Passages: Lord Byron's "A Fresher Growth"

The beings of the mind are not of clay;

Essentially immortal, they create

And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more belov'd existence: that which Fate

Prohibits to dull life, in this our state

Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied,

First exiles, then replaces what we hate;

Watering the heart whose early flowers have died,

And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.

--Lord Byron, from Canto IV of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

The merest sampling, but a stanza that called to me, as it were.

I hadn't realized how much I miss my Byron--with all the wit, the satire, the wild stories, and the heart, the absolute heart--until I finished Dorothy Dunnett's Checkmate, the final novel in the Francis Crawford of Lymond Chronicles, her own oft-maligned, oft-misunderstood, oh so witty, skilled, and wilful Byronic hero.

I'll have to put my copies of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan a bit closer to hand in the evenings.

Hrothgar's Pawn

Here's another piece from the chess set I never finished. A pawn, I guess.

Another minotaur of sorts. Actually, I think of the piece as a Viking faun, if I may mix my traditions. No horned helmet--an inaccuracy, that, anyway--but a horned head. The fierceness and the shagginess call out "Viking" to my mind.

Bullish and goatish both, though not Mediterranean at all: no Cretan sleekness, no Classical spareness here. The severity is rough and textured. Rough weather; rough water. Cold, kelpy seas; the swift shifting of the seasons; dark forests of oak and pine; harsh frost and snow; wolves and bears and boars (oh my). Bear-shirted berserkers, man-beasts, beast-men. What's his lineage, truly?

If Viking goats seem too far-fetched, recall that Thor the Thunder-god's chariot is pulled by two goats. (At least, until trickster Loki lames one of them.) And the sound of those chariot wheels rumbling across Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard, makes the thunder we hear down here on Midgard (or Middle-Earth). I like Thor, defender of gods and men against the frost-giants and all things unhallowed. Thor, whose very name echoes the Norse word for "giant" (thurs), always strikes me as the street-cop of that northern pagan pantheon.

My piece: Beowulf's henchman, perhaps, or Hrothgar's pawn. I haven't named him yet. Perhaps the name of one of Thor's goats would suit?

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

Don Quixote's Mirror

Approaching 50, I like to keep track. And the tracks are there to see.

They say, the lines on your face are the expression of spirit and experience, of choice and circumstance, whether of bliss or blunder--pluck or plunder--love, luck, or lucre. Perhaps, the etchings of duck-and-cover versus what-and-wonder. (Like Hamlet, "when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw"; I wonder which way the wind's blowing now.) I hope you can see that I smile a lot, usually; I feel lucky that way.

In what's probably my favorite novel--John Fowles' Daniel Martin--the main character keeps many, many mirrors on the walls of his Oxford bed-sit. The narrator offers two interpretations, not wholly mutually exclusive: first, the signs of vanity, invocations of Narcissus, the celebration of self; and, second, attempts to move from the first person to the third, from mere subjectivity to heightened objectivity. When I reflect on the many, many "profile pics" I'm accumulating, I prefer to think I'm echoing that latter impulse. I think this photo works, showing me as I am: a man of 49 and a bit more, still smiling, still exploring, still willing to tilt at a windmill or two.

Self-Portrait #49. With beret.

Passages: "A Humbler and A Prouder Mind"

Here's a resonant passage from a historical novel, which I share for itself and as a model of the way I cherry-pick my way through what I read, finding the scenes, the moments, the words that I can appreciate or use in some way, in any way.

The context of the passage involves a formal occasion in the offing, a crisis about appropriate attire, and friendship. I pick the specific words here for the insight into character.

For his part, Tobias would have been content to go in a sack, or even (the weather being what it was) nothing at all; for he had both a humbler and a prouder mind than Jack--humbler in that he did not suppose that anyone would notice him at any time, and prouder in that he did not suppose that he could be improved in any way by gold lace and taffety. But he was very much concerned at Jack's distress . . . .

--Patrick O'Brian, The Western Shore

I believe--though I'd have to check after all these years--that The Western Shore was a precursor to the famed Aubrey and Maturin novels. We certainly get a pair of friends at the heart of this novel and of that series.

Reindeer Sightings

Reindeer, Flying: sculpture mix; brown glazes, layered.

Dear Deer, Come Here

Hernest is my library-spirit, my book-totem, even if he looks like a mere deer in a trenchcoat. Look closely and you'll see the spirit of the Horned Lords of myth and magic, of the Celtic Cernunnos, of Herne the Hunter, of . . . okay, a deer in a trenchcoat. I think he brings me luck, though he is given to Jungian pranks and hijacking my pints of Blarney Duck Ale. He's been known to invite jackalopes to dinner. As autumn gains strength, he prefers whiskey, mythic fiction, and rather melancholy nature poetry, preferably featuring does and fawns, or creatures of the forest in general. He enjoys William Cowper's 18th-century masterpiece The Task and Sir Thomas Wyatt's Renaissance lyrics, particularly "They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek" and "Whoso List To Hunt, I Know Where Is An Hind." Listen!

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, alas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the Deer, but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,

Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt (I put him out of doubt)

As well as I may spend his time in vain.

And, graven with diamonds, in letters plain

There is written her fair neck round about:

"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."

--Sir Thomas Wyatt

Besides reciting such poetic laments, Hernest claims to be composing a comic burlesque and a woodland epic, Stag Party and The Herniad. My first real poem, according to my mother, was a song calling the deer closer at sunset in the town park of either Weed, CA, or Mount Shasta, CA; I was perhaps three or four. Dear deer, come here. And he has.

I can't help but think of better poetry than my doggerel couplet, of Shakespeare's mention of Herne the Hunter. These are Mistress Page's words, setting forth the legend and setting in motion a mighty prank for poor Sir John Falstaff:

There is an old tale goes that Herne the Hunter,

Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,

Doth all the wintertime, at still midnight,

Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;

And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,

And makes milch kine yield blood, and shakes a chain

In a most hideous and dreadful manner.

You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know

The superstitious idle-headed eld

Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age,

This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.

— The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act IV, scene iv, 26-36)

And then, my mind not being satisfied even by Shakespeare's verse--and resisting a full rereading of The Merry Wives just now, despite the evocative phrases I've quoted, despite the comic turns I'm recalling--I turn to another poem that I'd like to share with you. My "ragg'd-horn[ed]" fellow doesn't have the raw, eerie menace of the figure in John Montague's "The Split Lyre," but looking at my piece in clay somehow pulled me to this poet's piece in the following words.

THE SPLIT LYRE

On the frost held

field, Orpheus

strides, his greaves

bleak with light,

the split lyre

silver, hard

in his hands;

sleek after him

the damp-tongued

cringing hounds.

An unaccountable

desire to kneel,

to pray, pulls

my hands but

his head is not

a crown of thorns:

a great antlered

stag, pity

shrinks from

those horns.

--John Montague

Hernest: sculpture mix; brown glazes, layered.

Craving Salt

What I've been missing lately: diving and kayaking.

This is a summer scene from 2009.

That's Gerald, a good dive partner.

Just looking at the kelp makes me want to hop in the truck and head north. Maybe Thanksgiving in Mendocino? Abalone season will be over, but the sea-caves are always calling.

Packing my thicker wetsuit would probably be wise.

Mermaid Sightings

Mara the Mermaid:

Navajo Wheel clay;

glazed with Purple undercoat

and Celadon overlay on head and shoulders.

Mara modeled for me along (and in) Strawberry Creek in Berkeley;

in return, I had to take her out for coffee afterwards.

Guess where she insisted we go?

P.S. Apparently, there already is a famous Mara the Mermaid out in the world, but I only discovered that via a Google search for my own blog entry, so there's no relation between that Mara and mine. Purely coincidental.

One of the Nine

Muses, that is. The muse of patience and reflection.

"Ilana," after the model, though she was lovelier than what I've managed to catch here.

For me, Ilana had a longish face, though most of my fellow classmates gave her a rounded look. All but the one other male in the class. Not sure if that means anything.

Here, I'm looking at my shelves, looking through the photo-files, wishing I had the energy and time to play with clay.

It's good to remind yourself, don't you think?

Must Be Dragons

Didn't St. Patrick banish all the snakes from Ireland?

So this Celtic design, borrowed from the Book of Kells, I believe, must be dragons. Or, are they really snakes?

Earth wisdom, earth power--either way. Good luck to the wearer.

In his Winter Count, which is where I found the following passage, Barry Lopez quotes Jorge Luis Borges on dragons from The Book of Imaginary Beings, a passage that's always stuck with me. Listen:

"We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe, but there is something in the dragon's image that appeals to the human imagination, and so we find the dragon in quite distinct places and times."

This dragon-buckle is the work of Peter O'Loughlin, the silversmith who crafted the three-dogs-running pendant I featured earlier this month, and you may find him in a booth on Telegraph Avenue near UC Berkeley. In fact, he's usually selling his fine pieces in that first block next to Bancroft Avenue.

Elements at Play

Work in progress:

The mermaid's mine. Navajo Wheel clay: bisqued.

Waiting for glazing.

Glazed with a very bluish "purple" glaze; drying.

I put a coat of Celadon, a sometimes shiny greenish glaze, atop her head and shoulders after this shot.

Next step: another firing, that final trip through the kiln.

Then we'll see. Here's hoping.

Passages: Boland's "Daphne" and Mythic Art

Mythic literature--I've always loved it, from the translations of the Greek, Roman, and Germanic classics to the retellings and adaptations by contemporary writers. And, by mythic literature, I don't just mean the sorts of things Robert Graves or Mary Renault have done with Classical figures and beliefs, but also the sorts of things Charles de Lint or Robert Holdstock have done with Celtic, Indo-European, Amerindian, and other figures and beliefs.

Poetry is rife with mythic borrowings and mythic intonations from the earliest days. I almost wrote "from the days of belief," but who says belief doesn't exist now, exist in ways that matter most, figuratively, metamorphically (and that's not a misspelling for "metaphorically"). Right now, I'm thinking of Gluck's "Gretel in Darkness" (folklore counting as mythic, to me); Yeats' "Leda and the Swan"; Kizer's "Hera, Hung From the Sky"; Graves' "Ulysses"; and H.D.'s Helen in Egypt.

I could--and will--quote half a hundred good poems that use mythic material, but here's the first, the one that held me fast today when I was just reading around, open-eyed, not a care in the world, for that half hour I try to devote to the practice each day. Dangerous habit, that reading around, that openness; I recommend it.

Here's Eavan Boland and her poignant contemporary take on the myth of Daphne, a mortal woman transformed into a tree to escape the lust of the pursuing god Apollo.

DAPHNE WITH HER THIGHS IN BARK

I have written this

so that,

in the next myth,

my sister will be wiser.

Let her learn from me:

the opposite of passion

is not virtue

but routine.

Look at me.

I can be cooking,

making coffee,

scrubbing wood, perhaps,

and back it comes:

the crystalline, the otherwhere,

the wood

where I was

when he began the chase.

And how I ran from him!

Pan-thighed,

satyr-faced he was.

The trees reached out to me.

I silvered and

I quivered. I shook out

my foil of quick leaves.

He snouted past.

What a fool I was!

I shall be here forever,

setting out the tea,

among the coppers and the branching alloys and

the tin shine of this kitchen;

laying saucers on the pine table.

Save face, sister.

Fall. Stumble.

Rut with him.

His rough heat will keep you warm and

you will be better off than me,

with your memories

down the garden,

at the start of March,

unable to keep your eyes

off the chestnut tree—

just the way

it thrusts and hardens.

--Eavan Boland

An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987. W. W. Norton @ Co. New York & London: 1996.

Passages: "Dance Like A Wave Of The Sea"

William Butler Yeats has penned so many poems, but this isn't one of the famous ones. "The Fiddler of Dooney" is an early work, artfully simple, and easily overlooked.

THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,

Folk dance like a wave of the sea,

My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,

My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:

They read in their books of prayers;

I read in my book of songs

I bought at the Sligo Fair.

When we come at the end of time,

To Peter sitting in state,

He will smile on the three old spirits,

But call me first through the gate:

For the good are always the merry,

Save by an evil chance,

And the merry love the fiddle

And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,

The will all come up to me,

With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"

And dance like a wave of the sea.

--W.B. Yeats

"And dance like a wave of the sea": On my best days teaching, I feel a bit like the fiddler. That's heady inspiration for working harder, for doing better. I typed up this simple poem to share, yes, but mostly to remind myself today, this hour. And so.

Three Dogs Running

This is a favorite image, originally from the Book of Kells, as best I know.

This piece is from the hand of Peter O'Loughlin, silversmith, that I picked up years ago from his booth on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, CA.

I've read that the three-dogs-running symbolizes courage. I understand that; in the image, I see liveliness, perseverance, and no flinching. I wonder at letting-loose-the-dogs. I look at the pendant--at the photos now--and I smile, with the hint of a dog-tooth showing.

After I took the photos, I started reading around, pulling various books from the shelves, seeking just the right passage or passages to accompany the hounds.: W. B. Yeats' "On Baile's Strand," William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, Marie Heaney's Over Nine Waves: A Book of Irish Legends, among others. (There's a John Montague poem that would fit best, but my volume of his collected poetry is on my desk at work just now.)

Cuchulain, of course, is a man-hound worth recalling, but here's a passage from Marie Heaney's "St. Patrick" that feels oddly fitting: no dogs, but also no flinching.

While Patrick was preaching in Munster, Aengus, the king of Cashel, became curious about the visitor and summoned him to his fort. Patrick preached the gospel and the king, believing in it, asked to be baptized. As Patrick blessed Aengus, the spike of his crozier went through the king's foot, but Aengus did not flinch. When the ceremony was over and Patrick saw the wound he had inflicted he was stricken with remorse.

"I didn't cry out or protest," Aengus explained, "for I thought the piercing was part of the ritual that I had to endure."

Heaney, Marie. Over Nine Waves: A Book of Irish Legends. Faber & Faber. London & Boston: 1995.

Submariner, In Repose

Or, Garsecg: A Study in the Transmogrification of the Soul.

Passages: Heaney's "North"

I've got Dougie Maclean's "Mo Nighean Donn" playing from the Whitewash CD, and that seems a fitting background as I open up Seamus Heaney's North and share a favorite poem. Heaney is my favorite model of a poet whose symbolism is always grounded, always working concretely and figuratively, gaining strength from that constructive duality. Here, now, I just want to reread a memorable piece, not blather too much about it.

NORTH

I returned to a long strand,

the hammered shod of a bay,

and found only the secular

powers of the Atlantic thundering.

I faced the unmagical

invitations of Iceland,

the pathetic colonies

of Greenland, and suddenly

those fabulous raiders,

those lying in Orkney and Dublin

measured against

their long swords rusting,

those in the solid

belly of stone ships,

those hacked and glinting

in the gravel of thawed streams

were ocean-deafened voices

warning me, lifted again

in violence and epiphany.

The longship's swimming tongue

was buoyant with hindsight--

it said 'Thor's hammer swung

to geography and trade,

thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behindbacks

of the althing, lies and women,

exhaustions nominated peace,

memory incubating the spilled blood.

It said, 'Lie down

in the word-hoard, burrow

the coil and gleam

of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.

Expect aurora borealis

in the long foray

but not cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear

as the bleb of the icicle,

trust the feel of what nubbed treasure

your hands have known.'

--Seamus Heaney

North. Faber and Faber. London & Boston: 1975.

North is my single favorite volume of Heaney's verse, though Death of a Naturalist, Station Island, and Seeing Things all make claims upon me--as does Heaney's translation of Beowulf, though that's a different beast of mixed lineage and joy. His North pulls together my own preoccupations with the North Atlantic, with Celts and Vikings, with history and autobiography, bog people and ambition, with sagas and cauldrons and the cold salt sea.

(Heaney revises "North," this specific poem, slightly in his collected works of 1996: Opened Ground. He substitutes "curve" for "shod" in the second line; I'd been wondering if "hammered shod of a bay" was an Irishism or a metaphor, and I'd even devised an interpretation for "shod" as a noun, just in case. Isn't that what you do, too?)

Read "Exposure" next.