Mermaid in Blue, Rising

Mermaid in Blue, Rising: sculpture mix; blue glazing, thinly coated.

This is one of my older mermaids, I believe, from 2000 or 2001. She's been hanging in the garage all this time, and only yesterday did the light hit her in such a way that I thought, "Let's take her outside and give her a good look." I was aiming at a sense of metamorphosis here, what with her arms fused to her sides, merging the human portions with the fishier, finny portion. That's what I was aiming at.

What we have is a long, long mermaid, and even here on a bed of wood chips, she seems to be moving upward, streaming toward the surface, driven by some internal force. Don't you think?

I can't help but fit a story to the form when faced with such work, my own or by others.

To Autumn

Eight is the Number

Octopus: sculpture mix; misc. glazes, layered.

When I first took this out of the kiln (last summer? the one before?) I didn't like it that much, but now I do. It's good to put a piece aside for a while, until the expectations and intentions fade, until you can look at something for what it is, really. How many times have I re-learned this lesson? Plus one, as they say.

This piece highlights one of the reasons I play with clay. Whether or not anyone likes this, I do; and, I caught something fluid and real in cephlapods in this bit of clay.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Banks' "Raw Spirit": Making a Splash

I've been reading celebrated Scottish author Iain Banks' non-fiction Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram. I felt I needed a bit of background and further knowledge of my current favorite beverage--Scotch--and this book seemed a lively entry-point and initial tour. So far, it more than suits. (And, I'll be looking for the novels by Banks that I haven't yet read.)

Today, I want to share a passage that has nothing to do with alcohol, though it does involve high spirits. Enjoy.

At Glenaladale, despite the fact I am 49 and Les very nearly is--Les rarely allows an opportunity to pass when he can remind me I am a whole three months older than he is--we spend a significant amount of time and effort skipping stones, trying to hit large stones with small ones while the former are in flight, throwing stones at logs, using thin or circular stones--spun--in our attempts to produce duck's farts, and sweatily heaving the largest rocks we can manage up to the tops of small cliffs so we can throw them into the water and so produce Really Big Splashes.

(Look, growing up is about this sort of stuff no longer being the only way you're allowed to have fun, not about having to give it up altogether.)

I've always thought so, and it's good to find my own sentiments in a book. Wouldn't you agree?

Make some splashes of your own.

Cheers!

Kennelly: "My Heart Is Jacked From Writing"

COLUMKILLE THE WRITER

(from the Irish)

My heart is jacked from writing.

My sharp quill shakes.

My thin pen spills out

blood from my stormy lakes.

A stream of God's own wisdom

flushes my hand.

It blesses the waiting page.

It blesses where holly is found.

My thin pen is a traveller

in a world where books are waiting.

Who dares to see? Say? Who bothers to listen?

My heart is jacked from writing.

--Brendan Kennelly

WHAT ELSE?

Be with me Brendan of Ardfert when I

Question words. Song and speech like mine were cast

Aside when, stung by treachery,

You killed a man. Brendan, was it remorse

Made you confront the problematic sea,

The gruff distraction of the wind until

You breathed the cold air of sanctity?

I see you searching with a passionate will

The changing waste at feet and head,

The constant abyss. What reassured you?

Glint of leaping fish? Arrogance of birds?

The sea's tempers? All that has been said

About your lonely strength and rage is true.

What else subdues the sea or masters words?

--Brendan Kennelly

"The Paths of Glory Lead But to the Grave[s]," Robert Graves, That Is

Or, as I should say, the poet Graves leads the way here. I couldn't help the bad joke involving Gray's line from his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Still, weak humor notwithstanding, I believe that possessing "a new understanding of my confusion" will lead to sure, certain, and true glory. Maybe I should step aside here and let the poet offer his guidance.

IN BROKEN IMAGES

He is quick, thinking in clear images;

I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;

I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;

Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,

Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;

When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;

I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;

I in a new understanding of my confusion.

--Robert Graves

Yeats: "Memory," "Presences," and "The Balloon of the Mind"

MEMORY

One had a lovely face,

And two or three had charm,

But charm and face were in vain

Because the mountain grass

Cannot but keep the form

Where the mountain hare has lain.

PRESENCES

His night has been so strange that it seemed

As if the hair stood up on my head.

From going-down of the sun I have dreamed

That women laughing, or timid or wild,

In rustle of lace or silken stuff,

Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read

All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing

Returned and yet unrequited love.

They stood in the door and stood between

My great wood lectern and the fire

Till I could hear their hearts beating:

One is a harlot, and one a child

That never looked upon man with desire,

And one, it may be, a queen.

THE BALLOON OF THE MIND

Hands, do what you're bid:

Bring the balloon of the mind

That bellies and drags in the wind

Into its narrow shed.

--W.B. Yeats

Yeats: "Men Improve with the Years"

MEN IMPROVE WITH THE YEARS

I am worn out with dreams;

A weather-worn, marble triton

Among the streams;

And all day long I look

Upon this lady's beauty

As though I had found in a book

A pictured beauty,

Pleased to have filled the eyes

Or the discerning ears,

Delighted to be but wise,

For men improve with the years;

And yet, and yet,

Is this my dream, or the truth?

O would that we had met

When I had my burning youth!

But I grow old among dreams,

A weather-worn, marble triton

Among the streams.

--W.B. Yeats

Just Saying

Looking at the empty Glenlivet bottle (a lovely green) and imagining the red Molotov trajectory, you know: "It's a good thing I don't drink vodka."

The Hungry Reader at the Feast

Puck, Sleeping: What's the Shape of Your Soul?

Puck, Sleeping: sculpture mix; transparent brown, green, and denim glazing.

I know I have an inner fish, and I'll bet I have an inner Puck. What about you?

What's your trickster-raven-coyote-soul look like?

Happy 50th, Keith

Happy birthday, Keith. You would have been fifty today.

Here is a shot (and a close-up) when you were just twenty. Imagine!

Salt Point State Park, CA: May 1982.

We still haven't finished our arguments, you know, nor have we finished sharing stories.

We aren't done yet, my friend.

P.S. For the record, I can't believe Keith is actually wearing a watch.

He worked more jobs than anyone I have ever known, performed more tasks and favors for people at all sorts of different times of day, and was never late for his commitments, but he did hate to wear a watch.

Heaney's "Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces"

VIKING DUBLIN: TRIAL PIECES

I

It could be a jaw-bone

or a rib or a portion cut

from something sturdier:

anyhow, a smaller outline

was incised, a cage

or trellis to conjure in.

Like a child's tongue

following the toils

of his calligraphy,

like an eel swallowed

in a basket of eels,

the line amazes itself

eluding the hand

that fed it,

a bill in flight,

a swimming nostril.

II

There are trial pieces,

the craft's mystery

improvised on bone:

foliage, bestiaries,

interlacings elaborate

as the netted routes

of ancestry and trade.

That have to be

magnified on display

so that the nostril

is a migrant prow

sniffing the Liffey,

swanning it up to the ford,

dissembling itself

in antler combs, bone pins,

coins, weights, scale-pans.

III

Like a long sword

sheathed in its moisting

burial clays,

the keel stuck fast

in the slip of the bank,

its clinker-built hull

spined and plosive

as Dublin.

And now we reach in

for shards of the vertebrae,

the ribs of hurdle,

the mother-wet caches--

and for this trial piece

incised by a child,

a longship, a buoyant

migrant line.

IV

That enters my longhand,

turns cursive, unscarfing

a zoomorphic wake,

a worm of thought

I follow into the mud.

I am Hamlet the Dane,

skull-handler, parablist,

smeller of rot

in the state, infused

with its poisons,

pinioned by ghosts

and affections,

murders and pieties,

coming to consciousness

by jumping in graves,

dithering, blathering.

V

Come fly with me,

come sniff the wind

with the expertise

of the Vikings--

neighborly, scoretaking

killers, haggers

and hagglers, gombeen-men,

hoarders of grudge and gain.

With a butcher's aplomb

they spread out your lungs

and made you warm wings

for your shoulders.

Old fathers, be with us.

Old cunning assessors

of feuds and of sites

for ambush or town.

VI

'Did you ever hear tell,'

said Jimmy Farrell,

'of the skulls they have

in the city of Dublin?

White skulls and black skulls

and yellow skulls, and some

with full teeth, and some

haven't only but one,'

and compounded history

in the pan of 'an old Dane,

maybe, was drowned

in the Flood.'

My words lick around

cobbled quays, go hunting

lightly as pampooties

over the skull-capped ground.

--Seamus Heaney,

from North, 1975.

Yearning For The Sea

Jelly: sculpture mix; brown and black glazing, layered.

I'm missing the sea salt. Heck, I'm missing the pool-salt even, as I'm off my exercise routine too. I made this piece years and years ago, but my current yearning for water time and water creatures led me to notice it again. I like when that happens.

I've been teaching Melville's Moby Dick, Casey's The Devil's Teeth, and Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, and I've been playing with clay in poseidonic ways, but the yearning remains. Need that salt breeze, that cold immersion. Soon!

Robert Graves' "To Juan At The Winter Solstice"

TO JUAN AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE

There is one story and one story only

That will prove worth your telling,

Whether as learned bard or gifted child;

To it all lines or lesser gauds belong

That startle with their shining

Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,

Or strange beasts that beset you,

Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?

Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns

Below the Boreal Crown,

Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,

From woman back to woman:

So each new victim treads unfalteringly

The never altered circuit of his fate,

Bringing twelve peers as witness

Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,

All fish below the thighs?

She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;

When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,

How many the King hold back?

Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,

Whose coils contain the ocean,

Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,

Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,

Battles three days and nights,

To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,

The owl hoots from the elder,

Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:

Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.

The log groans and confesses:

There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,

Do not forget what flowers

The great boar trampled down in ivy time.

Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,

Her sea-blue eyes were wild

But nothing promised that is not performed.

--Robert Graves

The King of the Isles

King Holmberg: Sculpture mix; transparent brown and denim glazes, layered.

Green Gargoyle: Work in Progress

Green Gargoyle: recycled stoneware; green glazes.

Quartet: Wavey

Melville's Queequeg: "George Washington Cannibalistically Developed"

Herman Melville's Moby Dick is a novel full of great lines, sentences and even paragraphs that resonate either wittily, sensibly, or sentimentally (in the best and worst ways) long after the reading is done. Here's a simple sentence that I keep close at hand:

“You cannot hide the soul.”

Here’s the full passage from Chapter 10 -- "A Bosum Friend":

“With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his countenance yet had something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington’s head, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were likewise very projecting, like tow long promontories thickly wooded on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed.”

And from the next page, signaling Ishmael's shift from the opening pages "hypos," those feelings of violence and despair:

“I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it.”

In Search Of . . . .

. . . the Loch Ness / Berkeley conjunction. I'd heard tell of it . . . .

Nessie: recycled stoneware clay, bisqued.

She's a bit smaller than expected, I'd say.

Blue Fish

Blue Fish: sculpture mix; denim glazing, layered.

Caitriona O'Reilly's "Persona"

PERSONA

The mud-brown river is clotted with debris.

And what can I do with these dark adhesions,

These unmoored pieces of the night?

They breathe their black into my day--

What can I do with these dark adhesions?

If dreams are rooms in which my self accretes,

They also breathe their black into my day.

As a mannikin, I set myself to work

In dreams or rooms in which my self accretes.

See me there with the pained carved face.

As a mannikin, I've set myself to work

Until the lost loved one appears

And sees me there with the pained carved face.

I cannot get these wooden limbs to work

Until the lost loved one appears

To shrink at the slyness of my puppet-smile.

I cannot get these wooden limbs to work.

Nothing is different from nothing, I say,

And shrink at the slyness of my puppet's smile.

Chrysanthemum dragons shimmer in the room

But nothing is different from nothing, I say,

These unmoored pieces of the night,

These chrysanthemum dragons shimmer in the room--

Still the mud-brown river is clotted with debris.

--Caitriona O'Reilly

Old Art: Sea Lion, Mermaid, and Fish

Looking for ideas from old work.

There's something I like in each of these pieces, but I can list the flaws too.

What-have-you-done-lately-? deserves to be balanced by what-shall-I-do-next-?.

I'm certainly old enough to know that.

P.S. Your birthday is approaching, Keith. You would have been fifty. Miss you.