B Is For Bear; B Is For Bowl

Lucky, Swimming

The River-Ogre's Blues

Reprise -- Garulf: 
studio-mix clay (Navajo Wheel + stoneware); 
transparent brown and floating blue glazing, layered.

I like this angle, this lighting, for the blue in the mix has become readily apparent.  The glazes broke well, not obscuring the specific features and textures of this fellow.

Keith: The Fisher of Tales

 Prince William Sound: June 2002.  Keith Sanders in one of his favorite postures: with fishing pole in hand.  (The only posture better would be with his wife and kids, with friends.)  Keith and I had been kayaking about from a cabin in the nature reserve, after having been dropped off by boat for a few days of catching up on each other's lives, even if we didn't catch any fish.  

Photos of photos.  

Keith,

Happy 51st, again.  I wish you were here.  We all wish you were here.

Remember that time back in '79 or '80 when we waited two hours or so in line at the Original Steele's Diveshop for the rental equipment sale to begin?  We had a blast telling tales in tandem and entertaining the crowd.  (Okay, ten or twelve people was not much of a crowd, but for two young guys, it felt like a crowd.)  I remember that time passing so quickly, so smoothly, as we told silly story after silly story, mishap after mishap, that day.  Folks did thank us for helping the time pass so quickly.  We did good, and we had some fun.  We also both picked up decent ex-rental suits that day, suits I can still picture and may have somewhere in the garage: 5 mm thickness, though broken in; black with blue highlights; waffle-stitched; high-rise pants (not farmer johns); and jackets with integral hoods.  Those wetsuits proved just a bit too snug, suits we had to pass on and replace within the year or two.  We weren't noticing that we were still growing.  Those bargains still count.

We worked together well, kayaking that time (deciding against hubris together, deciding not to venture out into that storm), diving so many times, watching over friends and strangers in the abalone-waters, working on the school newspaper,  solving the ills of the world (at least, theoretically), road-tripping, and telling so many tales over and over.  

(I'll admit that I was counting on you to stand up against any bears for us both; luckily, that one never happened, and you were Alaska's recently adopted son.)  

More than anything, I know you are out there collecting more stories, fishing for the good ones to share when I cross over too.   We never voiced that plan aloud, but we didn't need to, did we?  

I'm looking forward to that reunion, my friend.  But just not yet.

Your pal,

Matt

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.

Barry Lopez: "River Notes" and Questing

I have been crippled by my age, by what I have known, as well as by my youth, by what I have yet to learn, in all these inquiries.  It has taken me years, which might have been spent (by someone else) seeking something greater, in some other place.  I have sought only you.  Enough.  I wish to know you, and you will not speak.  

--Barry Lopez,
from River Notes: The Dance of Herons

I can't say enough how much this slim volume mattered, how much it made complex, made even more emotional and even more intricately verbal my relationship with nature and story, when I first discovered River Notes in Moe's Books of Berkeley, CA, so long ago in 1980.

On this recent rereading -- and River Notes is a book I reread more or less each year, haphazardly, piece by piece over all the months of the year -- I realized how much his chapter "The Salmon" prepared me for the art and artistry of Andy Goldsworthy and for so many of my own efforts in clay amidst sea and creek.

I've witnessed this writer giving a talk and reading one of his stories at least once --"The Mappist," at the Donna Seager Gallery in San Rafael -- and I took this rather intimate opportunity (such a small venue, a somewhat select gathering) to thank Barry Lopez for his body of work.  I'm glad I overcame my natural diffidence to do so.

The passage above spoke to me when I was a mere youth, not even 20, and speaks to me now, a bit over 50.  I like the appositive defining of age in terms of knowing, in terms of what we don't understand and of what we do, as well as the sad, even bitter tone.  Loss breathes through the passage, through most of the book, and Lopez's voicing of that theme, that truth, caught my ear, and the ear of my soul (if you will), even if I didn't--perhaps, still don't--truly understand wherein that sense of loss resides, takes form.  Recently, I have read an interview with Barry Lopez in which he reveals that the writing of River Notes, though a sequence of fictional narratives, was deeply informed by the death of his mother.

The book takes us from the seaside, the mouth of the river, upstream until we reach the headwaters, the source.  The last chapter, be warned, is entitled "Drought."  I'll hold off saying more, for I'd rather awaken curiosity and intimate mystery.  I have taught two chapters in particular a dozen times, I think: "The Bend" and "The Rapids."  Here's another passage from "The Salmon":

There is never, he reflected, a moment of certainty, only the illusion.   And as he worked among the rocks in the middle of the river he thought on this deeply, so deeply that had his movements not been automatic he would have fallen off the rocks and into the river and been borne away.

In the summer light, even with the coolness of the water welling up around him in the air, thinking was all he was capable of; and this distraction left him exhausted and unbalanced so that at the end of the day the physical exhaustion he felt was something he lowered himself into, as into a hot bath.  He pondered gentleness often.  And he tried to pry (hefting the stones, conscious of the resonance between the idea in his mind and the work of his hands) into mysteries which remained as implacable as the faces of the stones.


Thank you, again, Barry Holstun Lopez.

River Notes: The Dance of Herons
A Bard Book / Avon Books: New York,  November, 1980.

Voyage-charm: sculpture mix; floating blue glazing; matte finish.   

Tomales Bay: Night-Paddle

Kayaks ready for the excursion.

You can never have too many of these, right?

Launched into the bay; the pause before the paddling begins.

We went paddling to see the bioluminescence of the dinoflagellates, the planktonic fireflies of the bay here, as well as the vast array of the starry, starry night, neither of which proved to be photographical (by my hands, anyway).  I would have liked to document the sea-glitter clinging to paddle and gloves in the water and even lifted out of the water.

Conditions: no swell, no chop, so calm waters; hardly any breeze at all; chilly temperatures to be met with wool and fleece and excitement at being on that water and beneath those stars.