Circus Time

Warming up: first contact with wet clay since January?

Playing In The Creek As If I Were Seven Years Old

Aground or grounded?  Either way, this blue bookfish is at large.

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn?

I love my alma mater, warts and all.  And, to keep with that metaphor, she'll bewitch you if you give her half a chance.  Half-Circe, half-Sibyl of Cumae?

Whenever I approach that gate, I hear Virgilian echoes; I just do.

(Homeric resonances too: Holy moly, Hermes!)


Let's hear it, especially, for Latin Summer Workshop '88!
"O passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem."  --Virgil, The Aeneid, from Book I.

Wave-Back Again

Here's an old photo--January 2011--with one of my favorite views: the back of a wave.

There's something about this angle, this perspective, that puts me out in the water again.  If I click on the shot and consider the larger version of the photo, I can really feel the energy that's just passed through and by me out there at Lover's Point, Pacific Grove, CA.

I cropped some of the sky out of the shot, hoping to put greater emphasis onto the wave itself.  Now, I'm not sure if that editorial move really worked.  Here's the original version of the photo:

And, then here's the rest of the wave-sequence as it follows through . . . .

Great day for free diving: not so much for checking out the fish and crustaceans, certainly, but for feeling the grip and flow of such wave energy.

Tasting Salt

Here are four shots from an old photo file from last year, catching glimpses of a free dive off Pacific Grove, CA.  These aren't the best nor most dramatic shots from the day--or I'd have posted them already--but they are true shots, expressive moments spent underwater or at the surface.  I like to dig into past files, and not just into my blog here, for the flavors of the day, the dive, in all its variety.  Sometimes, a shot that seemed overly-mundane will hit me differently now or will connect me with the dive (or the act of diving) itself.

 Here, you can see the surge at work--and at work on me, in particular.  I call this "flying time."

I think I've posted the wave-shot taken just after this one in "A Favorite View," for that shot caught a bit more drama as the approaching wave crest--as seen here, forward, upwards, and leaning to the right--but this shot is also just as true.  I like the texture and malleability of water in the shape of waves and wavelets, boils, ripples, counter-crests, and all else as they form on those waves.  Pindar said, "Water is best."

Here's another self-portrait from that day last year.  I offer it as an antidote to my own tendencies towards vanity: divers look goofy.  Another truth, and one I embody to perfection here.

P.S.  I really need to go diving.  It's been too long.

Sam Hamill's "The Gift of Tongues," the Generous Spirit, and PIracy

THE GIFT OF TONGUES


Everything I steal, I give away.
Once, in pines almost as tall as these,
same crescent moon sliding gently by,
I sat curled on my knees, smoking with a friend,
sipping tea, swapping Coyote tales and lies. 


He said something to me
about words, that each is a name,
and that every name is God's. I who have
no god sat in the vast emptiness silent
as I could be. A way that can be named

is not the way. Each word reflects
the Spirit which can't be named. Each word
a gift, its value in exact proportion
to the spirit in which it is given.
Thus spoken, these words I give 


by way of Lao Tzu's old Chinese, stolen
by a humble thief twenty-five centuries later.
The Word is only evidence of the real:
in the Hopi tongue, there is no whale;
and, in American English, no Fourth World. 

--Sam Hamill ~


"The Gift of Tongues," for me, voices a certain generosity of spirit that I admire, a certain spiritual perspective or dilemma that I sometimes inhabit.

Hamill's poem also speaks to the linkages of appropriation and use that ought to be infused with that sense of generosity in ways that parallel, say, Gary Snyder in his poem "Axe Handles" and in his life as well.

Hamill's poem came up in a conversation with a friend about piracy, Internet and media piracy in context, but generally piracy vs. theft and piracy vs. copying.  I quoted the above poem's opening line--"Everything I steal, I give away"--to highlight what I feel is the proper generous spirit of Internet sharing, say, or of classroom teaching.  Give credit where credit is due,  certainly, and encourage everyone to seek out the originals in whatever format, whatever venue.  (I quote Shakespeare or Byron in part to foster an interest in, a curiosity about, such writers.)

Piracy lacks such a generous spirit, despite all the attractive emblems of the piratical.

"Take what you can." 
"And give nothing back."
--those sentiments belong at best in a Hollywood fantasy, not the real world.

And while I love those lines in the moment of watching that first Pirates of the Caribbean film,  I think part of the charm of such costumed and indulgent selfishness comes from context, as ever.  These are down-and-out, though irrepressible ne'er-do-wells--Captain Jack Sparrow and his first mate, Mr. Gibbs--and such voicing of the pirate's code is as much fantasy-projection for them as it is for most of us in the audience.  The lines would have a much different flavor being spoken by Wall Street bankers and brokers, suited up but ties loosened, perhaps, with whiskeys in hand.


Sam Hamill, Destination Zero: Poems 1970-1995, 
White Pine Press: Fredonia, New York, 1995.

(Thanks to MR for the conversation.)

The poster presented at the top is self-expressive, a wonderful promotional tool and work of art for a worthy anthology from an excellent publishing house: Copper Canyon Press.  In that particular anthology I first encounted Hamill's poem quoted above, though I have just reread and presented the poem from Hamill's volume Destination Zero.

Boil and Bubble, Whirl and Wobble . . .

I like the boils in the water right in front of me.  Miniature whirlpools!

A fine day in February of this year.  Glad I went out.

Clayfish in Blue

Bluefish: sculpture mix; blue glazing, layered.
Summer/Fall 2011.

Reprise: The PIct

Pit-fired: sculpture mix; copper wire, flattened.
20-minute figure exercise with model.

Sorry About The Water Spot . . .

. . . but I like the sky.

Again, April 2, 2011.
Lover's Point, Pacific Grove, CA.

Stone, Blue

Lover's Point, Pacific Grove, CA: April 2, 2011.


I was ducking beneath a wave, and I decided to take a photo while I was down there anyway.

(Once again, looking through old photo files pays off.)

Anticipation

Test Prompt: Is Roxane Worth The Trouble?

When I teach Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, I end up wanting to write lots of letters.  I also always assign the following topics--or roughly similar ones--for in-class or take-home writing:

Is Roxane really worth the trouble?

Is Cyrano just a fool?  (Use evidence from all parts of the play to support your position.)

Does the Comte de Guiche have any redeeming qualities?  And if so, are they enough, really, to redeem him?

Stuff like that.

The first is a particular favorite, and those of you who know the play understand that in the beginning, Roxane, aside from her beauty and liveliness, doesn't seem to merit such devotion from Cyrano and Christian.  In fact, in the second and third acts, she can seem petty and hurtful.  And yet if you keep reading . . . .

I also like to direct students to the balcony scene as a crescendo in the arc of the play.  What really happens amidst all those words back and forth?  Is it all just the "pretty nothings that are everything," as Roxane claims earlier, or is there something of greater depth at work?

Oh, Roxane--


I've also found the following quotation helpful in considering the overall arc of the play:


"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
--Horace Walpole (1717-1797)


--a handful of thoughts at the end of a long day.

Isla Blanca

I like water-and-rock shots like this to feed my imagination.  I picture an island and I put my characters in play there.   This time, there's been a murder, and now that the fog has pulled back out to sea, well, Tom Dacre is about to wish the sunlight wasn't quite so bright.  Though that's not fair, he . . . .

Asilomar, actually.
Looking north toward what I call the Gazebo Rocks.
Perspective?  Memory for mourning?  Story-telling?  Uh-huhh.

McGuane: "Swallowing Hot Soup Upside Down"

Here's a piece from Thomas McGuane's Panama, a novel that made a lot more sense for me in 2006 or so than when I first read it back in 1985 or '86, in my mid-forties than in my mid-twenties.

If you know the novel, you just may know what I mean.

I have a lot of respect for how McGuane writes, for how he mixes the verbal gymnastics here with the practical considerations of characters in motion.


She put some music on--Tejas by Z Z Top, I think, something hard--stood up, and slid out of the rest of her duds.  I was transfixed, all my general views gone, everything withering to make room for the present, the furious rifle vision which riddles everything, that madhouse of what seems like a good idea at the time.


I had come with the flowers in addition to my usual maladies, been touched, and now found myself just as addled as thrilled.  My mental focus left like water for her to swim in; and suddenly we were on the floor and she was slipping away and I'm thinking, I can settle this.  And then I thought about Catherine and how it could be when it was with someone you loved.  This was the girl from the storm cellar.


She said, "You've got premature ejaculator written all over you."  I glanced into mid-air.


I felt completely there for it; but the feeling of the inside of her ran up spreading through me like swallowing hot soup upside down.  I looked down, as I do, and thought, as I am afraid I do, that she couldn't get away.  But she had some little movement that ought to be against the law.  And I was grateful, wondering where my old vanity had gone, when it was always my benificence that I thought was on the line, not these glorious collisions.  The earlier theater between Marcelline and me evaporated and it all grew dead serious; and probably, objectively, maybe even a trifle grotesque, as in knotty and wet and uncoordinated.


--from Thomas McGuane's Panama, Penguin Books, 1978: pages 50-51.

Totem Pool

Study session in progress.

(And what did Melville's Ishmael claim?  "I have swam through libraries . . . .")

Robert Graves: Gift, Glance, Green, Glint

Four poems by Robert Graves:

GIFT OF SIGHT
I had long known the diverse tastes of the wood,
Each leaf, each bark, rank earth from every hollow;
Knew the smells of bird's breath and of bat's wing;
Yet sight I lacked; until you stole upon me,
Touching my eyelids with light finger-tips.
The trees blazed out, their colours whirled together,
Nor ever before had I been aware of sky.


AT FIRST SIGHT
'Love at first sight,' some say, misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation.

But friendship at first sight?  This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches and then blushes.


VARIABLES OF GREEN
Grass-green and aspen-green,
Laurel-green and sea-green,
Fine-emerald green,
And many another hue:
As green commands the variables of green
So love my loves of you.


CHANGE
'This year she has changed greatly'--meaning you--
My sanguine friends agree,
And hope thereby to reassure me.

No, child, you never change; neither do I.
Indeed all our lives long
We are still fated to do wrong,

Too fast caught by care of humankind,
Easily vexed and grieved,
Foolishly flattered and deceived;

And yet each knows that the changeless other
Must love and pardon still,
Be the new error what it will:

Assured by that same glint of deathlessness
Which neither can surprise
In any other pair of eyes.

Robert Graves, New Collected Poems, Doubleday & Company, Inc: Garden City, New York: 1977.

Happy Mother's Day!

Dear Mom,
      Thanks for the magic.  I try to use it almost every day.
Your son,
      Matthew David.




Frog: sculpture mix; green glazing, layered.
(This was one of my first guided sculptures, in a class, and my model was a toy frog.)

"Giving What I Have" : Peter Green, Translating the Argonautika, and the Enjoyment of Reading

Classicist Peter Green is an inspiring scholar, translator, and novelist.  I've quoted from his excellent The Laughter of Aphrodite: A Novel About Sappho of Lesbos here, and now I'm returning to his translation of Apollonius of Rhodes' epic poem of Jason and the Argonauts.  I picked up this book eleven years ago for my 40th birthday, and as my 51st approaches, it feels right to revisit a favorite tale of adventure and desire.  

I'd like to quote Green on translating this epic poem as a "labor of love" and on formative experiences regarding scholarship and, more importantly, reading for enjoyment.  I'm in Green's camp, quite obviously, and I have a deep attachment to tales of the heroic Greeks as well.  

In his "Preface and Acknowledgements," Peter Green writes:

Working on the Argonautika has been for me very much a labor of love.  At the age of seven I first encountered, and was fascinated by, the quest for the Golden Fleece in that brilliant volume by Andrew Lang, Tales of Troy and Greece, never yet surpassed as a retelling of ancient myth for young people.*  Years later, reading Boswell's Life of Johnson, I came across this passage:

"And yet, (said I) people go through the world very well, and carry on the business of life to good advantage, without learning."  Johnson: "Why, Sir, that may be true in cases where learning cannot possibly be of any use; for instance, this boy rows us as well without learning, as if he could sing the song of Orpheus to the Argonauts, who were the first sailors."  He then called to the boy, "What would you give, my lad, to know about the Argonauts?"  "Sir, (said the boy) I would give what I have."

The boy's words, then and even today, struck an emotional chord that hit me directly and physically, just as a certain high-frequency note drawn from a violin will shatter a wineglass.   In one sense I have been giving what I have in pursuit of those bright, elusive, infinitely rewarding Sirens ever since.  The anecdote seems to me the best justification ever put forward for a truly humane education.

This is, I know, quite hopelessly old-fashioned and romantic.  Robert Graves somewhere recalls his dismay at the reply he got from an earnest student of English literature when he asked her what she enjoyed about Shakespeare's (I think) work.  "I don't read to enjoy," she said, in withering reproof, "I read to evaluate."  The absence of genuine pleasure is what makes too much literary criticism today an aridly sterile desert.  Despite this I still retain my deep instinctive responses to great art and literature, though a quarter of a century's exposure to American academic critical trends has come as near to killing such reactions in me as anything could do.  In that sense the present work may count as an act of calculated defiance, as well as an invitation to relish one of the Hellenic world's oldest and most deeply resonant myths, told by a master of his craft, who loved the sea, and ships, and the complexities of human nature, and let that passion irradiate everything he wrote.

--from The Argonautika: The Story of Jason and the Quest for the Golden Fleece by Apollonios Rhodios, Translated, with Introduction and Glossary By Peter Green,

University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1997: pages xii-xiii.

I'd almost forgotten Green's footnote to the passage above.  Here it is:


*Lang, together with The Heroes of Asgard and several other highly formative texts, was put into my hands during the three years, form six to eight, that I spent at an English P.N.E.U. (Parents' National Educational Union) school, before being transferred to the less congenial rigors of prep and boarding schools.  Most of the serious permanent passions of my later life (including the study of classics as a profession, and the absorption of world literature and music for the sheer fun of it) had their roots in my P.N.E.U. days.  I did not get any remotely comparable stimulation and excitement until I returned to Cambridge after World War II as an elderly (I thought) I was twenty-three) ex-service undergraduate.

Kelp College

"The law of gravity becomes complex under water, but it is not beyond our comprehension."

--Honor Frost,
Under the Mediterranean

(One of my favorite quotations--from a favorite book which I've written about here and here.)

MUSE

Across the pale stillness
of water keel-carven, these lovely eyes of desire
drag the ship to her doom.

--Simonides of Ceos

(translated by Richmond Lattimore)

-- I like the description, the phrasing and the images themselves, but I also like the paradox.  The water is calm, and yet the ship goes to its doom.
All for love, or desire, which isn't the same thing, is it? --

(TV screen-shot from John Stockwell's Into the Blue.)

Somehow, this juxtaposition is working for me, though perhaps an eye-to-eye shot of Sophia Loren would work well too: Boy On A Dolphin.

A Bevy of Barnacles

Monastery Beach, Carmel, CA: June 20, 2011.

It's good to look through last year's photographs every so often.

Watershot

Cloudy day from a fathom or so below.

Atlantean Net-Man

Retiarius: sculpture mix; green glazing layered; copper wire.
July 2007.

I've never managed to take any good photos of this piece.  I think he looks best at close range, in person, as it were.  I need to experiment with different angles and lighting.

Still, here it is.