Warning: Poachers

Note the shiny abalone iron.  Abalone season was called off this year and hadn't been in action for some time.  That shiny tool means someone was out there fairly recently; the salt sea is unforgiving in terms of deterioration via rust rust rust.  That clean tool means someone was out doing something they ought not to be doing; we need the abalone protected and unharvested now to recovery from the devastation wrought by the sea urchins on the kelp and other fodder that the abalone rely upon.  A Fish and Wildlife employee pointed out to me that most of the abalone being seen recently are the deeper-water abalone coming up into the more shallow water seeking food.

Being in the shallow water makes them more vulnerable to poachers.

I wanted to bring that abalone iron back to shore, but I also didn't want to be misidentified as a poacher for having such a tool in my possession when the season is closed.  So I left the tool there.  I wish I'd swam the iron into deeper water and tucked it into some difficult crevice.

Wistful about Orkney Diving

I'm missing Scotland and wishing that I'd been in good enough shape to dive the Scapa Flow in Orkney last summer.  I was there, but the commuting combined with old sports injuries had really done a number on my back and leg.  The long plane ride and the car-hopping across Scotland didn't help either.

(Still in pain, in process.)

Now, Northern California diving is world-class and wonderfully kelpy, but I'm feeling the pull of a missed opportunity, you know?

An Orkney view.

My Pal Keith: Happy 51st!

My pal Keith. Tomorrow would have been his 51st birthday. 

Here's a shot from Summer 2002. He and I were running around his adopted state of Alaska in my first visit. I'm not sure why I took so long to head north; I know that his yearly trips south to see family and friends made it easy to put off such a visit, and I know being a cash-strapped grad student for many years was also part of the equation.  Sadly so, I now know.  I wish I'd visited more often.  

Also, I am surprised Keith sat still long enough for a photo. That's either bug spray or pepper spray (for the bears) in his hand, I'm fairly sure.

I miss you, my friend.

And, wherever he may be, on the next turn of the wheel, if it is at all possible, Keith is sending his love, that mix of being concerned and compassionate, of being heedful and helpful,  to his family and his friends.

A Dancer From Atlantis

DETAIL:  Pit-fired goddess: sculpture mix; copper wire.
40-minute exercise with model.

Atlantis sank beneath the sea when a well-meaning man made yet another thunderous blunder . . . ?  No, that happens all the time, sad to say.  (The Kardios/Wellman conceit, for those who know.)  I wonder what Virgil would have said about Atlantis and the perils of burning desire, what Homer would have said about the pitfalls of pride and Atlantis' final days.   I can guess what Archilochos and Sappho would have said, yet I still wish we had such utterances--in the most embracing poetics--here to read.  I'd learn Greek to do so, I think.  Odd thoughts after a long and hot day.

(Anachronistic thinking?  Where did Plato get his ideas anyway, I mean, besides from Socrates?  Sail west, Athenians.  Sail west beyond Sicily, beyond the Pillars of Heracles, beyond the Isles of Tin, and then hang a sharp right--or was that an easy left?)

"All The King's Horses"

Puzzle/Regret: sculpture mix w/green slip, but unglazed; copper wire.

Not sure what to do with her, with this piece, with these pieces.  

Know that I wish I'd handled things better.

Message In A Bottle

The Glenlivet bottle is empty.

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

Robert Graves: Ghost Stories

Here are five more poems from the incomparable Robert Graves:

A RESTLESS GHOST
Alas for obstinate doubt: the dread
Of error in supposing my heart freed,
All care for her stone dead!
Ineffably will shine the hills and radiant coast
Of early morning when she is gone indeed,
Her divine elements disbanded, disembodied
And through the misty orchards in love spread--
When she is gone indeed--
But still among them moves her restless ghost.


TROUGHS OF SEA
'Do you delude yourself?' a neighbor asks,
Dismayed by my abstraction.
But though love cannot question love
Nor need deny its need,

Pity the man who finds a rebel heart
Under his breastbone drumming
Which reason warns him he should drown
In midnight wastes of sea.


SHE IS NO LIAR
She is no liar, yet she will wash away
Honey from her lips, blood from her shadowy hand,
And, dressed at dawn in clear white robes will say,
Trusting the ignorant world to understand:
'Such things no longer are; this is today.'


A LOST JEWEL
Who on your breast pillows his head now,
Jubilant to have won
The heart beneath on fire for him alone,

At dawn will hear you, plagued by nightmare,
Mumble and weep
About some blue jewel you were sworn to keep.

Wake, blink, laugh out in reassurance,
Yet your tears will say:
'It was not mine to lose or give away.

'For love it shone--never for the madness
Of a strange bed--
Light on my finger, fortune in my head.'

Roused by your naked grief and beauty,
For lust he will burn:
'Turn to me, sweetheart! Why do you not turn?'

I'D DIE FOR YOU

I'd die for you, or you for me,

So furious is our jealousy--

And if you doubt this to be true

Kill me outright, lest I kill you.

--Robert Graves