CUPPA-JOE

How many of you are like me--in that you buy more coffee than you actually drink?

That is, I will buy this cup and that cup (in my personal travel mug, of course) that I never quite finish.
Sometimes I've barely sipped from the cup I need to dump out for the next cup.

Still, if I didn't have that new cup of joe in hand, I'd be less relaxed, less happy, less able to focus on the next thing.

Glaze-Time

It has been a long time . . . .

Dickens on Childhood and Memory and Happiness

"This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater proprietybe said not to have lost the faculty, than to have  acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

"I might have a misgiving that I am 'meandering' in stopping to say this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from
anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics."

--Charles Dickens
-----very early in David Copperfield--

Credo

Salty, sandy, sunburnt, sore-muscled:
all the signs of a day well-spent.

Puck or Joy?

Two hummers are nesting in the hedge by the garage and frequently hang out in the orange tree by the holly and sing.  These shots are of one of the hummingbirds, for the other one wouldn't stick around for a profile pic.

Puck and Joy -- not twins I realize, but mates.

Dream: Wave-Crash

Kelp-time. Slightly disturbing, disorienting dream last night (among many) about free diving off a rocky shoreline just down the coast. I was distracted and checking out a circular "tide pool" out near the impact zone. A surfer stopped to give me the heads-up the tide was changing, the swell was rising, and the waves were getting closer and closer, ready to take me out. I thanked him, wondered how I could have gotten so focused on the shellfish and such in the crater-like collection of rocks, and started checking my exits. The waves were indeed crashing closer and closer, and the dusk was falling hard. Where had the time gone? Suddenly I was cold to the bone and tired. I went to the shoreward side of the rocks, and there was a twelve-foot drop to water and rocks (a completely unrealistic effect, but it was a dream). I'd have to time my getaway dropping over that side. I'd need water on the rocks to cushion my fall, but I wouldn't want to be caught in the crater for a full-on wave strike. Suddenly, in a rush of thick, thick water and thick foam, I was over the edge and getting rolled deep. I came up gasping. A very odd dream, but the cold water, the salt, and the kelpiness pleases me, despite the rough handling.

Required Reading, Say I

One-Trick Sea-Horse

I may be a bit of a one-trick pony with water and clay, but I haven't bored myself yet, and at age 52 I think that's one of the few sure guides to living well.

Printer's Devil

One of my poems in print.  

Rhymes With Orange

Exit . . . stage right;

or, William Blake's "Glad Day" in the marine biology version . . . .

Lively Water

I love when the water's lively like this, but then I'm a free diver by nature or maybe just a swimmer, in cases like this one.  Flat days are fine, and helpful when tanking, but there are too many flat days every year.

Surge is good, I say.  Let there be engagement.  I like when the water pushes back, pushes hard; I like working against and with the flow, particularly the latter.  Whether free diving or kayaking, give me some texture, some liveliness, and I'm a happy fellow.

The picture tells the story better than my words.  Doesn't that look fun?

Reading Dickens: Reflection In Action

Today I started reading Dickens' David Copperfield for the second time in my life because of something novelist David Corbett shared in a speech at Marin's best bookstore Book Passage last week. I am realizing that I haven't read this novel in more than 30 years, not since undergraduate days.  I am enjoying the opening puzzle about "the hero of my own life" and the bit on "meandering" also on the first page, but then I encountered this paragraph on early memories, on the people who tend to have such strong powers of memory, and on the other qualities that such people tend to possess, and I found this passage resonant. I certainly have retained my "capacity of being pleased," which is no small thing, and I wish the capacity of being happy in life on all.

Here's the passage:

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

--Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Ch. 2

Oddly enough, or not, I feel just a bit closer to the novelist and to his autobiographical narrator too.

Test Prompt: Is Roxane Worth The Trouble?

When I teach Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, I end up wanting to write lots of letters.  I also always assign the following topics--or roughly similar ones--for in-class or take-home writing:

Is Roxane really worth the trouble?

Is Cyrano just a fool?  (Use evidence from all parts of the play to support your position.)

Does the Comte de Guiche have any redeeming qualities?  And if so, are they enough, really, to redeem him?

Stuff like that.

The first is a particular favorite, and those of you who know the play understand that in the beginning, Roxane, aside from her beauty and liveliness, doesn't seem to merit such devotion from Cyrano and Christian.  In fact, in the second and third acts, she can seem petty and hurtful.  And yet if you keep reading . . . .

I also like to direct students to the balcony scene as a crescendo in the arc of the play.  What really happens amidst all those words back and forth?  Is it all just the "pretty nothings that are everything," as Roxane claims earlier, or is there something of greater depth at work?

Oh, Roxane--


I've also found the following quotation helpful in considering the overall arc of the play:


"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
--Horace Walpole (1717-1797)


--a handful of thoughts at the end of a long day.

A Viking Holiday!

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

Friends: Maui Farewell

Here are Keith and myself in the parking lot of the main Maui Dive Shop in Kihei. We have just returned the rental gear, and we're just about to head for the airport and our separate flights home. We've had a full week diving, sightseeing, eating, drinking, and talking. From casual jokes to heated debates, if we weren't actually underwater, we were definitely talking.

We never were much for hugging each other, and you can see that in the photo. The awkwardness seems slightly sad, but mostly funny to me now. Classic guys.

December 2008.

The Oatmeal Bowl

One piece in the puzzle of comfort.

Depth is everything, at least with oatmeal or soup.

The Diver vs. The Demon

The other night I dreamed that I was attacked by an invisible demon.

In some dark cellar, attempting to defend myself and protect an injured friend, I was flailing about with the only tools at hand: my abalone iron and dive knife. Each time metal met demon-flesh, the creature became visible, fleetingly, and I'd attempt to strike it again. I couldn't always see it, but I could feel it. The thing had fangs, claws, short wings, and a nasty disposition.

Scary, scary dream, but satisfying; my dive tools and I came through.

Wool-Gathering is Good

Old friends.

(Head and hands: jaunty, cozy, ready, happy.)

Between Sand and Sky

Happy man; check that body English.

The mouth of Drake's Estero, Drakes Bay, CA.
Fall 2009.

I'm standing on a sand bar, further away from the shore than it looks from this angle. Whenever a wave came in, you could enjoy the illusion of walking on water. And, whenever that somewhat bigger wave came in, you could enjoy the reality of not walking on water, of cold salt water soaking you to the bone. Those are both joys. Can't you hear me laughing? I certainly was.

Sea-Wolves

Sea-wolves; or, happy divers at Pt. Lobos.

I've mentioned my old surf-mat, circa 1978, with all the poetry and the Greek naiad eyes in permanent marker (pre-Sharpie days, my friends), and on that 'mat you can still read a popular 19th-century poem called "The Sea-Wolf," though I can't quite read those markings enough to tell you the poet's name. I'll have to do some research and report back. (It may be summer, but those words bring the daily classroom right to me, happily so.) I'll blog on that 'mat, just as soon as I take a good photo and decipher all the faded poems and sayings. ("Kiss my ab"--as in abalone--is still legible.)

Here are two 20th-century sea-wolves. Well, I'm definitely (and defiantly) 20th-century; Philip, my dive partner here, would probably claim to be 21st-century, and power to him, the young rascal. Carolina took the photo, for which I thank her. (If you are looking for a water-sprite, you should seek her out.) She caught Philip and myself smiling, and though we look goofy, as everyone does in neoprene, you can't blame that on her. There's nothing false about such high spirits, and Carolina documented it. That happens far less often than it should.

Pt. Lobos, Carmel, CA. Early December, 2009, though doesn't it look like a wonderful summer day? (Not a summer day in Carmel, though, since there would be fog, lots of it.) Glorious day. Great temps, 60's and even low 70's, on land; possibly high 50's in the water. However, visibility in the water was quite poor: five feet at best? I recall Philip keeping even with my fins just to not lose me; I was checking every half-minute or so. I was so glad he was sticking tight; I didn't want to get separated and lose dive-time just reconnecting at the surface. We headed out, moving along the alley out there, hugging the rocky configurations to the left, and headed back, still hugging that same side. Lots of fish, however unclear, and fun in the surge, but that's why you dive, good viz or not.

The high points of this dive were (a) when the big ling cod pushed us aside to return to his favorite crevice and (b) when we managed to navigate right back to our starting point without undue surface swimming or kelp-crawling. That last blessing was pure luck, as I recently discovered; in my latest dive at Pt. Lobos, I navigated my partner and myself into a long kelp-crawl without enough air or weight (a different story) to leap-frog our way back to the boat-channel and launch zone.

I'm going surfing and free diving tomorrow: Cowell's Beach, Santa Cruz. Lindamar in Pacifica is my back -up. I haven't surfed in a long time, and I've only progressed to being an apprentice (don't-wannabe-kook) anyway. After a session reminding myself how much I should have been surfing already (best prep) or doing more pop-ups (2nd best), I think I'll swim out with a camera and try to document some happy surfers. Looking at Carolina's photo here has given me that idea.

"Touch magic, and pass it on." (Terri Windling? Charles de Lint? Robert Graves? William Butler Yeats? The Waterboys? Read Windling's The Wood Wife; de Lint's Memory and Dream; Graves' Homer's Daughter; and Yeats' "At Baile's Strand." Listen to the Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues.) "Touch magic, and pass it on": Jane Yolen, those Merlin stories, I think.

By the way, that's me on the left. I think my tank is hanging a bit low here, a habitual error. I position the tank low because I don't want to hit the tank with the back of the head as I look up and about while diving, but the tank has been slipping down in the pack a bit too much the last few dives. What goes down could come up. In a heavy surf-exit, that could matter. At Lobos, at this protected entry/exit, no big deal; at a steep beach like Monastery, now, I could knock myself out. Wouldn't that be truly goofy? I'd better fix that.