Modern Totemic & Buddhist-like Imagery

In 2010, I severely injured my shoulder in mid-winter and could not move my right arm for 7 months. It was extremely painful and unnerving since I am right-handed. While I was being treated with prolotherapy, I taught myself to use a complex photo editing program, GIMP, similar to Photoshop, with my left hand. While walking along the two rivers behind my home on those winter days, I took many digital photographs and began creating photocollages from them. It became an obsession. I had numerous images printed on metallic paper and aluminum. Throughout my life, I have had many unusual and mystical experiences through an intimate embrace of nature that inspired an awareness of the animism in the natural world. This awareness influenced the digital imagery I created in the photocollages. As an example of my intimate experiences, I have watched Great Horned Owls express individualistic courtship rituals and mate more than a dozen times. On one unusual occasion with a female owl, she flew into my yard and perched above me. While looking down at me, she gave her mating call which I returned. She began leaning down towards me as she vocalized and I would answer her. We repeated this exchange many times.  Fledgling owls interacted often with my lover and me during our first spring together. We watched them each evening on our walks as they were learning to fly. Once, the pair perched on a wooden crossbar beside where we walked and, when we returned, one fledgling flew in front of us as if to show his prowess. When he tried to land on a twig-like branch, he ended up hanging by one foot upside down as he awkwardly flapped his wings. It was comical. Humor can emerge from what seems sacred. May we all be blessed with personal experiences that evoke a sense of oneness and connection with our world.