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CWPates

@cwpates.com

1.8K followers 2.8K following 22 posts

#Artist, #Painter and #Writer @ substack.com/@downthewoodedpath www.cwpates.com #Hoarderofrarebirds, #permaculture Please, no blind DMs

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 20/09/2026

"And some things are not seen. Cleaning and cutting squid for fishing, a large female conger crawled six feet from the tide - starving from migration and no fear left - started eating squid from my hand. Like a dog I guess there are levels of animal civility. And happenchance."

cwpates.substack.com

The Larger Conical Hill

ii.) The Larger Conical Hill. Punta Cerotito, Punta Chivato, Baja California Sur, Mexico; Oil on Linen, 28 x 28

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 28/04/2026

cwpates.substack.com/p/dont-tell-...

ii.) Pass Not

“You must descend”, called a voice through many years. The life of me ten years from now grinding away at my past, poking my lazy self. I haven’t written in months. Apart from the odd scribbled text touching on something old. This was old. Binah fallen, grieving her son.

“I dreamt of working a deep seafloor oil well. Huge habitable chambers descending to the ocean floor - stacked one on top of the other – each with oil extraction equipment, pipes going deep into the ground. Except the chambers were compromised, dark oil and water were rising quickly – a greasy dark mixture - as I climbed to escape. I had a single thin rope ladder to climb, and was clothed in heavy mining gear. Looking up there were thousands of feet to climb, the meager rope ladder disappearing into the darkness above. The black waters continuing to rise.”

We were leaving Arizona, and staying in our favorite cheap motel in Mammoth. The ‘mammoth’ gold strike and naming of the town that now sits half abandoned. Everything taken from the place. Its soul hanging between the riches excavated and the poverty of what was left.
Our little end kitchenette suite – next to the pool – with our small daughter running circles. The scrapyard dog behind his fence, behind our motel, barking. Guarding the night and that poverty. Barking and guarding his precious acres.
All the time they did baptisms - the remnants of Mammoth looking for a miracle - the congregation stood around the pool. And God and us drinking cocktails looking on through the pools barred walls. A full clothed baptism in a worn greasy suit. Something to get married in and die in I thought.
The water cold in Arizona’s late Spring, the sun scorching the edges of that cold. He came out of the water shivering, but undoubtedly reborn. The sun shimmering on his cheap suit.
Were we embracing two worlds, or just the one desperately seeking the other? A moment of alignment but not much more. The contradiction always there, the brutality…

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 11/10/2025

Pretty Boy Roderickson is one crow short of a "Cock-a-doodle-doo". He’s always been that way, maybe it’s a step forward?

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 05/07/2025

Brand new Birchen Laced (?) and gorgeous Spangled Rooster. Some way to meet Roderick’s passing. The Blue has Roderick’s soul, and then some.

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 16/06/2025

"I am in that place now and the garden around me is overgrown. Thornapple delights in this unkempt ground. The stink is all around. But with the flowers, bittersweet. This place where meaning has no meaning. Thousand hit wanderers flit from flower to flower. The frogs sing in the nights cool..."

open.substack.com

Thousands of Hits of Nothing

I dreamt an immense evil came up through the ground and flooded through time (both ways backward and forwards).

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 28/05/2025

"i. Darkness Visible".

open.substack.com

"i. Darkness Visible".

Massie's Corner, VA. Oil on Linen, 30" x 28".

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 23/05/2025

"You hear them approach at velocity, collide and buzz around your ears and occasionally get thwarted by ear hairs. But this egregious smite – like a neutrino through lead – flew straight to my eardrum. How thankful of ear hairs I will now remain! The first time I’ve ever heard a fly flap its wings"

Birthday Poem – For Virginia

You hear them approach at velocity, collide and buzz around your ears and occasionally get thwarted by ear hairs. But this egregious smite – like a neutrino through lead – flew straight to my eardrum. How thankful of ear hairs I will now remain!
The first time I’ve ever heard a fly flap its wings - a mechanical flip-flap for quite some minutes – a wonder I suppose! Meanwhile I was slapping myself on the other side of my head, cork crewing my very smallest finger and pulling at my ear in painful ways.
The human part of me was very distressed, something had breached my defenses and was moving to my inner core. Death Star levels of emotion started rising in me, was I that defenseless (and what next)? Then all went silent! For a good few minutes!
The gullible half of me relaxed. This small moment must have passed. Or flew off. Two, three minutes nothing. Then pain. My ear ached and my soul ached with distress! flip-flap, Flip-Flap, FLIP-FLAP, then a buzzing epiphany! I held my ear and ran inside.
I cork-screwed a Harris Teeter ‘Premium’ tissue into my ear canal. There was some regress from torment, the pain backed off. And upon extraction, some ear wax and hairs and blood. I’d been fed upon! A day that will blight the rest of my life...

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 06/05/2025

"I have made some kind of accord. The hounds that bay and bite are now quiet. Very friendly too. They are now the most beautiful liquid metal blues and violets. The gates that they guard have also changed."

open.substack.com

Rainbow Fish Bull Terriers

In memoriam: Cerium the goose

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 22/04/2025

The moon's my constant mistress, And the lonely owl my marrow; The flaming drake and the night crow make Me music to my sorrow. The spirits white as lightning Would on my travels guide me The stars would shake and the moon would quake Whenever they espied me... by Mad Tom O' Bedlam

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Reposted by CWPates

Octopus Lawyer @octopuslawyer.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

seems reasonable

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Reposted by CWPates

Ian Duhig @ianduhig.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Simic's most Yorkshire poem

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 13/03/2025

A Mouse Story open.substack.com/pub/cwpates/...

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 09/03/2025

"The frogs are now singing but Roderick can't hear them. Three nights ago (all pious and sanguine in faith) Reynard came to call. Old friends they were, but poor friends then and now! Our second rooster - the back door man - came to meet Reynard with chivalry and all a second rooster can bring.."

open.substack.com

Rainbow Fish Bull Terriers

the other side (March 3rd)

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Reposted by CWPates

CWPates @cwpates.com · 07/03/2025

open.substack.com/pub/slavic70...

open.substack.com

Blue

A cautionary feathered tale.

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CWPates @cwpates.com · 07/03/2025

open.substack.com/pub/slavic70...

open.substack.com

Blue

A cautionary feathered tale.

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