"Because I Know, From Plato"

I have ground up hemlock and it releases a nose-wrinkling sour smell.  It also sparks a pain above your eyes and across the brain.  I have never known, though, whether this is psychosomatic.  Because I know, from Plato, what hemlock can do.

--Bettany Hughes,
The Hemlock Cup: 
Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life

Editorial

Two spaces after a period:
Two steps to let that first thought settle before we move to a new one.

Notebook: Dive Thoughts

1.    Scribble, scribble, Mr. Gibbon:
A box of saltines,
Two cans of sardines,
And a bottle of Irish:
I feel ready.

2.  Wearing the 20-pound weightbelt
three hours straight diving and paddling
may have been a mistake--I realized,
as the first muscle spasms started in my back,
40 minutes out from Moody's in Mendocino--
but every diver knows, whether weightbelt or tank,
it's lighter if you never take it off.

3.  Why do I keep putting
these clay pieces underwater?
I don't quite know,
but I do and I do.

4.  See photos.

5.  Maybe free diving wasn't such a good idea with this temporary crown in my mouth.

King: Clay from 2011

King Holmberg: Sculpture mix; transparent brown and denim glazes, layered.

Missing the play of clay in hand . . . .

The Winding and Unwinding

THE WINDING AND UNWINDING

The shape of your thought
Entices me
Quite as much as
The thought of your shape.

Clay-minded,
Bloody-brained,
Fickle as a stick in water:
I swim towards you.

I reach for you
Again and again and again
In thought, in force,
Not withholding aught
Save what wyrd demands
From each of us.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide,
Again releasing,
Again embracing,
Tasting and chasing,
Like river-otters sliding
Down the sloped bank.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide:
The rounded lift and heft,
The nipple’s assertion,
The twinned-blood rising
Like the swift pull
Of the river’s pulse
And penetration --
Flowing,
Falling,
Following –-

That shared current
Streaming just past the shore,
Stranding us between
Just enough
And quite enough.
___

Coda:
Laughing lips sip --
Swallow -- another draft.
Glasses, glances,
Clash and chime,
Toasting the new year.

Harken to the hearty
Admonition:
Draft, not drift.

--Matthew Duckworth

Wool-Gathering

Yesterday's product of idle hands:

just hanging out in the studio,
watching clay -- figures and bowls -- dry . . .
I pulled out a bit of wet clay for play's sake,
and this fellow made himself apparent,
made himself present.

Credo

Salty, sandy, sunburnt, sore-muscled:
all the signs of a day well-spent.

Touchstone: from Kirk Russell's "Redback"

Here’s a passage that matters to me, a passage that truly evokes emotion and thought, from the fourth John Marquez eco-thriller by Kirk Russell:

At dawn it was quite cold and he made coffee, ate bread, cheese, and dates, and then walked down to the lake and filtered enough water for the hike up.  He slid the water bottles into the pack.  He slipped the pack on and started up with an ice axe in his right hand.

There was no trail or any real need of a trail.  The weather was fine and he could see ahead and knew his route.  It was steep and long and jumbled with granite and talus, and then he climbed on snow.  It was steep, and there were places where you wouldn’t want to fall, but nowhere did he need a rope.   On the saddle between Banner and Ritter he drank half his water and cleaned his sunglasses before starting up again.  Here, the snowfield steepened and he kicked the toe of his boot in harder and used the ice axe.

When he summitted Mount Banner just before noon he could hear Brad’s voice in his head.  On top, it was cold and clear.  Over the Minarets the sky was dark blue.  He caught his breath sitting on a rock looking down at Lake Ediza, small and beautiful below, and at Thousand Island Lake and east toward the desert, and then down the long reach of the Sierras.  This was a place Brad loved and Marquez walked the summit looking for a spot, then climbed down between rocks and found a place to tuck in Brad’s good luck talisman.

We do things to say good bye that defy rational explanation.  You take what you remember and loved in a human being and you hold it in your heart, but still at times you need a photo or a ring or a piece of clothing, something you can touch, a tombstone to visit where you can talk.  Marquez knew from time to time he’d come back to this mountain.  When he could no longer climb it, the mountain would still be here, and if part of Alvarez’s spirit lingered with it, and if the talisman held any good luck, the mountain would be safer for those that climbed.  What better spirit to guard climbers than Brad?

--Kirk Russell, Redback,
Severn House Publishers Ltd,
Great Britain, 2010/ USA, 2011
(pages 94-95)

Lost In Thought

The Crabman: Two Views.

JP at Bodega Bay.

Whiskey With Ice; Leaping From Zeus

RANDOM THOUGHTS OF THE DAY
____________________________

"No, I still drink whiskey with ice."

My response when the dental hygienist asked if my teeth were sensitive to cold.

____________________________

Influence can be tricky to trace.  Was I headed in that direction already or did so-&-so turn my steps that way?

I tend to mythologize myself as having leapt full-bodied from the head of Zeus, but that's hardly likely.

Byron: "This Odd Labyrinth"

I won’t describe—that is, if I can help
    Description; and I won’t reflect—that is,
If I can stave off thought, which, as a whelp
    Clings to its teat, sticks to me through the abyss
Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp
    Holds by the rock; or as a lover’s kiss
Drains its first draught of lips: --but, as I said,
I won’t philosophize, and will be read.

--Lord Byron
Don Juan: Canto X, #28

Minotaur, Yearning

Minotaur:

sculpture mix; blue and green glazing.
Model-exercise: 40 minutes?

(Previous entry here.)

"The Wanderer": Burton Raffel Translates From The Old English

THE WANDERER

This lonely traveller longs for grace,
For the mercy of God; grief hangs on
His heart and follows the frost-cold foam
He cuts in the sea, sailing endlessly,
Aimlessly, in exile. Fate has opened
A single port: memory. He sees
His kinsmen slaughtered again, and cries:
               “I’ve drunk too many lonely dawns,
Grey with mourning. Once there were men
To whom my heart could hurry, hot
With open longing. They’re long since dead.
My heart has closed on itself, quietly
Learning that silence is noble and sorrow
Nothing that speech can cure. Sadness
Has never driven sadness off;
Fate blows hardest on a bleeding heart.
So those who thirst for glory smother
Secret weakness and longing, neither
Weep nor sigh nor listen to the sickness
In their souls. So I, lost and homeless,
Forced to flee the darkness that fell
On the earth and my lord.
                         Leaving everything,
Weary with winter I wandered out
On the frozen waves, hoping to find
A place, a people, a lord to replace
My lost ones. No one knew me, now,
No one offered comfort, allowed
Me feasting or joy. How cruel a journey
I’ve traveled, sharing my bread with sorrow
Alone, an exile in every land,
Could only be told by telling my footsteps.
For who can hear: “friendless and poor,”
And know what I’ve known since the long cheerful nights
When, young and yearning, with my lord I yet feasted
Most welcome of all. That warmth is dead.
He only knows who needs his lord
As I do, eager or long-missing aid;
He only knows who never sleeps
Without the deepest dreams of longing.
Sometimes it seems I see my lord,
Kiss and embrace him, bend my hands
And head to his knee, kneeling as though
He still sat enthroned, ruling his thanes.
And I open my eyes, embracing the air,
And I see the brown sea-billows heave,
See the sea-birds bathe, spreading
Their white-feathered wings, watch the frost
And the hail and the snow. And heavy in heart
I long for my lord, alone and unloved.
Sometimes it seems I see my kin
And greet them gladly, give them welcome,
The best of friends. They fade away,
Swimming soundlessly out of sight,
                         Leaving nothing.
How loathsome become
The frozen waves to a weary heart.
               In this brief world I cannot wonder
That my mind is set on melancholy,
Because I never forget the fate
Of men, robbed of their riches, suddenly
Looted by death—the doom of earth,
Sent to us all by every rising
Sun. Wisdom is slow, and comes
But late. He who has it is patient;
He cannot be hasty to hate or speak,
He must be bold and yet not blind,
Nor ever too craven, complacent, or covetous,
Nor ready to gloat before he wins glory.
The man’s a fool who flings his boasts
Hotly to the heavens, heeding his spleen
And not the better boldness of knowledge.
What knowing man knows not the ghostly,
Waste-like end of worldly wealth:
See, already the wreckage is there,
The wind-swept walls stand far and wide,
The storm-beaten blocks besmeared with frost,
The mead-halls crumbled, the monarchs thrown down
And stripped of their pleasures. The proudest of warriors
Now lie by the wall: some of them war
Destroyed; some the monstrous sea-bird
Bore over the ocean; to some the old wolf
Dealt out death; and for some dejected
Followers fashioned an earth-cave coffin.
Thus the Maker of men lays waste
This earth, crushing our callow mirth.
And the work of old giants stands withered and still.”

He who these ruins rightly sees,
And deeply considers this dark twisted life,
Who sagely remembers the endless slaughters
Of a bloody past, is bound to proclaim:
          “Where is the war-steed? Where is the warrior?
                         Where is his war-lord?
Where now the feasting-places?
Where now the mead-hall pleasures?
Alas, bright cup! Alas, brave knight!
Alas, you glorious princes! All gone,
Lost in the night, as you never had lived.
And all that survives you a serpentine wall,
Wondrously high, worked in strange ways.
Mighty spears have slain these men,
Greedy weapons have framed their fate.
                These rocky slopes are beaten by storms,
This earth pinned down by driving snow,
By the horror of winter, smothering warmth
In the shadows of night. And the north angrily
Hurls its hailstorms at our helpless heads.
Everything earthly is evilly born,
Firmly clutched by a fickle Fate.
Fortune vanishes, friendship vanishes,
Man is fleeting, woman is fleeting,
And all this earth rolls into emptiness.”

               So says the sage in his heart, sitting alone with
                              His thought.
It's good to guard your faith, nor let your grief come forth
Until it cannot call for help, nor help but heed
The path you've placed before it.  It's good to find your grace
In God, the heavenly rock where rests our every hope.

--translated by Burton Raffel,
borrowed from Beowulf and Related Readings,
McDougall Littell; Evanston, Illinois; 1998.

Foreground: The Pict

Background: The Merman's Head.

Alternative titles: Not Hadrian; Deep in Thought; or The Painted Man's Grasp.

Shadows of the Past: Advice

"Think harder; write better."
--from one of my favorite professors to the English 47B class as a whole; he was a tad frustrated with the first essays we had handed in . . . .

"Don't indulge your natural diffidence."
--from a professor after a mock-interview back in the graduate school days; spot on, by the way.

"Be wary of that tendency to idealize, to see the best qualities and to be oblivious to all others."
--note to self, echoed by a therapist

I'm finding myself reflecting on the advice, the possible wisdom or useful statements, that I've encountered or confronted.  These three stand out, though I have no doubt forgotten even better advice that I have failed to benefit from; to those advisers who meant well for me, I wish I'd been paying closer attention.

(I think that last piece of advice was/is meant to be applied to myself by myself too.)


P.S.  A good friend who was there corrects me:
'And, I think it was: "Think harder, write better, be smarter."'

Arnold: "With Noiseless Current Strong, Obscure and Deep"

Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel -- below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel -- there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.

--Matthew Arnold

(1869)

Byron: "A Small Drop Of Ink"

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
       Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
      'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
      Of ages.  To what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper, even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his.

--Lord Byron,
Don Juan: 
stanza 88 of Canto III.