Musings – Page 2 – A View from the Wheelhouse

Chop wood,carry on

Posted on April 17, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Its been very lovely in Port Madison this Spring. I’ve been regrouping after putting up the art show, taking stock and redirecting energy toward simpler things like chopping wood. We are talking serious wood chopping.

The building is a workshop built by Ed Monk. I’ve been privileged to Moor Old Hand at this historic site, built by one of the Northwest’s finest boat designers. I feel his presence in the stoutly built out- buildings and docks, and gladdened by the thought that, he too, hauled gear and materials up and down the steep path to the water. His can-do spirit inspires my humble efforts, and I take extra care in the stacking of split maple and cedar. This stacking is itself, an art.

old hand interior January '12 007 — Interior of Old Hand

At first, I was unimpressed by Monk’s designs. But as I worked on his boat-houses I came to see his ubiquitous, wooden power cruisers in a new light.

I find rusty, bent shipwright tools near Monk’s shop, and use an old, weathered workbench he made. After the long preparation for the exhibit, this physical connection with common objects that surrounded his life has inspired in me an appreciation for the simple aesthetic of usefulness.

My boat, Old Hand is not a Monk, but was built of such stuff. Her portly hull design is a scaled-down version of the hefty Norwegian lifeboats designed by Colin Archer. After 10 years of owning her I’ve greater appreciation for her ponderous lines and stout workmanship. So I am readying for another season of sailing. I look at tide tables and plot course South toward Old Hand’s first port of call: Gig Harbor.

So stay tuned for posts chronicling these adventures on the Salish Sea told in art, music and videos.

Musings

Soul Hydrography- The Elwha Dam and Seattle Seawall

Posted on February 27, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Sediment released by removal of the Elwha River dam flows into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

port madisson images 004 — Drawing by Craig Spencer

Soul Hydrography is the study of how waterways, rivers and currents reflect the spiritual state of humanity. Our psychic energy flows with the drainage’s along which we establish our precarious settlements, into mythologies of the parched landlubber, and hies with the stream of time back to the infinite. I have no actual experience in this field, unless an adolescent kookdom in Surf City counts for training.

We are pulled into the undertow of mythic floods or swept into a sea of trouble . The primal chaos that threatens to engulf us is the same prima materia from which our civilization arose.

The removal of the Elwha River Dam and the rebuilding of the Seattle Seawall are two projects that reveal something of the secret history of the Northwest and the contradictory impulses we share-namely, the primal drive to hold or release, to build and destroy, or open and close. Like the breath, these complementary movements alternate through cycles of history.

The Elwha dam nearly decimated one of the world’s largest salmon runs, destroying the livelihood of the Clallum tribe as well as the settlers who lived along the river. While it generated electric power for Port Angeles, it deprived the area of another form of energy not measured by kilowatt-hours. It created a major blockage of the communities’ vital force-its chi.

The deteriorating Seattle seawall is symptomatic not only of infrastructure divestment, but is also an example of soul hydrography. In a heartbeat, the waters can engulf the high temples of power so serenely reflected on the surface of Elliot Bay.

William Blake called the 5 senses “the chief inlets of the soul in this age” (A happy turn of phrase for our theme.) Today, few consider that there might be other inlets, and forget lessons from former ages. Though decay of the materialist bulwark against the soul’s depths causes unease, we seem ever more walled off from the possibility of accord with unconscious dictates. These energies lie a thousand fathoms deep right off Seattle’s doorstep.

Emanuel Swedenborg’s reading of Genesis accounts the Ark as a vessel bearing remnants of the Ancient church. The waters Noah navigated drowned the remaining populace-the Nephilim- in materialism and greed. In Swedenborg’s esoteric reading of scripture, Nephilim denotes those whose inherent goodness and charity became immersed in selfish desires. Noah safeguarded secrets that held the key to gnosis, a mode of perception that maintained the spiritual life of man and, therefore, humanity itself. Though Swedenborg’s biblical interpretation addressed an inner history, involving preservation of an Arcana entirely different from chronological narrative, there are correspondences with the ecological disaster we face today. See Henry Corbin’s fascinating book, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam.

Happily, the Elwha dam is gone and the construction of a new seawall is in the works.

Musings

Hypergraphia-updated

Posted on February 23, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Writer’s cramp is neither a basic muscle problem, nor the high level disorder of the composition process seen in writer’s block, but somewhere in between.

Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease

1. I’m on my own for a week. Lily has left for Hawaii, leaving me to do something meaningful with my 7 days as a bachelor. Its time to start a post. Have I lost my ability to write since the last? Did I ever have it?

2. I’ve been reading my morning pages from 2010-2011. Those who follow of Julie Cameron’s Artist Way books know what I mean. Basically, you write 3 pages every morning whether you feel like it or not . Though I never progressed beyond this to her subsequent exercises, I’ve been doing them now for some 20 years (can it be true?)

After perusal of the pages and notating with the recommended red and green colored pencils, I see certain themes recur in dreams. Usually, I’m lost in some city looking for food and burdened with too much gear. The blockages I face in writing, art and life seem reflected in these endlessly recurring images of abandonment and loss in crowded cities somewhere to the south.

watercolor 036 — Watercolor by Craig Spencer

3. I listen to Hawaiian, slack key guitar and imagine what Lily is doing. A cascade of clear, lazy notes falls like rain on banana leaves while puffy clouds are blown across a vivid, blue sky with the tradewinds. ~~Festoons of bright jewels play over the dancing palms~~ Jewels of radiant light festoon the swaying palm trees while Lily does the hula.

4. I read more pages from 2010-11. There are exhortations to myself ~~to get~~ ~~moving-to overcome~~ ~~stasis.~~ to get moving. I throw pages out and keep only the dreams. These are the only things of interest-like the one of the earth gyres that inspired this painting. Only later did I realize it was a tribute to my ex-boss and dear friend Doug, who passed away from cancer 40 years after exposure to Agent Orange during the Viet Nam war.

The image of the twin gyres spiraling like whirlpools on the earth somehow seems related to this dilemma of intention versus receptivity. Or maybe Doug is simply telling me to get off my ass and get to work.

5. I told Lily before she left for Hawaii that its best not to stick to a set itinerary. Better to go with the flow, and adjust to circumstances over which you have no control (like volcanoes.) I might well have been speaking to myself as regards writing. After faced with a week of my own dark thoughts, negativity and acedia (sloth), I’ve decided to surrender to he natural ebb and flow of ideas and, like the ancient poets, call upon the muses for their aid in meeting the self-imposed weekly deadline for my blog post.

Port Madison, January '12 015 — Old Hand

6. ~~Today is overcast. The wind blows dark masses of cloud northward past the cell phone tower that looms overhead like an Archon whose only duty is to arrest my flights of prose.~~ Dark clouds fly past the cell tower looming overhead like an Archon whose sole duty is to arrest my flights of prose.

Maybe I’ll go clean the galley on my boat, Old Hand, or lay some dark hue on a fresh canvas and invite the muse into my fortress of solitude on the farm.

7. Why not write something? I resolve to have courage in the face of the blank page. I shall summon fortitude, and let not my hand be stayed by the inarticulate. O Muses, grant me a loftier theme! Inspire my oft-times loopy pen to transcribe thy song. Or at least not let my computer crash.

Musings

The Anchor-a cosmology

Posted on February 9, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Here is a painting of the Vickers memorial in Kane cemetery.

An angelic stone figure holding an anchor stands on a pedestal gazing up into the golden light that filters through the maple trees.

jacobs ladder — Jacob’s Ladder, by William Blake

The anchor has long been a symbol variously interpreted as faith, hope and soul. But I think there is another level of interpretation. The anchor and movement of chain as the tide rises and falls is a cosmological image. As the tides rises, the circle occupied by the vessel in its revolutions gets smaller until the chain is vertical, and remains, theoretically, in the center. This movement describes a cone shape.

Single Gyre

The geocentric, medieval image of the universe, though out-dated by Copernican discoveries, has its origin in human experience and is set to the measure of man’s ratio. It is a true cosmology because it defines spiritual co-ordinates and gives meaning to a world that, at certain points in history, tends toward a state of dissolution, of entropy. This image of the universe reflects a recurring pattern in civilization’s rise and fall, yearly cycles, and, on the microscopic level, the alternation of breath.

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the downward vortex where Satan resides at nethermost point of hell, cast down by gravity and the weight of sin, is mirrored in the ascending spiral of Mount Purgatory. In the medieval scheme of salvation, this point is the earthly paradise at the mountain’s summit. Martha Heyneman in her fascinating book, The Breathing Cathedral, likens this spiral to the movement of thread on a spindle. She sites Yeats’ vision of gyres, where the reciprocal upward and downward movement of these vortexes occur simultaneously. This reciprocal movement is like the souls ascent through the heavenly spheres at death and the corresponding descent of Divine Intellect into the manifest world, of the timeless dimension into the field of time.

In traditional societies, the dead were honored for their humble service, and the relationship between the dead and living was one of mutual reciprocity. We are culturally enriched by such simple gestures of remembrance. The honor conferred upon the dead completes a pact with the living and the departed are helped in their ascent toward knowledge and liberation.