Elongated tars loomed above us. Sherryl, Slim and me played in the sandbox directly under the movie screen. Dad had piled the family into the station wagon to see Moby Dick in 1956. Spars and blocks creaked with the ground swell. Ahab’s wooden leg thumped up the companionway before he turned to glower over the taffrail, compass in hand as though he’d forgotten it was there. He’s the very image of Saturn, that lugubrious old coot who circumscribes the weary world.
It was then I first heard the call, a faint echo in the Lydian mode.
And I hear it still, an aging live aboard long in memories and short on time; adrift in a tide race when I could be chilling before the latest remake of the same old sea story, grog in hand. But my mind must ever hie with the kelp’s sinuous curves into deeper soundings West.
Twenty years later I was an ex-con and Laguna Beach body surfer, turning and turning in the barreling beach break, arms outstretched as if in prayer.
My father turned mystical after Slim slipped LSD into his coffee in 1970 because he could no longer watch Dad physically abuse Mom when he raged at his lot; on swing shift at an LA chemical plant. After that dose, Dad really softened and began to heed Edgar Cayce’s prophesies about the darkening of the sun and the shifting of the poles–which I imagine are connected somehow.
That’s when I first read the Aeneid.
Twenty years on, Dad from his wheelchair on the Laguna cliffs, held lookout for whale-spouts on the sun burnished horizon; vexed by demons in his frontal lobe. It was as though we’d switched roles. I took charge and held a garage sale to clear the place for sale. Like an archaeologist, I dusted off old family relics with a wisk broom that came from our earliest years. Then, in a dream, I found a a copy of the Aeneid under a laurel-shaded altar of plywood at my own yard sale.
I see Aeneas carry his father on his shoulders from burning Troy as his father carries the household gods. I see him descend to Hades to ask his father’s shade the way.
Sherryl has since passed away. Slim still digs Miles Davis’s Lydian groove and I am left to tell the tale. I was but a boy who saw the hollow face of Saturn on a drive-in movie screen. Just as now, he’s rough-hewn in the rocky cliff as my boat bears away from the foreshore. He limps his sluggish round while, back home, the laurel tree’s shadow circles over the household gods, ever counter to the golden sun.
Category: poetry
Logboom Update
Number 25 of the season–whom I shall name William–was born around 0400 hours this morning. Marty, rising early for work, kindly kayaked around them in order to avoid disturbing the vital, bonding ritual between mom and newborn pup. Good on ya, mate.
The drama on the logboom is always entertaining. A yearling deposed William from the choice haulout spot for the latest pups, while Will’s mom growled and waved her flipper in righteous indignation at the clueless interloper. Harumph.
I named the latest two pups after William Blake and his brother, who appeared to the poet long after Robert’s passing; to guide him in the alchemical process of gravure. This relates to my last post about negative capability. Robert’s physical absence gave way to spiritual presence, which guided Blake into the mysteries of relief etching. This technique–which Blake was the first to use–requires a disolution of the copper plate in acidic hellfire in order to exalt the spiritual form as pure light.
Kathleen Raine writes of how the ancient Persephone myth appears in Blake’s poetry to symbolize the soul’s descent into the the material world. The Neo Platonists–whose philosophy Raine says informed Blake’s work–saw birth as death or banishment of the most vital and ineffable part of us.
O life of this our Spring! Why fades the lotus of the water? Why fade these children of the Spring, born but to smile and fall? Ah! Thel is like a watery bow, and like a parting cloud, like a reflection in the glass; like shadows in the water.
The Sepulchre of Malignia
Damnation of Drumph storyboard continued
Act 3, scene 1–Bedminster Cemetary, the Bardo of hungry ghosts. Demeter emerges from the woods at the base of a rocky hill to challenge Drumph.
Dem: Who dares violate the dark Goddess’s sanctum?
Drumph: This place has tremendous potential. Only the best people will come to my Ultimate Death theme park.
Chorus: All will come to the awesomely, spectacular, incredible Death.
Drumph: Malignia’s friend, Winston, can do the decor. Real class.
Chorus: Doom golden doom awaits the discriminting dead.
Is bird augury really fake news?
Drumph is building a tremendous crypt above the 18th green at his Bedminster Golf course with financing from Russian oligarchs. He calls a meeting where the Saudis express interest in exclusive burial plots. The tremendous Drumph Tomb is shown–bottom left–to the assembly. But Tiresias enters to proclaim disquieting omens regarding the end of the ancient Drumph line.
Storyboard for an Opera–the Damnation of Drumph
Setting–the world between worlds.
Time–the crossroads of time and eternity.
The Drumph organization deals in exclusive, New Jersey burial plots–which, in reality, are a front to launder rubles into the campaign. It’s a win/win for Vlad and Drumph, as the remains of Russian dissidents can thereby be processed for proper internment–as is proscribed by all that is just and holy. But Tiresias enters–stage left–bearing omens of doom. He foretells the fated fall of Drumph.
Watch for next episode–Malignia’s lament for the old country.
A View from the Wheelhouse 