Reflecting on Self (and Selfies)

This wasn't a selfie, but a driver's license.  A current conversation with a friend:

One old driver's license, I showed it to a very good friend and said, "Look at this. I look dead in the photo."

Old Friend said, "It takes ten years off you."

I said, "Ten years off dead--what's that?"

OF smiled, wryly.


(OF always keeps me down to earth.)

Cargo From Cumae: A Fragment

CARGO FROM CUMAE

Latium, 1164 B.C.

Nisus sighed as the shore lifted
With the easing of the tide before his eyes.
Younger, he'd have been under,
Working the wreck, allowing
Muscle and sheer will
To offset mere depth.
The boat shifted beneath his feet,
And the Trojan diver bowed his head --
Gray locks cropped against
The cloy, clammy, clinging weeds
Of long cold nereid fingers
And hotly wanton nereid needs.
Scars he touched and counted breaths . . . .

What youth ignores, age hoards.
Each foot ebbing meant
Longer labor, greater benefits
Below.  Both lungs and eyes
Less exercised by the low tides
Granted -- too soon denied --
By Diana and the marches of her moon.
Nisus surveyed his small domain,
This modest craft, consecrated
By Neptune's priest; nets; ropes;
Reeds; knives; hooks; weights;
A clay cup; worn sponges;
And that flask of olive oil,
Diver's mystery, for sight below . . . .

(an old fragment, newly polished a bit)

MD

Salvage Work: Rough Mermaid

I made this rough model for a larger piece, and now I'm wishing I'd spent more time on her face and on properly glazing her tail.  Still, each model helps me with the next.

Sculpture mix; green and blue glazing; copper wire; copper fishhooks; charcoal.

Treasure Hunting

I took these photographs March 30, 2011, a couple weeks after returning from Alaska and the memorial for my friend Keith.  I was attempting to find comfort, frankly, looking to old magazines and books, especially the ones pictured here that day.  I'd talked with Keith at various times about the books I wanted to write, that I haven't yet written.  A crime novel with diving and sunken wrecks; a historical-fantasy of the aftermath of the fall of Troy, also with diving and sunken wrecks; among others. With both of those projects, I have found inspiration in that particular issue of National Geographic and in Kirk Russell's eco-thriller regarding abalone-poaching, Shell Games.  The Surfers Journal is just good fun, good reportage, history, and photographic illustration of watery lives.  

Solace.  Inspiration.  Reminders of debts owed.

I still owe you at least one good book, Keith.  I'm working on it.  Slowly.  

Reprise: Exercise In Blue

Salvage / Boat:
sculpture mix; blue slip; twig; string; and copper wire.

Old project; mistake, improved upon.
Still cheers me.

Mermaid On The Wall

Warrior Mermaid: sculpture mix; raku, but flawed -- from years ago.

Octopus / Belly-Dancer

Octopus: sculpture mix, glazed with transparent brown and celadon; salvaged.

Crossley-Holland: "Faithful As A Wordfisher"

BEACHCOMBER

Faithful as a wordfisher,
there he goes, old magpie of the foreshore!
Face chafed and chapped like driftwood.

Parcelled shapeless against
winds straight off the icecap
but look! agile even so, jumpy as a tick,
quick in his pickings.

Scoofs along the tideline scurf,
his oily sack full of consonants:
hunks of wax,
and seacoal, rubber ballast, cork,
sodden gleamings.

And swinging in that shoe-bag hitched
to his broad belt?
Ah! In there, sunlight and amber moonlight,
emerald and zinc and shell-pink,
Aegir's vowels.

--Kevin Crossley-Holland

from the sequence "Waterslain"
from his Selected Poems,
London: Enitharmon Press, 2001


Note: I can't say that I follow all the lines above, but the general situation and the definite fun with language and scene I follow quite well.

And, "Faithful as a wordfisher": that's a description I like, using "as" both as a comparison and as a signifier of action/behavior. Starting Monday I wordfish with whole crowds of new students.

Moya Cannon: "Emptinesses Which Hold"

NAUSTS

There are emptinesses which hold

the leveret's form in spring grass;

the tern's hasty nest in the shore pebbles;

nausts in a silvery island inlet.

Boat-shaped absences,

they slope to seaward,

parallel as potato drills,

curved a little for access --

a mooring stone, fore and aft,

and a flat stone high up

to guide the tarred bow

or a hooker, pucan, or punt

when the high tide lifted it

up and in, then ebbed,

leaving it tilted to one side,

in its shingly nest.

--Moya Cannon

'WE ARE WHAT WE EAT'

That's what she said,

'Every seven years

almost every cell in our body is replaced.'

I thought of her own art,

how faithfully rendered

the miraculous lines, the miraculous lives,

of feather and bone --

and I remembered an oak rib,

honeycombed with shipworm,

given as a keepsake to another friend,

who had sailed from Dublin to the Faroes

in a wooden fishing hooker,

which was later rebuilt.

These boats are rebuilt, renamed,

until every plank and rib

has been replaced so often

that nothing remains

except the boat's original lines

and a piece of silver,

hidden under the mast.

--Moya Cannon

Salvage Work (small): sculpture mix; blue slip; clear glazing; copper wire; twig; twine.

Salvage Work

 Fisherman's Blues II: sculpture mix: blue slip & clear glaze; twine; twig; copper fishhooks.

M D U

At the end of the day's paddle to Emerald Bay and back, from my kayak I spotted two lost SUP paddles on the lake bottom, paused and considered, then continued up the shore 30 yards or so to beach my kayak near the path to my truck.  I described the paddles to the staff at the Baldwin Beach Kayak/SUP Rentals and their probable location.  I figured they could use the paddles; I like to share stories and finds, especially as I was ready to load up and leave.

On second thought--for how could I resist?--I grabbed fins and mask, and swam back to search for and, ideally, recover the two paddles.  Despite my efforts, I couldn't spot them again, but one of the staff took advantage of my info to recover one paddle from the bottom.  Score.  She used a stand-up-paddleboard, which gave her better perspective--that standing vantage--to scan for the "treasure".

Still counts, I say.

I love finding stuff.  I like when other people find stuff too.

For example, my best friend's wedding band from the bottom of a lake or another friend's truck keys from the Klamath River.  But those are stories for another day.

Lake Tahoe temps: 68 degrees in the upper layers.  That's pretty cosy after swimming in 54 degree Pacific Ocean water.  Diving down just a dozen feet meant finding the distinctly cooler waters that Lake Tahoe is famous for, however.  

Along this stretch of Baldwin Beach, I spotted two SUP paddles on the bottom--or I'm pretty sure there were two paddles.  I don't think I spotted the same paddle twice, but the kayak-rental staffer only found one.

Here, you can see how she's scanning the bottom from that standing vantage for those paddles.

Triton By My Side

Free diving off Pacific Grove: clay mask in tow.

I strapped one of my ceramic masks--Triton--to the belt for my camera pouch this time out.  I had wanted to take pictures of the mask underwater, set against a kelp holdfast or wedged in a rocky crevice beside some of those gigantic green anemones, perhaps, but the visibility was so limited, I ended up not chancing the loss of the mask this time.

The strong surge wasn't helping either.  Now, if I'd been tank diving, the conditions wouldn't have mattered so much for exploratory photography, even with the poor visibility, but I still prefer free diving and its particular challenges in such a situation.

Shore and tidepool shots only with the Triton mask: see those shots here and here.  Next time, deeper shots--or maybe I'll bring along one of my clay fish for such a photo opportunity; I've done such in tidepools, of course, as you can see here.

The Shining God

Nisus dove deeper and deeper, searching the kelp forest for the lost talisman, but Tyrik decided he'd be the wiser one (and drier) as he began to comb the tidepools and crevices in the rocks for any flotsam from the wreck . . . . 

Mask and Kelp II.

Radagast and Lucky, Working

Radagast: brown clay; unglazed.

Lucky the Reindeer: sculpture mix; brown and blue glazing.

I broke Lucky, by accident and before he had a name, on the way from the garage to the studio, but I decided to bisque and glaze him anyway. You never know what you'll get.

Solstice blessings on us all.

The Other Boathouse

Reminder: sign up for summer art classes.

Salvage: Work in Progress

Just a reminder to myself--and to anyone visiting my site.

Visible progress: one step at a time.

So, have courage, and take a step, or two, and so forth.

Happy 2011.

P.S. If you want to see how one of these pieces turns out:

http://mattduckworthunderwater.blogspot.com/2010/11/salvage-fishermans-blues.html

Salvage: Fisherman's Blues

I'd meant to do something else--what else, I can't recall--with that basic form, but the clay dried more quickly than I'd expected, dried before I could continue shaping and trimming. I slapped on the blue just to see, and later I thought, "A boat." Okay, what will help that image, that imposition, that fiction?

Telling stories with clay. No claims for mastery or masterpieces. Process; practice; pretense in the best sense.

I like it on the wall, but I wouldn't call it good. I'm posting it here as a model of fun, as a prototype for further exploration, as a bulwark against hubris.

Salvage Work: Sculpture mix, blue slip. clear glaze; copper wire; twine; a twig.

P.S. Fisherman's Blues, by the Waterboys, is a great album, particularly the title composition.

Postcard: The Anti-Gollum

Found a gold ring on the bottom of the pool today, oh boy. Once lost: now found. My salvage-diver alter ego--Nisus of Troy--lives. Gave that ring right to the lifeguard; not even tempted to court bad karma keeping such a trinket, such a trophy.

Second time so far in this life of mine.

First? Best friend's wedding ring lost in a lake. He didn't mean to lose the ring; it just happened.

One very stormy week later we returned to the scene of the crime, as his wife insisted, and I found the ring. We'd brought scuba gear up to this lake in Northern California, Klamath country--just in case--but simple free diving resulted in recovery. (Mucky bottom with a fine layer of moss-like webbing above two feet or so of mud; ring caught in that webbing: lucky.) My first real lesson in comparative geography: the lake was a mere 17 or 18 feet at the deepest, which fit the surrounding environment of rolling hills, glades, and gentle valleys. (We were a steep hike up from the Klamath River, but on that plateau the shifts in elevation were mild.)

Night-diving the shallow lake with that scuba gear and watching plump, pale-bellied frogs sleep beneath the lily pads: that was the real high of the trip. I still like how my buddy's wedding band appeared to me when the swirling cloud of disturbed muck finally settled, me holding my breath as long as I was able, not straining, but anxious for success, and the gold ring shining even at depth. (Gollum, gollum.) Those frogs, though, sleeping and dreaming. I have a fondness for frogs.

Finding the lost truck keys in the Klamath River was a harder task by far. Different trip. Not my keys, by the way, but my ride back to camp four or five uphill miles away. Of course, I had the goggles, and so I had the glory of searching and of finding. The Klamath is a fierce, cold river; fortunately, the keys had fallen out of a pocket in the eddying pool where we'd spent most of our time.

Nisus of Troy. Maybe I need a fourth tattoo.

Annotations: Chowdhury & Clark

Chowdhury, Bernie. The Last Dive: A Father and Son's Fatal Descent into the Ocean's Depths. New York: Harper Collins, 2000.

A detailed document of a tragedy, psychological profiling, and clear-eyed descriptions of diving, salvaging, and aquatic adventure . . . and yet I can never keep the specific details of the book in my mind. Perhaps the father/son issues are too close to home for me, though I don't think so. I'm glad I read the book, and yet I guess I need to reread it.

Clark, Eleanor. The Oysters of Locmariaquer. New York: Harper, 2006.

I love this book, and I even learned to love oysters after reading it. While I prefer more localized books for this project, I enjoyed learning the French history and processes of oyster-farming. Clark writes lyrically at times, and her more everyday paragraphs still sing. I love reading practical material, but I really love practical material in a clear, individual style, with a voice that sounds like itself, not like anyone else, and yet that uniqueness is an invitation, not a barrier, to go deeper and further into the subject. Am I gushing too much?