The Leveret

Hare Décor II

2012-01-20T12:18:00.001-08:00

Image: The Leveret.

Boys Will Be Boys II

2012-01-09T13:06:00.001-08:00

Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

Lapin aux Belles-de-Jour

2012-01-01T11:12:00.000-08:00

Image: "Lapin aux Belles-de-Jour" by C.C. Barton.

Bel Homme XI

2011-12-24T08:08:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Dancing Hares

2011-12-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

Image: OZinOH.
Sculpture: "Dancing Hares" by Sophie Ryder (Ballantrae Park, Dublin, Ohio).

Morning Light XLIII

2011-12-16T08:12:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Winter Hare

2011-12-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

Image: "Hare in Winter" by Philip Black.

Boys Will Be Boys

2011-12-02T08:02:00.000-08:00

Introducing a new series celebrating the exuberant, playful, often erotically-charged energy of males together – gay, straight and everywhere in between. Enjoy!

Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

Mysterious Assemblies

2011-11-28T08:11:00.001-08:00

. . . [Norman Halkett] is one of the few people to have seen the mysterious circular assembly of hares. . . .

"No one has ever been able to explain to me fully just why hares do on occasion sit in a wide circle with one or two or even more of their number having a gambols or frolics inside the circle. . . . I have seen it at least three times in my life, from as small a circle as say ten or twelve, to as many as thirty or forty hares, all performing at once. Some standing up . . . bolt upright on their hind-legs, others sitting on their hunkers, as we say, and some actually lying down as though they weren't paying much attention. But it does happen and I would honestly like to know what it really means."

– Excerpted from The Leaping Hare
by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
p. 53

Image: MajorWildlife.co.uk via WonderfulWorldOfImages.com.

Bel Homme X

2011-11-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Running Hare XI

2011-11-18T23:18:00.000-08:00

Image: "Running Hare in Iron Oxide" by Sophy White.

Morning Light XLII

2011-11-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

An Extraordinary Capacity

2011-11-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

Despite their reputation for rapid increase and hyper-sexuality, hares are not especially prolific breeders compared to rabbits – much less so compared to rodents. . . . But the brown hare does exhibit one extraordinary reproductive capacity which has provided, in the exaggerated descriptions given of it from Aristotle onwards, the basis for its reputation for unique and almost preternatural sexual proclivities and increase.

Unlike most mammals, both female rabbits and hares will continue to mate while pregnant. But only the brown hare is capable of conceiving a second time – of carrying two potential litters at different stages of development. Superfetation, as it is called, can occur as a rare event in most mammals, even in humans. It has been recorded in populations of brown hares in up to 13 percent of females, a remarkably high and probably conservative figure. For Aristotle it was a primary characteristic of hares – and subsequent writers almost competed with each other to emphasize and exaggerate its miraculousness.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
pp. 34-35

Halloween Hare

2011-10-31T16:11:00.000-07:00

Image: "Halloween Hare" by Robin Seeber.

Tan Lines XXXIV

2011-10-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Arabian Hare

2011-10-25T19:47:00.000-07:00

The Arabian hare is the largest species of Cape hare and can be found in Syria, Lebanon, northern Israel, the United Arab Emirates and across the Arabian peninsula. Arabic names for hares in this region include arnab, arneeb, harneed and haineeb.

Arabian hares have exceptionally long ears and pale, almost bleached coats which serve as effective camouflage for their life in the desert.

Much smaller than their European counterparts, Arabian hares rarely drink water, but obtain moisture from the grasses and shrubs that they eat.

Images: Bernard Blesl.

Bel Homme IX

2011-10-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

Following is one of several advertisements for Arisa - "the world's first gay Middle-Eastern party." Enjoy!

Recommended Off-site Link: Arisa on Facebook.

Elaborate Means

2011-10-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

Hares have . . . developed relatively complex escape and concealment strategies in addition to speed, endurance and camouflage. . . . The brown hare in particular employs elaborate means to confuse its scent trail, including doubling back on its tracks; leaping sideways to break the trail; entering and leaving its form in ways designed to construct a 'maze' for predators hunting by scent. They also establish regular routes or 'racetracks' in the vicinity of their forms, and 'meuses' or gaps in hedges and fences facilitating rapid egress from enclosed fields.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
pp. 31-32

Image: "Run, Hare, Run" by Fresnay.

Morning Light XLI

2011-10-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Table Hare

2011-10-02T11:27:00.001-07:00

Image: The Leveret.

Bel Homme VIII

2011-09-26T19:27:00.001-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

A Different Dimension

2011-09-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

To watch a hare in full flight is . . . to get an idea of the physical limitations of the human body. It seems to be moving in a slightly different dimension, or to cover the ground without the usual constraints of gravity and lateral resistance. Like 'the shadow of a wind-driven cloud,' or 'more like a low-flying bird than a running animal' . . . Even the word 'running' is not quite adequate to its bounding locomotion.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
p. 24

Image: "Young Brown Hare at Speed" by Andy Fisher (2009).

The Body: A Holy Place of Romp and Renewal

2011-09-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

The soul expresses itself throughout the body, in its members, organs, nerves, and cells, in all actions of desire, daring, and droop, wherever you ache and wherever you soar. Every nook and cranny of yourself can flutter and stretch, exude and hum, in experiencing the pleasures and pain of being alive. The body is a holy place of romp and renewal. It is not the shameful sewer that orthodox religions insist upon. Novalis said, "There is only one temple in the world, and that is the human body." From your tiptoe to your topknot you are throbbingly alive in the dance of the divine mystery.

The genitals, the anus, and the perineum are the holy trinity at the root of your torso's experience. The penis is the exposed tip of the heart and the wand of the soul. The perineum animates all the chakras. The anus is the transforming and recycling volcano that fertilizes new growth.

The proper activity in a temple is worship. Open your temple to love. . . .

– James Broughton
"Gaiety of Soul"
in Gay Soul: Finding the Heart of Gay Spirit and Nature
(edited by Mark Thompson)

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Good Luck

2011-09-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Despite widespread beliefs that the sight of a hare was a bad omen, in a few parts of Britain hares were thought to bring good luck. Some regions held that if a hare was encountered then a wish could be made as soon as it had passed by. To see a black one was a sign of good fortune, although a white one brought bad luck.

. . . Cultures in the Middle East used the symbol of the hare to signify the good fortune of a great hero. In some ancient Bedouin legends the hare’s power to counterarct evil forces was specifically identified with the female hare called ‘Akrasha.’ It was believed that she gave protection against leopards and other predators.

– Jill Mason
The Hare
p.112

Image: "The Black Hare" by Julie Allen.

The Death of Antinoüs

2011-09-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

By Mark Doty

When the beautiful young man drowned –
accidentally, swimming at dawn
in a current too swift for him,
or obedient to some cult
of total immersion that promised
the bather would come up divine,

mortality rinsed from him –
Hadrian placed his image everywhere,
a marble Antinoüs staring across
the public squares where a few dogs
always scuffled, planted
in every squalid little crossroad

at the farthest corners of the Empire.
What do we want in any body
but the world? And if the lover’s
inimitable form was nowhere,
then he would find it everywhere,
though the boy became simply more dead

as the sculptors embodied him.
Wherever Hadrian might travel,
the beloved figure would be there
first: the turn of his shoulders,
the exact marble nipples,
the drowned face not really lost

to the Nile – which has no appetite,
merely takes in anything
without judgment or expectation –
but lost into its own multiplication,
an artifice rubbed with oils and acid
so that the skin might shine.

Which of these did I love?
Here is his hair, here his hair
again. Here the chiseled liquid waist
I hold because I cannot hold it.
If only one of you, he might have said
to any one of the thousand marble boys anywhere,

would speak. Or the statues might have been enough,
the drowned boy blurred as much by memory
as by water, molded toward an essential,
remote ideal. Longing, of course,
becomes its own object, the way
that desire can make anything into a god.

Taken from Love Speaks It's Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems, selected and edited by J. D. McClatchy (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2001).

For a video of Mark Doty talking about Hadrian and Antinoüs and reading his poem "The Death of Antinoüs," click here.

See also the previous posts:
Antinous
Ganymede and Zeus

Recommended Reading: Beloved and God: The Story of Hadrian and Antinous by Royston Lambert.

Opening image: "Antinous" by Teotemerity.

Tan Lines XXXIII

2011-08-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Lepus – Constellation of Hare

2011-08-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Blandine Anderson’s painted works employ both Acrylics and Oil-paint. More recently, she has favoured heavily textured oil paint, built up in thick layers, which is combed, scratched and scumbled - to echo the textural qualities found in her ceramic works.

As in her recent ceramics, these paintings explore Blandine’s interest in natural forms and are often initially inspired by seeds and leaves. From this starting point, similar shapes from other sources are assimilated. These may be plants, bones, the bodies of living creatures, a piece of circuitry from an electrical appliance, the contours of a map, or the shape of a field. The shapes become intermingled and abstracted in the sketch-book, so that what begins as a seed may very easily become a bird.

The resulting images are not intended to be illusory – they explore the qualities of paint on the surface of the canvas. They are merely evocative of recognizable shapes or subjects. For this reason they are usually un-framed – painted on deep-edged canvasses, which emphasize their actuality.

– Source

Image: "Lepus – Constellation of Hare" by Blandine Anderson.

See also the previous posts:
Even in the Heavens
The Hare on the Moon
Hare Moon
In the Light of the Moon
Moon-Struck
A Solstice Approaches . . .

Bel Homme VII

2011-08-22T08:22:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Even in the Heavens

2011-08-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

Writes Simon Carnell in Hare:

Due to their relatively exposed way of living hares have an unusually high number of predators, with high mortality rates among their young. Adult hares live on average no more than one year, compared to a potential lifespan of up to twelve years. There is an epigram by Ausonius in which a hare hunted to the seashore by dogs and men cries out, before being eaten by a dog-fish, that "all rape of land and sea is on me/ even of the heavens, if there is a dog-star." An ironic conclusion, since in the southern night sky there is both a "dog-star" and a "lepus" constellation at the foot of the hunter Orian.

Merman V

2011-08-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Image 1: Artist unknown.
Image 2: DeZarin.
Image 3: Christina DeHoff.

Hare By the Sea

2011-08-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Image: Vince Cowell.

Bel Homme VI

2011-08-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Standing Erect

2011-08-05T15:59:00.000-07:00

"Lepus" (giclée on canvas, 42" X 28") by Robert Bissell.

Says the artist: "This large portrait of a hare standing erect was one of a series of paintings based on 18th century French and English portraits by Boucher and Gainsborough. Designed to make their subjects appear larger than life and removed from the common, they’ve always struck me as ostentatious. I wondered how it would feel if the style were applied to animals that stand on two legs—looking directly down at us, challenging our place and way of thinking."

Morning Light XL

2011-08-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

Image: Charles Thomas Rogers.

See also the previous posts:
Hard
Tools of Attraction

The Hare's Unusual Attraction to Airfields

2011-07-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

Note George Ewart Evans and David Thomson in The Leaping Hare . . .

One unusual feature of the hare’s behavior has caused a great deal of interest . . . both among naturalists and the general public. This is the hare’s frequent choosing of aerodromes on which to converge and, in fact, to live.

. . . Hares are to be seen on many airfields in many different countries: Prague, Frankfurt, Heathrow and so on. . . . This is the kind of behavior, contradictory and unpredictable as it is, that is nevertheless not too much out of character in the hare. For the common phrase hare-brained refers not so much to a lack of intelligence as to a wild impetuosity. Why, for instance, does such a shy and fearful creature choose the noisiest, most dangerous and most frequented spot in the modern urban complex to disport itself in?

There have been many attempts to explain why the hare appears to be so attracted to airfields. [Henry] Tegner [in his book on the hare] quotes a Natural History Museum expert as saying: “The hares seem to like the noise and the vibration.

. . . Others have put forward the theory that it is the abundant food they can get on the stretches of well-kept turf between the runways that has drawn hares to aerodromes. Good grazing is undoubtedly a factor in keeping them on an airfield; but it is questionable whether it is the main attraction. There is strong evidence that aircraft themselves attract the hares in the first place. For when in recent years an aerodrome frequented by hares was closed for repairs, the hares followed the aeroplanes to the satellite aerodrome which became the temporary landing place. But why should aeroplanes attract hares?

. . . Early reports of the hare following aircraft suggest that the hare’s reaction is inbuilt, an instinctive impulse to emulate the speed of the aeroplane by running alongside it: it suggests that the hare is purposefully ‘taking on’ the aircraft, responding to what it interprets as a challenge. This fits in well with what we know of the playfulness of the hare, of its delight in its own swiftness, and its readiness – in spite of its fear – to pit itself on occasion against a fast moving object. The hare’s main strength lies in its speed: it does not go to ground and relies on its speed to get itself out of trouble; therefore when it plays, as it appears to be doing when it courses alongside aircraft, it is likely that in showing its speed it is using one of its strongest instincts of self-expression.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
pp. 28-31

Related Off-site Link:
Milan Airport Shut by Hare Plague – Mark Duff (BBC News, June 17, 2007).

Bel Homme V

2011-07-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Anarchist Hare

2011-07-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Writes Simon Carnell . . .

Naturalists such as Ernst Haeckel were quick to explore the reactionary political implications of [Charles] Darwin's major work. The anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin, in his Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), set out to contest conceptions of a perpetual, selfish and bloody war between and with species by giving a thoroughgoing account of their co-operations. When he reaches the hare, he is forced to concede the fact that it is relatively asocial, is "not even endowed with intense parental feelings," and displays a marked antipathy towards its closet relative, the rabbit. Undeterred, however, it is at that point in his text that Kropotkin introduces the idea of the "pleasures" animals in general derive from playing together, asserting in particular that "our common hares . . . cannot live without coming together for play." To back this up he quotes a contemporary hare expert who testifies to the fact that they are such "passionate players" they have even been known to take an approaching fox for a playmate. What happens next to the hare is passed over in silence, in this almost subliminal reference to a pre-Fall or Golden Age. Kropotkin concludes with an ingenious explanation of the antipathy between hares and rabbits. Hares are "passionate, eminently individualist"; rabbits "placid, quiet and submissive": "their tempers are too widely different not to be an obstacle to friendship." Far from contradicting the general political argument with which he frames his natural history, then, the hare turns out, like Kropotkin, to be nothing less than a committed anarchist – with a natural scorn for the bourgeois conformism of the rabbit with its "family life . . . entirely built upon the image of the old patriarchal family."

– Simon Carnell
Hare
pp 17-19

See also the previous posts:
Unhoused
Buck
A Roaming Life
Antipathy
Much in Common

Image: Photographer unknown.

Tan Lines XXXII

2011-07-02T20:03:00.001-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Rabbit That's Actually a Hare

2011-06-29T20:33:00.000-07:00

Notes National Geographic:

Jackrabbits are actually hares, not rabbits. Hares are larger than rabbits, and they typically have taller hind legs and longer ears. Jackrabbits were named for their ears, which initially caused some people to refer to them as "jackass rabbits." The writer Mark Twain brought this name to fame by using it in his book of western adventure, Roughing It. The name was later shortened to jackrabbit.

There are five species of jackrabbits, all found in central and western North America. They are speedy animals capable of reaching 40 miles (64 kilometers) an hour, and their powerful hind legs can propel them on leaps of more than ten feet (three meters). They use these leaps and a zigzag running style to evade their many predators.

To read more about jackrabbits, click here.

Image: Annie Griffiths Belt.

Morning Light XXXIX

2011-06-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

An Extraordinary and Ancient Archetype

2011-06-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

Notes artist Hester Cox:

The hare is an extraordinary and ancient archetype which is important to many different cultures and inspires countless artists today. In many mythic traditions, the hare is a lunar animal associated with femininity, longevity and rebirth. Look a little deeper and you find that the hare is a paradoxical creature symbolising both foolishness and intelligence, lust and purity, witchcraft and Christianity.

Image: "Swift as a Hare" by Hester Cox.

A Solstice Approaches . . .

2011-06-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

. . . Unnoticed

By James Carroll

The Boston Globe
June 20, 2011

Once, humans were intimate with the cycles of nature, and never more than on the summer solstice. Vestiges of such awareness survive in White Nights and Midnight Sun festivals in far northern climes, and in neo-pagan adaptations of Midsummer celebrations, but contemporary people take little notice of the sun reaching its far point on the horizon. Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, the official start of the summer season, the fullest of light — yet we are apt to miss this phenomenon of Earth’s axial tilt, as we miss so much of what the natural world does in our surrounds.

In recent months, catastrophic weather events have dominated headlines as rarely before — earthquakes and tsunami in Asia; volcanic cloud in Europe; massive ice melts at the poles; tornadoes, floods, and fires in America. “Records are not just broken,” an atmospheric scientist said last week, “they are smashed.” Without getting into questions of causality, and without anthropomorphizing nature, we can still take these events as nature’s cri de coeur — as the degraded environment’s grabbing of human lapels to say, “Pay attention!”

To our ancestors in the deep past, that attention to nature was, well, natural. They made the evolutionary leap into human consciousness through close observation, among other things, of what heavenly bodies do in the sky. In a cosmos over which they had no control, paying attention to patterns of heat and cold, light and dark, rain and drought was a matter of survival. The invention of agriculture depended on awareness of seasons, so that times of planting and harvesting, herding and grazing, could be depended upon. Movements of the sun and moon were seen to have both influences on, and counterparts in, individual human experience — from mood swings to menstruation to aging. Astrology opened into astronomy, calculation into mathematics, scrutiny into science. Definitions of the calendar were essential to culture. The solstice was a marker of all this.

But this habit of regard for nature was essential also to the transition into modernity. Contemplation of the sun was nothing less than the incubator of our age. Copernicus and Galileo, after all, ushered humans into the breakthrough of testable knowledge by means of their study — one theorizing, the other experimenting — of Earth’s place in the solar system. The solstice, previously perceived as the sun’s standing still for a moment before reversing course on the horizon, would never be understood that way again. Heliocentrism initiated the maturing of science, which eventually would demonstrate that seasonal rhythms not only produce global dynamics of climate but also hormonal changes — daily, weekly, monthly — within the individual human body, each person biologically synchronized to the cosmic clock. Because of science, we were able to grasp the age of the earth — to know that there have been more than 4 billion summer solstices. Humans awakened to the full complexity of the universe.

Ironically, the accompanying social revolution of industrialization led to illusions of human mastery over nature, and ultimately to detached indifference toward it. Contemporary technological civilization became blinded to key phenomena of the living world, much as the night sky is blotted out by the artificial light of cities. Most recently, the cycles of time have given way to the eternal present of the computer screen — detachment squared. As humans came to know so much, we lost our grip on the knowledge with which we became human: our familiarity with the physical universe we live in. Imagining that we no longer needed nature, we ourselves became the great threat to nature. As our sense of the complexities of life quickened and deepened, our destructiveness of life also quickened and deepened. Through ambitions of unlimited growth, consumption, competitive manufacture, and self-expanding technology, we humans have become a mechanism of extinction. When we stopped noticing Earth, we began to destroy it.

Intimate awareness of nature and its cycles, as we saw, was an ancient mode of survival. But survival is at issue again. Noticing the length of light now, reveling in the sun’s achievement, rejoicing in Earth’s perfect balance, honoring the summer solstice — loving it: This is how we became human, and it is how we stay human.

James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Globe.

Bel Homme IV

2011-06-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Maximum Significance

2011-05-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

Due to its historical multivalence, the archive of associations which it has generated, the hare is rip to be . . . squeezed for maximum, even ultimately uncertain or inchoate significance. Amongst the kinds of things which it has been made or co-opted to signify is, precisely, this poetically open-ended or resonant quality. That said, they tend to cluster around a number of areas more or less troped upon its natural history: sex, death, speed and vitality, super-sensitivity, elusiveness and cunning; untamed or unfathomable "wildness," with only their sinister portentousness bucking the trend.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
pp 45-46

Image: Catherine Hyde.

Bel Homme III

2011-05-28T12:19:00.001-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Much in Common

2011-05-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

The hare and the fox have much in common. They are both active by night, both symbols of the irrational, the intuitive, of cunning and the fickleness of the moon.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 218

Image: Detail of "The Forest" tapestry by William Morris.

The White Hare

2011-05-15T07:05:00.000-07:00

The White Hare
By Seth Lakeman

I heard her in the valley,
I heard her in the dead of night.
The warning of a white hare
Her eyes burning bright.

Careful you don’t catch her
Or give her right of way.
For she will look upon you,
Steal your soul away

For the white hare is calling,
Dancing in the night.
She’ll be out ’til the morning,
With eyes burning bright.
The white hare is calling you.

Out upon the heather
A shadow came onto me.
Her hair was hanging over,
Her face I could not see.

She ran behind the rocks,
I heard the hounds cry,
The image of a woman
With her head held up high.

For the white hare is calling,
Dancing in the night.
She’ll be out ’til the morning
With eyes burning bright.
The white hare is calling you.

If you go hunting,
Calling out your prey,
If you see a fair maid,
With her hair ash and grey.

Careful you don’t catch her,
Give her right of way,
For she will look upon you,
Steal your soul away.

Recommended Off-site Link:
Seth Lakeland's Official Website

Tan Lines XXXI

2011-05-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Running Hare X

2011-05-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

Image: Scott West.

Morning Light XXXVIII

2011-04-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Easter Hare

2011-04-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

According to Bede the name of the Christian festival of Easter was adopted from an Anglo-Saxon goddess called Eostre, spelt by other writers Eastre, Ostara, or Eastur. The name is cognate with Aurora, Eros and with Ushas, the Sanskrit for dawn. The month of April was called Eostur-monath, the Dawn month, and the pre-Christian festival of Easter included rites symbolic of death and resurrection. Few details are known, but there is no reason to think that it differed basically from other spring festivals such as that of Adonis . . . which were held in Western Asia and in Greek lands.

Eastre's favourite animal and attendant spirit was the hare. Little else is known about her, but it has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of the dawn, were carried by hares. . . . The hare was a companion of Aphrodite too, and of satyrs and cupids. Wedding rings in ancient Greece bore its image and in the Middle Ages it appears beside the figure of Luxuria [self-indulgent sexual desire, personified as one of the deadly sins]. Elsewhere it represented love, fertility and growth. It is associated with the moon, dawn and Easter not only in this respect – as a symbol of physical growth – but in their deeper, spiritual meanings: the enlightenment of the soul through death, redemption and resurrection. Like the Easter egg itself the hare is an emblem of body and soul.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
pp 132-134

Image: The Leveret.

Body and Soul

2011-04-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

Like a hare springing erect and bounding exuberantly across a dew-kissed field, the beauty and energy of the aroused male embodies the burgeoning life force often associated with spring.

The hare is symbolic of natural phenomena that connote actions of the aroused male: the rising sun, the coming spring. In folklore, art and dreams, hares herald great bursts of energy and creativity. They are often thought to be touched by divine madness, by a spirit of anarchy that overturns dogmatic tradition and restrictions. They are tricksters, offering us new ways of seeing and being in the world. They are emblems of the integration of body and soul.

The hare was the Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess Eastre's companion and messenger. It is said that her illuminating and warming powers, as goddess of the dawn, were embodied and channeled by hares. Like her, they represent the love and carnal pleasure that can lead to flourishment, to renewal, to the blossoming forth of life. They therefore have a reputation for lusty sexuality and fecundity. One artist who has incorporated this symbolism into his work is Mexican painter and sculptor Francisco Toledo.

Simon Carnell notes that in Toledo's art, "conspicuously sexualized as well as trickster-like hares can be found copulating with, fellating and buggering human figures, in a literalization of their symbolic associations with sex." In Toledo's "Crafty Hare" (opening image) a man-hare possesses four erect penises, two as ears, and is surrounded by wasps with over-sized stingers (pricks!)

Image 1: Francisco Toledo.
Image 2: The Leveret.
Image 3: Robert Canis.
Image 4: Francisco Toledo.

Unhoused

2011-04-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

[Hares'] speed, camouflage, lack of family life and even size are linked as adaptations to their principal behavioural difference from the rabbit, namely, the fact that they do not burrow. Though there are exceptions to this rule, with certain desert-dwelling hares using or extending the burrows of other animals to escape the sun, and with mountain hares occasionally using short burrows to escape predation from above, most hares make do instead with a 'form' or resting place which consists of only a narrow scrape on the surface of the earth. As a result of this, or an intimate parallel connection to being 'unhoused' or unprotected, hares are extremely precocial.* For whereas rabbits, like most small mammals, are born blind and naked in a prepared 'nest,' leverets are born fully furred, able to see, and able to move about soon after birth. . . . Whereas the rabbit is a large small animal, the hare has developed in ways more consistent with being a small large one.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
p. 61

* precocial – adjective. An animal species active and able to move freely from birth or hatching and requiring little parental care ( opposed to altricial).

Running Hare IX

2011-04-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

Image: Julia Cassels.

Bel Homme II

2011-04-02T06:04:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Hare-Witch

2011-03-28T20:15:00.001-07:00

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomsen.

_________________________________

None of [the traditional understandings of the witch] can help us in our inquiry into the origin of the hare-witch concept. For this we must turn to a much more matter-of-fact image: the witch as a survivor of the priest, priestess, or leading participant in the ceremonies of a very ancient religion.

[Humanity] was bound to animals from the very beginning. Animals were an essential part of religion; and the core of the ritual of this religion was concerned to consecrate the animals and to ensure that they would survive and multiply in order to help humans sustain themselves on this earth. . . . Our thesis is that the hare was one of those consecrated animals; and in the periodic celebration of the rituals connected with this creature, certain members of the group (witches, if we are allowed to use the anachronism) assumed the shape of the hare as part of the ritual.

We know from the cave figures at Le Gabillou and Isturitz that early humans were involved with the hare; and we can infer that the people who were taking part in the ceremonies concerning the hare took its skin and head as part of their dress and simulated the actions of the animals as they had observed them in the wild state. . . . During these rituals the animal-humans worked themselves into a trance in which they believed they became, or were changed into, the group or totem animal. This was done, as already suggested, either for religious reasons – for cementing the identity of the group with the animal – or for magical reasons: for ensuring the success of the hunting of the animal that was to follow the ceremony. Probably, however, both purposes were implicit in each ritual.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomas
The Leaping Hare
Pp. 144-145

Image: Artist unknown.

Tan Lines XXX

2011-03-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Hare Décor

2011-03-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

Image: The Leveret.

Running Hare VIII

2011-03-23T19:47:00.001-07:00

Image: Tracey Long.

Bel Homme

2011-03-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

Subject: Rafael Branciforti. Photographer: Unknown.

Love-Gifts

2011-03-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

The use of the hare as a sexual symbol or emblem [is] not unique to Greece. But there are vase-paintings depicting a practice that was: the giving of hares as love-gifts.

Examples of those images include men offering hares to women, usually in a lightly eroticized scenario. And men offering the creatures to other men, usually an older man making a gift to a younger, depicted in such a way as to make the sexual meaning of the image explicit. In one such image the hare is stretched out horizontally to make physical connection between the standing figure who holds it by its back legs and ears, and the seated youth on whose shoulders the front legs of the hare rest. This stretching out of the hare, and the artist's skill in painting it, gives to its body a lithe or nubile character which enhances and further clarifies its homoeroticism.

– Simon Carnell
Hare
p. 61

Image: Erich Lessing Photo Archive.

Bath Time

2011-03-12T16:31:00.000-08:00

Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

Moon-Struck

2011-03-08T08:03:00.001-08:00

Primitive man, who was the father of myth, tended with his keenness of observation of natural phenomena to link together things which appeared to him to have like attributes. The hare-moon parallel would not have escaped him. The moon is the emblem of inconstancy: it is always changing its place in the sky, and even over two consecutive nights its shape, point and time of appearance in the sky are different.

The hare has a similar attribute. It will appear suddenly in an unexpected place, stand up or leap precipitately out of its form or cover in the undergrowth. It will pause a moment, dart off at speed, only to reappear a few moments later running in an entirely different direction. In the popular imagination, too, the moon (luna) is equated with lunacy; and there is a traditional belief that if you sleep out in the moonlight you are inviting madness, which is presumably the danger which the Psalmist gave assurance against: "The sun shall not strike thee by day nor the moon by night."

The hare's apparent madness at the chief mating season is also well known. It throws all its natural caution to the winds and becomes the opposite of the timid creature that will leap precipitately and hurl itself away from danger. The irrational behaviour of the March hare is therefore another reason for labelling the hare as mad or moon-struck.

– George Ewart and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 113

Image 1: "Lunar Hare" by Mandy Walden.
Image 2: "As Gold Moon Rolled, the Quest Began" by Mandy Walden.

Tan Lines XXIX

2011-03-03T15:11:00.000-08:00

Subject: Will Fennell.
Photographer: James Demitri.

Recommended Off-site Links:
Will Fennell: Beauty and Grooming Expert
Will Fennell's Lovely DNA – Queerty (July 31, 2008).
Will Fennell, Aussie Queer Eye Guy, Strips Down for DNA – Hunk de Jour (July 31, 2008).

Hares in Winter

2011-02-28T23:02:00.000-08:00

Image: One Pink Goose.

Morning Light XXXVII

2011-02-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

The Chinese Year of the Hare

2011-02-03T15:03:00.000-08:00

It's the year of the hare! This year we will be licking our wounds and recovering from the fierceness of the year of the tiger. It will be a year of self-reflection and inward journeys.

-- Source

There's such a huge difference between the gentleness of this Hare or Rabbit year, after Tiger, who has been so powerful. And we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, because Dragon is next year 2012, which will be extremely transformational and positive. So this wonderful, gentle time of the Year of the Hare, we can heal, transform, [use] diplomacy, be kind and pure with each other.

Taste and refinement are valued. Comfort is desired. Money can be made easily but also spent easily because the hare or rabbit loves beauty, luxury or artifice. Remember, Dragon Year 2012 will be very powerful, shamanic, a wild, exhausting time. So appreciate the small pleasures of this Hare Year 2011 as superb and somewhat rare opportunities to heal, relax, entertain, mend fences.

If relationships have been difficult, now would be the time to build those bridges again. Reach out, connect, heal. Make time for family gatherings and comfortable travel. Expect political compromise and diplomatic peacemaking on a global level. Discretion and persuasion are effective in a Rabbit Year, whereas force will not work.

-- Susan Levitt
Quoted in "Astrologer Advises Rest, Recuperation in Year of the Hare"
by Kate Woodsome
Voice of America News
February 3, 2011

See also the previous posts:
Chinese Year of the Hare
Sign of the East

Tan Lines XXVIII

2011-01-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Merman IV

2010-12-20T04:50:00.001-08:00

Tan Lines XXVII

2010-12-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Edgy and Contemporary

2010-11-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

Located in the hinterland of Byron Bay, Australia, the property of “Amileka” comes complete with 360 degree views, an outdoor pool and a giant red hare (or is it a rabbit?).

Awarded “Best Property Australia” in the 2009 CNBC International Property Awards, the 2008 Architecture Award from the Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Country Division), and the 2009 Master Builders Association Regional Award, “Amileka” has been described as an “edgy contemporary home.” When can I move in?

Tan Lines XXVI

2010-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Running Hare VII

2010-11-12T22:10:00.000-08:00

Image: Artist unknown.

Morning Light XXXVI

2010-11-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

Subject: David Rich.
Photographer: Unknown.

The Sea Hare

2010-10-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Notes Wikipedia:

The clade Aplysiomorpha commonly known as sea hares are medium-sized to very large sea slugs with a soft internal shell made of protein. These are marine gastropod molluscs in the superfamilies Aplysioidea and Akeroidea.

The common name "sea hare" derives from their rounded shape and from the two long rhinophores that project upwards from their heads and that somewhat resemble the ears of a hare.

Sea hares are mostly rather large, bulky creatures. The biggest species, Aplysia vaccaria, can reach a length of 75 centimetres (30 in) and a weight of 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) and is arguably the largest gastropod species.

Sea hares have soft bodies with an internal shell, and like all opistobranch mollusks they are hermaphroditic. Unlike many other gastropods, they are more or less bilaterally symmetrical in their external appearance. The foot has lateral projections, or "parapodia."

Sea hares are herbivore/herbivorous, and are typically found on seaweed in shallow water. It seems to be the case that some young sea hares are capable of burrowing in soft sediment leaving only their rhinophores and mantle opening showing. Sea hares have an extremely good sense of smell. They can follow even the faintest scent using their rhinophores, which are extremely sensitive chemoreceptors.

Their color corresponds with the color of the seaweed they eat: red sea hares have been feeding on red seaweed. This camouflages them from predators. When disturbed, a sea hare can release ink from its ink glands, providing a potent deterrent to predators. This release acts as a smoke screen, while at the same time, adversely affecting the smell sensors of their predators. In a small environment, this ink could be toxic to the inhabitants. The color of the ink is white, purple or reddish, depending on the color of the pigments in their seaweed food source. Their skin contains a similar toxin that renders sea hares largely inedible to many predators.

Some sea hares can employ jet propulsion as a locomotory method, although without the sophisticated cognitive machinery of the cephalopods their motion is somewhat erratic.

Image 1: GetAHugeTank.com.
Image 2: ColdWaterImages.com.
Image 3: Zazzle.com.

Tan Lines XXV

2010-10-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Dancing Hare

2010-09-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Paul Christiano as Strephon in the first of the Ritual Dances
in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage.

Morning Light XXXV

2010-09-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

Images: Subject and photographer unknown.

Hare Care

2010-09-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

Like all wild creatures, it is important for a hare to keep itself clean and they are always grooming. This puts them at risk of ingesting chemicals sprayed on the land, especially because they like to keep their feet clean after being balled up with mud. The risk of chemical poisoning to hares has decreased, as pesticides are used more sparingly and are a lot safer, but paraquat is still often sprayed on stubble after the harvest to kill off any growth, and this can be harmful to hares.

- Jill Mason
The Hare
p. 53

Morning Light XXXIV

2010-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Eyes of the Hare

2010-09-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

Brown hares have large golden-coloured eyes set on the side of their heads, providing them with almost 360 degree vision. Directly ahead of them is where they can see least. They have been known to kill themselves by running into an object or even each other because they have obviously been looking backwards at whatever was behind them rather than forward. This all-round vision means that from their hiding place they can view everything about them. It is a fallacy that hares never close their eyes. They shut them when they are fighting to avoid injury and also when they are dozing. In common with many other animals that are the prey rather than the hunter, they do not go into a deep sleep. They probably merely relax and nap.

- Jill Mason
The Hare
pp. 49-50

Tan Lines XXIV

2010-08-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

In the Light of the Moon

2010-08-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

The hare is nocturnal and spends most of its day in a shallow form on the ground; and unless someone approaches very closely it will not move away from its resting place. Apart from the certain times of year, in the spring mating season or during the corn-harvest when hares are disturbed, there are few to be seen about the countryside. But you will frequently see them out at dusk or in the light of the moon, moving and feeding in the fields. If they have lain in the open or in the woods or reeds of a marsh for the best part of the day, they will come out into the open at night to feed and disport themselves.

- George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 112

Morning Light XXXIII

2010-08-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Creatures of Habit

2010-07-31T08:00:00.000-07:00

Hares are creatures of habit and use the same tracks and gaps in hedges, which has always made them easy for poachers with nets or snares. They also make good use of the unsown lines left in arable crops which are now such a part of modern farming practices. When they are chased they know exactly where they are heading.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Image: "Hare in the Barley" by Bells of Suffolk.

Checkum

2010-07-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Former UK Big Brother House Mate Dale Howard is appearing naked in a campaign for the UK Charity Macmillan Cancer Support aimed at encouraging men to check for testicular cancer.

Tribe

2010-07-07T07:07:00.000-07:00

Tribe, from "Survival" by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Color lithograph with chine colle; 35/50.

Tan Lines XXIII

2010-06-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Catholic Tastes

2010-06-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

The Brown hare has catholic tastes, feeding on a variety of crops. It is wholly vegetarian and is a fastidious feeder, much preferring the lush tender young shoots of corn and clover, different grasses, crops of swedes, turnips, cabbages, lettuces and carrots to rank herbage. The hare is not averse to dining on the bark and shoots of all kinds of trees and shrubs. It also enjoys the delights offered to it by smallholders and market gardeners who grow an even wider range of vegetables! In the flower garden hares can wreak havoc, having a penchant for dahlias, carnations, pinks, nasturtiums, wallflowers, primulas, heathers and herbs such as parsley and thyme.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Image: The Leveret.

Leporid Sculpture

2010-06-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

In creating her 14' Leporid in St. Paul's Western Sculpture Park, artist Mary Johnson used rebar, lath and cement. She also invited children from the neighborhood to help create mosaic medallions from found objects which were then embedded into the leporid's "hide." She used the hub caps from a '58 Ford for the eyes!

Images: The Leveret.

Morning Light XXXII

2010-05-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Soul of the Sufferer

2010-05-28T08:12:00.000-07:00

Write George Ewart Evans and David Thomson:

. . . Belief in the transmigration of souls either into animals or other human beings seems at one time to have been universal. The thought behind it is familiar to us all and comes from observation. A parent can often see his/her dead father or mother not only in the character but in the gestures and facial expressions of his/her child and it is natural for anyone who lives among animals to observe in them traits that belong to people too. They were and sometimes still are, invested with human souls by imaginative sympathy; the lion has the dignity and courage of a noble person, the elephant wisdom and the long memory that goes with it, Swallows are skilled and spiritual. The hare is chosen for qualities as varied as its nature and has the soul of the sufferer, the fecund begetter, creator of arts, inventive dreamer, and, principally, of the person who is gifted with an intuitive leaping mind.

In some societies it was not everybody’s soul that could enter an animal. Only the chosen – the wise elder or the child that was born to be a priest or shaman – possessed that power; they possessed it during their lives as well as after death. Like the witches they could shift their minds into paraphysical states, rendering themselves “beside themselves” as we say of people who have temporarily abandoned the controls of reason.

The [following] ritual rhyme of the Scottish witches . . . describes a psychological transformation that went together with dressing up as a hare. In modern English it means:

I shall go into a hare
With sorrow and sigh
and (probably) mental torment.

– George Ewart Evans and David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
Pp. 148-149

Cock Rock

2010-05-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

In his "Salute to the Greatest Crotches in Rock," Morgan Short notes that "the crotches of rock singers have captivated the imagination of the world" for years.

As "an embodiment of the mystery, danger and freedom of the music itself," writes Short, "the crotch has occupied a central role in a stirring rock performance."

Continuing, he notes:

Of course, the crotch today remains a valuable weapon in the rock arsenal, as exemplified by the current wave of tight pants bands rehashing the Kinks/The Who sound of the 60s and 70s. More and more women are also mobilizing their crotches as well for the good of the rock. Take Peaches, for example. In recent years, the famed Electroclash chanteuse has turned her crotch into something of a cottage industry for photos, song lyrics and album covers.

His "salute," however, focuses on "elder statesmen and women of rock; those who burned bright, burned big and then (mostly) wilted away." Yet "whether by physical presentation, stylistic innovation or a certain ineffable spirituality," the crotches of those highlighted "will always live on in the hearts of the fans."

Top of the list is Led Zepplin's Robert Plant, who elsewhere on the web is described as the "Definitive Bulge of Rock and Roll."

"The crotch of Robert Plant," writes Short, "should be considered the fifth instrument of Zeppelin. For stripping away all ambiguity as to the proportions, dimensions and angles of his package, Robert Plant is a true innovator. On stage he may have been singing 'Kashmir,' 'All My Love,' and 'Ramble On,' but implicitly he was whispering gingerly into your ear, 'Here is the outline of my penis.'

Others highlighted in Short's "Salute to the Greatest Crotches in Rock" include Freddie Mercury, Iggy Pop, Bon Scott, Jim Morrison, Axel Rose, Prince, David Bowie, Courtney Love, and David Lee Roth.

To view and read more , click here.

Buck

2010-05-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

Bucks are very promiscuous and many may be attracted to a female prior to her being properly in season. A male will stay close to a doe, guarding her, until after mating has taken place. Several males will be drawn to the vicinity of the doe from different directions and there may be scuffles as the males are intent on trying their luck and keep harassing her.

Fighting, boxing, scratching and biting takes place and the fur often flies, but usually it is the doe who is the aggressor as she tries to fend off their unwanted attentions.

Although they normally live a solitary existence, the bucks themselves have a loose social hierarchy and they are aware of where they stand in the pecking order, so that fighting among themselves is kept to a minimum. . . . Male hares play no part in raising their offspring.

- Jill Mason
The Hare

Images: Jane Ford.

Tan Lines XXII

2010-05-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Abyssinian Hare

2010-05-14T23:43:00.000-07:00

The Abyssinian Hare (Lepus habessinicus) is a species of mammal in the Leporidae family. It is almost entirely restricted to the nations of the Horn of Africa, though it extends marginally into eastern Sudan and may also occur in far northern Kenya. It has been suggested it should be considered conspecific with the Cape Hare, but is considered a separate species based on (presumed) sympatry in their distributions.

- Source

Image: Jeff Kerby.

Merman III

2010-05-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

Image 1: Artist unknown.
Image 2: Lanisaz.
Image 3: Elf-Fin.

Morning Light XXXI

2010-05-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

Subject: Kent Edwards.
Photographer: Ricardo Muniz.

Hare Moon

2010-04-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

In the Middle East the female hare Akrasha, through her association with the moon and six stars known as Al Thurayya, was thought to drive away evil djinns. Cultures in many places around the world as far apart as India, China, Mexico, Africa, North America, and Europe linked the hare symbolically with the moon, the dawn, the seasons, madness, and sometimes with fire. In Britain the full moon in April was called the ‘hare moon.’

– Jill Mason
The Hare, p. 101

Tan Lines XXI

2010-04-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.