Old Clay: Moving Forward

Identity Crisis

Superhero or nemesis?

Lines Upon Lines

Red Duck at Sunset

Ring: "Waves"

A good-luck ring, I'm hoping.

Classic artistry from the Irish metal-workers on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, CA.
You can find their fine work here.

For me, the wave-ring is also a wyrd-ring, the pattern of becoming, of winding and unwinding, that marks the Old English idea and practice of fate, of the world's workings, of past/present/future.

Check the rings and lines of age on my hand too.  I'm reminded of how trees show their life-lines.  Knotwork.  Or, there's a Bruce Sterling novel that I never liked much of a future dystopian universe in which wealthy people could live long, long lives in young and younger bodies, but their hands would give them away -- the signs of aging in the wrinkles and lines of their hands being resistant to the otherwise miraculous drugs to offset mere age -- would give them away, and as an older reader now, as an older man now, I see what he was getting at.

That's cool.  Slipping over the cusp of 2015 into 2016, I think about something the great surfer Fred van Dyke said --in an excellent documentary, David L. Brown's Surfing for Life -- "I'm getting older, and I gotta dig it."

Something like that.  And I am digging it.

(Talk to the hand, if you don't dig it too.)

The Winding and Unwinding

THE WINDING AND UNWINDING

The shape of your thought
Entices me
Quite as much as
The thought of your shape.

Clay-minded,
Bloody-brained,
Fickle as a stick in water:
I swim towards you.

I reach for you
Again and again and again
In thought, in force,
Not withholding aught
Save what wyrd demands
From each of us.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide,
Again releasing,
Again embracing,
Tasting and chasing,
Like river-otters sliding
Down the sloped bank.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide:
The rounded lift and heft,
The nipple’s assertion,
The twinned-blood rising
Like the swift pull
Of the river’s pulse
And penetration --
Flowing,
Falling,
Following –-

That shared current
Streaming just past the shore,
Stranding us between
Just enough
And quite enough.
___

Coda:
Laughing lips sip --
Swallow -- another draft.
Glasses, glances,
Clash and chime,
Toasting the new year.

Harken to the hearty
Admonition:
Draft, not drift.

--Matthew Duckworth

HWAET!

Lead figurines from the 1970s:
orc-warrior
vs. Spear-Dane.

Reprise: Shoulders of Clay

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

Aquaman

Aquaman, Aquamatt:
2015 version.

The Adventures of Kelpman

Close-up: Kelpman in the surge.

Kelpman:
chicken wire figure (1996);
kelpflesh (2015).
Bodega Bay surge channel.

Sand-Encrusted Creatures As The Tide Falls Away

Barnacle and sea anemones anchored to the wall of the surge channel.  

The tide was dropping.

Two small sea anemones tightly closed and covered with sand.

The eye of the abyss . . . .

An unlikely, but definite, beauty.

Some sea anemones are still partially opened as the tide is dropping.

Surge channel.

Surging water fills the channel and covers the creatures . . . until the water recedes, drawing back for the next wave.  High tide won't occur again for hours.

Flow in action.

Kelpman

Kelpman:
chicken wire fellow (1996)
kelpflesh (2015).

Sea-Charms

Deluge In Clay: Atlantean

Reprise: Exile of Atlantis; the Spearman.

Crossley-Holland: Do You Ken?

SALT- COMPOUNDS

salt-scythe
sweeps onshore, corrosive and hissing; pins back
ears; rifles each stay, shroud and halyard.

creek-wood
the old ones, clinker-built and always thirsty;
noses blunt and bottoms glaucous; still quivering.

sea-garment
roseate spinnaker, light-breasted; no less
stiff canvas, often split and mended, grey with salt.

herring-haunt
see-through escarpments toppling and barking
as they dive through themselves into ghosts of flint.

mauve-mist
delicate as breath suspended over marsh grass;
summer carpet, wiry and tide-beaten, knotted in mud.

wave-arms
without joints, creaking and groaning; like wings
their strange spade hands salute and dip and rise.

mud-runes
ribbon-casts, blow-holes, keel-scrapes, anchor-spikes,
darts of the stitchers and strutters and mincers.

--Kevin Crossley-Holland

from his Selected Poems,
London: Enitharmon Press, 2001

Arnold: "The Forsaken Merman"

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!

Call her once before you go—
Call once yet!
In a voice that she will know:
"Margaret! Margaret!"
Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear;

Children's voices, wild with pain—
Surely she will come again!
Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!
"Mother dear, we cannot stay!
The wild white horses foam and fret."
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;
Call no more!
One last look at the white-wall'd town
And the little grey church on the windy shore,
Then come down!
She will not come though you call all day;
Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;
She said: "I must go, to my kinsfolk pray
In the little grey church on the shore to-day.
'T will be Easter-time in the world—ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."
I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"
She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?

       Children dear, were we long alone?
"The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;
Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say;
Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town;
Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,
To the little grey church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
"Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!

       Down, down, down!
Down to the depths of the sea!
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun!"
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,
Till the spindle drops from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh;
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden
And the gleam of her golden hair.

       Come away, away children
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing: "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea."

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr'd with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side—
And then come back down.
Singing: "There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea."

--Matthew Arnold

Garsecg: Or, The Merman, Holding A Fish

Merman: stoneware; glazes in green,blue, and gray. Note the blotchy chest. I dripped glaze on top of glaze in hopes of gaining the texture and color of kelp, and it worked.

I've posted shots of this piece many times now, but Merman remains one of my favorite pieces and one of my first successes.

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.

Spear and Wave

Free diver spearfishing west of Lover's Point, Pacific Grove. There were two divers working the area, but I didn't notice the second one until the two were climbing up the stairs from the beach.

I'd been rather distracted after taking this shot by gearing up myself.

I hadn't planned on diving, not definitely, but sunny skies, little wind, and such blue water had me pulling on the wetsuit and fishing out my fins as fast as I was able.

Also, if someone else is already out, then it's do-able, you know. It's more than do-able, it's now must-do-able.

(I may be fifty, but part of me's still fifteen or whatever. That adolescent competitive spark still burns. I have better impulse control now, but like to give in once in a while. Got to keep that heart pumping. And, truthfully, my first free dive of 2012 was quick and cautious. Due to the limited visibility underwater, I put off my photographic plan and practiced riding the surge between rocks as well as entries and exits. I haven't been working out and wanted to take it easy, but I had to get wet. Always counts.)