Kayak-Fishing: JP / Mendocino

June 13, 2019.

Charmed

Clay King rides shotgun.

A Ridiculous Injury

This early afternoon I was in too much of a hurry, rushing from a classroom down a hill via sloping walkways punctuated by steps and walkways and steps.  I felt I needed to hustle to get materials from my truck in the lower parking lot beyond the soccer field before my office hours.

So, I was rushing downhill, not really watching my footing, and right before the second set of steps my right foot came down on a small pinecone that turned under my ankle and my ankle turned with it, rolling.  I had such momentum going forward, a heavy pack of books on my back and another bag of papers and files on my shoulder, that I could not just stop.  Instead, gravity was sending me forward without any gravitas whatsoever.  I was going to fall, but falling down the set of steps seemed too fraught--I feared for my teeth and my skull, so I leapt and ran, lunging and launching myself even as I dropped one bag.

I "ran" down the steps, barely keeping my feet, that ankle protesting, ran down the steps and the next ramp--impossible to halt until I had run out all that momentum, had jumped a flowerbed, and had landed, sprawling on the sloping lawn.  So lucky in this mild misfortune.

Luckily, the wind was not blowing, so the papers that had fallen and scattered from that bag had not gone far.  One witness to my running-fall insisted on helping me gather the materials, insisted on telling me where the Health Center was.  I hobbled to my office time, late now.

Hours later, after ibuprofen, I am icing the ankle again and, also, icing a dram of rum.

I had to hurry, you know?


4/19/19 Further reflections:


The whole thing felt like one of those dreams in which gravity doesn't quite exist, dreams in which we run and leap and find ourselves too far from earth, too far from safety . . . and then gravity returns.  It was both hilarious and humiliating, both scary and beyond fear or thought.  I am glad I kept going, you know, for anything less would have resulted in injury, serious falling, and the strain on my ankle is from that first rolling.  Lucky me, seriously.

Also, when I limped past the scene of the crime this morning, I was chagrined to find that the whole thing -- from pinecone to lawn-sprawl -- only comprised about ten yards of territory.  And, the second "ramp" was actually flat pavement, though leading to another flight of steps, which made the flowerbed hop (not "vault," as I first wrote) and lawn-roll mandatory.

P.S.  About three weeks ago, I strained the other ankle by not paying sufficient attention, so there's a lesson for me, for me.

Journey-Charms

Old clay.

Mendocino Miscellany

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 Gang Is On The Way

Soldate clay, still drying.

Reprise: Aegir, Sea-God

Kayak Fisherman: JP

The Drifter, catching a rockfish.

I had a good time, Jeff.  Thanks.

Intrepid: Mother-Daughter Abalone Divers

Mother and daughter go abalone-diving for the first time.  They had to work hard on this bright, but surgy day.

In the photo below, I'm fairly sure that's the mother talking to my friends about abalone diving.  The photo below is from the afternoon before the morning shots I caught above.   I've been abalone-diving since 1978, so I did have some advice for this woman.  She had good questions, practical questions, but she also revealed a lack of experience that troubled me.  Van Damme is a protected entry and exit point, mostly, but I wouldn't call the waters out by the arch a novice dive spot at all.  I pointed out some of the dangers as well as places I'd seen divers get lucky, but I also appreciated the sheer verve this woman had.  She wanted to get some abalone, and she was willing to swim and work to get it.   I was happy to see her and her daughter out there the next morning, but I also paddled my kayak nearby to see if they wanted any help or not.  I could see some struggling with all the surge as well as some difficulty with a weight belt, but I didn't patronize these divers by trying to help them when my help wasn't wanted.   I tend to paddle over and hover around any divers, checking whether any aid is wanted, I see out on a surgy day working the long swims.  Male or female, I'll add.  My friend E saw the two later, when they exited the water, and reports that they did not get abalone, but they saw one or two small ones.  Next time, I say.  Next time.