Matt Duckworth Underwater

Off The Point

2012-02-11T16:40:00.000-08:00

Breaking Wave

2012-02-09T19:32:00.000-08:00

I had first just tagged this shot as "breaking wave," but there's a lot more going on, I think.

I love the action, of course, with the surfer on the right looking back, probably wondering what the diver (that's me) thinks he's doing. I wondered if he thought I was going to get beat. The surfer on the left, of course, is just thinking about himself, duck-diving and avoiding the curl above him.

Myself? Divers duck under, you know, or ride the surge.

I also like the bumpiness and the shine coming off different parts of the wave, from the frothy spray to the sun rays bouncing back at the camera. That lumpiness, though, is just too cool for words for me.

Note: all the blather here is about the wave and the action, not about my photography. I just pushed a button. Getting into that place, that position in the zone, is the fun of it all.

I love getting beat by waves, too. I'm calculating if I can really hit the water again this weekend, what with all the grading I need to be doing. And yet . . . to get salty-wet.

By the way, I love duck-diving, by definition.

When I was swimming in--and with the camera's memory card full up--there was a boogie-boarder who just owned the spot. She knew every curl and surge and rock and rhythm, and she'd ride right up to the breakwater and would just pull out of the wave she'd been riding before splatting, as casual as you please. When the next biggish wave came in, she just set herself and somehow avoided getting plastered. Obviously, local knowledge and water-time there. It was a pleasure to watch her work the waves.

I was sorry I couldn't take photos. Next time.

I Have A Kelp Tattoo II

2012-02-06T22:23:00.003-08:00

And yet more fun in the sturm und drang of it all.

Where It's Fun

2012-02-06T18:07:00.001-08:00

Backside Beauty

2012-02-05T20:07:00.000-08:00

I love watching the backs of waves. That realization was slow in coming, conditioned as I have been by all the frontside, front-lit, top-heavy, looming beauties offered up in the surf magazines and films. And watching the wave from this perspective must mean I'd missed it, right, if I were surfing, and the only consolations would be watching my friends ride and the knowledge gained as to where and how the waves were breaking particularly. Though, I'd probably be turning to keep my eyes on the approaching breaker and missing much of that rear view.

As a free diver and especially as an abalone diver up north, I've watched many waves breaking, calculating the time between sets, checking the force in play, setting up my exit amidst the rips and rocks. Mostly, I love watching the backs of waves for the simple fact that such a view means I'm out there.

And Out There is where I generally desire to be.

With the photo above, I'd like to direct your attention to the lovely view of the shore, to the foam-capped back of the breaking wave, to the black-suited surfer waiting for the next one, and to the humps and contours of the water just in front of me. That foreground and the dip just beyond . . . whoever thinks water is flat must be looking into a bucket at rest on the ground.

My favorite schoolyard experiment was always to fill a bucket with water and to swing it all the way around over and over again without spilling a drop. (For me--and I don't know if this was the lesson I was supposed to be learning--gravity was the bucket that kept the oceans from spilling off the surface of the earth.)

On the other hand, lots of spillage up above, and it's all good.

I like the hint of kelp in the foreground to the right too.

(Centrifugal force: that's the bucket lesson, right?)

P.S. I like how we are looking up at that breaking wave. You'd think we'd be looking down or across at it, since it's broken, really, and yet we are still looking up. That's how much water is moving shoreward, and I am being pulled down into the trough of the next wave as well.

My Favorite Blue

2012-02-05T14:25:00.001-08:00

Star Power

2012-02-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

Poor visibility along with the swell made fish photos a bit of a wild goose chase, but I like this green-world star.

You can see how poor the visibility was yesterday. On the photo, I am floating at the surface looking down at my feet in only about 12 feet of water, but it's all hazy foreground and no background visible at all.

Oh, what did the gentleman at the dive shop say to me earlier?

"You should have been here last weekend. 35 feet visibility."

Up and Going

2012-02-05T07:06:00.000-08:00

Unknown surfer making it happen.

Water Check II

2012-02-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

Pacific Blue Commotion

2012-02-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

Water check.

(My favorite picture of the day.)

Pieces of Luck

2012-01-29T18:55:00.000-08:00

Or, Incense-Goddesses.

Originally, I put wooden skewers through each clay piece for support, but now that each piece is finished, those holes are handy for incense sticks.

Incense-Goddesses: sculpture mix; green or blue glazing, layered. Each piece was a 20-minute live model exercise.

If you are interested in having such a figurine yourself, let me know. They are a bit rough, obviously, but no rougher than a lot of figurines I've seen in specialty stores.

If you want a custom incense-goddess (or god), if you are willing to model for your own figurine, contact me and we'll see how that could work. I'd get live practice, certainly, and you just might get a piece of sculpture that not only holds incense sticks, but that holds your own (rough) likeness, and I'd call that a piece of luck.

I have no idea how serious I am about such offers. I guess I'll decide if I get any actual responses.

Bookfish, Working

2012-01-29T09:50:00.000-08:00

Bookfish: sculpture mix; green and blue glazing.

Dreaming

2012-01-24T18:32:00.000-08:00

I had meant to hit the water this past weekend, but the stormy weather kept me home. Because of the traffic and driving issues, actually. I managed two pool workouts though, so I'm placated, if not happy.

Out in the water on a stormy day? That's gravy, as long as I have a clear, doable exit.

On the highway over the Santa Cruz mountains in the pelting rain with all those fools who don't know how to drive in rain anyway? No, no thank you.

The above shot? January 8, 2012. A glorious day in Pacific Grove.

Tonight, I'm working on handouts for class (well, not right now) and reading around.

I'm rereading Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" for class.

I'm reading bits from Kaui Hart Hemmings' The Descendants, an excellent novel that has been made into a film with George Clooney recently. I'm rereading bits from Linda Greenlaw's The Lobster Chronicles and Ian Rankins' The Complaints.

I'm listening to Grace Potter and the Nocturnal's eponymous CD right now, and I'll replay it once more before putting in a quieter CD, one of Jack Johnson's.

I've a shot of Irish in some water, and I expect to drink a bit of tea too, English Breakfast, no doubt, before I crash out.

I recommend all of the above, by the way.

The handouts, though. I'd best get back to those.

Spouting

2012-01-22T18:37:00.000-08:00

This isn't a good photo, technically, what with the waterspots and the edge of a neoprene glove showing in the upper left, but it's a true photo.

Wallfish: Scary or Goofy?

2012-01-22T18:29:00.001-08:00

Right. I know.

Wallfish: sculpture mix; sea foam and green glazing.

Wanted: Sea-Monkey On My Back

2012-01-21T18:04:00.001-08:00

I love my Power Fins.

I had meant to free dive today, but after the rain-drenched commute yesterday I bagged, quite unhappily, Monterey Bay for the local workout pool. I had a good session, in the rain, but that's not a kelp forest experience. Oh, and the illustrations will make more sense if I tell you that I swim with mask & snorkel and my dive fins. I swim as a diver now, having hit my limit with regular lap-swimming about a decade ago now.

I miss my full-on pool addiction. As recently as early 2010, I was still swimming almost daily, but wear and tear and serial illnesses--sore throats, flues, and cold after cold--sapped my energy and my compulsion to swim, swim, swim. So, for the first time in years, I barely swam at all last semester, and so gained 20+ lbs (from a skinny, muscled, but unhealthy 155 to a plump, slack-muscled, unhealthy 187). I have kept meaning to return to the pool, but that's hard to do when I couldn't breathe for coughing, and I knew that working out in the cold water just might push me into another lingering illness and I'd been missing too many work-days already. I started erring on the side of caution, and once you break, really break, a routine it's so hard to get back to it.

Simply, I've been happiest in my life when I must swim. Just must.

Such an addiction, for me, is tied to sense of self. When I was a recent college graduate back in the--gasp--80's, I needed an identity since I'd just lost my "student" status. (And, you know, as a student, you can work any job anywhere and no one judges you.) Sheepskin in hand, but allergic to offices and not having a clue about a career, I was working in warehouses and driving delivery vans, and so I reached back to a somewhat neglected love and swam, swam, swam. I was a "swimmer," no matter what I was doing to earn a buck.

Note: At the time, I was also feeling my way into another deep love--genre fiction--which I'd neglected in favor of Literature as an obsessed English major at UC Berkeley. And, I'm proud of the 28 lit courses I took as an undergrad--double the number required for the major, thank you very much--but my time at Cal also had me Gemini-ing my reading life, suppressing my yearnings for popular contemporary fiction even as I reveled in the classics and my eager immersion in the whole heroic tradition of European literature and a special attention to the British "greats," from Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales up through Moby Dick, Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and The Wasteland.

At that time, away from school and not knowing what to do with myself, I took some time off to just read, swim, play ping-pong, and party like a college student (since I'd been working too hard between the classes and the job to pay--no loans, no debt--for college to party when I was enrolled). Then, having spent my meager savings, I took any job at hand: packing clerk in a table linens factory in the Mission, warehouse worker in an electrical supply house in "Point" Richmond (and I put it that way since the company did), driver and then head driver with that same company, and eventual lifeguard and swim instructor for the City of Richmond. I was recruited to teach swimming to children and adults because I spent so much time at the Plunge. And, to tell you the absolute truth, I credit my swim instructor job as having a greater and most positive influence on my classroom teaching of English literature and composition than any part of my experience as a student and later instructor at UCB (aside from the fine example of the enthusiastic Prof. Andrew Griffin).

Anyway, away from school, working, and swimming, I rediscovered genre fiction and contemporary American fiction in general. Jenifer Levin's Water Dancer was an important book to me, for all that it's a rather clumsy first novel. More importantly, Levin wrote one of the best books on swimming, literally, that you will ever find. (*See note below.) That there's a quest motif and two strong characters, the swimmer and the coach, only made that book more significant to me, and that experience with this book solidified my sense that the best literature is not universal, but particular. I needed such a book at that time in my life, and there it was.

The novels of John Le Carre, Thomas McGuane, Richard Ford, and Robert Stone also mattered, and those are not merely genre writers. Still, I was making my way back into the mysteries, crime novels, science fiction, and heroic fantasy that I did in fact love deeply.

While I was reading whatever I wanted and swimming before work and during lunch or after work most days of the week, I became addicted to my water-time and my identity as a swimmer. I swam and swam and swam, putting in my miles--my timed miles, for speed--day after day after day. There was an older lawyer who would swim at noon or in the evening with whom I shared a wonderful competitive relationship. We didn't even know each other, never spoke beyond the locker room, and yet if we were in the pool, we'd pace each other, racing for distance. (Occasionally, we'd see the other person coming in and one of us would say, "Let's pretend we aren't here at the same time, okay? I'm not up for racing today." We each respected such a request, for we knew on plenty of other days, we'd be racing lap after lap for 30 minutes or even an hour at a time.) I still recall the day I beat the lawyer, finally able to keep ahead of him lap after lap after lap in one of those workouts that started as casual pacing and then turned into serious racing. He took it hard, harder than I expected, and we never were able to race together again. I pointed out that I'd been pushing myself with two-a-days just to be competitive with him, but having the younger guy finally beat him like that just ruined something. I really missed having such a pacer to help me to push myself. The laps just weren't as much fun for a while there.

(Now that I'm older, I understand how much keeping ahead of the younger ones can matter. Heck, when I was a mere 33, as I say now, and working the summer at the pool again during grad school, I made myself ill not letting any of the younger lifeguards and instructors beat me during training races. They didn't realize there was a real race on, but I was damned if I was going to lose to any of those guys. Seriously, I couldn't get out of bed the next day between the exhausted muscles and the sinus symptoms knocking me down. Lame, but "heroic": to tell you the truth, I wasn't in the best shape at that moment, but that wasn't a good enough excuse not to push myself too far. I miss that sort of drive, sometimes, too.)

I'm not and have never been the fastest swimmer, but I've mostly always swam. My earliest memory is of being in the water at age 2 or 3 with my mother. I swam distance in high school, but I didn't bother going out for the college team. I wouldn't have been fast enough. And yet I am at ease in the water like any true wannabe-fish, and I've put in the time during the best periods of my life. I'm not fast, but I'm devoted, you know? Or, I can be, and that's where the sea-monkey comes in.

Anyway, back in my warehouse and driving days, I swam all the time, and if I wasn't swimming, I was thinking about it. I quit counting laps and started counting miles, counted time spent going back and forth in the pool, any pool.

I started getting a bit obsessed, though I also wasn't interested in competion, per se. I didn't join a Masters team, for as a recent college graduate, I was a bit tired of being told how to do things. Still, I needed to swim.

How can I put it?

If I swam twice a day, I was okay. If I only swam once per day, I was lazy. If I didn't swim at all that day, I was fat.

The pool was closed on Sundays, so that was my official, non-fat day of rest.

And that's my best way of understanding my anorexic friends, by the way, for I had both the obsession and the issue with body fat. (Just a few years ago, I dropped down to 155 or below, and that's just too too thin for a 6-foot man, but I liked how you could see all my muscles, and I was swimming 5 or 6 or even 7 days a week and feeling great with loads of energy . . . .)

At that time in the past, just out of university the first time, I did read my way through all of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee mysteries, finding the old paperbacks in used bookstores throughout Central California (one of the perks of my driving job), which offered me the model of retirement taken whenever a person could afford a piece of it, now ideally, and then back to work until the next flush period of ease. I think I really absorbed my desire for gainful unemployment at this time in my life. No wonder I've embraced teaching with summers off for rejuvenation and immersion in new pursuits. Also, Travis McGee's moral-yet-allergic-to-conventional-thinking character and consequent narrative perspective fed something inside too. Travis McGee is a good man, but don't expect him to work 9-to-5 or to join the country club. Rather, expect him to help out a friend and to act for what's right and fair over what's legal or illegal.

Finally, this morning, I found myself longing for the addiction to training while practicing my underwater laps. I want that sea-monkey on my back. I want to finish my commute with a compulsive longing for chlorinated water and not whiskey-and-water. I can drink the Bushmill's afterwards, as a reward. More importantly, I want to dive and kayak quite a bit this coming spring and summer, so I need to get in shape. As a 50-year-old, I have to work at it a bit more and not just expect being in shape to happen. That's fine. I'm looking forward to the pool work, for I can almost taste the joy and exuberance of being a real working swimmer. I'm a swimmer even if I'm in the middle of the desert, but . . . you know what I mean.

Time to get serious again.

I'm smiling as I type this entry. And my muscles are sore in the best ways.

_________________________________

*To help you to understand when I say that Water Dancer is a great book about swimming, consider, say, John Cheever's famous short story "The Swimmer" about suburban New England and a man who decides to travel across the county using one swimming pool after another. Despite being included in anthologies of swimming literature, Cheever's short story isn't really about swimming; it's about existential angst and the late 20th-century American suburban male. Levin's novel is about swimming lap after lap after lap, about stroking through open water, crossing miles and miles from mainland to island or up rivers and across lakes, and (not "but") it's also existential in its own way, what with the lesbian main character seeking meaning in life through action.

Seeking meaning in life through action is a fine methodology, by the way.

Get wet!

Shallow Longings

2012-01-20T10:12:00.000-08:00

Sunbeams illuminating the water:
Kealakekua Bay.

Years and years ago.

A fish's POV.

Feeling Groovy III

2012-01-18T19:18:00.000-08:00

I really like the surface angle and surface textures. Water: It's alive!

Two more shots from January 8th's free dive at Lover's Point, Pacific Grove, CA.

Because I wish I were there . . . .

Feeling Groovy II

2012-01-17T19:04:00.000-08:00

Lots of divers love flat days. Not me.

Sea Star and Hermit Crabs

2012-01-13T20:14:00.000-08:00

Another Tidepool, Another Hermit Crab

2012-01-12T18:59:00.001-08:00

One Breath

2012-01-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

Fangfish

2012-01-10T09:01:00.001-08:00

Fangfish: sculpture mix; green and sea foam glazing, layered.

This piece was meant to be a rattle, but the clay balls ended up glazed in place. You can see one such ball just behind the teeth in the bottom shot.

Lovely Tentacles

2012-01-09T18:40:00.001-08:00

Water-Watching

2012-01-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

I'm repeating this last shot from an earlier entry, but I wanted to show the sequence as the wave moves through the diver's position and to the rocks.

The bands of dark blue and blue-green, corresponding to relative depths--deeper vs. shallower--help us to see the energy moving through the scene.

First Free Dive of 2012

2012-01-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

Or, So This Is What I Look Like?

My mask straps need adjusting, and I think I'm about to dive. Hence, the sort of hovering there.

Or, maybe I haven't yet adjusted to the cold water on my face.

Beautiful day: Sunday, January 8, 2012.

First dive of the year; first dive in ages and ages.

And here's a photo from just after the dive.

Note the slightly goofy, mask-marked, cold-salty-water-swollen look.

(I still remember noticing on television how Jacques Cousteau, his right-hand man Falco, and Cousteau's eldest son would all look so much older after cold water diving. Or, the cold water reveals real age?)

Weathervane

2012-01-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

Anchorite

2012-01-09T08:29:00.001-08:00

Sea Flower

2012-01-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

Spear and Wave

2012-01-08T20:59:00.000-08:00

Free diver spearfishing west of Lover's Point, Pacific Grove. There were two divers working the area, but I didn't notice the second one until the two were climbing up the stairs from the beach.

I'd been rather distracted after taking this shot by gearing up myself.

I hadn't planned on diving, not definitely, but sunny skies, little wind, and such blue water had me pulling on the wetsuit and fishing out my fins as fast as I was able.

Also, if someone else is already out, then it's do-able, you know. It's more than do-able, it's now must-do-able.

(I may be fifty, but part of me's still fifteen or whatever. That adolescent competitive spark still burns. I have better impulse control now, but like to give in once in a while. Got to keep that heart pumping. And, truthfully, my first free dive of 2012 was quick and cautious. Due to the limited visibility underwater, I put off my photographic plan and practiced riding the surge between rocks as well as entries and exits. I haven't been working out and wanted to take it easy, but I had to get wet. Always counts.)

Hello Mom and Dad!

2012-01-08T20:53:00.000-08:00

Gazebo Rocks, Asilomar, CA.

Happy New Year!

Kayak Diver

2012-01-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

Here's an image of my dive partner Gerald from last August up on the Sonoma Coast. Note that he's wearing a squid lid instead of a full hood. (Usually that's enough for this stubborn diver, but he got chilled this time around. I'll remind him next time. He won't listen.)

Good session, if a trifle cold and surgy.

I like surgy, actually. Here, the water looks rather flat, but we are in the lee of a thick kelp bed and in a lull between the swells moving through.

Pooling My Resources

2012-01-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

Once again, going swimming has me feeling more like myself.

When I haven't been swimming, that idiom--"more like myself"--seems more a lame riddle than a reliable truth. After even such a short swim as today's, however, I do feel more like myself, like my better self.

Nisus of Troy stirs in my imagination's deepest waters.

Also, my muscles are already sore in the better ways.

The real trick or test will be to build a pattern, to craft that practice again with three, four, or even five workouts a week while school is in session. I've done it before, and I've needed to restart before. Time to begin again.

Maybe the ocean tomorrow. Just a quick dip, you know.

Amazon

2012-01-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

Brynhild, Sleeping

2012-01-06T16:02:00.000-08:00

Regarding Rules?

2012-01-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

Rules and personality types: followers, breakers, makers, and unmakers.

I'm a weird mix of all four, especially the last two.

How about you?

F: Well, I don't know about the last two, but I'm a fairly strict rule-follower… until the rules make no sense.

M: Then you become a rule unmaker, right?

F: I don't know; how do you make the distinction between breaking and unmaking?

M: Attitude.

Roots

2012-01-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

Mom never had pink hair that I recall, however.

(In case there's any confusion, that's a mermaid-duck on the left. My earliest memory of my mother involves her swimming with me on her shoulder at the Richmond Plunge. I think I was two-and-a-half or three years old.)

Watershots: Feeling Groovy

2012-01-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

I love this view, the sea level view, just as much as the underwater perspective. I love bumpy, marbled water, and these shots mean I was out there, swimming. I like kayak shooting too, but free diving means more feeling of the ocean's motions. Groovy.

These shots are all from last January, and I'm posting them more as a goad and a guide to getting back in the water than as worthy shots in themselves. I could look at such shots all day, I must admit, though I'd rather be out there. Sadly, I'm too out of shape right now to round Lover's Point in Pacific Grove on such an energetic day.

So, next task: check the lap hours at the local pool. The mask and fins are already in the truck.

Aeschere's Echo

2012-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

Or, "Field of Confusion"?

Or, "The Woodman's Spectre" or "What the Wolf Left"?

Originally, I called this entry "Who? What? Where?" to highlight the odd camouflaging quality of the shots, and then a number of alternative titles came to mind, as you can see. Finally, on reflection, I am recalling a poignant passage from a favorite medieval poem, Beowulf.

Aeschere, the beloved advisor of King Hrothgar of the Danes, loses his head, literally, and his life, of course, as Grendel's mother's victim in revenge for the brutal slaying of her son. The vicious mere-creature (or devoted, though monstrous mother) mounts the Dane's head on a stake beside the mere in which she lairs, the mere into which Beowulf, the Geatish warrior, must dive to gain vengeance in turn.

I recommend reading the poem in the original Anglo-Saxon, but if that's not possible, why not pick up Seamus Heaney's wonderful translation of the poem?

Shoulders (Brown & White): brown clay; white slip, applied and scored; clear glaze.

I'm not sure what I was trying to do, originally. I probably started making the base for a full bust and stopped at the shoulders. I like that form, not sure why (or, the subject of past and future blogs), whereas I've found that making a full bust puts the emphasis on the head rather than the shoulders. As to the glazing, maybe I thought the scoring would look tribal or would draw some sort of proper attention to the curves of the form. That didn't work out, but now that I'm moved the piece onto this mulch, I am seeing possibilities for future projects.

There's life even in our mistakes, if you keep your eyes open and move stuff around. Now I'm glad I didn't trash these "shoulders" when I was tempted too.

"Throw Physic to the Dogs; I'll None of It"

2012-01-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

A favorite scene: Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act 5, scene 3.

The bloody usurper is about to find that the tide of fortune has turned against him. Macbeth is both a blunt fist and a haunted soul, though the blood beats the nerves every time. I've always felt drawn to Macbeth, though I am not entirely sure why. Certainly, you've got to love a character who claims he'll never quit, and who lives up to that claim, mostly, but for one moment of doubt. And who would gainsay this man that doubt after such fatal promises?

"I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd." With that line Shakespeare channels much of the old heroic alliterative beat-based tradition. You can hear Beowulf and Byrtnoth in that line.

Macbeth is a heroic play. Heroic, but twisted, bewitched, as we all know. Lord Byron's favorite of Shakespeare's plays, at least in his youth. (You can see a bloody Scottish hand all over Manfred, for example.) I think Anthony and Cleopatra spoke clearly to him as the years of exile accumulated. Still, despite (or because of) the iniquities of Macbeth's character, I find much in the play that draws me back again and again. The starkness, the bloody dilemmas, the feast of fortune and the failure of reading fate: all that and more.

Reread with me this time:

Dunsinane. A room in the castle.
Enter MACBETH, Doctor, and Attendants.

MACBETH:

Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:
'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman
Shall e'er have power upon thee.' Then fly, false thanes,
And mingle with the English epicures:
The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.

[Enter a Servant.]

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!
Where got'st thou that goose look?

Servant: There is ten thousand--

MACBETH: Geese, villain!

Servant: Soldiers, sir.

MACBETH:

Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear,
Thou lily-liver'd boy. What soldiers, patch?
Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine
Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?

Servant: The English force, so please you.

MACBETH:

Take thy face hence.

[Exit Servant.]

Seyton!--I am sick at heart,
When I behold--Seyton, I say!--This push
Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Seyton!

[Enter SEYTON.]

SEYTON: What is your gracious pleasure?

MACBETH: What news more?

SEYTON: All is confirm'd, my lord, which was reported.

MACBETH:

I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd.
Give me my armour.

SEYTON: 'Tis not needed yet.

MACBETH:

I'll put it on.
Send out moe horses; skirr the country round;
Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour.

How does your patient, doctor?

Doctor:

Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.

MACBETH:

Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Doctor:

Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

MACBETH:

Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
Come, put mine armour on; give me my staff.
Seyton, send out. Doctor, the thanes fly from me.
Come, sir, dispatch. If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.--Pull't off, I say.--
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?

Doctor:

Ay, my good lord; your royal preparation
Makes us hear something.

MACBETH:

Bring it after me.
I will not be afraid of death and bane,
Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane.

Doctor: [Aside]

Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,
Profit again should hardly draw me here.

[Exeunt.]

I love the doctor's aside at the end here. He's speaking to and for us, and the wry humor is just another example of Shakespeare's canny layering of emotions. Just look at all the emotions the Scottish king is cycling through in what I've quoted. A brutal confidence may be overriding the doubts of others, but an underlying melancholy undercuts the hubristic joy some other battle-king would be feeling much more sincerely. Macbeth knows he's crossed the line that divides proper manliness, in his terms, from monstrosity, that separates society from those outside it, whether they be nobles or not. Macbeth truly is a usurper and a murderer, and he knows it too too well. Yet he was a glorious thane with all the martial skills that his true king admired, and that's a fact too often neglected by readers of the play, I feel.

Macbeth, above, is at his most Hamletish, if you will, and yet Scottish king and Danish prince burn with strikingly divergent fires. The bonfire of ambition vs. a funeral pyre? Or, perhaps, the way into the parallels and contrasts between these noble figures would be to consider the patterns woven from emotion and intellect, from ambition, hubris, consciousness, responsibility, shame, guilt, anger, and revenge.

I should work on the Macbeth vs. Hamlet conundrum--aiming at the nuances rather than the broad strokes--for that's what I feel it is, a conundrum, as I hear and feel the echoes between the plays. I even have some of the best books on the shelf or in mind to check what the authorities have claimed, but I want to work these two characters out in conjuncton for myself, by myself. An independent exercise in critical reasoning, in dynamic character construction and storytelling: something I think all of us should practice often. (I've been reading a book on Beowulf in which the lack of critical practice and of dynamic narrative awareness has been so frustrating.)

Gawain's Stroke of Luck

2011-12-30T20:21:00.000-08:00

Or, Part I of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

Wood-Kerne

2011-12-30T14:02:00.000-08:00

Wood-kerne: sculpture mix; green and nutmeg glazing.

Radagast and Lucky, Working

2011-12-26T21:52:00.000-08:00

Radagast: brown clay; unglazed.

Lucky the Reindeer: sculpture mix; brown and blue glazing.

I broke Lucky, by accident and before he had a name, on the way from the garage to the studio, but I decided to bisque and glaze him anyway. You never know what you'll get.

Solstice blessings on us all.

A Viking Holiday!

2011-12-25T09:03:00.000-08:00

A belated Happy Solstice to you all!

As the days grow longer, may we all strive a bit more to fill our days--and each other's days--with action, reflection, and happiness.

--MD

Three Kings

2011-12-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

Catriona O'Reilly's "Thin"

2011-12-24T10:15:00.000-08:00

THIN

It is chill and dark in my small room.

A wind blows through gaps in the roof,

piercing even the eiderdown. My skin

goose-pimples in front of the cloudy glass

though there was scalding tea for dinner

with an apple. I'm cold to the bone.

I don't sleep well either. My hip-bones

stick in the foam mattress, and the room's

so empty. My sister is having dinner

with a boy. Awake under the roof

I watch the stars bloom heavily through glass

and think, how shatterproof is my skin?

I doze till six, then drink semi-skim

milk for breakfast (the bare bones

of a meal) before nine o'clock class.

It's kind of hard to leave my room

for the walk to school. No roof

over me, and eight solid hours till dinner-

time. All days my dreams of dinner

are what really get under my skin,

not the boys. My tongue sticks to the roof

of my mouth again in class. I'm such a bone-

head! And my stomach's an empty room.

My face floats upwards in a glass

of Coke at lunchtime. One glass.

I make it last the whole day till dinner:

hot tea and an apple in my room.

My sister seems not to notice the skin

around my mouth or my ankle-bones.

If our parents knew they'd hit the roof

I suppose. My ribs rise like the roof

of a house that's fashioned from glass.

I might even ping delicately like bone-

china when flicked. No dinner

for six weeks has made this skin

more habitable, more like a room--

or a ceiling that shatters like glass

over those diners off gristle and bone.

This skin is a more distinguished room.

--Catriona O'Reilly

For too too many of the women I've known.

"Like Pearls, The Pain"

2011-12-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

A moment from Joe Coomer's Pocketful of Names:

She climbed up into the stern of the boat. Flakes of rust and paint rained on the granite floor. Driftwood watched her climb, then settled down, chin to forepaws, to wait. She sat on the bare wood of the washboard, clasped her hands and pressed them between her crossed legs.

So Will had loved Emily. And he had loved her. And now he was in love with Zee. It was plain to see, and impossible to understand, how his affection was so embracing, so encompassing, and so malleable. His heart seemed so easily restored. She knew that she herself held grudges for years after the end of a relationship. She revisited diaries, letters, and even greeting cards in attempts not to understand old failures but to relive them. There was nothing to be resolved, no transforming catharsis in memory. Time did not heal old wounds. The hurt persisted, and like pearls, the pain survived deep in a center that had to be continuously swathed with yet another layer of forgetting that only soothed until the next remembering. The boy at Haystack, Mark, his name a crystal she cut her tongue on each time she said it. It was the first time in her artistic life that art seemed unimportant. She just wanted to bury her face in his neck and lie there forever. It was more important that she watch him create. And Jalendu, who was as lost in love as he was in New York, and who tried to hide from love and the city in her. How could you not love my sweet brother? It was easy not to love him. She had no other choice. After months of desperately trying to be in love with a man she admired, who made her laugh and cry with his tenderness, a man who found the world around him strange and mystifying and full of beauty, who regarded her as its zenith, she'd given up. "It's not that I don't want it to be there," she'd told him. "It simply doesn't exist."

"Perhaps it will be born later," he suggested.

And from that point on she could not meet his eye or hear his voice. It was all part of the world she already knew and did not need. When they separated she did not miss him. After he was gone, there were times when it was only as if he'd moved back home to India. He was safe, at home in his culture, surrounded by comforting, close reflections of his own face. "I will die if I cannot be with you," he said. And he did. And he was right about love, too. It was born later. She came to the understanding that this was a man who would have been a companion. There were worse things than being adored. She saw him in a glass of water, in puddles on the street, the rain sweeping down her windshield before she switched on the wipers. His sister came and took his remains back to their parents' home on a sandbar in the River Houghli. Sitting there in the stern of Break of Day, she suddenly realized that both men, Mark and Jalendu, had lived on islands. It was troubling. Is that why she'd come here? Or was it only coincidence? Arno had left her an island, not a farm in Nebraska. In fact, she'd only moved from one island to another. Manhattan was an island, too. If you wanted to be direct about it, every land mass on earth was an island. The only thing that differentiated every human, every island dweller on the planet, was their individual distance from the water.

--Joe Coomer, Pocketful of Names.

Mere Mortal

2011-12-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

That's my favorite self-portrait of the year: free diving off Salt Point State Park in Sonoma County, CA. This dive was an early August jaunt with dive partner Gerald. Very surgy day, though the water looks clearer than I expected or recall here.

Late lunch at the Fish House in Bodega to celebrate and refuel.

Just a random shot from that August dive, the last dive of 2011, I think. Even the random shots of an urchin, fish, abalone or kelp get my blood pumping for another dive.

Before that happens, I need to put in my pool time, rebuild some swimming muscle, and drop some blubber. This semester was the most difficult in memory for keeping the pool sessions going. I must have gotten sick every other week, catching the latest cold or flu or sore throat time and again. And, as a teacher who relies perhaps too much on my voice in class, it was a rough, rough term.

All that time out of the water has not been good for me. Seriously, I need to work off some of the excess weight, or turn it into useful muscle, or I'll need a slightly bigger free diving / kayaking wetsuit. Four years ago I was dropping below 160--which was too light, too thin--and these days I'll sliding past 180. More than the issue of weight or neoprene fit is fitness. I miss the muscle and the muscular support. When I was doing all that dolphin kicking with the Rocket fins on, I didn't have the back aches from too many hours at the desk. (Or, if my back hurt, that was because I was kicking, diving, and kayaking too much, which felt better, even if it did still hurt.) I didn't have the same knee issues. And, I would bounce up the stairs. (Don't you love aging?)

I'm reminding myself of all this to power the return to swimming regularly, frequently. I like myself better when I'm swimming too much.

Pool: here I come.

Wavy hair: if I can't hit the beach, I'll wear it. Something like that. Growing it out; resisting the buzz. December 2011.

I'd rather grow some gills. Wouldn't that be the best mutation? Or, to phrase it as a question: if there were a surgical procedure to implant gills in the sides of your throat/neck, would you go for it?

Maybe some of that Harry Potter gillyweed for the next dive.

Silly thoughts at the end of a long day. Why not?

Robert Graves: Three Cantrips

2011-12-22T18:07:00.000-08:00

RECOGNITION

When on the cliffs we met, by chance,

I startled at your quiet voice

And watched the swallows round you dance

Like children that had made a choice.

Simple it was, as I stood there,

To penetrate the mask you wore,

Your secret lineage to declare

And your lost dignities restore.

Yet thus I earned a poet's fee

So far out-distancing desire

That swallows yell in rage at me

As who would set their world on fire.

--Robert Graves

THE GIFT OF SIGHT

I had long known the diverse tastes of the wood,

Each leaf, each bark, rank earth from every hollow;

Knew the smells of bird's breath and of bat's wing;

Yet sight I lacked; until you stole upon me,

Touching my eyelids with light finger-tips,

The trees blazed out, their colours whirled together,

Nor ever before had I been aware of sky.

--Robert Graves

THE SNAP-COMB WILDERNESS

Magic is tangled in a woman's hair

For the enlightenment of male pride.

To slide a comb uxoriously

Through an even swell of tresses undisturbed

By their cascade from an exact parting

Could never hearten or enlighten me--

Not though her eyes were bluer than blue sea.

Magic rules an irreducible jungle

Dark as eclipse and scented with despair,

A stubborn snap-comb wilderness of hair,

Each strand a singular, wild, curling tree.

--Robert Graves

Wizardry for the Tree

2011-12-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

Radagast the Brown: ornament; unglazed clay.

Exercising with Clay

2011-12-21T16:03:00.002-08:00

20-minute gestural exercise w/ living model.

Pit-fired.

The Watcher (Not at Dusk)

2011-12-21T15:58:00.004-08:00

Dusk

2011-12-20T18:05:00.001-08:00

I call this one The Watcher.

Sculpture mix; nutmeg and brown glazing.

Tonight felt right for pulling him out and taking a few potshots.

Dusky, dusky mood.

My mother would have been 76 today.

From my earliest days, she fostered my devotion to stories and magic.

Real magic: the sort you can find in the webbing of a frog's foot, in the whiskers of a ginger cat, in the earth around a tomato plant's roots, and in the sand, rock, and salt of the seashore. Driftwood, windfall, found coin. I am the son of a witch, as she always claimed, for which I am so grateful.

I wish you'd found the time and space to learn the piano, Mom. When I realize that I've been putting something -- some possible joy, however arduous or demanding -- off for too too long, I think of that wish of yours.

Bull-Headed

2011-12-20T13:57:00.000-08:00

Brecca: stoneware; blue glazing.

Hrothgar's Pawn: sculpture mix; deep green glazing.

Talismans of stubbornness? Head-pieces for hardiness and holding ground?

Sofia's Bottom; Or, A View I've Been Missing

2011-12-18T08:25:00.000-08:00

That's the keel of my kayak, Sofia, as seen from below, from the basic free diving perspective, and that's one view I've sorely missed.

There's a cheeriness about sighting Sofia's bottom as I rise up from below, even if I'm not planning to clamber back aboard anytime soon.

The yellow is quite obviously a jaunty color, but her presence is more than a mere color or look. When I see her where I expect to, I know I haven't been pulled off track by any unnoticed currents. If I want to climb out, there she is, whether I just want to warm up, to grab a piece of gear, or to paddle off to a new divespot. If I am weary from all the hard swimming and held breaths, she offers a platform to rest upon. If I am getting spooked from sharky thoughts, well, there's eleven or so feet of plastic sanctuary.

Mostly, Sofia has been my companion up and down the coast, as far south as Morro Bay and as far north, so far, as Mendocino. I haven't been diving, or even swimming, due to work demands and too many illnesses strung one after another, cold to flu to sore throat to whatever bug is going around. So, looking at any shot of my kayak, even this one from beneath, especially this one from beneath, is both heartening and tantalizing.

I need to take Sofia out soon. She deserves it. We deserve it.

Okay, maybe I'll take some Sudafed and try a light workout later today. First step towards some kind of fitness. I've been missing the pool so much also.

Rex

2011-12-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

King's Head: sculpture mix; shiny black and shino glazing.

(Marred from the black glaze running further than expected.)

Portrait of the Artist as a Gemini

2011-12-17T17:15:00.001-08:00

Caption Contest?

2011-12-16T18:30:00.000-08:00

Sea Urchins

2011-12-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

Mendocino waters: July 2011.

(Maybe in January I'll slip into these waters again.)

Actually, these shots are for my English 1A students this term. Tom Kendrick could tell us so much about these creatures, starting with whether they'd be legal catches or not.

Have a great break!

(That is, MWF Class, have a great break beginning after our final this morning.)

Knight at the Ford

2011-12-12T18:04:00.000-08:00

Guthlac: sculpture mix; green and blue glazing.

Looking at the figure leads me into looking at the water. I like catching the flow in such moments. I feel I learn something.

Hwaet!

2011-12-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I Sip Scotch

2011-12-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

. . . while Susie sells seashells by the seashore.

Other times, I need more salt.

Monastery Beach: June 20, 2011. Fairly random shots.

Recollections for the spirit. I'm too far from the water right now.

The Antler Dance

2011-12-05T18:21:00.001-08:00

King Lear and Frey the Stag: sculpture mix; green and blue glazing.

Wagging Tales

2011-12-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

Coyote: clay trickster.

Tuxedo in Motion

2011-12-03T20:11:00.001-08:00

Almost 17 years old.

Still very much in earnest.

Changeling

2011-12-01T14:50:00.001-08:00

Odysseus' crewman; Circe's merman.

Greek Helmet/Merman: sculpture mix; brown and green glazing.

This is an old piece, and not entirely successful, but it's giving me ideas.

Mermaid in Blue, Rising

2011-11-26T12:16:00.000-08:00

Mermaid in Blue, Rising: sculpture mix; blue glazing, thinly coated.

This is one of my older mermaids, I believe, from 2000 or 2001. She's been hanging in the garage all this time, and only yesterday did the light hit her in such a way that I thought, "Let's take her outside and give her a good look." I was aiming at a sense of metamorphosis here, what with her arms fused to her sides, merging the human portions with the fishier, finny portion. That's what I was aiming at.

What we have is a long, long mermaid, and even here on a bed of wood chips, she seems to be moving upward, streaming toward the surface, driven by some internal force. Don't you think?

I can't help but fit a story to the form when faced with such work, my own or by others.

To Autumn

2011-11-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

Eight is the Number

2011-11-25T23:25:00.001-08:00

Octopus: sculpture mix; misc. glazes, layered.

When I first took this out of the kiln (last summer? the one before?) I didn't like it that much, but now I do. It's good to put a piece aside for a while, until the expectations and intentions fade, until you can look at something for what it is, really. How many times have I re-learned this lesson? Plus one, as they say.

This piece highlights one of the reasons I play with clay. Whether or not anyone likes this, I do; and, I caught something fluid and real in cephlapods in this bit of clay.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T09:33:00.001-08:00

Banks' "Raw Spirit": Making a Splash

2011-11-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

I've been reading celebrated Scottish author Iain Banks' non-fiction Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram. I felt I needed a bit of background and further knowledge of my current favorite beverage--Scotch--and this book seemed a lively entry-point and initial tour. So far, it more than suits. (And, I'll be looking for the novels by Banks that I haven't yet read.)

Today, I want to share a passage that has nothing to do with alcohol, though it does involve high spirits. Enjoy.

At Glenaladale, despite the fact I am 49 and Les very nearly is--Les rarely allows an opportunity to pass when he can remind me I am a whole three months older than he is--we spend a significant amount of time and effort skipping stones, trying to hit large stones with small ones while the former are in flight, throwing stones at logs, using thin or circular stones--spun--in our attempts to produce duck's farts, and sweatily heaving the largest rocks we can manage up to the tops of small cliffs so we can throw them into the water and so produce Really Big Splashes.

(Look, growing up is about this sort of stuff no longer being the only way you're allowed to have fun, not about having to give it up altogether.)

I've always thought so, and it's good to find my own sentiments in a book. Wouldn't you agree?

Make some splashes of your own.

Cheers!

Kennelly: "My Heart Is Jacked From Writing"

2011-11-20T16:37:00.000-08:00

COLUMKILLE THE WRITER

(from the Irish)

My heart is jacked from writing.

My sharp quill shakes.

My thin pen spills out

blood from my stormy lakes.

A stream of God's own wisdom

flushes my hand.

It blesses the waiting page.

It blesses where holly is found.

My thin pen is a traveller

in a world where books are waiting.

Who dares to see? Say? Who bothers to listen?

My heart is jacked from writing.

--Brendan Kennelly

WHAT ELSE?

Be with me Brendan of Ardfert when I

Question words. Song and speech like mine were cast

Aside when, stung by treachery,

You killed a man. Brendan, was it remorse

Made you confront the problematic sea,

The gruff distraction of the wind until

You breathed the cold air of sanctity?

I see you searching with a passionate will

The changing waste at feet and head,

The constant abyss. What reassured you?

Glint of leaping fish? Arrogance of birds?

The sea's tempers? All that has been said

About your lonely strength and rage is true.

What else subdues the sea or masters words?

--Brendan Kennelly

"The Paths of Glory Lead But to the Grave[s]," Robert Graves, That Is

2011-11-19T17:19:00.000-08:00

Or, as I should say, the poet Graves leads the way here. I couldn't help the bad joke involving Gray's line from his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Still, weak humor notwithstanding, I believe that possessing "a new understanding of my confusion" will lead to sure, certain, and true glory. Maybe I should step aside here and let the poet offer his guidance.

IN BROKEN IMAGES

He is quick, thinking in clear images;

I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;

I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;

Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,

Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;

When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;

I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;

I in a new understanding of my confusion.

--Robert Graves

Yeats: "Memory," "Presences," and "The Balloon of the Mind"

2011-11-18T23:55:00.000-08:00

MEMORY

One had a lovely face,

And two or three had charm,

But charm and face were in vain

Because the mountain grass

Cannot but keep the form

Where the mountain hare has lain.

PRESENCES

His night has been so strange that it seemed

As if the hair stood up on my head.

From going-down of the sun I have dreamed

That women laughing, or timid or wild,

In rustle of lace or silken stuff,

Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read

All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing

Returned and yet unrequited love.

They stood in the door and stood between

My great wood lectern and the fire

Till I could hear their hearts beating:

One is a harlot, and one a child

That never looked upon man with desire,

And one, it may be, a queen.

THE BALLOON OF THE MIND

Hands, do what you're bid:

Bring the balloon of the mind

That bellies and drags in the wind

Into its narrow shed.

--W.B. Yeats

Yeats: "Men Improve with the Years"

2011-11-18T23:39:00.000-08:00

MEN IMPROVE WITH THE YEARS

I am worn out with dreams;

A weather-worn, marble triton

Among the streams;

And all day long I look

Upon this lady's beauty

As though I had found in a book

A pictured beauty,

Pleased to have filled the eyes

Or the discerning ears,

Delighted to be but wise,

For men improve with the years;

And yet, and yet,

Is this my dream, or the truth?

O would that we had met

When I had my burning youth!

But I grow old among dreams,

A weather-worn, marble triton

Among the streams.

--W.B. Yeats

Just Saying

2011-11-18T23:03:00.000-08:00

Looking at the empty Glenlivet bottle (a lovely green) and imagining the red Molotov trajectory, you know: "It's a good thing I don't drink vodka."

The Hungry Reader at the Feast

2011-11-18T21:11:00.001-08:00

Puck, Sleeping: What's the Shape of Your Soul?

2011-11-17T18:56:00.000-08:00

Puck, Sleeping: sculpture mix; transparent brown, green, and denim glazing.

I know I have an inner fish, and I'll bet I have an inner Puck. What about you?

What's your trickster-raven-coyote-soul look like?

Happy 50th, Keith

2011-11-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday, Keith. You would have been fifty today.

Here is a shot (and a close-up) when you were just twenty. Imagine!

Salt Point State Park, CA: May 1982.

We still haven't finished our arguments, you know, nor have we finished sharing stories.

We aren't done yet, my friend.

P.S. For the record, I can't believe Keith is actually wearing a watch.

He worked more jobs than anyone I have ever known, performed more tasks and favors for people at all sorts of different times of day, and was never late for his commitments, but he did hate to wear a watch.

Heaney's "Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces"

2011-11-12T15:18:00.000-08:00

VIKING DUBLIN: TRIAL PIECES

It could be a jaw-bone

or a rib or a portion cut

from something sturdier:

anyhow, a smaller outline

was incised, a cage

or trellis to conjure in.

Like a child's tongue

following the toils

of his calligraphy,

like an eel swallowed

in a basket of eels,

the line amazes itself

eluding the hand

that fed it,

a bill in flight,

a swimming nostril.

There are trial pieces,

the craft's mystery

improvised on bone:

foliage, bestiaries,

interlacings elaborate

as the netted routes

of ancestry and trade.

That have to be

magnified on display

so that the nostril

is a migrant prow

sniffing the Liffey,

swanning it up to the ford,

dissembling itself

in antler combs, bone pins,

coins, weights, scale-pans.

III

Like a long sword

sheathed in its moisting

burial clays,

the keel stuck fast

in the slip of the bank,

its clinker-built hull

spined and plosive

as Dublin.

And now we reach in

for shards of the vertebrae,

the ribs of hurdle,

the mother-wet caches--

and for this trial piece

incised by a child,

a longship, a buoyant

migrant line.

That enters my longhand,

turns cursive, unscarfing

a zoomorphic wake,

a worm of thought

I follow into the mud.

I am Hamlet the Dane,

skull-handler, parablist,

smeller of rot

in the state, infused

with its poisons,

pinioned by ghosts

and affections,

murders and pieties,

coming to consciousness

by jumping in graves,

dithering, blathering.

Come fly with me,

come sniff the wind

with the expertise

of the Vikings--

neighborly, scoretaking

killers, haggers

and hagglers, gombeen-men,

hoarders of grudge and gain.

With a butcher's aplomb

they spread out your lungs

and made you warm wings

for your shoulders.

Old fathers, be with us.

Old cunning assessors

of feuds and of sites

for ambush or town.

'Did you ever hear tell,'

said Jimmy Farrell,

'of the skulls they have

in the city of Dublin?

White skulls and black skulls

and yellow skulls, and some

with full teeth, and some

haven't only but one,'

and compounded history

in the pan of 'an old Dane,

maybe, was drowned

in the Flood.'

My words lick around

cobbled quays, go hunting

lightly as pampooties

over the skull-capped ground.

--Seamus Heaney,

from North, 1975.

Yearning For The Sea

2011-11-12T08:41:00.001-08:00

Jelly: sculpture mix; brown and black glazing, layered.

I'm missing the sea salt. Heck, I'm missing the pool-salt even, as I'm off my exercise routine too. I made this piece years and years ago, but my current yearning for water time and water creatures led me to notice it again. I like when that happens.

I've been teaching Melville's Moby Dick, Casey's The Devil's Teeth, and Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, and I've been playing with clay in poseidonic ways, but the yearning remains. Need that salt breeze, that cold immersion. Soon!

Robert Graves' "To Juan At The Winter Solstice"

2011-11-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

TO JUAN AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE

There is one story and one story only

That will prove worth your telling,

Whether as learned bard or gifted child;

To it all lines or lesser gauds belong

That startle with their shining

Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,

Or strange beasts that beset you,

Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?

Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns

Below the Boreal Crown,

Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,

From woman back to woman:

So each new victim treads unfalteringly

The never altered circuit of his fate,

Bringing twelve peers as witness

Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,

All fish below the thighs?

She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;

When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,

How many the King hold back?

Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,

Whose coils contain the ocean,

Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,

Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,

Battles three days and nights,

To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,

The owl hoots from the elder,

Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:

Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.

The log groans and confesses:

There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,

Do not forget what flowers

The great boar trampled down in ivy time.

Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,

Her sea-blue eyes were wild

But nothing promised that is not performed.

--Robert Graves

The King of the Isles

2011-11-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

King Holmberg: Sculpture mix; transparent brown and denim glazes, layered.

Green Gargoyle: Work in Progress

2011-11-10T22:31:00.000-08:00

Green Gargoyle: recycled stoneware; green glazes.

Quartet: Wavey

2011-11-10T22:19:00.000-08:00

Melville's Queequeg: "George Washington Cannibalistically Developed"

2011-11-09T19:53:00.000-08:00

Herman Melville's Moby Dick is a novel full of great lines, sentences and even paragraphs that resonate either wittily, sensibly, or sentimentally (in the best and worst ways) long after the reading is done. Here's a simple sentence that I keep close at hand:

“You cannot hide the soul.”

Here’s the full passage from Chapter 10 -- "A Bosum Friend":

“With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his countenance yet had something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like tow long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.”

And from the next page, signaling Ishmael's shift from the opening pages "hypos," those feelings of violence and despair:

“I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it.”

In Search Of . . . .

2011-11-06T14:25:00.001-08:00

. . . the Loch Ness / Berkeley conjunction. I'd heard tell of it . . . .

Nessie: recycled stoneware clay, bisqued.

She's a bit smaller than expected, I'd say.

Blue Fish

2011-11-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

Blue Fish: sculpture mix; denim glazing, layered.

Caitriona O'Reilly's "Persona"

2011-11-05T10:14:00.000-07:00

PERSONA

The mud-brown river is clotted with debris.

And what can I do with these dark adhesions,

These unmoored pieces of the night?

They breathe their black into my day--

What can I do with these dark adhesions?

If dreams are rooms in which my self accretes,

They also breathe their black into my day.

As a mannikin, I set myself to work

In dreams or rooms in which my self accretes.

See me there with the pained carved face.

As a mannikin, I've set myself to work

Until the lost loved one appears

And sees me there with the pained carved face.

I cannot get these wooden limbs to work

Until the lost loved one appears

To shrink at the slyness of my puppet-smile.

I cannot get these wooden limbs to work.

Nothing is different from nothing, I say,

And shrink at the slyness of my puppet's smile.

Chrysanthemum dragons shimmer in the room

But nothing is different from nothing, I say,

These unmoored pieces of the night,

These chrysanthemum dragons shimmer in the room--

Still the mud-brown river is clotted with debris.

--Caitriona O'Reilly

Old Art: Sea Lion, Mermaid, and Fish

2011-11-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

Looking for ideas from old work.

There's something I like in each of these pieces, but I can list the flaws too.

What-have-you-done-lately-? deserves to be balanced by what-shall-I-do-next-?.

I'm certainly old enough to know that.

P.S. Your birthday is approaching, Keith. You would have been fifty. Miss you.

Swell

2011-10-30T16:19:00.001-07:00

The Waves: sculpture mix; denim glaze, layered.

Brendan Kennelly's "Begin"

2011-10-30T08:24:00.000-07:00

BEGIN

Begin again to the carolling birds,

To the sight of light at the window,

Begin to the roar of morning traffic

All along Pembroke Road.

Every beginning is a promise

Born in light and dying in dark,

Daily deception and exultation

Of Springtime flowering the way to work.

Begin to the pageant of queuing girls,

To the lonely arrogance of swans in the canal,

To bridges linking the past and future,

To old friends passing though with us still.

Begin to the treasures that we have squandered,

To the profit and the loss, the pleasure and pain,

Begin to the knowledge that to-morrow

Is another beginning for every man.

Begin to the loneliness that cannot end

Since it perhaps is what makes us begin,

Begin to wonder at unknown faces,

At crying birds and the sudden rain,

At branches stark in the winter sunlight,

At seagulls foraging for bread,

At couples sharing a sunny secret

Along together while making good.

Begin to the surge of the waking city,

To familiar streets that are always strange,

To words of greeting in the Dublin morning

Proving that we have come through again.

Blessed with the promise and the disappointment

That make the minutes of every day,

We step into the streets of morning

Walking the pavements of come-what-may.

Though we live in a world that thinks of ending,

That always seems about to give in,

Something that will not acknowledge conclusion

Insists that we forever begin.

--Brendan Kennelly

P.S. Many years ago, one of my students from English 40--Irish Carl--gave me a book of Kennelly's verse, and in particular this rousing poem, and though I've proven to be a poor correspondent, I've always appreciated that giving and treasured this poem.

W.B. Yeats: Twilight and Fire (in the Head)

2011-10-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

INTO THE TWILIGHT

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,

Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;

Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is aways young,

Dew ever shining and twilight grey;

Though hope fall from you and love decay,

Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:

For there the mystical brotherhood

Of sun and moon and hollow and wood

And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,

And time and the world are ever in flight;

And love is less kind than the grey twilight,

And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

--W.B. Yeats

Folly's Champion

2011-10-29T09:59:00.001-07:00

The Sea-Jester: sculpture mix; shino and denim glazes, layered.

To quote Yeats again: "And dance like a wave of the sea."

From "The Fiddler of Dooney."

And, to quote a friend quoting Reba McIntyre, "To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funnybone."

Forty Winks

2011-10-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

Puck, Sleeping: now glazed.

Mermaid-in-Waiting

2011-10-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

Wet clay.

A Flying Visit

2011-10-22T10:13:00.001-07:00

Quick jaunt last night to the studio. Finding parking in Berkeley on a Friday evening was an ordeal; have to plan that part better next time. Studio almost empty though, so a good relaxed vibe there. Must go again at that time.

The reindeer was broken even before his first trip to the kiln; here, he's almost ready to go in again as a glaze test.

No horns, only one leg: I still think he's a jaunty flier. You know the reindeer song: On Dasher, on Dancer, on Comet, on--yes, this might be Cupid.

I had a difficult time trying to work out the best glazing for Puck here, and I settled for a fairly standard harlequin effect. Or so I think. You never quite know how the glaze will react in combination, or . . . unless you have more practice than I do.

Waves. I borrowed the design idea from an old Viking funeral stone. I still think it's lucky.

Puck and Kipling's "A Tree Song"

2011-10-20T19:48:00.000-07:00

A TREE SONG

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,

(All of a Midsummer morn!)

Surely we sing no little thing,

In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oak of the Clay lived many a day,

Or ever Aeneas began.

Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,

When Brut was an outlaw man.

Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town

(From which was London born);

Witness hereby the ancientry

Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Yew that is old in churchyard-mould,

He breedeth a mighty bow.

Alder for shoes do wise men choose,

And beech for cups also.

But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,

And your shoes are clean outworn,

Back ye must speed for all that ye need,

To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth

Till every gust be laid,

To drop a limb on the head of him

That anyway trusts her shade:

But whether a lad be sober or sad,

Or mellow with ale from the horn,

He will take no wrong when he lieth along

'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,

Or he would call it a sin;

But - we have been out in the woods all night,

A-conjuring Summer in!

And we bring you news by word of mouth-

Good news for cattle and corn-

Now is the Sun come up from the South,

With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs

(All of a Midsummer morn):

England shall bide till Judgment Tide,

By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

--Rudyard Kipling,

from his playful historical panorama Puck of Pook's Hill

Comfort Reading

2011-10-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

"The Sounding Furrows"

2011-10-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

Keith Sanders, Drake's Bay, February 1980.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

--from Tennyson's "Ulysses"

I really missed my pal Keith today. He died back in March.

Very unexpectedly, I choked up while reading Tennyson's "Ulysses" in class today and had to stop. Ulysses is asserting his need to keep seeking, to going out beyond the horizon, rather than just slowing down, just dying at home. The poem is many things: the complaint of an underemployed, active man; a celebration of ambition and exploration; a variation on happy-ever-after; a paean to friendship; a poetic death-wish; a farewell. Even as I was reading aloud, I was looking ahead at the place in the poem where the Ithakan king calls upon his comrades, his sharers in adventure, to seek further conquests, further explorations, and the thought of my belated best friend took hold of my voice. I staggered, as it were, to a stop.

Keith is supposed to be here; we were supposed to grow old together, you know?

We were supposed to say the sorts of things Ulysses is saying to his crew to each other. Glory days and scars. Rallying cries. Shared folly and achievement. So much loss and anger flashed through my head.

The silence lengthened, and then I picked up the next line, continuing, but I had to stop again. Instead, I paced around the front of the room, and I told them why I had to stop, that the poem brought back my dead best friend, even though I hadn't expected it too.

Then, I shifted back to the beginning of the poem and the rather difficult first five lines, which I had written on the board already, and we considered the voice and the tone of that voice together. Shoring up my fragments--to steal from Eliot--against my ruin, I used the intellectual to hold the emotional in its proper place, more or less. As an English teacher, I moved forward in the poem, meaning to do honor to friendship as well as to Tennyson and his Ulysses.

Today, the students took all of this in stride, working with me. I've gotten a bit emotional, a bit engaged, with our reading before, treating characters and situations "as if they were alive," as if they mattered. They seem to like that. I'm not sure how many other teachers have acted this way, and the thought occasionally hounds me.

Here's a favorite image from the poem that transcends mere character, that we can all engage with, I hope. Certainly, the lines recall Keith's amazing energy, his wonderful engagement with life, his own aspirations and actions to "shine in use."

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

I recall years ago preparing to teach an essay by Ellen Mairs, I think, on "being a cripple" (her choice of phrasing) and on multiple sclerosis, her affliction, being behind in my prep, and so I arose at 4 a.m. to catch up, and something about that early hour allowed me to be more vulnerable and I just wept reading the piece, a piece I'd always approached intellectually before. I went in and told my students how I wept, and more of the students than usual opened up to discuss the emotional and then the intellectual aspects of the essay.

I have learned to teach, for example, Richard Rodriguez's essays through the emotions first, and the students get so much more, emotionally and intellectually, out of these pieces. And so forth.

Another arrow in the quiver of instruction? I say that as I don the armor of the intellectual for another day in the classroom, but whether or not I am wearing such armor, my heart is still on my sleeve. Emotions matter, and critical thinking that doesn't consider and value emotional responses isn't really all that properly engaged, is it?

Here is the whole of Tennyson's poem on the Greek adventurer long after the close of Homer's epic:

ULYSSES (1833)

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this grey spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

P.S. Today, one student thanked me after class for being openly emotional in relation to our reading and commented on how the class was helping her to revisit a slightly younger self, as self who read, who had time to read, feel, and be.

I appreciated hearing those words, and I think the ghost of my pal appreciated them too.