Meet The New Board

 

My new paddle board is definitely demanding: sleek and tippy. 

(Still, the test isn't genuine without the threat of failure.) 

But my legs and knees, while sore and stiff in the morning, seem to benefit from the exercise, and my spirit certainly has been glad to find salt water in this new way. I wonder, yes, if I should have chosen a cruiser, but all the books and the guides say buy the board that challenges you. 

Mere salesmanship? 

I will tell you after some serious workouts.

P.S. I do like how fast this board can be, even when I am merely in kayak-mode.

SAPPHO: Poetry

A few selections from the Greek poet Sappho (translated by Mary Barnard):


#39 He is more than a hero

He is a god in my eyes—
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you—he
 
who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast.  If I meet
you suddenly, I can’t

speak—my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body

and I turn paler than
dry grass.  At such times
death isn’t far from me.


#44 Without warning

as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart.


#45 If you will come

I shall put out
New pillows for
You to rest on.


#65 Persuasion

Aphrodite’s
daughter, you
cheat mortals.


#53 With his venom

Irresistible
and bittersweet

that loosener
of limbs, Love

reptile-like
strikes me down.


#41 To an army wife, in Sardis:

Some say a cavalry corps,
some infantry, some, again,
will maintain that the swift oars

of our fleet are the finest
sight on dark earth; but I say
that whatever one loves, is.

This is easily proved: did
not Helen—she who had scanned
the flower of the world’s manhood—

choose as first among men one
who laid Troy’s honor in ruin?
warped to his will, forgetting

love due her own blood, her own
child, she wandered far from him.
So Anactoria, although you

being far away forget us,
the dear sound of your footstep
and light glancing in your eyes

would move me more than glitter
of Lydian horse or armored
tread of mainland infantry


#84 If you are squeamish

Don’t prod the
beach rubble.


*See Mary Barnard's translations of Sappho's poetry, introduced by Dudley Fitts, published by the University of California Press.

Mental Models

Take your pick, right?

The Clay Waits

The clay waits
Life-mask
Death-mask
The sculptor can't decide
Drawing ragged breaths
This broken morning
Fixing memory in pieces
Mixing temerity with mortality
. . . .
The clay waits.

There was a crooked man
Who climbed a crooked hill
Who had been a broken child
Bound to a broken will . . . .
. . . .
Pottery unfired
Bowls unthrown . . .
The clay waits.

There is a frayed man
On a frayed course . . .
. . . .
Threadbare nerves
Nightmare curves
Vertiginous horse
Sweltering source
Fevered fear
Galloping near . . .
. . . .
The frayed man wakes . . .

The clay wakes.

--MD

slightly revised: 7/8/18
and again: 3/21/20
and again: 4/13/20

Shark Dream

Early this morning, I had my very first shark attack dream.  I've been diving since 1978, and I've had plenty of shark dreams, dreams in which I watch sharks swim from shore, dreams in which I seem to swim with sharks deep underwater, dreams menacing and dreams awe-inspiring, but dreams getting attacked . . . first time.  In the dream, I was out on a kayak with a friend, and we were going to free dive.  Somewhere up north--Sonoma or Mendocino coast.  We anchored our boats to kelp, and we got ready to enter the water, planning to drop down into the kelp forest.  For some reason in the dream--for I would never dive in this manner--I dropped my fins and mask & snorkel overboard, and then I swam down to the equipment in the dreamily-overly-clear water.  As I swam down, I could see some sort of body mass and some sort of movement in the near distance, but without my mask, I could not see clearly enough to make out details.  I certainly felt nervous.  At the bottom, I donned my mask and cleared it a bit, using only a little of the air in my lungs, and pulled on both fins as I looked about, spinning slowly to cover the 360 degrees.  There, swimming away, was a large shark.  As I slowly moved upward, trying to kick slowly, easily, calmly, sending out the vibes of functional-fish, not of awkward-fearful-prey, I could see the shark turn and circle and then rush for me.  Of course, I woke just before that open mouth closed on my body . . . .

And, of course, I had to get up, walk around, and drink some water before I could shake loose of that final moment.

What I Have Learned

English 1B: two questions.

How does X serve the story?
And, what does the story serve?

English 1A?
Shift "story" to "argument".

Fictional Identikit

There's a game going about to identify one's self via three or four literary characters.

Here's my submission from the four quarters of my soul, or some such:

Jim Hawkins, from Stevenson's Treasure Island;
Ishmael, from Melville's Moby Dick;
Frank Bascombe, from Ford's The Sportswriter;
and
Robert Walton, from Shelley's Frankenstein.

"The Other Worlds": Life's Largest Riddle

The Other Worlds is an excellent mythopoeic novel by a dear friend, Christoph Greger.  Christoph's own humble way of introducing the book to the world is worth quoting: "Hey all you cystic fibrosis lit fans, Ren fair geeks, and/or mythopoeic/modernist bildungsroman junkies -- here's something that might be of interest."

This fine novel deserves deep interest, presenting classic character-in-crisis; entertaining and evoking in the tradition of Yeats, Morris, Dunsany, de Lint, and Windling; and offering entry into multiple worlds, this one we share and those others 'beyond the fields we know'.  The setting and the style are distinctly contemporary; the themes and dilemmas, definitely timeless.  Life's largest riddle--mortality--met by mystery, measured by memory, and beset--or aided?--by magic waits at the heart of The Other Worlds.

Read this book.

Identity Crisis

Superhero or nemesis?

Fool's Gold; Or, The Admonition

How good is the book in your head--if it isn't on the page?
What book?
I don't see a book.
In the head or in the heart?

Page, page, page--that's what matters.

Story of my life.

Read less; write more.
Keep on reading, but write more.
Get it down; revise it.
Do the thing that needs to be done.

Voices in my head.

I'd quote my father, but then I'd just be looking for pity or mercy or something.

Right now the book in my head is a mixture of Homer and Robert E. Howard, John Fowles and Robert Stone, edited by Hemingway. All of which ought to make very little sense at all.

Not on the page.
Doesn't count.

I picked up a new used copy of James Lee Burke's Heaven's Prisoners from Pegasus Downtown yesterday, and now the book falls open to the exact page I was looking for--the previous owner/reader had my same hang-ups, I'm guessing--page 262:

"But I had learned long ago that resolution by itself is not enough; we are what we do, not what we think and feel."

Ouch.

As one of my students once said when faced with this same passage: "No mercy."

Agon: Truth vs. Error

"A central consideration is that a correct understanding of how, for instance, true factual beliefs are formed has no tendency to undermine them, while the opposite is typically true of ideological beliefs, for example. This is a truth--admittedly far from clear--at the heart of the Enlightenment enterprise."

--Bernard Williams, in a note to Shame and Necessity

Red Duck at Sunset

TBT: Water / Damage

A 2008 shot, from Hawaii, and the water got into that disposable camera, but that's okay.

I'll never be that young again--and, hey, eight years ago is younger--but I yearn and aim to be in as good a shape as I was that year.  I swam and swam and swam that year.

Aiming to make the rest of 2016 a water-year.

Shark Dream

A couple nights ago I had one of those dreams . . . . Keith was still alive, and we were free diving somewhere down south, for we had thin wetsuits and no hoods nor gloves. We were swimming about a quarter mile off-shore near a rocky reef that reached up to the surface in places, but not enough to count as an island. At some point, I realize a great white shark is swimming beside me, just appearing, as it were, not bent on attacking or feeding . . . yet. The shark swam beside me, or rather I swam beside the shark, kicking hard yet smoothly to maintain equal speed, not wanting to draw attention to myself by jerking or halting or anything, really. I wanted to warn Keith, to tell him to climb up onto the reef or something, to take care, but I was busy swimming and breathing, for I was using a snorkel, not a tank, and I was trying to keep my eye on the shark the whole time.

The shark leaned closer, swam closer, so I put my left hand out and touched the shark, holding it off, or attempting to, by pressing firmly and smoothly against the creature's side, though I ended up with my hand firmly against the creature's jaw just behind the teeth, the mouth. We swam like that, the shark effortlessly, me straining to maintain smoothness and speed, afraid to pull away, to make any sudden movements. This swimming, my hand against the shark, went on for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a minute or two. I wanted to warn Keith; I wanted to break away and climb up onto any protection I could; I wanted to kick and swim forever, for this shark was the most powerful creature I'd ever been so close to. Kicking and breathing, now holding my breath as the shark leaned in even further, pushing against my hand, bending my arm, and then my hand slid into the mouth of the shark, and I could feel the teeth tearing into my skin, the shark not yet even biting . . . .

And I woke up, lurching upright, dragging in that lungful of air as if I'd been holding my breath for too long, fully alert, fully freaked, happy to be alive, and unhappy in that dream-way that the long moment with that shark was over already.

A dream, as I said. Anxiety-expression? Longing? Power -- in part?

Whiskey Friday

Or, The Devil Is In The Details

Body English:
sculpture mix; transparent brown and shino glazing.
20-minute exercise.

Mary Oliver: "To Love What Is Mortal"

IN BLACKWATER WOODS

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

--Mary Oliver

Note: I came to this fine poem from Jennifer Cutting's fine tribute to her beloved cat Mr. Sunshine, who passed away just recently.  Wednesday will be the seventh anniversary of the passing of my own sunshine-orange-boy Rudi.

Keep On Keeping On

Good fin-workout at the pool today:

kick across, kick & stroke back;
frequent underwater laps;
pushed past that desire to stop early;
felt like myself after 45 minutes.

Getting back in shape,
getting into better shape:

that's the goal.

Goliath, Beware!

David, the Kelp Crab.

Crossley-Holland: "Comfort"

COMFORT

Who said anything about comfort?
Those syllables do not rhyme
with zinc slakes or ice-bright sky.
The sea is grinding her spears.
Up creeks and gullies, over groynes
the black tide surges
and the hag wind rides her.
In the bleak forest on the staithe
rigging clacks and chitters.

Little but memory for company,
wild geese, swans whooping,
but no urbanity no
gossip prejudice bitterness sham.
In London I dream of these harsh folds,
the sea's slam, the light's eagle eye,
and here again I draw
this place -- hair-shirt, dear cloak --
around such infirmities.

--Kevin Crossley-Holland

Seamus Heaney: "Imagine Being Kevin"

SAINT KEVIN AND THE BLACKBIRD

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
and lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

--Seamus Heaney