Beach Plaid II

A shot from yesterday's tour of the mudflats and rocky shore habitat with Kirk Lombard, the Sea Forager, in Half Moon Bay.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Monday, January 27, 2014

Reprise: Shy Octopus






Remembering some summer fun.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Reprise: Dusk Swimming




Dusk swimming:
Kealakekua Bay--out off Manini Beach.
Big Island, HI.

End of July, 2013.



The top photo just may be my favorite of 2013, of the shots I've taken.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Minotaur, Yearning


Minotaur:
sculpture mix; blue and green glazing.
Model-exercise: 40 minutes?

(Previous entry here.)

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Merit Badge

Snorkel-cat:
This is the stamp I use to mark my swimming and diving--and have used for years now.

Simple system.  If I swim or dive, I stamp my datebook.  When I look back at the days or months and see red, I am gratified.  If I look back and see a lack of red, I am unhappy.  "Do it for the stamp" may seem a bit lame, but whatever gets me into the pool or ocean is worthy of merit right now.

2013 was not a very red year.  I need to get into shape, better shape, swimming and kayaking shape.

2014: I'm aiming at well-marked pages, plenty of snorkel-cats.  I earned one today.

Wish me luck.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Pictish Warrior?



I've decked out my clay mask (Autumn/Winter) with a leather medieval helmet and a plaid muffler --for the fun of it.

Yearning (Oh, I Miss The Salt and Kelp)




I need to go diving.

(And, to be realistic, this diver would have a camera in his hands, not the speargun, and he'd ditch the tank for free diving.  Well, a tank dive would be fun too.  Oh, and the knife would be strapped to a leg.)

Maybe next weekend--or the one after that.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

GMB: "I Gave It Back To The Sea, To Dance In"


BEACHCOMBER

Monday I found a boot –
Rust and salt leather.
I gave it back to the sea, to dance in.

Tuesday a spar of timber worth thirty bob.
Next winter
It will be a chair, a coffin, a bed.

Wednesday a half can of Swedish spirits.
I tilted my head.
The shore was cold with mermaids and angels.

Thursday I got nothing, seaweed,
A whale bone,
Wet feet and a loud cough.

Friday I held a seaman’s skull,
Sand spilling from it
The way time is told on kirkyard stones.

Saturday a barrel of sodden oranges.
A Spanish ship
Was wrecked last month at The Kame.

Sunday, for fear of the elders,
I sit on my bum.
What’s heaven? A sea chest with a thousand gold coins. 

--George Mackay Brown


from The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown

Friday, January 3, 2014

Puck or Joy?




Two hummers are nesting in the hedge by the garage and frequently hang out in the orange tree by the holly and sing.  These shots are of one of the hummingbirds, for the other one wouldn't stick around for a profile pic.

Puck and Joy -- not twins I realize, but mates.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Encouraging Apt Engagement?


When I encounter art of any sort, 
I find myself with these questions: 

What am I feeling now?
What is the piece saying?
What's the story (and backstory)?

[Oh, and how is it made?
--among many, many others.]

Now, my students usually want to start with "What does it mean?"

(A fine, though often
misleading or reductive
question to get to know
something, someone,
anything at all.
Where to begin,
then?)

Artists (and fellow audience-members), 
what responses 
and what responsive questions 
would you encourage 
me to encourage 
in my students?

Crossley-Holland: An Anglo-Saxon Riddle


 RIDDLE 61

A woman, young and lovely, often locked me 
in a chest; she took me out at times,
lifted me with fair hands and gave me 
to her loyal lord, fulfilling his desire. 
Then he stuck his head well inside me, 
pushed it upwards into the smallest part.
It was my fate to be filled with something 
coarse if that person who possessed me 
was virile enough. Now guess my name.

--translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland



Solution: 61 -- Helmet

The Exeter Book Riddles, translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland,
Penguin Books, ______.

Heaney: "Like Heroes in a Barrow"


IN GALLARUS ORATORY

You can still feel the community pack
This place: it’s like going into a turfstack,
A core of old dark walled up with stone
A yard thick. When you’re in it alone,
You might have dropped, a reduced creature,
To the heart of the globe. No worshipper
Would leap up to his God off this floor.

Founded there like heroes in a barrow,
They sought themselves in the eye of their King
Under the black weight of their own breathing.
And how he smiled on them as out they came,
The sea a censer and the grass a flame.

--Seamus Heaney

(Thank you, RA, for the reminder this first day of the year.)