Abalone Desperation

This shaggy mollusk seems to be an abalone driven by hunger from the deeper water to the very edge of a popular Mendocino beach.  I was surprised and a bit dismayed to find this mollusk so close to where so many people launch their boats.

Sea-Witch

Hungry Urchin

Not Tandem, But Parallel

Are You Hungry?

Prepping for a lecture:
"The Hungry Reader at the Feast"
Nov. 18, 2011.

The Spirit of Autumn

Hernest: sculpture mix; brown glazes, layered.

(You can learn more about this luck-piece here.)

Beware of the Critic

Sign outside the art studio.

Orange Julius

Yard-pal going to town on an orange from the tree.

(Is that squirrel Lavinia or Beauregard?  Or . . . Julius?)

Graves: "A Pinch of Salt"

A Pinch of Salt

When a dream is born in you

With a sudden clamorous pain,

When you know the dream is true

And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,

O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch

You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.

Dreams are like a bird that mocks,

Flirting the feathers of his tail.

When you seize at the salt-box,

Over the hedge you'll see him sail.

Old birds are neither caught with salt nor chaff:

They watch you from the apple bough and laugh.

Poet, never chase the dream.

Laugh yourself, and turn away.

Mask your hunger; let it seem

Small matter if he come or stay;

But when he nestles in your hand at last,

Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast. 

--Robert Graves

Hermes/Puck: sculpture mix; raku fired.  

Catriona O'Reilly's "Thin"

THIN

It is chill and dark in my small room.

A wind blows through gaps in the roof,

piercing even the eiderdown. My skin

goose-pimples in front of the cloudy glass

though there was scalding tea for dinner

with an apple. I'm cold to the bone.

I don't sleep well either. My hip-bones

stick in the foam mattress, and the room's

so empty. My sister is having dinner

with a boy. Awake under the roof

I watch the stars bloom heavily through glass

and think, how shatterproof is my skin?

I doze till six, then drink semi-skim

milk for breakfast (the bare bones

of a meal) before nine o'clock class.

It's kind of hard to leave my room

for the walk to school. No roof

over me, and eight solid hours till dinner-

time. All days my dreams of dinner

are what really get under my skin,

not the boys. My tongue sticks to the roof

of my mouth again in class. I'm such a bone-

head! And my stomach's an empty room.

My face floats upwards in a glass

of Coke at lunchtime. One glass.

I make it last the whole day till dinner:

hot tea and an apple in my room.

My sister seems not to notice the skin

around my mouth or my ankle-bones.

If our parents knew they'd hit the roof

I suppose. My ribs rise like the roof

of a house that's fashioned from glass.

I might even ping delicately like bone-

china when flicked. No dinner

for six weeks has made this skin

more habitable, more like a room--

or a ceiling that shatters like glass

over those diners off gristle and bone.

This skin is a more distinguished room.

--Catriona O'Reilly

For too too many of the women I've known.