Entitled

"Now that I see your full name, I have to say this:
'Matthew Duckworth . . .
. . . Earl of Sandwich.'"

--clerk at the hardware store

Beach Salad

Beach salad.

(See Sappho on "beach rubble" via Mary Barnard.)

Hollow-eyed,

Tight-lipped:

This fish . . . .

Garnish for gulls.

Someone else's tower.

Rock on.

Fisherman setting forth.

My clayfellow Aegir . . . .

Flow.

 Ducks-in-a-row.

McDuck Underwater and the Fields of Light

Profiles In Courage

Beaks of clay . . . .

A Jury Of One's Peers

Yard-ducks.

Reprise: Wave-Back Longing

Free diving off Lovers Point: February 2012.

I haven't been in the water for forever (too many months), so I like looking here and remembering how I swam out to the surf zone and played for an hour or so. I kept out of the way of the surfers, of course; my mask kept leaking from all my smiling as I duck-dived wave after wave after wave.

Oh, I'm missing some kelp-time, seriously.

Looking Out From Ferry Point

Rhymes With Orange III

Roundness

The Ocean In His Eyes

Misterioso Duck: 
sculpture mix; trans-brown and denim glazing.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods; 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore; 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar: 
I love not man the less, but Nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
--Lord Byron,

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
Canto IV, #178

Shelf Life

Be Lucky -- Vote Ducky!

The window of a shop near my house.

Fiat Dux

(Tip of the beak to UCB and to EHS for the title.)

Wet Clay: Keeping Track

Bowls for the soul.
And small figures--heads of duck and ogre--to help me to find my pieces once the plastic goes over the top and obscures which wooden bat is whose.

Close-up of The Ogre's Head.

The Duck's Luck

Isn't there an old English folktale or folksong with that title?
If there isn't, there should be.

Not that all luck runs downstream . . . .

The ebbs and flows, 
The floods and shoals . . . .

I now tend to consider carrying such a luck piece a worthwhile wooing of Fortuna.   This wrought clod-of-clay gives me something to turn in my hand -- a talisman, a worry-stone --for when I grasp at a bit of boost, that palpable push, from the web-footed luck of the big-billed duck.

Sentinels in Blue and Green

Sentinels of the imagination?  Guardians of the bookshelf?  Okay, so they aren't the Ruritanian palace guard nor Strider's ancestors guarding the river approach to the southern kingdom . . . .

Greeters?  "Hello, fellow reader!  Pick a book, any book.  Or, we can suggest one for you, if you'd like?"  That's the duck talking.

The dragon?  I'd like to say he'd caution you against dog-earring favorite pages, but I do that myself.  He may look somewhat goofy, but he does have teeth and fire at hand--as do most books, the ones worth your time; or they should do, if you're lucky.

Welcome to the Gates of Ivory and Horn.

Self-Portrait #50: sculpture mix; blue (with a bit of green) glazing, layered.
Green Dragon (Somewhat Goofy): sculpture mix; green glazing, layered.

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.

In Medias Res

In the middle of things . . .
the duck-fish presides, always ready for a go-out.

And I just keep duck-diving wave after wave after wave in my mind.


(I've posted shots of the duck-fish before here, among other places.)

What's A Duck Worth?