The Myth
The Myth of the Arc(k)
How the ship was built. Why it sails.
Before there was an ark, there was a broken man, sitting under a tree.
I sat, sketching a spider in ink — the long legs, the geometry, the patient intention.
And then, as if the universe had been listening, a spider fell from the branches of the hemlock tree I was sitting under, and landed on my drawing.
I heard it clearly: Weave a web with your pen and mind.
So I did.
The Storm That Built the Ship
Every Arc(k) faces storms.
And we hope our ships won't sink
We didn't build our boat in wavy waters.
But if we're already sailing, and our boat is beaten and the waves are crashing...we need to know a few things...
We need to be able to remove water from our ship
We need to have a seaworthy hull
We need to repair sails and hoist them up - and there's a time and a place when it's NOT the time or the place...
so How to we get the work done at the right time
The Arc(k) of Animal Alchemy was built during times my ship was battered....
A reckoning with patterns I'd been running for decades without knowing their names.
Fears dressed up as control. Gifts buried under years of unacknowledged value. The slow, painful, finally-beautiful process of learning to sail according to my ships design and patient captaining.
I paint these animals because I needed better memories. Symbols of the larger pattern...and memories of an actual crew.
Each animal had something to teach me about a certain kind of weather.
I'll paint until I have 192 of them. Until every pattern I find in the collective human experience has a face, a shadow, a gift, and a light.
One Arc(k), 64 Patterns
The Arc(k) maps 64 patterns of change — recurring currents that move through every human life, in every era, without exception.
They come from a very old map of change: the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, three thousand years of humanity's attempt to read the sky.
I didn't invent the territory. I drew my own guideposts on it — and painted the animals that live there.
Patterns like:
- creation/destruction
- effort/surrender
- black/white
- color/dullness
- fear/freedom
These are contrasts and nuances in the great 'weather of life'
In understanding contrast, we need to take a journey and this is where the animals come in to help....
Each pattern carries three animals.
The first animal teacher teaches about a shadow, a snare — the storm, the knot, the unconscious fearful undercurrents running your ship.
The second is the Compass — the presence inside the shadow or storm or knot, that we discover as we shine a light, ride the waves, and untie the tangles.
The third is the Lantern — The light - the hues and edges, the calm center, the braided halyards...what it feels like when you're sailing true and the pattern is mastered.....
Shadow -> Presence -> Light.
Sixty-four patterns.
Three animals each.
One big Arc(k).
Why an Ark
Because we're all in one.
Earth is an ark. Carrying all of us...
Our body is an ark...carrying us every day.
And inside all that is an "inner" arc(k) - one that houses the real you
This inner boat can be resilient, and strong and quick and worthy....and also broken and damaged and hurting...
Whether we know it or not, we are all carrying something — some cargo of meaning, some collection of creatures and lessons we've gathered on the journey, some destination we're sailing toward...even when we've lost the coordinates.
The Arc(k) isn't a rescue ship.
It's not a navigation system.
It's a remembering of a version of our selves that wants to be responsible.
We're not waiting to be saved — we're learning to captain our ships, our stories and to sail where we want to go.
In the ocean, "storms" don't just stop.
But we get better at reading them. We discover something about ourselves along the way... And eventually, we realize the storm was the weather that made us who we needed to become.
Come Aboard
The Arc(k) is a living system.
I'm painting it in real time, in the rhythm of the seasons, as the sun moves through sky.... New patterns arrive. New animals board the ship. The map grows.
You're welcome here — whether you spy one animal that stopped you in your tracks, or want to learn the whole map, or just have a place to sit with questions for a bit...
All of it is the Arc(k). All of it is yours to explore.