Fieldwork

JP, working.

Duncan's Falcon-Thoughts

MY MOTHER WOULD BE A FALCONRESS
    --by Robert Duncan, 1919 - 1988

 My mother would be a falconress,
And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist,
would fly to bring back
from the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize,
where I dream in my little hood with many bells
jangling when I’d turn my head.

My mother would be a falconress,
and she sends me as far as her will goes.
She lets me ride to the end of her curb
where I fall back in anguish.
I dread that she will cast me away,
for I fall, I mis-take, I fail in her mission.

She would bring down the little birds.
And I would bring down the little birds.
When will she let me bring down the little birds,
pierced from their flight with their necks broken,
their heads like flowers limp from the stem?

I tread my mother’s wrist and would draw blood.
Behind the little hood my eyes are hooded.
I have gone back into my hooded silence,
talking to myself and dropping off to sleep.

For she has muffled my dreams in the hood she has made me,
sewn round with bells, jangling when I move.
She rides with her little falcon upon her wrist.
She uses a barb that brings me to cower.
She sends me abroad to try my wings
and I come back to her. I would bring down
the little birds to her
I may not tear into, I must bring back perfectly.

I tear at her wrist with my beak to draw blood,
and her eye holds me, anguisht, terrifying.
She draws a limit to my flight.
Never beyond my sight, she says.
She trains me to fetch and to limit myself in fetching.
She rewards me with meat for my dinner.
But I must never eat what she sends me to bring her.

Yet it would have been beautiful, if she would have carried me,
always, in a little hood with the bells ringing,
at her wrist, and her riding
to the great falcon hunt, and me
flying up to the curb of my heart from her heart
to bring down the skylark from the blue to her feet,
straining, and then released for the flight.

My mother would be a falconress,
and I her gerfalcon raised at her will,
from her wrist sent flying, as if I were her own
pride, as if her pride
knew no limits, as if her mind
sought in me flight beyond the horizon.

Ah, but high, high in the air I flew.
And far, far beyond the curb of her will,
were the blue hills where the falcons nest.
And then I saw west to the dying sun--
it seemd my human soul went down in flames.

I tore at her wrist, at the hold she had for me,
until the blood ran hot and I heard her cry out,
far, far beyond the curb of her will

to horizons of stars beyond the ringing hills of the world where the falcons nest
I saw, and I tore at her wrist with my savage beak.
I flew, as if sight flew from the anguish in her eye beyond her sight,
sent from my striking loose, from the cruel strike at her wrist,
striking out from the blood to be free of her.

My mother would be a falconress,
and even now, years after this,
when the wounds I left her had surely healed,
and the woman is dead,
her fierce eyes closed, and if her heart
were broken, it is stilled

I would be a falcon and go free.
I tread her wrist and wear the hood,
talking to myself, and would draw blood.

------------------------------------
Thanks to JP for sharing the poem with me.

Grace

Egret or heron?  I always misremember, but I know grace when I see it.

P.S.   Great egret, actually.  I checked (again).

Notebook: Whale-Watching / Kayaking

1.  I will have to set aside the camera a bit more deliberately to engage my whole sight and other senses.    Next time around.  The camera itself, turning it on, fussing with zooming and focusing, really narrows the experience.  I love having the shots to document and to spark memories, but I want to look and see more fully in the moment.

2.  The experience really was rooted in wet neoprene, in the seat of the wetsuit, in the motion of the swell under the kayak, in the lifting and the dropping and the shifting and the pulling and the pushing.  On the afternoon of the 30th, the tug was back into the harbor, but the swell was rising and the wind had created chop, so there was a constant motion -- up down thisway thatway-- that the morning had lacked, had been so flat and calm.  I love the water movement, and the sit-on-top is so well-crafted to ride such movements.  Even now, two days later, if I just sit and unfocus, I am moving in my mind with residual body sense-memories.  A lovely sensation to me.

3.  Then, besides the emphatic floating quality, the sounds!  So many birds flying, shrieking, calling, ker-plunking into the water after the anchovies.  Pelicans and terns and murres and cormorants and classic gulls.  Terns and pelicans out with us, mostly.  Then, the barking of sea lions in the distance, the splashing of seals nearby, the crunching-lunching of otters.  The chatter of humans: excited, agitated, inane.  "HOLY SHIT" were the first words out of one fellow's mouth, as he rounded the small point to leave the harbor only to be faced with a lunging whale.  (That fellow was off his game, more nervous than his date, and he shadowed JP and me off and on, nervously.  Still, such caution in such a situation is no bad thing, and his date may have been more water-savvy -- or simply oblivious -- than he was.)  The whales' spouting, blowing, and splashing.  Occasionally, the power station would let out great blasts of steam that would mimic the whale spouts--and would confuse me, for a moment, as I looked for that other whale.  The water made the most noise and the most noises, lapping and slapping and splashing and crashing along and onto the jetty, the kayak, the whales, itself.

The Whales Singing?

If I stick my head under the water--or just slip on in completely--what sounds will I hear these humpbacks making at this time of year and in this place?  (In Hawaii, in December 2009, I could hear the humpbacks singing whenever I went swimming.)  

Or, will I just hear the wailing of the anchovies?

Kayaking: Whales Feeding Near the Jetty

Folks on the jetty were treated to a feeding show for over two hours that I witnessed with whales feeding within 10-30 yards. Jeff and I were about to head back into the harbor at the end of the afternoon paddle when two humpbacks in tandem lunged forth and then another humpback spouted right behind us! Too cool!

We didn't get any shots of that finale, but here are two more of my shots of a humpback feeding a little earlier.

Kayaking: Humpback Whale off Moss Landing

No zoom here, so this whale was even closer than it looks in the photo!

And I had back-paddled before taking the shot because I could see bubbles and possibly a back beneath and just in front of my kayak.

And, JP reminds me:  "And just picture how much whale there is below the surface: more than 2/3s of the humpback lies ahead of its 'hump' & its ventral fins are about the length of the tail section that's visible here."

A very special moment on a very special day:  I felt blessed.  Still do.

Seal-Bird Island and the Rocking Zoom

That sort of fringe on the top of the rocky islet?  Can you see what I mean?  (Move a little closer; enlarge the shot, perhaps.)  I am fairly sure those are birds, standing tall in the wind.   Or, a good many of them are birds, though some are seals, noses held high.

At first I thought they were all seals, a whole lot of seals providing that visual fringe effect, and in fact the creatures on the rocks closer to the water are seals, dozens of them.  

(What do you call a whole lot of seals?  A salvage of seals? A savory?  A soiree? A sea?  A season?)

Now, I'll give you a sequence of shots that illustrate the difficulties of attempting to use the zoom on my amphibious camera -- a camera better suited to close-ups and arm's-length captures -- while balancing in a closed-deck kayak.  I love the motion, myself, but the results are a bit up-and-down in quality.

Off Bodega Bay on a very sunny day.

Happy paddling.

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.

Bob Mould's "Very Temporary": Very Intense

VERY TEMPORARY

If you want it to be, you've got to stand here by me
But if you wanted to leave, go on and make yourself free
If you want me to plead, you see me down on my knees
You can do as you like, but do you know where it leads?

When I wake from my sleep, outside my window I see
A little robin that sings a little sonnet for me
And every morning, I feel just like that bird in that tree
I'd build a nest out of weeds, but would you share it with me?

This is very temporary, but I can't do without having you around
If it's very temporary, tell me now
Just to please you, I'd blow my brains out, this is it
Cut my heart out with a razor now

You're the one in my dreams, how can I make you believe
It's all that I want, it's all that I want

Now I'm lonely, it's the yearning
You infiltrate my thoughts and places in my home
This is very temporary, I know that's all you want, I know, I know
You're the reason I keep breathing, and I'll give up the fight if you go
Cut my heart out with a razor now

--Bob Mould, lyrics from District Line (2008).

You really should hear the song, but I also like focusing on the words, as I do here.

"Stupid Now," "Again and Again," and "Old Highs, New Lows" are three other songs from this CD well worth digging into.

Survey: Two Views

Hunter, Bayside

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

Middle English Lyric: "Foweles in the Frith"

Foweles in the frith,
The fisses in the flod,
And I mon waxe wod.
Mulch sorw I walke with
For beste of bon and blod.

--anonymous

from Middle English Lyrics:
A Norton Critical Edition,
selected and edited by M.S. Luria and R. L. Hoffman,
W.W. Norton: New York,
1974.

Barry Lopez: "River Notes" and Questing

I have been crippled by my age, by what I have known, as well as by my youth, by what I have yet to learn, in all these inquiries.  It has taken me years, which might have been spent (by someone else) seeking something greater, in some other place.  I have sought only you.  Enough.  I wish to know you, and you will not speak.  

--Barry Lopez,
from River Notes: The Dance of Herons

I can't say enough how much this slim volume mattered, how much it made complex, made even more emotional and even more intricately verbal my relationship with nature and story, when I first discovered River Notes in Moe's Books of Berkeley, CA, so long ago in 1980.

On this recent rereading -- and River Notes is a book I reread more or less each year, haphazardly, piece by piece over all the months of the year -- I realized how much his chapter "The Salmon" prepared me for the art and artistry of Andy Goldsworthy and for so many of my own efforts in clay amidst sea and creek.

I've witnessed this writer giving a talk and reading one of his stories at least once --"The Mappist," at the Donna Seager Gallery in San Rafael -- and I took this rather intimate opportunity (such a small venue, a somewhat select gathering) to thank Barry Lopez for his body of work.  I'm glad I overcame my natural diffidence to do so.

The passage above spoke to me when I was a mere youth, not even 20, and speaks to me now, a bit over 50.  I like the appositive defining of age in terms of knowing, in terms of what we don't understand and of what we do, as well as the sad, even bitter tone.  Loss breathes through the passage, through most of the book, and Lopez's voicing of that theme, that truth, caught my ear, and the ear of my soul (if you will), even if I didn't--perhaps, still don't--truly understand wherein that sense of loss resides, takes form.  Recently, I have read an interview with Barry Lopez in which he reveals that the writing of River Notes, though a sequence of fictional narratives, was deeply informed by the death of his mother.

The book takes us from the seaside, the mouth of the river, upstream until we reach the headwaters, the source.  The last chapter, be warned, is entitled "Drought."  I'll hold off saying more, for I'd rather awaken curiosity and intimate mystery.  I have taught two chapters in particular a dozen times, I think: "The Bend" and "The Rapids."  Here's another passage from "The Salmon":

There is never, he reflected, a moment of certainty, only the illusion.   And as he worked among the rocks in the middle of the river he thought on this deeply, so deeply that had his movements not been automatic he would have fallen off the rocks and into the river and been borne away.

In the summer light, even with the coolness of the water welling up around him in the air, thinking was all he was capable of; and this distraction left him exhausted and unbalanced so that at the end of the day the physical exhaustion he felt was something he lowered himself into, as into a hot bath.  He pondered gentleness often.  And he tried to pry (hefting the stones, conscious of the resonance between the idea in his mind and the work of his hands) into mysteries which remained as implacable as the faces of the stones.


Thank you, again, Barry Holstun Lopez.

River Notes: The Dance of Herons
A Bard Book / Avon Books: New York,  November, 1980.

Voyage-charm: sculpture mix; floating blue glazing; matte finish.   

On Watch

Guardian (mask): sculpture mix; brown and green glazing, layered, sponged; copper wire.

Hummingbirds: Yard-Pals

There are two hummingbirds in the shot above.  One sitting on a branch, and the other flying off (to the right).  See the wings in motion?  

Check the next photo to clarify what's happening.

Therapy: Clay / Hands / Soul

I allowed myself an hour or so in the studio today.

Duck, Duck, Bowl

Work in progress.

Rafting In The Studio

“Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.” 

--Dorothea Tanning

I was tempted to title this entry "Anger Management," which is true to an extent, but art's aid to essential sanity is something that I favor and recommend.  I took my own advice and managed to fit the studio into my day.

Three bowls and some silly little figures: feeling fairly sane right now.