Gemini X 3 / 5 +9

Charting the passage of time, activities, and identity:

what I do.

There's a lot more humor and a lot less ego involved in the parade of profile pics; at least, that's the way I see it.  (Judge me, if you want, but I don't intend to lose sleep over the matter.)  I have written before of Rembrandt's many selfies and of the third-person would-be objective perspective of mirror-images offered in John Fowles' novel Daniel Martin, an old favorite.  

Tracking my age and how the lines on my face and how the gray or white hairs on my head accumulate can be a sport with different events.  Guessing where the next ache or sore muscle will appear is another such event.  I am not getting younger, right?  

But I am also still paddling and diving and reading around and pursuing other such richly-enlivening activities.  (Man alive, I miss the studio and clay.).   I like to keep track of all those activities I am fortunate enough to pursue -- and keep track of the different people I seem to be and have been: Diver Matt, Kayak Matt, Teacher Matt, Clay Matt, and so forth.  After a long day desk-bound, there's a uplifting joy in checking what I was doing, who I was, in times past.  Sometimes, checking the last trip to Mendocino, for example, can spur me to check the weather and start making plans for the next outing,, however long or far away.  And, if that planning proves merely mental, proves merely daydreaming, that's good too.  I return to the matter at hand at the desk a bit more energized, a bit more ready to dig in.  

What with the pandemic, remote teaching, and reaching 59, I have been feeling reflective.

As a Gemini, I am used to seeing the world and myself through a two-fold lens.  

Here are a few more recent examples.

THE PADDLER:

(A) stern and serious, working at it --

B) Having fun on the water -- salt salvation --

THE VINTAGE LOOK  /  BLACK & WHITE GAMES:

(A) Ducking down an alleyway  -- "Call me Ishmael."          (Thanks, Herman Melville.)

(B) A "Pirate" Looks Toward 60?          (Thanks, Jimmy Buffett)

 

FULL-FRONTAL (portrait-wise):

(A) Post-dive, unmasked: 

red from too much sun and the cold cold water; 

slightly saltdrunk --

(B)  Post-paddle, pandemic ready --

This last shot: that mask gets lots of smiles, lots of laughs, from children and adults alike.  

It's a sea lion mask, technically, but many kids think it's a dog--and why not? 

Sea lions bark too, don't they?

So, I oblige.

Any man who barks in public can't take himself too seriously.

Captain, Dancing

Zevon: Mutineer

MUTINEER

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
Hoist the mainsail - here I come
Ain't no room on board for the insincere
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

I was born to rock the boat
Some may sink but we will float
Grab your coat - let's get out of here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

Long ago we laughed at shadows
Lightning flashed and thunder followed us
It could never find us here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

Long ago we laughed at shadows
Lightning flashed and thunder followed us
It could never find us here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer

I was born to rock the boat
Some may sink but we will float
Grab your coat - let's get out of here
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer
You're my witness
I'm your mutineer
I'm your mutineer......

--Warren Zevon

from his album Mutineer
c. 1995 Zevon Music BMI

Pirate Xmas: A Song

Here’s a bit of doggeral for singing:
"Pirate Xmas" --  

Ran out of Irish --
Drinking rum --
Pirate Xmas

Futility feeds into despair
Lack of hope fills that empty chair
Friends and family in disarray
Dead, distant,
Dreadfully dismayed
Under sentence
Ducking attack
Don’t count the blessings that we lack
Don’t count the blessings in arrears
Just bless, just bless
Find the needy and just bless
Pirate Xmas

Look beyond
Look beyond
Feed whom you can
Toast the rest
Pirate Xmas

Ran out of Irish –
Drinking rum –
Pirate Xmas

X marks the spot . . . .

--MD

I expect to revise this one, but the tune's in my head.
Feel free to sing as you wish.

Captain's Log

Feeling Like The Captain:

I've felt like Captain Jack Sparrow for days now, having spent enough hours on the water last Thursday and Friday -- those bright, surgy days -- to absorb those rhythms and motions! I love that feeling.

By feeling like Captain Jack, I mean feeling wobbly and tilty and one with the sea.  He had the Black Pearl, and I have Sofia

 Log Jam:  While kayaking last Thursday, I was startled by a shape in the water, by a long brown shape, that I took to be a mature sea lion that I was suddenly much too close to.  Not a harbor seal, for the shape was too too long and broad, but a sea lion, and at close quarters, a full-grown sea lion could do plenty of defensive damage.  That brown shape was just a log, however, a carved-off tree-portion about six or seven feet long drifting in the cove.

Now, having been surprised by that log, that shape, I back-paddled furiously and avoided any collision.  Which would have been the right action, particularly if it had been a marine mammal.  Still, I am struck by how much my startled response came before any rational sense of "Hey, that might be a sea lion, so avoid hitting the creature"; and, from reading and teaching Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival, I am well aware of the dynamics of amygdala trumping hippocampus, of emotional reaction before rational decision, but still I would like to have not been so afraid of a shape.  Haven't I trained for these situations?  Haven't I paddled and visualized enough to respond more thoughtfully?  Or, at least less fearfully?  Was this a failure of grace?   Or should I appreciate how much my core self, the body/emotional self, worked to take me out of (perceived) danger?

Yearning (Oh, I Miss The Salt and Kelp)

I need to go diving.

(And, to be realistic, this diver would have a camera in his hands, not the speargun, and he'd ditch the tank for free diving.  Well, a tank dive would be fun too.  Oh, and the knife would be strapped to a leg.)

Maybe next weekend--or the one after that.

Eye, Aye: A Medley

Otter Pelt Short

Keeping track: buzzcut 2013.

Hydrodynamic.

S-P # 51+

Bowmore

Message In A Bottle

The Glenlivet bottle is empty.

(Am I hearing Captain Jack Sparrow with a Caledonian accent now?)

Sam Hamill's "The Gift of Tongues," the Generous Spirit, and PIracy

THE GIFT OF TONGUES


Everything I steal, I give away.
Once, in pines almost as tall as these,
same crescent moon sliding gently by,
I sat curled on my knees, smoking with a friend,
sipping tea, swapping Coyote tales and lies. 


He said something to me
about words, that each is a name,
and that every name is God's. I who have
no god sat in the vast emptiness silent
as I could be. A way that can be named

is not the way. Each word reflects
the Spirit which can't be named. Each word
a gift, its value in exact proportion
to the spirit in which it is given.
Thus spoken, these words I give 


by way of Lao Tzu's old Chinese, stolen
by a humble thief twenty-five centuries later.
The Word is only evidence of the real:
in the Hopi tongue, there is no whale;
and, in American English, no Fourth World. 

--Sam Hamill ~


"The Gift of Tongues," for me, voices a certain generosity of spirit that I admire, a certain spiritual perspective or dilemma that I sometimes inhabit.

Hamill's poem also speaks to the linkages of appropriation and use that ought to be infused with that sense of generosity in ways that parallel, say, Gary Snyder in his poem "Axe Handles" and in his life as well.

Hamill's poem came up in a conversation with a friend about piracy, Internet and media piracy in context, but generally piracy vs. theft and piracy vs. copying.  I quoted the above poem's opening line--"Everything I steal, I give away"--to highlight what I feel is the proper generous spirit of Internet sharing, say, or of classroom teaching.  Give credit where credit is due,  certainly, and encourage everyone to seek out the originals in whatever format, whatever venue.  (I quote Shakespeare or Byron in part to foster an interest in, a curiosity about, such writers.)

Piracy lacks such a generous spirit, despite all the attractive emblems of the piratical.

"Take what you can." 
"And give nothing back."
--those sentiments belong at best in a Hollywood fantasy, not the real world.

And while I love those lines in the moment of watching that first Pirates of the Caribbean film,  I think part of the charm of such costumed and indulgent selfishness comes from context, as ever.  These are down-and-out, though irrepressible ne'er-do-wells--Captain Jack Sparrow and his first mate, Mr. Gibbs--and such voicing of the pirate's code is as much fantasy-projection for them as it is for most of us in the audience.  The lines would have a much different flavor being spoken by Wall Street bankers and brokers, suited up but ties loosened, perhaps, with whiskeys in hand.


Sam Hamill, Destination Zero: Poems 1970-1995, 
White Pine Press: Fredonia, New York, 1995.

(Thanks to MR for the conversation.)

The poster presented at the top is self-expressive, a wonderful promotional tool and work of art for a worthy anthology from an excellent publishing house: Copper Canyon Press.  In that particular anthology I first encounted Hamill's poem quoted above, though I have just reread and presented the poem from Hamill's volume Destination Zero.

Jolly Roger

"House-pirate."

"House . . . pirate?  What's that?"

"Focused sublimation, I think."

"Aaaarrrgggghhhh.  Isn't there something easier?"

"We wouldn't want there to be any real trouble . . . ."

Kitchen Mermaid

Summer 2009: Sculpture mix, glazed with stormy blue and celadon; pirate medallion.