Pillars of Atlantis

The names and geography of the adventure tales of my childhood are never that far away from me.

Atlantean

 One of my favorite of places.  Paddle out from Van Damme State Beach, as I have said before, and poke around in the nooks and crannies as you head south, and you just might find this gem.

Here's the view looking up when you take the photos you've just looked at.

Rereading, Again:

Jan Siegel's Prospero's Children is always a lively treat.

Old Clay: Moving Forward

Bottle-of-Dreams

That's Chloe, by the way, a dancer of Atlantis, so click the link to know more.

Drowning Atlantis

I need to swim.

Right now, the water-of-life goes down like water.

When I am swimming regularly, putting in the laps, day after day, I'm not so thirsty.

Right now, I'm trying to drown Atlantis.
And I am.
Drop by drop,
dram by dram,
deluge by deluge.

The King of Atlantis
Fall 2009: Sculpture mix
(glazed with Transparent Brown, Stormy Blue, & Celadon),
copper wire, and hemp.

Reprise: Shoulders of Clay

Self-Portrait #47.
Sculpture mix;
green and shino glazing:
live model.

The Salt Embrace II

Or, In The Locker.

When I was a boy, I wanted to find the Elephants' Graveyard, the ruins of Atlantis, and Davy Jones' (actual) Locker.

Triton

Triton: clay mask in the ocean;
sculpture mix;
tan and blue glazing.

West-Atlantis Rising

 The Farallon Islands -- from the highway above Stinson Beach.

Hermes And Company

Deluge In Clay: Atlantean

Reprise: Exile of Atlantis; the Spearman.

Invitation to Exploration

Boland: "Atlantis -- A Lost Sonnet"

ATLANTIS -- A LOST SONNET

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades, 
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all 
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting 
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe 
what really happened is 

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and 
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of 

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

--Eavan Boland

Thanks, EHS, for sharing.

A Dancer From Atlantis

DETAIL:  Pit-fired goddess: sculpture mix; copper wire.
40-minute exercise with model.

Atlantis sank beneath the sea when a well-meaning man made yet another thunderous blunder . . . ?  No, that happens all the time, sad to say.  (The Kardios/Wellman conceit, for those who know.)  I wonder what Virgil would have said about Atlantis and the perils of burning desire, what Homer would have said about the pitfalls of pride and Atlantis' final days.   I can guess what Archilochos and Sappho would have said, yet I still wish we had such utterances--in the most embracing poetics--here to read.  I'd learn Greek to do so, I think.  Odd thoughts after a long and hot day.

(Anachronistic thinking?  Where did Plato get his ideas anyway, I mean, besides from Socrates?  Sail west, Athenians.  Sail west beyond Sicily, beyond the Pillars of Heracles, beyond the Isles of Tin, and then hang a sharp right--or was that an easy left?)

Exile From Atlantis

Close-up of "Spearman of Atlantis."

Garseg: out of the kiln and into the creek.

Spearman of Atlantis: Clay Mask

 Garsecg: sculpture mix; layered glazes: denim, floating blue, celadon, transparent brown, and shino.

Introducing Fern Capel

I'll quote a lengthy paragraph from the first chapter of Jan Siegel's Prospero's Children.  I am tempted to quote something about the elemental mermaid from the rather gripping, rather fantastic prologue, but the novel really gets going with the introduction of our main character: so sensible, so grounded Fernanda Capel.

That was the beginning, she decided long afterward.  The meeting at the gallery, the sense of menace, the picture.  The incident seemed trivial enough at the time but it left her feeling vaguely perturbed, as if the outlying penumbra of some far-flung shadow had brushed the borderline of her bright safe world, or she had caught a few isolated notes of an eerie music which would soon come booming from every corner of the universe, obliterating all other sound.  The events of that extraordinary and terrifying summer became perhaps easier to assimilate because she was in some sort prepared: from the moment of that initial encounter an unfamiliar atmosphere began to seep into her life, unsettling her, unbalancing her cultivated equilibrium, making her vulnerable, unsure, receptive to change.  She was sixteen years old, well-behaved, intelligent, motivated, a product of the Eighties in which she lived, viewing the world with a practical realism engendered by the early death of her mother and the responsibilities which had devolved on her as a result of it.  Her father's easygoing manner had acquired its undercurrent of anxiety from that time, left alone with a small daughter and smaller son, but it was Fern who had gradually taken charge of the household, trading au pair for housekeeper, seeing the bills were paid, bossing her surviving parent, attempting to boss her younger brother.  She had coasted through puberty and adolescence without rebellion or trauma, avoiding hard drugs, excessive alcohol, and underage sex.  Her future was carefully planned, with no room for surprises.  University; a suitable career; at some point, a prudent marriage.  She thought of herself as grown-up but behind the sedate facade she was still a child, shutting out the unknown with illusions of security and control.  That summer the illusions would be dissipated and the unknown would invade her existence, transforming the self-possessed girl into someone desperate, frightened, uncertain, alone--the raw material of an adult.


--Jan Siegel, Prospero's Children, A Del Rey Book, Random House: New York, 2001.  Pages 16-17.

Now some will say that there's far too much telling and not enough showing in the above paragraph, and I can see the point of such an observation.  I can also see the point of laying out the larger trajectory of Fern's summer, her transformation, in one such paragraph and then devoting three hundred pages to the How of that summer, that transformation.  Desperation, fright, uncertainty, isolation: those are crucial ingredients of the stew of life, the factors without which we may never mature.

Fern Capel's career spans three books: Prospero's Children, The Dragon Charmer, and The Witch Queen.  I recall reading somewhere that Jan Siegel was interested in taking the child-hero of the classics of the fantasy field--the Narnia books, The Dark is Rising books, and so forth--from that special, fantastic, and haunted childhood into adulthood.  For as we all know, stories never really end, not even when the books are unwritten . . . .

The Oracle of Light

The King of Atlantis: sculpture mix; misc. blue and green glazes; twine; copper wire.

I've posted shots of this mask a few times before. This afternoon I took it down from the wall and out into the sun for a good look. I like this piece, and I brought out the camera just because of that liking. I haven't put enough time aside for playing with clay, and this posting encourages me to pursue such pleasure.

These shots somehow call to mind one particular fragment from Archilochos. Here it is, translated by Guy Davenport in his Seven Greeks. Note the range of tones as Archilochos carries us through even this brief piece.

Be bold! That's one way

Of getting through life.

So I turn upon her

And point out that,

Faced with the wickedness

Of things, she does not shiver.

I prefer to have, after all,

Only what pleases me.

Are you so deep in misery

That you think me fallen?

You say I'm lazy; I'm not,

Nor any of my kin-people.

I know how to love those

Who love me, how to hate.

My enemies I overwhelm

With abuse. The ant bites!

The oracle said to me:

"Return to the city, reconquer.

It is almost in ruins.

With your spear give it glory.

Reign with absolute power,

The admiration of men.

After this long voyage,

Return to us from Gortyne."

Pasture, fish, nor vulture

Were you, and I, returned,

Seek an honest woman

Ready to be a good wife.

I would hold your hand,

Would be near you, would have run

All the way to your house.

I cannot. The ship went down,

And all my wealth with it.

The salvagers have no hope.

You whom the soldiers beat,

You who are all but dead,

How the gods love you!

And I, alone in the dark,

I was promised the light.

--Archilochos

(7th century B.C.)

Gateway to Atlantis

I was born in Carmel, but I sometimes imagine I was born undersea right here, right below this set of rocks at Lover's Point, Pacific Grove, Monterey Peninsula, California. Not sure why, but I do.

When I started free diving solo about fifteen years ago, this is the place I chose. It was a rough, unsunny, somewhat stormy day, unlike the bright shine in this photo. Rough water, great time. That's been the pattern since, too.

These rocks are the gates of adventure and magic for me.

When in doubt of where to dive, I'll run down to Pacific Grove, suit up, and jump on in. Swim round the Point and back again. Find those fish. Delve into the kelpy depths. Go down and up again, over and over--far more fun than it sounds. If the swell is running just a bit, hitch a ride through the surge channels on the nose of the Point, checking out the giant anemones in the crevices on the fly; or, hold that breath and plant myself to take photos of those Big Greens, braced between rocks as the waves push and pull: click, click, click. If the swell is running high, swim with the surfers, ducking under the breakers as needed, and feel the surge, absorb the pitch and purge bone-deep. When that happens, I always sleep quite well, rocked into slumber by the memory in the muscles and the mind. I also tend to be fairly beat from the workout. All good.