Yearning

From Beowulf to Milton's Satan!

800 or so years in 16 or so weeks:

Literary Survey

and Vision-Quest (or so I hope)

Join the fun at CCSF in San Francisco

Heading Out

Mendocine paddling.

Atlantean

 One of my favorite of places.  Paddle out from Van Damme State Beach, as I have said before, and poke around in the nooks and crannies as you head south, and you just might find this gem.

Here's the view looking up when you take the photos you've just looked at.

Mendocino

As she filled my travel cup, the Mendocino waitress slipped and shifted through a double-handful of funky dance moves and then, after collecting my cash, closed the till with an eloquent twitch of her hips.  All for her own obvious delight in the music coming out of the speakers.  I wish I’d paid some attention to the tune.

Lumpy II

Oasis

Lumpy

Feast

For the body and for the soul.

Feeling Crabby

Normally, feeling "crabby" would be a negative thing, but isn't that a beauty?
Vintage shot.

Quick Dip

Well, that was really more than one breath.

Sam Hamill: "Ars Poetica"

PREFACE: ARS POETICA

Some say the poem's
best made from natural speech
from the inner life.
I say, That is sometimes true.
The poem's a natural thing.

Some say the poem
should rise into purest song,
a formality,
articulate expression
achieved through complex structures

derived from classics--
which also is true enough.
Let the song arise
as it will.  Learn to revise
the life.  Beware.  Disguises

rise up everywhere:
most dangerously, self-in-
fatuation.  "More
poets fail," Pound declared,
"from lack of character than

from lack of talent."
Some insist the poem is
heaven-sent, claiming
angelic heirs.  The poem,
I believe, is a failure

elevated in-
to triumph, a form of truth
wrought from mortal flesh
and blood that will soon perish,
but which--for one brief moment

or an hour--reveals
the tragic human spirit
in the very act
of imagining itself
cured of the sickness of self.

The poem cannot,
finally, be explained nor
defined.  The true gift
poetry bestows begins
and ends with humility

before the task.  All
the suffering of this world
can be truly felt,
absorbed adn transcended, just
by the act of listening

to that deepest voice
speaking from within.  Forget
hagiography.
All the great masters are dead.
Forget rime and irony.

Forget words, meter,
diction, whole syllabaries--
the literary.
The heart by way of the ear.
What's that you wanted to say?

--SAM HAMILL



from Gratitude,
BOA Editions, Ltd.
Rochester, NY  1998


(This one is for Eric, a very welcome house-guest)

Drowning Atlantis

I need to swim.

Right now, the water-of-life goes down like water.

When I am swimming regularly, putting in the laps, day after day, I'm not so thirsty.

Right now, I'm trying to drown Atlantis.
And I am.
Drop by drop,
dram by dram,
deluge by deluge.

The King of Atlantis
Fall 2009: Sculpture mix
(glazed with Transparent Brown, Stormy Blue, & Celadon),
copper wire, and hemp.

Sobriquet

"Hey, hey, Teach.  What's with the clay-head?"

--Not-my-student asking about the prop for Macbeth class today.

Second favorite event after the baby duck on campus.  

Since this was the last day of regular classes and I will be suffering from not-teaching soon, I liked hearing the sobriquet.

Julius, Post-Ides: sculpture mix, pit-fired on Ocean Beach, SF, CA.

The Rule(s) of Threes

The Rule(s) of 3s:
today's linchpin in English 1B, a required Introduction to Literature course.

Triples: In Macbeth, we have three witches, three murderers, three apparitions.

I want to talk about a different set of triples, of threes.

Air: you can go three minutes without air.
Water: you can go three days without water.
Food: you can go three weeks without food.

But how does any of that relate to our English class?

Habits?
What do you think?
Three weeks--to break or to lose a habit?
Three months--to make, to create, a habit.

Students, I say as I heft Homer's Iliad and Shakespeare's Macbeth in my hands,
You've been reading steadily for three months now.  Don't stop.

Yes, some of you were already readers before you came to this class; good for you.  I've been cheering you on all term.

But some of you haven't been readers . . . but now you are.

Keep going.  Make being a reader a full-on habit.

After finals, take a week or two weeks off--I mean, why would you?  But okay, take a little time off--but before that three weeks' mark rolls around, pick up Homer's Odyssey or another Shakespeare play or a novel, crime or fantasy or science fiction or whatever.  Just don't stop reading.


(I think my students appreciated the effort I was making, and I pulled them in with the rules of threes.)

Time's Wicked Current

Rum-tee-tum-tee-tum-tum.
Sipping rum, watching "Into the Blue" with the director's commentary going, and remembering a long-anticipated Hawaiian dive-trip with my late best friend back in 2008.

Time has a wicked current, you know?


(If you want to know more about the clay mask, check here.)

Captain, Helper

My good cat Captain loves to help me with the laundry.

What that means:  Our washer is not balanced properly, so until I adjust the machine, the washer flips out and becomes unbalanced and galumphs galumphs galumphs.  I tend to grab a book to read and just sit atop the washer (instead of dealing with the balance issues).  Captain, bless his soul, likes to help me and comes running when he hears the imbalanced washer struggling--and so we both sit atop the washer.

Yesterday while I was at work, the washer was in operation and Captain heard the imbalance and came running to the rescue, standing atop the heaving machine and gentling it with his weight, just a bit.

M D U: Profile Pic

Brief swim off Pelican Point,
Tomales Bay, CA:
2/3/18.

A little less than four hours paddling on the bay and probably only ten minutes swimming about and I feel so much more like myself: the saving grace of exertion and immersion.

Comfort Reading Since 1982

Martha Grimes'
The Old Fox Deceiv'd.

Classic English mystery penned by American writer:
still counts, still delivers the goods.

Richard Jury, Melrose Plant, Wiggins--
A cast I find so much fun.

Journey-Charms

Old clay.