The Night Bird

A strangeness lit the air like the feeling of static caught in a newly washed blanket. Unseen and yet so profoundly there.

Night, seemed to grow even darker as it seemed to swallow the moonlight in large gulps. The only thing the inky blackness hadn’t devoured, was a few splotches of silvery light here and there.

Even the wind had taken notice, leaving all the country side without a trace of its existence. Nothing moved and nothing made a sound. It was as quiet as it is when snow has first fallen and everything has gone still.

The dancing crickets had stopped chirping before night took over and the fireflies had long since retired for the evening. It was as if the night had suffocated life, yet something stirred low in the shadows. It all but moved with stealthy precision, hearing every single breath that had been held in its wake.

The owl moved through the night without a single sound. It was patient and had enjoyed watching the mouse dance and flail around as if it thought it owned the hour itself. The great winged fowl, beautiful and strong as it was, wise and noble, slowed it’s flight until it almost hovered over the haughty mouse.

The mouse, ignorant to such a magnificent creature, nor fully understanding its power thought it wise to taunt the great owl. The valourous owl never wavered nor swayed from its position. Instead, it watched the mouse with amusement as the mouse attempted to mimic the owl, failing miserably.

The owl, patient as it was continued to watch the mouse with unyielding eyes, circling silently above. The energy around the owl felt like a great happening as if the forest itself was holding its breath, waiting for that moment it would strike.

The mouse grew more bold and brazen, spewing jibberish and careless insults as the owl silently observed its every move. The mouse danced around, laughing at its own jokesto misunderstand the position of the owl. The valourous owl, wise beyond reason continued to let the mouse have its fun as it had no idea it was about to be ingurgitated whole.

Finally, the owl yawned with boredom, growing tired of the rodents unintelligible tirade. The owl thought not of the mouse, but brought its feet forward and spread its razor sharp talons making an oval pattern, stretching its legs forward as it struck the mouse from behind. The mouse shrieked and cried out, begging for mercy but for the owl it was nothing more than a snack.

Black Widow Oblivion

This is another fictional story from The black widow series. Enjoy. All characters are just figments of my imagination. Any or all resemblance to an individual is merely coincidence.

She (the black widow) sat hours in her easy chair, oblivious to the world around her, including her children. She furiously stretched her mind into the massive organ it is by spending countless hours crushing candy as if it were her only reason to live. She spent every waking moment doing as little as possible just so she could crush those striped candies into a big win.

Without a care in the world the widow crushed candy all the while ignoring her husband as if he never existed, whilst her children were raiding the pantry for every sugary, carb loaded treat they could find. Laundry was piled into mountainous heaps in the garage as if the washer itself had violently vomited them across the floor. Which isn’t surprising since the clothes often smelled so putrid and so sour it would make you gag if you smelled them, thinking they were clean.

The widow was typically in a real maddening hurry and had no choice, but to run over the laundry with her car. She never had a problem rolling over those stacks of dirty jeans, t- shirts, towels and underwear like speed bumps in the car line at school. She couldn’t be bothered with that stufg, she was just too tired. She wasn’t even going to be able to cook because she was so tired. Besides, she really needed to get to her easy chair and crush candy.

She spent so much time engrossed in candy bombs that she never saw the beautiful bombs chasing around her very ignored husband by her back. They snickered and laughed, asking him why he was even with her. They loved coming to her parties where she tired to sell some kind of plastic bowl or scented waxy shit because the widow loved to drink. And, when she did… They would go on the hunt for that sexy husband of hers that she didn’t even know she had. She would sit on her sofa, pounding beer from a bottle, laughing about menial things no one really wanted to talk to her about. That gave the perfect little out for a friend to slip out to the garage.

The widows friend spotted the highly attractive husband in the garage. He had been hiding from the cats in the house when one, bad, little kitty escaped. She pawed and nipped hoping he would play. The kitty friend told him the widow never had to know, meowing like a cat in heat.

To be frank here, this sort of thing happened quite often. But, as fate would have it, the widow wouldn’t have noticed. She couldn’t have because, she was so very very busy. Busy making ass imprints on the sofa with her dildo, that is….

It was obvious she didn’t want her husband like the babysitter did. And, she couldn’t possibly want him like those women at church who loved their fitness training. They frequently invited him over for some cross training, if ya know what I mean…

The widow sure loved the energizer bunny, while her closest, and dearest friend was still fantasizing about the time she had her way wity the widows husband. Of course, the dear friend never told the Widow, but then again, she never told the widow she had once warned her husband before their marriage not to marry her because she was a user.

Which of course, all of that said was true. The woman couldn’t do a thing on her own, she needed him to do everything for her or slave her children out. She couldn’t clean the house and she couldn’t cook, and she certainly couldn’t do laundry anymore than she could clean her ass. She was busy you know and that was a chronic problem, but then again so was her month long periods too.

Behind her back people whispered. She thought she had snowed them all including the congregation at her church, but her husband had been two steps ahead the whole time. He never let an opportunity go without sharing to the Pastor and other deacons about her “personal issues”.. Like the one where she puts her ass print on the sofa…

Unbeknownst to her, he forwarded her emails she sent him, photos of food rot crusted in the fridge, laundry stacked in the garage and filth everywhere she never cleaned. He recorded her cussing like a sailor and let the pastor hear what she really sounded like when no one was listening. He even sent the church, the most damning email of all, where she admitted to all her egregious acts.

One day, her husband decided that he had never loved her and put her to the curb. He had only felt sorry for her little snot nose toddler she had when he met her and against his better judgment stayed for the rug rat. But, that rug rat had grown up and it was time. He hadn’t found her attractive for years and years. He couldn’t stand her voice anymore than he could stand her, so… he left.

She thought she had won. She gloated around town like she had just taken him to the cleaners, except he didn’t want anything she got. Andvthe best part was he had the last laugh. He had bested her in her own playground.

Every week she went to church after he left, and told the poor abandoned wife tale, they placated her and then snickered all over again. They laughed and made fun of her knowing she was the liar and fake that she was. They knew, because her husband made sure to let everyone know the truth, just before he divorced her. In fact, she may never have known what all those sideways glances were actually for and probably wouldn’t have wanted know either.

She had been made a fool in her own backyard. If it couldn’t get any worse for her, it did when her son began telling the world about her drunken escapades with men from dating apps. She thought no one knew, but everyone knew. Her place of employment knew, her church, her neighbors and even her so called friends.

The black widow had been stripped of her power and dethroned. Her crown was stripped and she had to sell the big house, trade in the mom mobile and take the demotion in front of the entire world and God.

Thank you for reading ❤️

Hypervigilent Me.

There is a moment in everyone’s life where we must ask ourselves if what we are doing is worth it. The next question, Is the action worth what you will benefit?

In my own need to avoid failure, I have chosen the route of brutal honesty. I know that if I attempt to be someone I’m not or even pretend to be accepting, have certain opinions or have beliefs I do not, I’ll most definitely fail. Why? That’s really simple for me to awnser, because I know I will fail. I’m incapable of the lie. I think it’s also because I have a strong sense of who I am and how I feel about something or an idea.

If I were to try and go against that, over time I’d end up letting the cat out of the bag. At that point, I have most likely disappointed someone in some way.

Therefore, I have to be true to myself even when the majority of people prefer the lie over the truth. And, that’s what I have found over the course of my life, people just don’t like the truth. That goes for pretty much anything and any topic.

Amazing really, but I understand it.

However, in the particular subject I’m referring I honestly have so many thoughts that it’s hard to compound them into something that is decipherable. There seems to be so many layers upon layers of emotion and just when I get past one, I find another waiting.

In a nutshell, I realize that if I’m forced to (deal/put up) with a certain individual who is nothing short of a miserable, unhappy and bitter person just so I can be around another, the choice is clear. I’ll pass on all of it.

I would like to actually write further about this in a more detailed way and I will, but for now I’m in the early stages of even understanding what has happened.

If I’m in a position to always be the target of someone’s hate then I’ll never be able to be anything more than the eye of a hurricane. I will inevitably be stuck inside the tumultuous winds around me and can never truly escape it.

Unless, I chose to never step inside the eye. And that’s where I’m at. I’m removing myself from the eye and walking completely away because in my opinion it’s just not worth the effort. In other words If I have to tolerate a heinous person just to have a relationship with another, I’d rather just not altogether. I just don’t care that much, and if it makes me a bad person so be it. I can accept it.

I have had to deal with a lot of things in my life that were challenging, difficult and at times down right ugly. Time has passed and that part of my life is over and I finally have the peace, happiness and joy I truly never had. With that being said, I can honestly say, I just don’t have in me to tolerate anything sub par. I don’t have to, and I’m not going to. I refuse to be someone’s target because they themselves can’t put there jealousy, anger and hatred where it belongs, on them. That individual, that one single person, is the very one with the problem. It’s not me. It’s them. And I don’t have to be apart of it. I can separate myself from it and I choose to.

I intend on going further with this because I think it’s important what I want to say and what needs to be said into the universe, but I do need a minute to formulate my words. I need to find them and gather them so I say it right because I truly believe that what I have to say is significant and important.

Perhaps not important to most, but there is atleast one person it might mean something to and even if they never read it, I still need to say it.

So, I’ll close for now with hopes of returning to the continuation very soon.

I’d like to thank my husband, my twin flame and greatest joy for giving me the courage to stand on my own.

Thank you for reading ❤️

The Great Happenstance

The undeniable estrangement of a pisces.

Estrangement. What exactly is it?

From the very moment I was born and drew upon my first breath, I was estranged. In more ways than one, I have always experienced the sensation of ill belonging. I have never fully embraced that which so many others follow. My attention and careful eye was always looking somewhere different.

Often, I wished to be like the masses. That seemed easier in a sense. Later, and of course after much punishment to my own self, I realized it was far easier to be the lone wolf than a wolf among sheep. Sheep get rattled easily when wolves are present, and I do, honestly get that. However, with that understanding comes the next sense of knowing, if I am a wolf then where is my mate.

Some journeys, are life long feats. Those feats are the exact ones that toughen our mind, sharpen our teeth and prepare us for battles ahead. I can’t say, I wasn’t grateful. If not for these spirit hardening obstacles, one could assume, and certainly myself, I would not have made it thus far to even have the remote opportunity to write about it. It was, without question, those beatings that served as a survival tactic in my youth. Simply put, I had been put here without my mate, and I was in desperate search.

If, what I felt existed, then I was meant to find it. I knew I was searching for something. At times, I wasn’t fully sure what that ‘something’ was. I only knew I had been and was, groomed for that moment.

There were times, of course, I thought to myself that it was all a figment of my imagination. That everything I felt was nothing more than fantasy behind a silly dreamers eyes. A sleepless dream, yearning to break free and become as real as was the wooden boy, Pinocchio. I told myself I was crazy, delusional, and even insane to have such ideas. Yet, I always had something manifest right in front of me, reminding me of my path. Atleast, enough of a reminder to keep me looking, that is.

Survival tactics taught by the almighty Universe, have lasting scars. They steal the most innocent parts of you, to only chew them up and spit them at your feet. They beat upon your spirit in ways, not even a fist can do to purple flesh. There is of course the one hit you remember most.

That one horrible blow, the one that hits so hard, it sucks all the air from your lungs. And, for a moment you can’t be for certain, but it’s possible, this, is what it feels like to die. Your credible thoughts slip from your mind as quickly as did your breath. The only thing happening inside that deafening silence is the natural instinct to fight. And, it’s there in that milla second, that your spirit decides if it will try to breath or succomb. I am not even sure if the decision is conscious or merely one made for us by creator, but I can say this. That blow, is the very one that marks your soul with a heavy, burdensome, mark.

There will never be another moment I will be free of knowing what it is to have your spirit broken. As is the graceful spirit of a wild stallion set free upon this earth, to then be caught, corralled and whipped until the last of his spirit, his fight, has drained away. A spark dies out.

Hopelessness, often fills that cavernous void. It reeks such havoc. The darkness swims around you and even then it’s troublesome to locate the light. But, even then, broken and without, something calls to you. It whispers your name, beckoning you on. It knows your suffering and yet it still finds your beauty worthy enough to yet still, call to you.

I never liked my reins, nor did I like the fences. I longed to be free, but not just of these chains, free of the pain, so burned inside me. I would fight, but this time, I would fight without the fear of dying, because I had already experienced that. I fought now, for that one chance that if I were free, I might find what still called to me. My spirit, my soul, although broken, wasn’t too ugly for whatever called to me. I knew, without a compass nor a star in the sky, that I, must, find it.

Escape comes with a great price, there are sacrifices to be made and often they are ones I had wished I could have spared, but none is the sacrifice if it weren’t exactly that. As I have lived a thousand lives inside one, I have walked many miles, down desolate roads. I have twisted my way through endless labyrinths, turning this way and that until I found myself right where I started. I slept a million, sleepless and dreamless nights, under a blanket of stars, that just might would have told me their secrets, if only I had known how to read them.

I was close to giving up, I wanted to. I wanted to close the door on anything I had ever imagined to be true. I wanted to burn the book of anything I believed to be real and simply evolve into a character I had created. And, I was doing so with great effort, but yet still, I felt it. I could hear it, just ever so lightly, but it was there. The whisper, then my name, calling on me.

At first, I was confused by it. I even thought what I heard and what I needed to do, where two separate things. When in fact, they were the same exact thing.I could not fully embrace what I was, who I was because in those moments, I wasn’t fully aware, although it would come soon enough.

The power, the true strength of the flame came from whence I stated what I wanted and then let it go. This time, it was my voice he heard, whispering the call. Unbeknownst even to myself, I had beckoned the flame with undeniable power. The desire to reunite with its truest self, it’s most natural form was beyond any other. In that moment, he, my mate, my twin flame, awnsered the call.

There is nothing short of cosmic in this union. No, it’s not literal explosions of galactic partials floating around in space, but, it is something powerfully moving. So moving, that one must try, as difficult as it is and comprehend what it means for the Universe to right itself.

It is a reversal without actually reversing. It’s becoming whole when there are no pieces to fill the spaces. Our eyes, were miraculously washed clean. Birth, death and even the after all became the same. Suddenly, just as swift as was the power in which I stated my desire, the world changed, just as we did.

And, in that way, we were no longer those lone wolves, searching endlessly for the other. We were, ‘one’ complete, being. We were whole and complete, but even greater still, we were free.

There, in our greatest storms, we battled together, knowing one day we could once again, be as we were. One.

3, is nothing, when compared to forever. 11.11 ♥️

Thanks for reading.

The Southern Oracle

Sixth painting from the series Southern Oracle
Oil on panel 24×36
Mandi Mk Fowler

I don’t exactly like to divulge the reasons or meaning behind a series or specific painting. In my opinion, I find it crippling to the viewer and diminishing to the work.

Several years ago I attended a concert for one of my most beloved female artists. I had listened, cherished and held close the lyrics close as if they were written specifically for me. I carried these musical treasures as if they had the ability to save me from every monster in the closet. It had been a long journey from the time I was 15 all the way to my 30s. In those years that music was exceptionally powerful and in some ways spiritual to me, because it was those words so eloquently written and sang with beautifully chilling vibration that literally held me through some very difficult years.

I felt this strange closeness to it, a connection. I was beyond excited to actually go see her live, let alone have some kind of deeply enlightening experience.

It definitely was, but not exactly in the way I hoped for. You see, it went wrong when she decided to explain every song she ever wrote, why and what she was going through. In those moments, it was like she had just belted me in the face while belching out everything I ever thought about those lyrical chords was all bunk.

Nothing, and I mean nothing was at all what I had believed it to be or mean. In one swift move she had completely ruined this savior I had clung to, this understanding kinship and spiritual meaning.

I learned then, that although it was interesting to know, I wished she had kept that to herself. The music was only subjective when I didn’t know anything other than what the universe wanted to say through it.

I was so upset that for awhile I put her music away and let everything she babbled about mull out of my brain. It took some time before I returned to it but when I did there were still a few songs that she had out right obliterated. I couldn’t hear anything other than her marriage dissolving or a stalking fan. Which I can assure you was never anything I heard when I had found refuge and solace in those albums.

Therefore, I choose to keep my deepest emotions, thoughts and secrets about my series or even individual paintings to myself for the sheer fact that if there is something hidden in them that’s meant just for you then I wouldn’t want to diminish that by telling you anything that might taint that view.

I have never wanted to paint anything that was merely static or white noise for a wall. In fact, I have strived hard to paint things I felt were moving or powerful. Some viewers might not experience that but they wouldn’t choose it because it matched a great set of French curtains or some HGTV make over. I wanted to create something that would speak without anyone saying a word.

I wanted them and hope they elicit a secret to be told only to you, the viewer and that somehow it has a bigger meaning than even the viewer would want to share.

Art should be loved with great conviction so that it never bores or tires. It should always speak to you.

If it doesn’t, then it’s just wall filler.

Sometimes, I like to share my direction but after that it’s up to the viewer to decide, and, I find that more prophetic than a set of tarot cards and a mystic reader.

The only thing anyone really needs to know is that every painting, no matter the subject matter, size or media has a piece of me in it.

Usually, it’s the tiniest of details, or hidden symbolism that no one knows but me, but nevertheless they are there. In some ways, I have often thought they took on a life of their own. They occasionally feel as if they breath in when I turn my back and I know without a shadow of a doubt that late at night, after the lights have been turned down I hear them talking amongst each other as if they are bestest of friends.

I suppose in some ways, they are.

Thank you for reading. ♥️

A poppy seed

Mandi Mk Fowler, Stained glass mosaic on wood. 2020

It’s amazing how something so tiny as a poppy seed can mull around in your thoughts like sugar in a tea pitcher, spinning around until finally it dissolves into you. One tiny little seed. One tiny little thought.

Often, as a child we discovery many things be it through books, movies or something other. It was then that something so powerful struck me unknowingly and it wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized how important that one line in a movie would become. It was my poppy seed, and the prophecy of something to come.

If only I had known then, that it was going to be what it became, perhaps I would have thought on it harder, but that, isn’t the law of the universe.

“Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen, for my will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great.”

“You have no power over me!”

These few, but precious words. It’s a reminder that in weakness I allowed a single person to take my innocence (the babe) and use it like it was theirs to keep, and although that fight lasted another fifteen years, it is finally this moment today that I have taken back what is mine. This person, has no power over me and never did.

The journey has been a labyrinth of wrong turns, obstacles and mistakes. However, it was never about those erroneous hurdles I had to face but more or yet about discovering myself.

It was about finding my own power inside me and letting my voice be heard. I have nothing to prove to anyone and nothing to lose that anyone can take.

And, although I have to remind myself constantly of those words, it is then that I remember I hold the power over me.

I have the power to be whatever I want, without barriers. In that, it’s the most freedom I have felt since I was a little girl watching that one movie over and over in the VCR until I feared it might burn up inside the machine from over play.

The universe is always listening, planting seeds and letting them grow. It’s only when those precious seeds grow, we finally see what it was all planted for.