Quick Dip: Four Shots

The last two shots are not quite in focus, but they capture the actual visual experience of the dive rather well.  Slightly murky water with dark skies overhead kept me squinting, attempting to see better and more.  Cold, cold water too . . . though I was wearing a 4/3 surfing wetsuit, not fully zipped, and shouldn't complain.  Proper gear makes for longer dives . . . .  I need to find that good 6/5 surfing wetsuit, I guess.

Larger context:
Yesterday, I slipped off the kayak into the water off Mendocino for a short free dive.  I intended to play with (and shoot photos inside) a surge channel between a rock and a small island off Van Damme State Beach, but the surging of the swell circling around the island and then being squeezed into that channel shot me out precipitously.  After the such second cannon blast, I moved into quieter waters just to the side of the surge channel and took a few shots there.  I've often swam into such channels -- there's a great one on the east point of Lovers Point in Pacific Grove, for example -- but this particular one had a combination of seeming innocuousness and irresistible force that I will be back to try again.  Often, I've found the largest sea anemones in such channels.

Once A Boy

Memory Alley . . . .

Reprise: A Favorite Wave

April 2, 2011: A good time in the water. 

I needed it.

Keith: We Never Took Enough Photos

My best friend Keith in two unguarded moments: Kruse Ranch dive trip.

He hated photographs, hated sitting still long enough for a photo, hated posing.  I'd have to be sneaky to document our dive trips, our friendship, and since I was arrogant regarding the primacy of memory and the internal vision, I colluded with Keith.  I can't recall that he ever snapped a shot, though I think his children may remember the facts differently.  He would have told me, Matt, of course, I want to have keepsakes of my children.  (He loved his children fiercely.)

Memory Lane is a blurry avenue, don't you know?

We left home about midnight and drove the three or four hours up to our "secret spot" on the Sonoma Coast, talking all the while, solving the moral conundrums and practical puzzles of the day, crashing out after a few beers by the side of the road.  (We both had forgotten to bring a bottle opener, and consequently, we had to be creative with different parts of the Datsun or our dive knives to serve that need.)  I think there's a "No Camping" sign a few feet from where Keith is sleeping.  With the morning light -- though this trip we'd obviously overslept -- we'd gear up and harvest a few abalone.  I usually ended up driving homeward while Keith napped in the passenger seat.  (I sometimes railed at him for how he relied on me to keep him awake on the outward leg, but he snoozed on me, leaving me to my own devices, on the homeward leg, but he always failed to be impressed by my arguments.  As driver, I had command of the tape deck, and he knew I liked companionable solitude anyway.)

When would this trip have occurred?  Post-undergraduate.  Law school days for Keith?  Warehouse/driver days for me?  I'd have to do some homework.  Early or mid-80's?  If I think hard enough about that car, I can work out the year, I'm sure.

If I spent too much time with my instamatic taking photos of the tidepools, of the surf, of any of our group, he'd urge me to get done, as we needed to head home.  He usually had work or chores or something waiting for him, and I respected those responsibilities, yet it often seemed as if he just thought what I was doing was frivolous.

He claimed to hate these shots.  And yet I can recall one time he commented that I never bothered to share the photographs with him and the rest of the gang, if gang there happened to be that year.  I was surprised and hadn't shared due to my sense of his disinterest, or antagonism, or to the poor quality of the shots, hurried and taken from the hip, as it were.

I wish I had more of them.

I miss you, man.