???????

These 2 pages from my current art/life journal show a whimsical, all about ME, couple of pages (photos from 30 years ago and current advertisement)

background art work featuring my

"Native American Birth Totem......"

which I learned about from a link on Julie Marie's post...

(visit Celtic Woman)

I am a member of the Butterfly clan, Air chief, Wind is West.

My totem animal is the Crow (or Raven). The totem is to be a guide and teacher.

[These birds have been showing up, for some time now, in my art work as on this journal page....]

Characteristics of the crow are Peaceful, Intelligent, Idealistic, Charming, Romantic and Tricky. The plant associated with this totem is Ivy.

I also had researched my Celtic tree sign a couple of months ago....and it was Ivy, too. ["Ivy": You have great taste and probably keep up with trends...the reason you are the one everyone goes to when picking out an outfit or decorating. You are also fiercely loyal to those you love and very protective of them.]Then I learned that Ivy has specific subdivisions and I am a Maple [ Maple, Independence of Mind, no ordinary person, full imagination and originality, shy and reserved, ambitious , proud, self-respect, hungers for new experiences, sometimes nervous, many complexes, good memory, learns easily, wants to impress!].....so maybe I should paint a Maple tree with ivy growing on it, and a crow in its branches!LOL.

Another crow:

I was reading "Dropping Ashes on the Buddha", a book loaned to me by my son, at bedtime last night....there appeared this poem on the page, (written by Seung Sahn after seeing a man walking up a mountain and some crows flying out of a tree)

"The road at the bottom of Won Gak Mountain

is not the present road.

The man climbing with his backpack

is not a man of the past.

Tok, tok, tok,---his footsteps

transfix past and present.

Crows out of a tree.

Caw, caw, caw."

[To a Zen master, all things are One, all experience is an illusion, and things are always changing. So why do we want to define and label ourselves????.... I guess because it is fun! I am having fun being a "crow" and an "ivy".] BTW this handcarved Korean doll could be the man in the poem?