The Crash Test Dummies: "There Are NIghts When All My Aching Bones Won't Let Me Sleep"

THE GHOSTS THAT HAUNT ME

There's a skeleton in everybody's closet
I can think of one or two in my own room
But I would like to introduce them both to you
You'd shake their bony hands and so dispel the gloom

'Cause you're so kind
I know you would not mind
You'd send away the ghosts that haunt me now
And the things I fear
Just wouldn't seem so near
And when I stroll out late at night
There would be nothing rattling at my heels

There are nights when all my aching bones won't let me sleep
And demons come to plague me as I lie in bed
But I know if you were sleeping there beside me then
That you could fend them off and they would let me rest

There are nights
When the wind comes howling through my old place
I have dreams
And I wake up with the sweat pouring down my face
And I wait till the morning comes

There will come a time I fear when all my days are done
And they will come collect my corpse and bury me
And then I hope you'll come over to the Other Side
To join me in our new life, keep me company

--Brad Roberts

from the Crash Test Dummies' debut album:

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

Sinead Morrissey: "& Forgive Us Our Trespasses"

& FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES  

Of which the first is love. The sad, unrepeatable fact
that the loves we shouldn’t foster burrow faster and linger longer
than sanctioned kinds can. Loves that thrive on absence, on lack
of return, or worse, on harm, are unkillable, Father.
They do not die in us. And you know how we’ve tried.
Loves nursed, inexplicably, on thoughts of sex,
a return to touched places, a backwards glance, a sigh -
they come back like the tide. They are with us at the terminus
when cancer catches us. They have never been away.
Forgive us the people we love – their dragnet influence.
Those disallowed to us, those who frighten us, those who stay
on uninvited in our lives and every night revisit us.
Accept from us the inappropriate
by which our dreams and daily scenes stay separate.   

--Sinead Morrissey

Mermaid: Reprise

October 2010.

A Boat-Load Of Charm

In progress.

Face Time: Wet Clay

Practice session. 

Kavanaugh's "On Raglan Road"

ON RAGLAN ROAD
          (Air: The Dawning of the Day)

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew 
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue; 
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way, 
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day. 

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge 
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge, 
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay - 
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away. 

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known 
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone 
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say. 
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May 

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now 
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow 
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay - 
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day. 

-- Patrick Kavanagh

And here's my favorite rendition of this poem by Mark Knopfler and Donal Lunny.

Shelf Life

Looking At You

Odysseus: sculpture mix; unglazed.

The first full-sized head I made: years ago.

I just felt the mood to look at it again, and he looked back.

Becoming Poseidon

Embracing process.
Maybe the smile on the mask had something to do with my own appreciation to be playing with clay again after a hiatus.
Or, maybe the Greek god Poseidon has his own matters to be happy about.  I am the channel, only, after all.

Remember The Labyrinth

Minotaur's Head (small): sculpture mix; green and floating blue, layered.

Wet Clay

Ursula Le Guin, In Person, on The Novel: 2/26/13

Poseidon: Mask

Wet clay.

Mermaid: Pit-Fired

Pit-fired mermaid. A crude piece, but I knew nothing about sculpting at the time.  Still, the crudeness worked, don't you think?

First pit-fire experience on Ocean Beach. A long time ago.

Luck conspired with fire here.

The red on the tail came from the kelp I picked up on the beach 

and wrapped around the piece.  My instructor Jim suggested the effect.  Thank you, Jim, for that and other kindnesses, other nudges towards artistry.

Be Lucky -- Vote Ducky!

The window of a shop near my house.

Octopus / Belly-Dancer

Octopus: sculpture mix, glazed with transparent brown and celadon; salvaged.

Yeats: "That Dolphin-Torn, That Gong-Tormented Sea"

BYZANTIUM

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.

The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. 

--William Butler Yeats

Bathing Beauty

Mask: Red Menace

Red Hawk: sculpture mix, pit-fired; red paint; copper wire.

Centering

Somewhere Between A Ballad And Blank Verse

Keith: We Never Took Enough Photos

My best friend Keith in two unguarded moments: Kruse Ranch dive trip.

He hated photographs, hated sitting still long enough for a photo, hated posing.  I'd have to be sneaky to document our dive trips, our friendship, and since I was arrogant regarding the primacy of memory and the internal vision, I colluded with Keith.  I can't recall that he ever snapped a shot, though I think his children may remember the facts differently.  He would have told me, Matt, of course, I want to have keepsakes of my children.  (He loved his children fiercely.)

Memory Lane is a blurry avenue, don't you know?

We left home about midnight and drove the three or four hours up to our "secret spot" on the Sonoma Coast, talking all the while, solving the moral conundrums and practical puzzles of the day, crashing out after a few beers by the side of the road.  (We both had forgotten to bring a bottle opener, and consequently, we had to be creative with different parts of the Datsun or our dive knives to serve that need.)  I think there's a "No Camping" sign a few feet from where Keith is sleeping.  With the morning light -- though this trip we'd obviously overslept -- we'd gear up and harvest a few abalone.  I usually ended up driving homeward while Keith napped in the passenger seat.  (I sometimes railed at him for how he relied on me to keep him awake on the outward leg, but he snoozed on me, leaving me to my own devices, on the homeward leg, but he always failed to be impressed by my arguments.  As driver, I had command of the tape deck, and he knew I liked companionable solitude anyway.)

When would this trip have occurred?  Post-undergraduate.  Law school days for Keith?  Warehouse/driver days for me?  I'd have to do some homework.  Early or mid-80's?  If I think hard enough about that car, I can work out the year, I'm sure.

If I spent too much time with my instamatic taking photos of the tidepools, of the surf, of any of our group, he'd urge me to get done, as we needed to head home.  He usually had work or chores or something waiting for him, and I respected those responsibilities, yet it often seemed as if he just thought what I was doing was frivolous.

He claimed to hate these shots.  And yet I can recall one time he commented that I never bothered to share the photographs with him and the rest of the gang, if gang there happened to be that year.  I was surprised and hadn't shared due to my sense of his disinterest, or antagonism, or to the poor quality of the shots, hurried and taken from the hip, as it were.

I wish I had more of them.

I miss you, man.

Water-Wings

 Riding the surge . . . and trying not to fly past too quickly.

"Hooked, Slimed, and Gutted"

SONG: "CABIN'D, CRIBB'D, CONFIN'D"

There's a hammer in the head
And a pounding at the door.
You'll never sleep soft
Till you even out the score.
There's a question on the table
And a cupboard full of woes,
But your sole occupation's
Shooting blanks of Old Crow.

The innkeeper said,
It never fails, never fails.
Just make yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

Our ghosts just doze at dawn
In a soul-bin "Lost and Found."
Though hooked, slimed, and gutted,
Sorrows rarely ever drown.
(At every bottle's bottom,
Every sinner floats.
On this fishing trip to hell
You're still bailing out the boat.)

Opportunity's not knocking,
But Misery's banging pails;
You've made yourself at home:
Bed of nails, bed of nails.

--MD

Mermaid Sky

 

Amazon Mermaid, With Rocks: 

stoneware; blue and clear glazing; 

copper wire, varying thicknesses; beach pebbles.

Crab Happy

Shakespeare: "Cabined, Cribbed, Confined"

MACBETH:
Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air.
But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.—But Banquo’s safe?

--Shakespeare's Macbeth 3.4. . . .