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!

November Salt and Sun

Salvage: Fisherman's Blues

I'd meant to do something else--what else, I can't recall--with that basic form, but the clay dried more quickly than I'd expected, dried before I could continue shaping and trimming. I slapped on the blue just to see, and later I thought, "A boat." Okay, what will help that image, that imposition, that fiction?

Telling stories with clay. No claims for mastery or masterpieces. Process; practice; pretense in the best sense.

I like it on the wall, but I wouldn't call it good. I'm posting it here as a model of fun, as a prototype for further exploration, as a bulwark against hubris.

Salvage Work: Sculpture mix, blue slip. clear glaze; copper wire; twine; a twig.

P.S. Fisherman's Blues, by the Waterboys, is a great album, particularly the title composition.

A Tolkien Talisman

My talisman: Not this figurine of a hobbit actually, but the song posted below. One of Tom Bombadil's songs in The Fellowship of the Ring; a finding song. At least that's how Tom uses it, calling for the hobbits' ponies lost on the barrow-downs. And that's how I often use it myself, and have done for the last thirty-five years. If I misplace something (or myself), I tend to sing these four lines, over and over again. Often, I'll end up discovering what I was hunting, or I'll find something else just as useful, just as worthwhile.

Walking, paddling, or driving, I use Tom's song to express myself, adjusting the way I sing or chant the lines according to spirit and mood: sheer exuberance, foursquare contentment, whirling confusion, grinding frustration, stinging bitterness, the headlock and hollow-chestedness of melancholia, or the cold bite of grief. Given the right delivery, these four lines sound as a hearty call-to-arms, a wily wizard's spell, a lovesick ballad or a doleful, doom-laden dirge. Of course, I'm usually off-key and not being quite true to the book's original usage, but I don't think old J.R.R. would mind too much.

Listen, and then sing for yourself, whatever your mood:

Hey! Now! Come hoy now! Whither do you wander?

Up, down, near or far, here, there, or yonder?

Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail and Bumpkin,

White-socks my little lad, and old Fatty Lumpkin.

P.S. I first memorized these lines because my friend Ron Johnson already had them to hand in his head. That wouldn't do, you know? So, I started my own singing, and glad I am.

Passages: Pegasus "Sprains a Wing"? Not Hardly

Here is the opening to Lord Byron's fourth canto of his marvelous, seemingly miscellaneous masterpiece Don Juan. I love the narrative voice; the ease of speech, allusion, and rhyming; and the deceptive defense, hardly--and yet completely--serious. Playing games in earnest: that's my Lord Byron.

Canto IV

Nothing so difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning
The race, he sprains a wing and down we tend,
Like Lucifer when hurled from heaven for sinning.
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,
Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far,
Till our own weakness shows us what we are.

But time, which brings all beings to their level,
And sharp adversity will teach at last
Man and as we would hope, perhaps the devil
That neither of their intellects are vast.
While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel,
We know not this--the blood flows on too fast;
But as the torrent widens towards the ocean,
We ponder deeply on each past emotion.

As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow
And wished that others held the same opinion;
They took it up when my days grew more mellow,
And other minds acknowledged my dominion.
Now my sere fancy 'falls into the yellow
Leaf', and imagination droops her pinion;
And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep,
'Tis that our nature cannot always bring
Itself to apathy, for we must steep
Our hearts first in the depth of Lethe's spring,
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep.
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.

Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land
And trace it in this poem every line.
I don't pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned,
Unless it were to be a moment merry,
A novel word in my vocabulary.

To the kind reader of our sober clime
This way of writing will appear exotic.
Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,
Who sang when chivalry was more quixotic,
And revelled in the fancies of the time--
True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic.
But these, save the last, being obsolete,
I chose a modern subject as more meet.

How I have treated it, I do not know;
Perhaps no better than they have treated me
Who have imputed such designs as show
Not what they saw, but what they wished to see.
But if it gives them pleasure, be it so;
This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free.
Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear
And tells me to resume my story here.


And resume his story he does.

I hope I have awakened some curiosity or have reminded some of you what a joy--what an absolute and absolutely resonant joy--Byron's poetry can be.

Hitting the Snooze Button

Strandings

Mosaic, with green glass.

Kelphorn or kelpwhip?

That's not snow.

The Drowned Man: sculpture mix, greenish undercoating, white and clear glazing; sand; foam (with pebbles flying).

Passages: Auden's "O Where Are You Going"

O WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,

"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,

Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,

That gap is the grave where the tall return."

"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,

"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,

Your diligent looking discover the lacking

Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"

"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,

"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,

The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."

"Out of this house," said rider to reader,

"Yours never will," said farer to fearer,

"They're looking for you," said hearer to horror,

As he left them there, as he left them there.

-- W. H. Auden

"O Where Are You Going" is one of my favorite heroic poems; I love the theme, the characterizations, and the alliteration. (Hear the music; feel the beat.) The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, "The Battle of Maldon," "The Wanderer," and "The Seafarer" stand behind this poem, though perhaps through the workings of William Morris, G. M. Hopkins, and Ezra Pound. (Some research just might settle that question.) Likewise, later medieval allegories and mystery plays invigorate the Modernist invocations of personae and praxis. Mostly, I appreciate how the poem partakes of ancient, traditional cadences without sounding like pastiche, without merely deriving from those past patterns. In short, the poem lives.

Auden also used an alternative title for this piece--"The Three Companions"--which reminds me of Job's "comforters." Passive versus active; stuck versus steady. The companions: reader, fearer, and horror. The hero: rider/farer/hearer. I love how the last verse pulls together all that comes before as our hero gets the last word with each nay-sayer. "As he left them there, as he left them there."

Atlantean!

The King of Atlantis: sculpture mix; stormy blue and celadon glazes, layered; copper wire; twine.

Rain Goddess

Nefertiti: Sculpture mix; glazed with sea foam in layers.

Cocktail Time

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.

Point Reyes Flashback

I'm too busy at my desk to break out the kayak this week, so I'm turning to past photos for solace. Here are a few from a jaunt at Drakes Estero. Gerald and I paddled down from the oyster farm through heavy fog to the Drakes Bay itself, where we played in the shallow waves of the Estero's mouth. On the way back, we had sunshine, but also had some navigational issues since everything looked so different (duh!) without the fog! Which was fun, in a different, slightly stressful way.

Fall 2009. Good fun.

Possible correction: one shot looks more like Tomales Bay than the Estero, and yet how could it be mixed in with the others? (I guess there's some kayaking to be done soon to double-check.)

Still, Point Reyes National Seashore. Check it out. Great hiking too. Oh, and make a detour to Point Reyes Station on your way to pick up scones at the Bovine Bakery. Best scones I know. The bookstore there will be well worth your time too. But the scones . . . Bovine Bakery.

Kelp Time

Just off the Coast Guard Breakwater, at the north end of Cannery Row, back in the summer. I've just slipped into the water from my kayak.

It's Monterey Bay, so I do have a hood. Too cold otherwise, despite the thick head of hair. Actually, on this particular day I am using a squid lid, not a regular hood, but it's enough for about an hour or so of free diving. I'm wearing the surfing wetsuit, the 4/3, so I'll be lucky to last that hour anyway. Still, wearing the surfing wetsuit means that I can really swim, that I have freedom of movement that my other, thicker wetsuits just don't allow, so I'm very happy despite the early chill in store. I can swim, I can swim, I can swim: yes, sometimes I feel that exuberant, that childish, that child-like.

Here, clearing and refitting my mask. I've pulled the neoprene cap back to get a proper seal with the mask. After that's in place, I pull the lid back into position, and then I slide under the water to see what can be seen. Love my kelp-diving, I do.

Slight wind; check the rippling surface. Visibility underwater less than ten feet, unfortunately. Air temps in the mid-to-upper 60s at best; water temps, mid-50s. Got wet and salty: all good.