The Witch and the Frog

My mother always told me that she was a witch and that when I was a very small boy she'd turned me into a frog and that I had hopped around the yard behind her while she watered the plants. I could remember that, or almost, you know? I believed her, my mother.  And who wouldn't want to be a frog?  Who wouldn't want to be the one child that she had transformed in this way.  And, she'd always turned me back into her dear boy.

And our whole lives together, we never questioned these truths. We never broke the bond of the shared story. All our lives.

So, whatever I may think rationally, I never read transformation stories the way a person who hasn't been a frog--my mother said, right?--reads that story. (I mean, I probably don't even think about frogs the same way someone who hasn't been a frog thinks about frogs.)

And that's a gift she gave me, a gift we shared together: the magic of story, of imagination, of transformation and sharing.

Cannery Row Free Diving

A fun quick swim
down and about
on a low viz kind of day.

Monterey Paddling

Thanks for the photo, JP.

Cannery Row Parking

Another Beauty

Underwater Yoga

(Clay Exercise:
20-minutes with live model.)

Paddling with JP and Bird

Subtidal

No Weight Belt: Subtidal Mendocino

Last Saturday, I went kayaking and snorkeling out from Van Damme State Beach in Mendocino County and headed north through the sea-caves, rock gardens, and water-alleys there.  The tide was low, though rising, and low enough that when I entered the water to take a few photos of the flora and fauna I realized I ought to leave my weight belt in the kayak.  The light swell and surge were carrying me quite close to the spines of the sea urchins along the rocks that lined the water-alley and even close to the spines along the bottom in the shallow sections.  As I did not have a place to park the kayak--no handy kelp to anchor to with any surety--I clipped the anchor line to my left bootie, and we floated, kayak and myself, at the surface with the surge and looked about.

Second Cave, North from Van Damme

Green Water; Rising Tide

Thistle Me This One Too

"Whirl is king": Aristophanes

I love spirals.

I'm Reminded of Scottish Cattle

A herd of sea palms.

A Fashionable Abalone

Is that a hat?

Clough: "In the Depths"

IN THE DEPTHS

It is not sweet content, be sure,
That moves the nobler Muse to song,
Yet when could truth come whole and pure
From hearts that inly writhe with wrong?

’Tis not the calm and peaceful breast
That sees or reads the problem true;
They only know on whom it has prest
Too hard to hope to solve it too.

Our ills are worse than at their ease
These blameless happy souls suspect,
They only study the disease,
Alas, who live not to detect.

--Arthur Hugh Clough

Thistle Me This