Capital: Old Clay

Stunt Doubles

Looking At You

Odysseus: sculpture mix; unglazed.

The first full-sized head I made: years ago.

I just felt the mood to look at it again, and he looked back.

Scylla and Charybdis

Anger and Stupidity, in other words.

Monstrosities that will eat you alive, or swallow you down, or both.

Or, perhaps, as in my own case a little too often for my liking, you become the monster, or the maelstrom---or even both--yourself.

And that's no way to live.


(Birthday reflections: improvements and amends to be made.)

Changeling

Odysseus' crewman; Circe's merman.

Greek Helmet/Merman: sculpture mix; brown and green glazing.

This is an old piece, and not entirely successful, but it's giving me ideas.

Odysseus: "A Spark Alive"

But this seemed best to him, as he thought it over.

He made his way to a grove above the water

on open ground, and crept under twin bushes

grown from the same spot--olive and wild olive--

a thicket proof against the stinging wind

or Sun's blaze, fine soever the needling sunlight;

nor could a downpour wet it through, so dense

those plants were interwoven. Here Odysseus

tunnelled, and raked together with his hands

a wide bed--for a fall of leaves was there,

enough to save two men or maybe three

on a winter night, a night of bitter cold.

Odysseus' heart laughed when he saw his leaf-bed,

and down he lay, heaping more leaves above him.

A man in a distant field, no hearthfires near,

will hide a fresh brand in his bed of embers

to keep a spark alive for the next day;

so in the leaves Odysseus hid himself,

while over him Athena showered sleep

that his distress should end, and soon, soon.

In quiet sleep she sealed his cherished eyes.

--Homer's Odyssey,

the very end of Book V: Sweet Nymph and Open Sea

in the frankly wonderful translation by Robert Fitzgerald.

A favorite passage of mine.

Cleopatra's Barge

When I was a boy swimming lap after lap after lap, I would imagine pulling Cleopatra's barge up the Nile. When we shifted to sprints, I'd shift to Tarzan attempting to outswim crocodiles. When we slowed down for underwater work, I'd do my best Submariner. When we had to tread water forever, I'd recall Odysseus hanging from the fig tree above Charybdis, his legs in the water, churning and churning.

Hero tales.

Passages: Post-Homeric Echo

Broker's concentration failed, and he actually laughed because he was remembering the first line in his favorite book when he was a child: "Odysseus was never at a loss." He'd tried to live his personal Odyssey that way. Now here he was chained and helpless, and the subject was all about loss.

--from Chuck Logan's Vapor Trail, the fourth of the Broker novels.