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.

As Audience, As Witness

As I was getting coffee at the cafe this morning, I had a gentleman walk up to me and ask about the Bamboo Reef t-shirt I was wearing.  He wanted to know if the business were still in operation, and I named Monterey and SF as ongoing locations.  He then told me his father had been one of Bamboo Reef's three founders--with Al Giddings and Leroy French -- back in 1961.  We chatted briefly, me asking about his father's name (which I now can't recall, grrr), and then he moved on.

I'm guessing he wasn't a diver like his father, or at least not a local diver, or he would have known . . . but we didn't talk about any of that.

I like how the man wanted to connect with something his father had helped make -- and to say it out loud -- and I, random fellow that I am, was able to participate as audience, as witness.

Stepping South of Carmel

Hey Dad --

Byron: "Where is the world of eight years past?"

'Where is the world?' cries Young at eighty.  'Where
The world in which a man was born?' Alas!
Where is the world of eight years past? 'Twas there--
I look for it -- 'tis gone, a globe of glass,
Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed on, ere
A silent change dissolves the glittering mass.
Statesmen, chiefs, orators, queens, patriots, kings,
And dandies, all are gone on the wind's wings.

--Lord Byron
Don Juan Canto 11, stanza 76.

Editorial

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

Time's Wicked Current

Rum-tee-tum-tee-tum-tum.
Sipping rum, watching "Into the Blue" with the director's commentary going, and remembering a long-anticipated Hawaiian dive-trip with my late best friend back in 2008.

Time has a wicked current, you know?


(If you want to know more about the clay mask, check here.)

Orkney Time

Two of the Stones of Stenness.

"Kiss My Ab"

Simple shot of an abalone gripping the underside of a rock up in Mendocino waters. Just anticipating some free diving coming up. The non-dramatic elements, like this, please me to no end.

Now, this abalone is undersized, in legal terms, about 5 or 6 inches across that shell, I'd guess.  (I'm holding the camera quite close here.)  And, while I learned to dive while "chasing abalone", as we used to joke, I tend to look and appreciate and not take these days.  Good eating, yes, but also good thriving.

"Kiss my ab" was the motto we'd throw at each other while abalone-diving.   The good old days.  (You know, driving three hours and then limiting out in 10 minutes of water-time.   Or, better, taking our time to find the best abalone we could there off Salt Point or Kruse Ranch, imitating the harbor seals in the surge channels, diving deep into the kelp again and again, and dealing with those rocky shore exits, no matter how much the swell had risen.)  Those days were too short and too few, but golden while they lasted, silver in memory.  I'll toast those days -- and my dive buddy Keith -- with some rum in the evening after the next time I go free diving, and I'll go free diving soon just to be toasting those days, that friend.

Grief's Visage?

Weird brother to go with the weird sisters in Macbeth this week?

Or, Grief's Visage?
Hollow-eyed and empty-mouthed?
Can you hear the wailing?

Herald:
stoneware; sea-foam glazing.

Julia Whitty, Diving, and Manysidedness: Highly Recommended

The current reading in my English 1As.

Check out Julia Whitty's blog at http://deepbluehome.blogspot.com/

Nick Drake's "Time Has Told Me"

TIME HAS TOLD ME

Time has told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
Someday our ocean
Will find its shore.

So I`ll leave the ways that are making me be
What I really don't want to be
Leave the ways that are making me love
What I really don't want to love.

Time has told me
You came with the dawn
A soul with no footprint
A rose with no thorn.

Your tears they tell me
There's really no way
Of ending your troubles
With things you can say.

And time will tell you
To stay by my side
To keep on trying
'til there's no more to hide.

So leave the ways that are making you be
What you really don't want to be
Leave the ways that are making you love
What you really don't want to love.

Time has told me
You're a rare rare find
A troubled cure
For a troubled mind.

And time has told me
Not to ask for more
For some day our ocean
Will find its shore.

--Nick Drake


Seek out Nick Drake's CD Five Leaves Left for the original song, from which I have taken these lyrics. Gorgeous music too.

Bob Mould: "Walls In Time"

Here is another set of lyrics from Bob Mould's oh so excellent District Line, though you should really listen to the song . . . .

WALLS IN TIME

Is it a crime to want to show your soul?

Waste enough time, another black hole

Misguided, not even lost, not even sure

Now find the disease or the cure

Has life lost all its glory and wonder

Sad tales are told again and again

Sleep, toss and turn, my old bed

What a tale, again and again

Now all the stories of the world could fit in a building

In a building high and wide

Filed under headings that no one's quite sure of

Lord knows that everyone tried

When the pen meets the paper

When the mind, it begins to stray

How a soul could lose its will to explain

Oh, explain again and again

Day after day, day after day, day after day

Flowers losing life when picked from the ground

A nice arrangement for the occasion

But flowers, when moved from place to place

Lose all meaning, dislocation, dislocation

In a fit of fitless night, a flame attempts to spark a soul

Ignite, burn, candle light, a waste of time, another dead soul

If these walls around my soul could talk

The words would lose importance

Within these walls I hold so dear these words

We all want to leave a mark somewhere

For those of us who feign to care

In all unfortunate times we find a way

To build up these walls in time

To build up these walls in time

Is it a crime?

--Bob Mould

Bob Mould's "Very Temporary": Very Intense

VERY TEMPORARY

If you want it to be, you've got to stand here by me
But if you wanted to leave, go on and make yourself free
If you want me to plead, you see me down on my knees
You can do as you like, but do you know where it leads?

When I wake from my sleep, outside my window I see
A little robin that sings a little sonnet for me
And every morning, I feel just like that bird in that tree
I'd build a nest out of weeds, but would you share it with me?

This is very temporary, but I can't do without having you around
If it's very temporary, tell me now
Just to please you, I'd blow my brains out, this is it
Cut my heart out with a razor now

You're the one in my dreams, how can I make you believe
It's all that I want, it's all that I want

Now I'm lonely, it's the yearning
You infiltrate my thoughts and places in my home
This is very temporary, I know that's all you want, I know, I know
You're the reason I keep breathing, and I'll give up the fight if you go
Cut my heart out with a razor now

--Bob Mould, lyrics from District Line (2008).

You really should hear the song, but I also like focusing on the words, as I do here.

"Stupid Now," "Again and Again," and "Old Highs, New Lows" are three other songs from this CD well worth digging into.

Bottom Time

"Divers Do It Deeper!"; "Get Wet!"; "Kiss My Abalone!": rallying cries of my well-spent youth.

(We are the grit that makes the pearl or mars the paint job.  A more mature reflection?)

Humble shots, certainly, but they pull me deeper into memory's well.

One breath-hold; a handful of shots; the surge moving me forward and back as it likes.

There may be no real drama available here for anyone else, but I like the bottom of white sand and crushed rock as well as the translucent green blades in motion.

Mostly, these shots make me want to dive down again and again, to see what's there, and to do any of that, well, I need to begin training again, to get in shape, to swim and swim and swim, which is all good.  I walked today, and that's a fine start.  Laps now . . . .

Reprise: "And If I Laugh At Any Mortal Thing"

I
Nothing so difficult as a beginning 
In poesy, unless perhaps the end; 
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning 
The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, 
Like Lucifer when hurl'd from heaven for sinning; 
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, 
Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far, 
Till our own weakness shows us what we are. 

II
But Time, which brings all beings to their level, 
And sharp Adversity, will teach at last 
Man, -- and, as we would hope, -- perhaps the devil, 
That neither of their intellects are vast: 
While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel, 
We know not this -- the blood flows on too fast; 
But as the torrent widens towards the ocean, 
We ponder deeply on each past emotion. 

III
As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, 
And wish'd that others held the same opinion; 
They took it up when my days grew more mellow, 
And other minds acknowledged my dominion: 
Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow 
Leaf," and Imagination droops her pinion, 
And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk 
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque. 

IV
And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 
'Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep, 
'Tis that our nature cannot always bring 
Itself to apathy, for we must steep 
Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring, 
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep: 
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; 
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix. 

V
Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land, 
And trace it in this poem every line: 
I don't pretend that I quite understand 
My own meaning when I would be very fine; 
But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd, 
Unless it were to be a moment merry, 
A novel word in my vocabulary. 

VI
To the kind reader of our sober clime 
This way of writing will appear exotic; 
Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, 
Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic, 
And revell'd in the fancies of the time, 
True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic: 
But all these, save the last, being obsolete, 
I chose a modern subject as more meet. 

VII
How I have treated it, I do not know; 
Perhaps no better than they have treated me 
Who have imputed such designs as show 
Not what they saw, but what they wish'd to see: 
But if it gives them pleasure, be it so; 
This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free: 
Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear, 
And tells me to resume my story here. 

--Lord Byron,
the opening stanzas of the fourth canto of Don Juan

I've posted these lines before, but that's fine.  That's what reprise is for.

Time-Travel: Take Four

Photo of a photo.  1965 vintage, perhaps.
Between more formal posturings, wouldn't you say?
Or after.  Mostly candid capture here, though one fellow is tracking the camera still.

(Me? The small fry in front.)

Fowles: "Lightning Strikes"

"Truth is born as lightning strikes."  --Archilochos  (via Davenport)


TWO POEMS FROM JOHN FOWLES:


THE EXPERIENCE

You go down the right turnings
just as it says in the guide,
and it isn't there.

You turn up at the right room
at the right time,
in the right month and moonlight;
and it isn't there.

You discover the right grove,
you stand about on damp leaves.
A man on a tractor passes
and thinks you are mad.

You have the paper and the time,
you have the lot, 
and nothing comes.

And it comes
at the start of a busy day
as you shave in a hurry,
cog with no time.

The wind.  And you stand,
blinded till you are not blind.

--John Fowles



WITHIN TEN SECONDS

Within ten seconds
I knew I wanted to kiss your eyelids.
This is why I kept staring
Past you, as if to a cold horizon.
You were not boring me, as you thought.
I was looking to where you stood
Smelling of rain, with naked breasts.
Naked, defenceless, needing defence.
It was not as you thought,
You were piqued and moved away.
I was the one who by silence,
Staring, no move, moved away.

Where pine trees touch water.
I am
Men who tie themselves to masts.
You are
Sirens with delicate eyelids.
Penelope is white with lust.
Molpe, the deck has tears
And the rock has tears.
Even the sun has molten tears.

Meeting, never to meet again.

--John Fowles