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.

Aegir, Ready

Aegir: sculpture mix; blue, green,and white glazes; copper wire; fishhooks. 20-minute exercise with model. (I overglazed, actually, but later I realized that I like the gloppy, soggy, flowing look with this piece.)

Aegir is one of the Northern European sea-gods from pagan times; he and his wife Ran use hooks and nets, fishing for the souls of fisherfolk, sailors, merchants, and passengers upon those cold northern waters. (Njord is another Norse god, though he has more to do with ships, harbors, and anchorages.) Aegir is known for the beer he brews; the Norse gods, led by Odin, Thor, and Frey, often spend weeks at a time hoisting tankards and horns with Aegir and his sea-folk in that cave beneath the sea.

Being the guest of Aegir, if you're not a Norse deity, just may mean you've gone and drowned yourself. At least the beer is reputed to be good.

Hurdling the Oak

Reindeer Game

This fellow is a veteran, and still game, despite having only three legs and half a rack. (Here, we are parked up at Tilden Park, a lovely place for a walk along the local ridgelines.)

Reindeer Tyr: Sculpture mix; brown glazing. Markings on chest and hooves from a Celtic ring I wore for years.

The Harbinger

The Harbinger: sculpture mix, nutmeg and dark green glazes; twig; copper wire.

Bookfish

"Kindergarten Dropout"

I just remembered how at age 5 I announced to my mother that I would start kindergarten, but then I was going to "drop out."

1966.

And, now, I'm up late revising a final exam for my students tomorrow.

Ezra Pound's "The Seafarer"

One of my favorite poems in Old English is "The Seafarer," that melancholy lament with the wonderful setting of being adrift, physically and soulfully, in the sea, however much the speaker plies the oars. I often think of this poem at the end of a tough outing in my kayak.

Here is the translation by Ezra Pound, a translation known for its sonic fidelity and religious infidelity (or reworking). Pound approximates as best one can the rhythmic and alliterative style, the heroic and elegiac spirit, even as he substitutes, as another translator once said, the Angles for the original angels, holding to the underlying pagan culture instead of the specific Christianity of the poem as it has survived to this day.

THE SEAFARER

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,

Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days

Hardship endured oft.

Bitter breast-cares have I abided,

Known on my keel many a care's hold,

And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent

Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head

While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,

My feet were by frost benumbed.

Chill its chains are; chafing sighs

Hew my heart round and hunger begot

Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not

That he on dry land loveliest liveth,

List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,

Weathered the winter, wretched outcast

Deprived of my kinsmen;

Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,

There I heard naught save the harsh sea

And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,

Did for my games the gannet's clamour,

Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter,

The mews' singing all my mead-drink.

Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern

In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed

With spray on his pinion.

Not any protector

May make merry man faring needy.

This he little believes, who aye in winsome life

Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,

Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft

Must bide above brine.

Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,

Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then

Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now

The heart's thought that I on high streams

The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.

Moaneth alway my mind's lust

That I fare forth, that I afar hence

Seek out a foreign fastness.

For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst,

Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed;

Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faithful

But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare

Whatever his lord will.

He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having

Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight

Nor any whit else save the wave's slash,

Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water.

Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries,

Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,

All this admonisheth man eager of mood,

The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks

On flood-ways to be far departing.

Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying,

He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow,

The bitter heart's blood. Burgher knows not--

He the prosperous man - what some perform

Where wandering them widest draweth.

So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock,

My mood 'mid the mere-flood,

Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.

On earth's shelter cometh oft to me,

Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer,

Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly,

O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow

My lord deems to me this dead life

On loan and on land, I believe not

That any earth-weal eternal standeth

Save there be somewhat calamitous

That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain.

Disease or oldness or sword-hate

Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body.

And for this, every earl whatever, for those speaking after--

Laud of the living, boasteth some last word,

That he will work ere he pass onward,

Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his malice,

Daring ado, ...

So that all men shall honour him after

And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the English,

Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast,

Delight mid the doughty.

Days little durable,

And all arrogance of earthen riches,

There come now no kings nor Cæsars

Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.

Howe'er in mirth most magnified,

Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,

Drear all this excellence, delights undurable!

Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth.

Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed low.

Earthly glory ageth and seareth.

No man at all going the earth's gait,

But age fares against him, his face paleth,

Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions,

Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven,

Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth,

Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry,

Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart,

And though he strew the grave with gold,

His born brothers, their buried bodies

Be an unlikely treasure hoard.

Sir Bertilak Sends His Best To The King

The Solstice is almost upon us.

I like to reread "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" this time of year, for 'tis a Christmas story, a winter story, a challenge-and-change story. Young Sir Gawain stands up to defend the King's honor against the green-clothed, green-skinned, green-haired giant's insults and tests. What would you have done if a green giant offered you the chance to prove your mettle--yours, the court's, and the king's-- by taking a swipe at his neck in return for the opportunity to take a swipe at yours a year hence? Must be a trick?

Of course, but imagine when, despite your successful hack with the axe, the mysterious Green Knight catches up that rolling, bleeding head by the hair, and that detached head laughs and reminds you of the grim appointment, a year hence. Would that be a long year or a short year for you? Would you even set out to meet this giant maniac? Would you get lost on the way, particularly since you don't quite know where you are going anyway? (Finding the knight to honor your oath being part of the test.) And, oh, if you find a castle and a lovely lady offers you a magical belt of protection, would you accept it--and lie about taking it? Would . . . .

Where is my copy of this poem?

The original Middle English is wonderful, but more difficult without practice than Chaucer's pieces, so I tend to be a bit lazy and reach for Tolkien's translation. There are other fine ones, beside.

If you are looking for a good book for the autumn/winter evenings . . . .

Robin Hood and Selfwood Forest

We all have such stories, don't we?

Robin Hood: my favorite film growing up (the Errol Flynn version); that feathered, green Peter Pan hat at age 8 from Disneyland was really (to me) a Robin Hood hat; playing historical cops & robbers: Robin Hood is on either side, but not both sides at once; the subject of my Chaucerian imitation as an undergrad: The Knight's Yeoman's Tale; a piece in the John-Fowles-Daniel-Martin-Robin-Hood-Byron/Byronic-hero-grad-school puzzle in my autobiography.

Truly, I would characterize my academic and even professional career through the figure of Robin Hood, though I also don't expect that to make any sense at all, especially if you don't live in my head.

"Everything I steal, I give away," asserts another Robin Hood figure, poet and editor Sam Hamill, and I concur. I have a poster from the Copper Canyon Press up on the wall just because of that line. Well, and because the Copper Canyon Press publishes great poetry.

I've been accused of not being able to tell the forest from the trees. Pure Robin Hood, don't you think? (I love the trees, I prefer the trees, but I pay attention to the forest too, while They--I'll generalize--just ignore the trees and assume They already know the forest, for They bought the map. 'The map isn't the terrain," the wisdom of the scout reminds us.)

Who is your mythic/historical figure that helps you make sense of some part of your life?

I have one friend who answers truly "Merlin," and who elaborates "Seeker of arcane knowledge and advisor to leaders."

Another friend: "Don Quixote." Of course . . . do we need elaboration? DQ is my own third or fourth choice, I think; Jim Hawkins from Stevenson's Treasure Island is another of my own runner-ups.)

A third friend invokes Dr. Seuss: ‎"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze. / I am the Lorax, I speak for the Trees."

A fourth friend responds and expands just the way I prefer: "Alice from Alice's Adventures, Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books, and Klaus Baudelaire from the Series of Unfortunate Events. Later, I added Dr. Watson to that list, and took Rosalind (from As You Like It) as an inspirational figure—I was probably about fifteen by that point. But if you told me to pick one, it'd be Hermione. Bookworm side-kick (not the main character); socially awkward; steps up to solve problems, but is sometimes taken for granted because she's dependable."

Now, I have yet another reason to read those Harry Potter books, finally. I like to understand literary references, especially from my friends, and who would pass up such an intriguing character as that? (Plus, the side of me that isn't quite Robin Hood fits that description of Hermione fairly well, with a few adjustments.)

Still another, a fifth, the Skeptic responds, perhaps rightly, "WHO does live in Your head? 'We seek him here, we seek him there...' '

(Answer: Of course, I do, and all those imaginary friends. But, friend, your mythic/historical alter ego, if you please?)

Skeptical Friend relents, responding with "Natty Bumpo and his real-life compadres--Bridger, Carson . . . . Roland, Horatio at the Bridge, Cuchulain at all those river fords . . . ." (The Skeptic and I share many of the same stories, much the same upbringing. In fact, this Scout helped bring me up, as it were. And, for those few who will understand, we both ended up relishing Escape From New York and The Thirteenth Warrior after initial resistance.)

Perhaps oddly, I do feel that I'm a literary huntsman, a literary Green Knight (Bertilak-as-teacher, yes), and even Heaney's wood-kerne, so the reach to Robin Hood is not that far.

Don't we all have such stories?

I repeat, who is your mythic/historical figure that helps you make sense of some part of your life or soul? Go on, tell us.

Recommendation: New Viking Voyages

I love water adventures, especially the ones involving practical archeology or anthropology.

I grew up with Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki on a bookshelf just above my bed. I recall buying Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage the first day it was available, bringing it home and devouring this nonfiction tale of Irish exploration of the North Pacific in leather boats. Leather boats! (Icebergs! Whales! Adventure! I was--and am--a fairly enthusiastic armchair voyager.)

Severin's book is still a favorite, a book I read yearly, but W. Hodding Carter has also contributed a worthy volume to this adventurous, salty, usually cold water genre.

A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World. So much fun as we move with Carter from his first inspiration, through many trials, dead-ends, pitfalls, tragedies, successes, fellowship, and more, to the voyage's end. My favorite parts, besides the bantering of the crew, involve Hodding Carter's coming to terms with questions of leadership, practical and spiritual in the best senses. Also, just as Severin's Irish replica, Hodding Carter's craft Snorri is authentic; it doesn't have a motor for emergencies. This vessel must be sailed, and sailed well. No escort vessel either (and neither did Severin's craft). These fellows get in a bit of trouble all by themselves. Two tries to get across the sea. And . . . .

Read the book; you'll have fun, no doubt at all.

Secondly, there's an illustrated companion to Hodding Carter's chronicle:

An Illustrated Viking Voyage: Retracing Leif Eriksson's Journey in an Authentic Viking Knarr.

Lovely photos by Russell Kaye; a fine tribute to the men and women who constructed this vessel, the crew who sailed and rowed this vessel, and to the landscape this Viking craft sailed from, through, and to. This book makes me want to voyage too, or at least to break out the kayak and the camera for some Marin Headlands action, even if I'm not heading out across any sea or up the coast on my own epic journey. Armchair travel at its finest.

P.S. I've also written about Hodding Carter's adventures before:

http://mattduckworthunderwater.blogspot.com/2009/05/annotations-w-hodding-carter.html

Seamus Heaney's "Exposure"

EXPOSURE

It is December in Wicklow:

Alders dripping, birches

Inheriting the last light,

The ash tree cold to look at.

A comet that was lost

Should be visible at sunset,

Those million tons of light

Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips,

And I sometimes see a falling star.

If I could come on meteorite!

Instead I walk through damp leaves,

Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,

Imagining a hero

On some muddy compound,

His gift like a slingstone

Whirled for the desperate.

How did I end up like this?

I often think of my friends;

Beautiful prismatic counselling

And the anvil brains of some who hate me

As I sit weighing and weighing

My responsible tristia.

For what? For the ear? For the people?

For what is said behind-backs?

Rain comes down through the alders,

Its low conducive voices

Mutter about let-downs and erosions

And yet each drop recalls

The diamond absolutes.

I am neither internee nor informer;

An inner emigre, grown long-haired

And thoughtful; a wood-kerne

Escaped from the massacre,

Taking protective colouring

From bole and bark, feeling

Every wind that blows;

Who, blowing up these sparks

For their meagre heat, have missed

The once-in-a-lifetime portent,

The comet's pulsing rose.

--Seamus Heaney

Two Poems By Jessica Fisher

Jessica Fisher is a poet that I have recently encountered. I'd picked up her volume Frail-Craft from my favorite bookstore--Pegasus Books--and read around in it a bit before shelving it at work. Now, clearing that shelf of the semester's texts, I found the volume again. Now, I'm delving deeper.

Here are two that strike me today. Each has a clear voice and a sense of mystery for me. I feel drawn in by these two, even if I haven't quite worked out or felt out all the nuances. I like where I am being taken, if that's the best phrase. "Canal," the second, is a prose-poem, and since the original line endings won't fit into my blog as given, I've marked those endings with "/".

I hope you find Fisher's poems striking as well.


FRAIL-CRAFT

It's a true story: we were at sea, together at risk,
and he was very poor, a regular fisherman, from
a family of such. He happened to fill the equation
in the geometry of appetite I trace: for even the blind
can see! And so you see it's not so much about the eye
as whatever is made to serve the master who asks
for wine, wants the pickled fruits de mer alongside
the treatise on navigation and the maps that show
what oceans hide.
Yet men still drown
in order to know the difference between sky
and whatever name you give to the deep. Otherwise
they see the sea as surface, want to sit on the beach
and say Look at me, looking at the sea!


--from NONSIGHT

3. CANAL

Because, despite the eye's illusion, parallel lines do not converge: so that it was that / we walked the canal in tandem, you on the north side, I on the south. I / watched as you stooped to fix your shoe, as you took off your jacket, then put it / back on again; I knew you were cold, too, when the wind came, and the rains, / and then snow, sleet, hail--such offense taken, though there never was a / crime, never the imagined tryst in the summer canal, our bodies pale against / the nightblack reeds. But if the eye can love--and it can, it does--then I held / you and was held.

Two Poems By John Montague

John Montague is an Irish poet whose work I have long admired. Prof. Tracy at UCB first introduced him to me; I picked up a selected works (published in 1982) in a used bookstore in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, back in 1993.

Here are two poems I particularly admire. The first speaks to my sense of tradition, of antiquities and visions of the past, though with a wonderfully skewed perspective. With the second, well, I used to think I had found a wonderful table of poetic development, a sequence of aesthetic wonder and, perhaps, blunder (not on the part of Montague, but on the part of the naive poet-figure, Oneself); and perhaps I still think that way. Maybe something else is going on for me, now, as a more mature reader.

In each, I can see echoes and rejections or revisions of Yeats. Joyce, Synge, Lady Gregory, and even Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I'll reread the poems with you. Go ahead, and aloud, please.

OLD MYTHOLOGIES

And now, at last, all proud deeds done,

Mouths dust-stopped, dark they embrace

Suitably disposed, as urns, underground.

Cattle munching soft spring grass

--Epicures of shamrock and the four-leaved clover--

Hear a whimper of ancient weapons,

As a whole dormitory of heroes turn over,

Regretting their butcher's days.

This valley cradles their archaic madness

As once, on an impossibly epic morning,

It upheld their savage stride:

To bagpiped battle marching,

Wolfhounds, lean as models,

At their urgent heels.

THE TRUE SONG

The first temptation is to descend

Into beauty, those lonely waters

Where the swan weeps, and the lady

Waits, a nacreous skeleton.

The second is to watch over

Oneself, a detached god

Whose artifice reflects

The gentle smile in the mirror.

The third, and the hardest,

Is to see the body brought in

From the street, and know

The hand surge towards blessing.

For somewhere in all this

Stands the true self, seeking

To speak, who is at once

Swan

lady

stricken one.

Sea-Green Stones

I found these two stones in tide pools away down south below Carmel many, many years ago.

My Mother Taught Me To Hunt

She did, indeed. "What did you learn in school today, Matthew?" she started asking when I was five. She made me feel I should learn things, so I pursued learning, sometimes relentlessly. Learning something (or, better, multiple "things" ) to bring home and share became proof of my prowess: a string of trout for the pan after a day of fishing for knowledge. And, she listened to my answers for so many years that I think about reporting what I've "caught" at the end of each day, still, even now.

(We didn't get along all the time, but those were absolute gifts.)

When I think of her, I now often think of the ending to Ted Kooser's poem "Mother":

But the iris I moved from your house

now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots

green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,

as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.

Were it not for the way you taught me to look

at the world, to see the life at play in everything,

I would have to be lonely forever.

The poem's ending catches my sense of debt, of appreciation, and while I don't think I ever feared the spectre of loneliness the way the poem's speaker seems to have done, perhaps the gifts of seeking knowledge, of seeking life, and of reporting it, of sharing it, have protected me in their own way.

My mother died on a Friday, December 5th, back in 1997.

You should have quit smoking the day I turned eleven, Mom, the way you promised you would; I quit sneaking sips of beer that day, just as I said I would, and I didn't start again until years later when it became quite clear you weren't going to keep your part of our bargain. I know you had your reasons, but I'm still angry about that. Can you blame me?

Rest in peace, Mom. You need it, and you deserve it.

Your son,

Matthew David

Tuning Fork, Compass Needle

Here's a slightly apologetic line from Rebecca Solnit's excellent A Book of Migrations: Some Passages in Ireland that matters to me, that provides a focus, a model, an admonition, and some solace:

"I tried to use the subjective and personal not to glorify my mundane autobiography but as a case study in how one can explore the remoter reaches of the psyche by wandering across literal terrain."

My tuning fork, my compass needle. I use personal anecdotes in class--yes, a lot--but for the same reason that Solnit uses her own subjective journeys, her own experiences and reflections. I adhere to the principle behind that "case study" approach, for my heart declares even the "mundane" matters, if your "aim is true" (to borrow from Elvis Costello) and if you tell it right.

As a reader, a teacher, and a maker in particular, I add a second continent to her phrase, much as Solnit herself does in actual practice, joining such "wanderings across literal terrain" to explorations of the literary terrain. Both matter so much to me, but reading richly is a crucial key to the lock of life's treasure chest I've found. Picture the scholar as a Robin Hood, stalking the forest of words, as a pirate, navigating the shoals of the soul: silly, true images. (Even Bilbo Baggins was a burglar, remember.)

The Commonwealth of Letters, to use an old phrase, is a vast expanse, often quite civilized, often still savage. The pathways are not all paved, and the way isn't always clear, despite all those who have gone exploring before you. On such a journey, there will be pubs and palaces as well as pitfalls: famine, drought, lacerations of the soul. Persevere. If you are lucky, you'll find treasure; luckier, dragons.

No passport necessary beyond literacy; no invitation needed beyond your own curiosity.

Start wandering. When you get back, start talking.

Wouldn't It Be Cool To Have Antlers?

And yet, folks have enough trouble managing umbrellas in tandem on a crowded sidewalk. (I just wear a hat myself.) Imagine the brouhaha on a rainy day like today with umbrellas and antlers.

Of course, if we could have antlers and fly, that would overleap whole stacks of problems. No jostling on the pavement, then.

If we could have antlers and fly, we wouldn't care if we got soaked by that rain. We could just drop those umbrellas and hats too.

Blitzen: sculpture mix; glazed with shino and transparent black for the mottling and the snowflake effect.

"Is the Coast Clear?"

Brecca on Deck

Another "chess" piece: Brecca, the Bull--Beowulf's foe/companion in the swimming match.

I like the wet "planking" beneath this northern minotaur's head.

Wool-Gathering is Good

Old friends.

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

Duck, Duck, Goose . . . .

On the way to morning coffee.

A year ago, I was kayaking in the Bay off Berkeley, but this is quite fine too.

Thanksgiving, 2010.

Pining for North

My idea of a great beach.

(And, why wool sweaters and wetsuits were invented.)

Head north on Highway 1, but stop just south of Mendocino.

Photo: Damme Rocks, November 21, 2009.

Brouhaha

Here's an old poem of mine from the cellar, 90's vintage:

BROUHAHA

"A gift, though small, is hardly all

That passes 'twixt giver and getter;

For as we get near it, that generous spirit

Leaves both a little bit better."

"Blarney," gibed Joan, "John, you just want the loan

Of my body. Such credit's not smart.

You think to deceive, but I'll not believe

'Til your tongue becomes dumber than your heart."

(This is the continuation of the Blarney Duck Ale verse, now in the "failed seduction" genre. I still have not quite solved the technical problems of two speakers and of bridging the gap from the first to the second stanzas. Cheers, anyway!)

Frey, the Yule-Stag

An ornament for the winter solstice.

Frey: Sculpture mix, green and blue glazing; copper wire.

A Bit of Blarney . . .

. . . is good for you.

That's a little poem from the back of my beer label--Blarney Duck Ale--and that I penned in cards for Xmas back in the early 90's. The beer wasn't much, certainly not a special recipe, but just a share of the home brew that I helped Peter W with once or twice. Still, the brewing process was educational, and drinking the product was also fine, though I could buy a better dark ale for the same amount of money. Better in taste, though not necessarily in satisfaction.

I like my bit of blarney, so much so that I sing it much as I do that Tolkien finding-song, adjusting the delivery to my moods. I think I capture a certain truth of generosity of spirit in those mere four lines; the music is intentional. I have kept playing with it, trying to expand it. In 1996 or so, I added a second stanza for a more dramatic, problematic effect, creating a dialogue in the "seduction" genre. (Actually, in the "failed seduction" genre.) I'll put that version in a different blog entry: "Brouhaha."

On some of the bottles of Blarney Duck, I put a favorite poem from Samuel "Dictionary" Johnson and the 18th century. I like the shift in tone from the speaker's address to the old hermit, from the speaker's yearning for solace and truth, from the seriousness of the opening stanza--from all that--to the gray sage's response, to the hermit's smiling solution, to the fun of the closing stanza. What's a wise old man's solution to the woes of this wicked world? A pint, my lads and lasses; what else?

That brew, along with most home brews, definitely demanded letting the contents settle. Brewing was a blast, once I managed to put away my anxiety about how it would all turn out, so for a few moments at a time. Ideally, I would have brewed more and gotten past worrying about results. In the garage, I have all the gear . . . .

P.S. As I was taking photos outside in the generous light of the sun, the faint wind started shooting stiff gusts to whisk away these old labels. One shot seems worth keeping, though. Cheers!