Today was very warm and the leaves turned even more wildly colorful.

From The Science of Color US Forest Dept

A succession of warm, sunny days and cool, crisp but not freezing nights seems to bring about the most spectacular color displays. During these days, lots of sugars are produced in the leaf but the cool nights and the gradual closing of veins going into the leaf prevent these sugars from moving out. These conditions – lots of sugar and light – spur production of the brilliant anthocyanin pigments, which tint reds, purples, and crimson. Because carotenoids are always present in leaves, the yellow and gold colors remain fairly constant from year to year.

I saw buffalo eating grass under a billboard on a road trip. Buffalo shoulders, eyes, and shagginess seem to already be in the sculpture I'm making. While driving, I started the shape shifting process in my mind of becoming a buffalo in dance.

Early in the morning, while it was still dark, before practicing yoga, I continued to sculpt a section that was becoming like Baci's face a little. Baci was my dog who died last year. I also articulated the vulture form with more detail in another sculpture. There are many Black Vultures on Rt. 385 lately. I contemplated the guts I'm adding too. Tiny disorganized coils draping on thorns, and horns, and upward reaching body parts, not like how I see entrails strewn flat on the road as I pass wild animals that get killed by cars. Hurts. The vultures drag them off to the side of the road and eat them in a way that looks shockingly disrespectful, flinging parts in the air. Its just how they do it. I transform the gut coils in to what I feel alive in my torso- they become like the blazing crimson vines in the trees. That feeling and imagery may happen in the vibrant living spiral of the vinyasa practice.

I remember walking around outside as a kid, finding rocks and plants and making worlds. It feels like that again. The science of color inside. An abundance of sugar and light that can't flow backward. It shows up more vividly the longer it pools. It's cooking in to some kind of magic color array in there with some kind of internal light, perhaps.

clay model for bronze, or food casting