Olympic Hopeful

Studio Fish

Walking On Sunshine

Or, the kelp-creatures cometh?

The Bull From The Sea

Mendo Sea-Cave!

Apologies for the water-drop spotted lens here. I decided to post these flawed shots to show some friends what this first cave at the north curve of the Van Damme State Beach bluffs looks like.

I'll need to head north soon for better pictures.

Weeds From The Garden?

The sea-garden, that is. Less obviously beautiful "beauties."

And here are some other weeds: shots flawed by fog or water drops on the lens.

Above: I like how you can see the flow working around and between these rocks.

That wave is coming. Don't you feel all slanty, all off-kilter here?

Harbor seals! Good chop in that channel too. Was the tide dropping or rising?

A calmer shot: not very dramatic, but a lovely place to kayak. The underwater shots of sea urchins and anemones and the "weeds" above came from this pocket of water.

Just launch your kayak from the protected center of Van Damme State Beach, Mendocino County, and hang a right at the first point. Or, launch and head to the right well before the point for the sea cave that will take you under that first point. Keep heading north, but exercise caution according to swell and tide. Have fun.

Sea Monkey See

Sea monkey do.

I'll admit freely that as I've approached fifty, and now turned fifty, I've been taking more self-portraits, trying to get some sense of what I really look like, what I really am like. (We all know the rose-colored or coal-colored glasses of personal melodrama and history.)

And while profile-pic games only take us so far onto the surface of things, we work with the tools at hand.

You may be able to see the water dripping from the camera in the close-ups (click, click) of a few of these shots; after immersion in salt water, the camera must be submerged for an hour or so in hopes of soaking away the salt crystals that could screw up the seals upon opening for recharging the battery and for downloading the pics. I'd been soaking the camera in a small plastic tub in front of this mirror and got the urge to play. Afterwards, I placed the camera back into the tub for further soaking.

I look at these goofy shots and, mostly, chuckle. What vanity to think I'm going to learn anything about myself in such an exercise, and yet there I am, clicking away in front of a motel room mirror after a long day of sun and salt.

Is that my father I see in those features? Of course, but what about mom? Hugh, yes, but . . . George? And, how many selves could I have? Which one (or two) is really me? (I am a Gemini.)

There's something about the camera shot that I can stop and look at that differs from the mere mirror. I am not sure what that difference is, but discovering that is part of the exploration, perhaps even more than capturing these glimples of self.

Sea monkey see. Sea monkey do.

Now if I were a real writer, I'd be working harder to capture these differences and these images in words. Or, so I can castigate myself. More likely, while I am a word-guy and story-guy, the visual world matters to me a lot more than I'd ever realized while growing up and, what, maturing. I've always had a good visual memory (which page is the poem on in the book? right-hand or left-hand side? Rembrandt or Vermeer? Which Vermeer?), but the story I've always told myself involved words, always words words words. Yet even as an excellent student, I tended (and tend) to look out the window. And my other medium is clay; sculpture is three-dimensional, like the best writing, right?

Anyway, while I was playing profile-pic games in that motel in Fort Bragg, I started thinking of how hard it is to convey specific outdoor experiences, in my case diving and kayaking.

I mean, the whole session on the closed-deck kayak, I felt as if I were in a bowl, a giant watery bowl, and no matter how hard or in what direction I paddled, I still couldn't get out of the bottom of that bowl. I can try to explain this by pointing to currents and wash rocks catching and diverting flow, but in my gut there just wasn't a sea "level"; the whole ocean seemed tilted on its side, slightly, just enough to create a visceral sense of imbalance and dislocation. Frankly, I loved it. The sensation was otherworldly, and yet quite common if you spend enough time on the water.

Professional photographers will emphasize the need for that straight horizon, but I must say I prefer sea-shots that tilt. They seem truer to the experience, but then I'm a diver and kayaker more than a hiker or landscape painter on the shore.

"Being grounded" carries a different freight for the boater. Seamus Heaney wrote a great passage on how the floaty boat-edness (my term) that he felt unnerved by came from the very buoyancy that guaranteed his safety. I'll have to look out his original words.

My quest over this summer will be to catch images that convey that sense of meaningful imbalance, that unfreighted lift of sea and sky. Somehow, I just haven't been able to translate via images those occasions when the whole world seems askew, seems tilting. Often, those heavy water sessions look tame to the camera, and there must be a way to figure that untamed feeling.

In the next shot, you can see the wave approaching, but it felt a lot taller than it looks. There are also the matters of mass and speed. This was a fairly mild, though energetic day, so I didn't feel in danger, but I also knew I was a bit of cork bobbing amidst far greater forces. (But that's also why you go out there.)

Perhaps in the close-up (after clicking on the shot), you can see the energy behind the texture. Kelp bobbing about, the waves were moving through; I felt like Sofia, my kayak, was half-horse in this session. More emphatically, the whole surface seemed (and seems) to loom over us.

When I first began thinking of this entry, I thought of the self-shots above as monkeying around, and then I thought of how much I've played with catching images while diving and kayaking for so many years.

I started with simple disposable "submersible" cameras and used them, effectively enough, for years and years. Above, you can see my amphibious Canon Powershot, and lately I've been using a tough submersible Olympus that I found in 25 feet of water off Maui last summer. I have some basic tools, and those tools ought to be enough to catch the sorts of experiences I'm after sharing. Yes, I could throw cash into equipment, but that's not my nature, and anyway it's a vision thing, not a limitation via technology, that matters here.

I need to figure out how to take my shots to get what I want; I need to learn how to shoot so that I can share what I truly see and, more importantly, feel.

Oh, I haven't quite got the words, but I'm throwing them out there in hopes that upon rereading I'll find and make better words. Also, perhaps some of my story here will prove more effective than I'm thinking now.

I felt compelled to share these images, these words, and that compulsion is parallel to what grips you playing on the water, in the water, and under the water. There's something about all that mass flowing that makes any pool session so obviously sterile, no matter how intense the workout.

Otherworldly, I've said, but perhaps I spend too much time away from the more raw forces of nature. Worldly, in the best sense? Natural.

Sea monkey see; sea monkey do. Just one of Mother Nature's sons.

Icing On The Cake

Rock: Two Shots

The Other Favorite View?

Looking back at land.

Good day for riding a bit of swell, for working a bit: Saturday, June 25.

Honor Frost: The Practical Diver

I've written about my hero Honor Frost recently here, and I'd like to share a bit more from her non-fiction Under the Mediterranean. Here are two passages of worthy practical import, and which feature nail polish in particular:

Light in diving is somehow illustrated by a cathedral: for the first few metres where the windows are there is colour, but the floor below is in shade, though there is still quite enough light and one can read if one wants. The explanation of the gradual disappearance of colour underwater is, of course, that as the sun's rays diminish with increasing depth, so the world goes into monochrome. Red disappears first, after about 15 metres, yellow is the last to go at about 30. I discovered this for myself when I cut my finger at 50 metres. My blood oozed out black as ink, and when I looked at my nail varnish it was black too. I can now gauge the depth at which I happen to be swimming by the colour of my nails. (7)

and

Curiously enough, I had less difficulty in equipping myself for underwater drawing than John had had on land. Lead pencils work underwater and so do india-rubbers. Any sheet of light-coloured metal, such as aluminium, makes a serviceable tablet. Notes and drawing made in the water are traced on to paper later, so that a tablet can be re-used. When I do not have to improvise, my standard equipment consists of a portable metal drawing-board with a spring clamp down one side, such as architects use in the field. Sheets of plastic "paper", cut to size, are inserted in the spring to form a block; they can be detached after use. The only modification that had to be made to this portable board was the addition of a second clamp, held by bolts, on the opposite side of the board. Without this, the sheets tended to slip out of the spring when submerged. Plastic or metal rulers are equally serviceable in water, but for longer measurements I find that an arrow from my fish-gun (graduated in units of 10 centimetres in nail varnish) is handier. It is also less likely to be mislaid on a boat, where fish-guns are always carefully stowed. (172)

I'm always trying to match books and readers, and I do like to share the books I value, but I have yet to find another proper reader for Frost's semi-autobiographical study of the essential problems in the proper approach to understanding archaeologically marine sites and remains. The level of expertise may have been superseded, particularly with the advent of more refined technology and diving experience being embraced by serious scientists, but the comprehension of and the appreciation for the underlying issues remain timeless.

Happy Chatter

My kayak Sofia is a very chatty boat. As she heads into any chop, she talks. I like that. I like how she talks to me, commenting on the conditions of swell and tide. As she moves through the water, particularly as she moves up and down, slapping and smacking, she talks and talks. I appreciate her voice and her beautiful shape in ways that other riders just wouldn't.

If you look up at her hull, you can see her "shoulders" or "hips". The full-bodied shape makes her very comfortable in rough water and reluctant to be rushed anywhere. (If my 180 pounds were in the kayak, you'd see how those shoulders and hips ride down in the water; hence, her deliberate pace as we move through the water.)

Sofia is named after another full-figured beauty: Sophia Loren. One of my earliest crushes.

You can see how she sits in the water here. Her "wings" are what give her that characteristic voice and way of riding and even sitting in the water. She's stable without being boring, and I can dive from her, sliding overboard to make my way underwater for a while, sliding back onboard, with a minimum of fuss and no anxiety or concern at all. With my fins on, I can practically vault onto her without any fear of upset.

I think she's a beauty, though most kayakers look for sleeker models.

Now, occasionally when I consider claims that sharks, for example, are drawn to the sound of helicopter blades thudding, I wonder about how much my chatty girl is being eavesdropped by you-know-who/you-know-what, but any flash of concern disappears as I listen to her happy conversation. Sofia just loves being out in the water, and her cheery manner puts me right at ease.

Kelp, Dancing

On land, I tend to have two left feet. Put me in water, though, and I've got a few good moves. Here are some of my partners.

Sea Garden: Mendocino

My favorite shots from one of Friday's dives.

By the way, I took these pictures in ten feet or less of water. An easy snorkel, if you were so inclined.