Self-Portrait #47: Summer 2008

Turtle Power: Depth Recharging

Annotations: Bascom, Bentos, Berrill & Berrill

As part of a research project, I have produced an annotated bibliography of 129 nonfiction texts, all associated with aquatic subjects.

Here are three more entries:

Bascom, Willard. The Crest of the Wave: Adventures in Oceanography. New York: Anchor, 1990.

Great book. If I had been able to read this book at age twelve, I'd probably be an oceanographer. Bascom has led a vital, varied professional life within that general rubric of oceanographer, and he obviously relishes challenges and learning from challenges. Bascom's narrative lives up to its title, since he was a forerunner in many oceanographic fields. An excellent book to show the advances of technology through the hands-on efforts of actual scientists. I can imagine using excerpts in my English 1A classes along with other essays on practical scientific topics.

P.S. I love the chapter in which Bascom and a fellow scientist use the most modern tool at the time for measuring the ascending depths of the beaches in Washington and Oregon: lead and line. One man drove the amphibious craft from deep water through the surf and up unto the beach, and the other man heaved and retrieved the lead-weighted line, calling out specific depths as they careened through whitewater and onto the sand. Then, Bascom and company hit surf and sand again and yet again. (After such labor, Bascom went on to birth Waves and Beaches, the standard academic text on the subject for many years.)


Bentos, Carlos. A Crew of One: The Odyssey of a Solo Marlin Fisherman. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002.

Bentos tells a good story, and he has the experience to back it up. Most marlin fishermen work in teams. Bentos does it all--solo. A good book to set beside Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, though Hemingway is still the better writer and tells the better story.


Berrill, N.J., and Jacquelyn Berrill. 1001 Questions Answered About the Seashore. New York: Dover, 1957.

The title tells you all, or pretty much. Some of the material is outdated, but the ambition of this book and the practicality of approaching science through reasonable Q & A predates the Frequently Asked Questions so common, and rightly so, today. I like to browse in this book, and I am planning to offer sections to students to model inquiry, response, and habits of organization.

Annotations: Ahrens, Ambrose, Bartholomew

As part of a research project, I have produced an annotated bibliography of 129 nonfiction texts, all associated with aquatic subjects. I read far further in water-related fiction and nonfiction in the last eight months, but I decided on the specific bibliography in relation to teaching my courses, English 1A, English 93, and the prospective elective "Literature and the (Aquatic) Environment." Of course, not all 129 books on my list would suit our courses, but I had to read (or reread) to discover such fitness or lack of fitness. I share my findings for each one itself and for the critical model at work.

Here are the first three books in the bibliography:

Ahrens, Chris. Good Things Love Water: A Collection of Surf Stories. Cardiff, CA: Chubasco, 1994

This is a playful collection, good on details and in touch with the early days of the Southern California and Hawaiian surf-scenes. Mostly, Ahrens shares stories from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. He sets up each story, and then lets the narrative unfold. Ahrens has a bit of a chip on his shoulder--past teachers had told him he'd never be a writer--but that just adds energy to the delivery.


Ambrose, Greg. Shark Bites: True Tales of Survival. Honolulu, HI: Bess Press, 1996.

The perfect beach read, in its way, with these stories of shark attacks in an accessible, brief form: "bites." Not much in the way of science, but the emphasis on the human element makes this volume good for borrowing to use with students.


Bartholomew, Wayne "Rabbit," and Tim Baker. Bustin' Down the Door. New York: Harper Collins, 2002.

Set mostly in the mid-1970s, Bustin' Down the Door is a useful history through the eyes of a key participant in the short board revolution and in the Hawaiian/Australian explosion when the trash-talking sports from Down Under discover that the native Hawaiians, frustrated by the history and legacy of oppression by outsiders, consider such trash-talking to be disrespectful to a potentially fatal degree. The book documents both Rabbit's career and the development of professional surfing.

The DVD of the same name would be a wonderful companion; the DVD is better at focusing on the developing dream of professional surfing, as surfing as an actual sport in popular culture, than the book. The DVD would be the better choice when teamed with Coleman's Eddie Would Go.


Postscript: Good sports writing and popular science writing can be golden for our students. Real-world-based prose (if that phrase works for you); usually accessible to the common reader, though usually demanding as well; often quite dramatic in nature; replete with information, imagery, and action.

Quick Fiction: Hold Your Breath

HOLD YOUR BREATH
Fifty feet underwater, cellphone in hand, Martin wondered whom he could call. Why had he felt compelled to show off? After Jane had dropped her phone overboard, he'd breathed deeply and had descended swiftly, finding it fairly easily amidst fish and coral. What a champion retriever! Now, his chest clenched, and the weight of the water pressed down as he looked up, up at the diveboat, up at Jane floating, peering downward. He held out the phone. Why not--he thought, pumping his legs--why not return in style? And yet now those chest muscles seized, his throat convulsed, his vision funneled, and his finned feet faltered. How long had he been under? Oh, he'd make the surface, oh, though not in any style he'd wish remembered. I'm a desperate dog, he thought, a dog digging, digging, digging. Another part of his mind calmly queried, "A desperate dog?"

That's my favorite of the quick fictions I've written so far. I'm still not sure how effective my writing is, but I know I enjoy the effort and the ambition.

Quick Fiction: An Overview and An Invitation

Quick Fiction in 100-150 Words: A Project for Your Classes, A Project for Yourself?

I often use creative writing projects in my classes, especially English 1B, because I've found that most people read differently, read more effectively, if they think of themselves as--you guessed it, how obvious--as writers. I've found that creative writing assignments tap into a special self-vision of being a writer for my students--and for myself, frankly--that expository writing assignments just don't quite reach in the same way. English 1B, with the emphasis on literature and critical thinking, is a key place to tap into personal creativity for the most obvious relevance to the work of the course.Short-short stories, Fast-Reads, Quick Fiction--whatever the label, this is the genre I've found most effective with my students.

We read a collection from a "Fast Read" contest in The Monterey Weekly from a few years ago (that I chanced upon while on a dive trip); the Fast-Reads call for stories in "101 words or less." We discuss and analyze those stories, and then we write some of our own. I request two short-short stories, 100-150 words in length, from every student. One of those stories is presented anonymously to the class. Together, we read, discuss, and analyze the class stories. We don't hold a contest for best of set, but we do look for good titles, good opening lines, good moves, good striking descriptions, characters, plots, and so forth: the standard right words in the right places. I emphasize looking for the good stuff in any and every piece to create a crucial supportive environment and to curtail easy criticism and cynicism. Why not look for what works well, first, in any and every piece of writing? I also write short-short stories and contribute my own, anonymously, with the rest of the class. Why not?

And why not share short-short stories as fellow members of our department, or as fellow members of the blog-universe?

I originally posted a version of this entry on "Clean Thine Ears," the CCSF English Department's blog-site. I wanted to place it here also for clarity and for the invitation: Share your stories!

Touchstone: Neruda

I love Pablo Neruda's poetry. His phrases, insights, and images haunt me, give voice and form to my own thoughts and feelings. That's one of the gifts of poetic expression, perhaps one of the burdens. Even when I can't quite keep up with his leaping, sweeping, picturesque imagery, I love being along for part of the wild ride. I expect the more I read Neruda, the more able I'll be to keep my seat in that saddle. And, much of what Neruda wrote is so accessible, so open and available, so touchable and true. He's never just simple, never simplistic, but he has the capacity for clarity, oh yes. Passionate, reflective, exuberant, and clear: Isn't that an ideal poet?

Reading Neruda and Lorca always makes me aware of a lack or loss, makes me wish I would just revive my old high school Spanish, would just take some classes to learn the language properly instead of just shifting back and forth between the translation in English and the Spanish original. I can work through many of the passages, but I am blind and deaf to so much nuance, tone, flavor. (And, wouldn't it be wonderful to speak Spanish anyway, to converse with so many of the people I know and meet in the original language of their hearts?)

Here's a poem I recently rediscovered. I was looking for "The Sea Urchin" because I am teaching Martin Wells' Civilization and the Limpet, a collection of marine biology essays, in my English 1A. I wanted to bring another enthusiast of the natural world to my students, and Neruda both pays attention to the world in front of him and brings the human world into contact with that nature's denizen, animate or inanimate, whether sea urchin, octopus, crayfish, starfish, seaweed, chunks of granite, bits of jade, figureheads transformed by years of wind, sand, sun, and tide, even a mermaid's heart . . . . Perhaps Neruda and I are too focused on the human, too ready to bring human and nonhuman together. I will ponder the issue of whether I am failing to pay due respect to the sea urchin or limpet or kelp as itself, only itself, but right now, I don't care. Read the poem, as I will reread it.

The Sea Urchin

The sea urchin is the sun of the sea,
centrifugal and orange,
full of quills like flames,
made of eggs and iodine.

The sea urchin is like the world:
round, fragile, hidden:
wet, secret, and hostile:
the sea urchin is like love.

---Pablo Neruda

Translated by Maria Jacketti and Dennis Maloney
Neruda, Pablo. Isla Negra. Ed. Dennis Maloney. Buffalo New York: White Pine Press, 2001.

Postcard: Kelp Monster Green

Here's a postcard I sent to my surf-camp compadres and a few other friends. I place it here as a model of engagement and a memory of good times. This was a day last October.

I've been drydocked too much lately. Rudi and other very serious issues aside, what am I doing? I'm off work (sabbatical, a lovely word), only taking one class with lab, doing chores (sometimes), and swimming, but here I am, so close to the surfable coast, so I really don't have any excuses for not surfing or at least working on learning to surf, on that learning curve. Tuesday morning, a little disgusted by my chlorinated regimen, I hopped in the truck, drove to Santa Cruz. There, on 41st Avenue, I picked up a new wetsuit--O'Neill Psycho I in kelp-monster-green--and then I drove over to my surf-instructor's house to get an old board, a 9'6" Doyle, sky-blue, sand-roughened, battered but dependable.

You can tell something, too much, about me by those priorities. My core score is pretty low. New suit, old board. I just know how keeping warm will matter more and more as the year turns. I had to get wet, of course. Cowell's Beach is close to Richard and Marisa's, so there I went. Only four people out in the water, counting myself, so you can guess what experienced surfers already knew. Wrong tide, wrong swell. I paddled around for an hour, realizing again how my swimming with my fins (for my diving trip to Maui in December with Keith, yes) really doesn't build those paddling muscles at all, at all. I tried to catch a few slow-rolling almost-waves, the best on offer, and that was fun, anyway. Then, I had to hit the road to get up to SF for my marine biology class. (By the way, it's fun and a little odd to be a student at my own school.)

The drive up the coast was beautiful, invigorating and calming, the way the ocean almost always is for me. I looked for the migrating gray whales as I drove along, but I didn't see any. They are out there, still. Coffee and a scone in Half Moon Bay helped also. I got wet, I paddled for some exercise, and I'm ready now. Pacifica on Friday morning?

I didn't surf, but I surfed, you know?

Touchstones: Duane, Robbins

I tend to gather quotations. I harvest the words and phrases in books or in conversation that arrest, jar, sear, soothe, explicate, or edify something somewhere somehow for me. There may be a sense of recognition, a glimpse of the past or of a possible future. Or, there may be a revolution, a shift in perspective, that sudden awareness where before there had been something only now grasped as false, facile, unearned, unreliable. Once or twice, I have felt caught, gripped, even gutted. When I've been lucky, there's been growth, an enlargement in my sense of the world, or in myself.

Here are two that I return to again and again. I'll let you imagine how each strikes me. How does each strike you?

The first voice is Dan Duane's, from his Caught Inside: A Surfer's Year on the California Coast:

"If there's a relief in discovering the life you most desperately dream of living, there's also a fear in discovering your soul's needs--after all, how then deny them?"

The second voice is Tom Robbins', from the narrator of his Jitterbug Perfume:

"Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer."

Feeling a bit thirsty, a bit in need of comfort. Cactus, here I come.

Turtle Power: Sand Under Sea

Work in Progress: Summer 2008

The Sleeper

Matt, Aqua Matt (or Nisus of Troy?)

My favorite image of myself, playing aquatic superhero, free diving in Hawaii.

As a boy, I always wanted to be the hero, and I'd debate Aquaman vs. the Submariner while everyone else was debating Batman vs. Superman or Captain America vs. the Green Lantern. Namor, prince of Atlantis, has had my greatest loyalty, especially in the original comic/cartoon version. Somewhere I have a list I kept of the more aquatic figures from myth and literature: first, Odysseus, Beowulf, Theseus, Tarzan; then, Travis McGee, Dorey Thomas, Doc Ford, maybe James Bond--those are all that surface in my mind just now. (My title is a rather juvenile borrowing from Bond's infamous self-introduction.)

I love free diving, being underwater and limited only by my ability to hold that breath, to swim and to explore, to hover and examine, to search and seek, and to feel that welcoming pressure of the water on muscle and bone. (I wish my sinuses liked it as much as the rest of me.) In my regular workout pool, I am known for diving as deeply as possible and as often as possible, lap after lap, so it's no surprise I'm the usual finder of treasure, the lost earrings and bracelets. Mel Fisher has nothing to worry about, but my dreams live on. Today, a pearl earring; tomorrow, King Priam's gold!

Somewhere, I have story-notes about a certain Nisus of Troy, veteran of that Greco-Trojan conflict, survivor and refugee, now a fisherman and salvage-diver, always seeking the treasures plundered from his beloved city and lost with those ships that failed to return to Greece, the ships lost to Poseidon's wrath. Nisus of Troy. You know there must also be a few crafty Greeks seeking that drowned gold, silver, and bronze. Never underestimate Odysseus.

Yes, I still have hero fantasies. Why not?

Turtle Power: Maui Free Diving

Borrowing from Quality: Anna Mills On Nature Writing

I'm a teacher, so I'd better confess. I have borrowed--stolen?--the "lively, thoughtful" in my subtitle from my friend Anna Mills' definitely lively, distinctly more thoughtful blog: On Nature Writing. Read what she's written. Tell your friends to do so too.

Thanks, Anna.

P.S. I've since changed my original subtitle, dropping the "lively, thoughtful," and yet I aspire to both qualities in everything I write. And, I still want to give Anna my thanks for the encouragement.

A Good Beginning: "Once By The Pacific"

I think that recalling Robert Frost's "Once By the Pacific" would be an appropriate gesture for this initial posting. I keep wondering where on the west coast Frost was visiting from New England. I keep thinking I should research that question. Then, I reread the poem, speak it aloud, and I find myself at the shore, wet with spray, and grinning, helplessly and heedlessly, despite the palpable rage in Frost's vision.


Once By the Pacific

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

---Robert Frost (1928)