Category: Poulsbo

Posted in Poulsbo, Seal log

The Selkies of Dogfish Bay

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

Last June I had the good fortune to land a job at at the Dogfish Bay Marina.  Aside from sweeping the docks, parking lot and the endless chores, I found myself cast in the role of a sort of ambassador between the human and the pinniped populations.  I experienced the trauma of a seal pup, abandoned by it’s mother, slowly die from starvation.

20160317_213128
Mother helping her pup onto haulout logs.

 

Seals must get a firm scent at birth in order to establish contact.  Immediately after birth, the mother clasps her newborn by the nape of the neck in order to get the scent.  If this process is interrupted, the mother fails to establish the link which allows her to “recognize” her pup.  Through the interference of a well-meaning child, this process was interrupted, and the mother let her offspring starve.  After the poor pup’s demise, she haunted the dock near where her pup had hauled out on the low swim-step of a speedboat; her eyes streaming with tears.

 

For ages, seals have emanated an aura of magic. In the Celtic stories of the Selkies, a hunter, on a quest for worldly riches, is summoned into the depths by a shape-shifting, seal messenger of Lachlann’s undersea Kingdom.  After a lengthy stay, the hero returns to terra firma transformed by his experience–a wiser, more compassionate being.  His cruel, rapacious heart is softened by his ordeal and he emerges a changed man; one who has seen the depths of profound reality below the selfish preoccupations with material gain. Such a visitation by the Selkie heralds an epiphany– an awareness of our deep relatedness with all creation.

20160317_133337
Komokwa–Chief of the undersea Kingdom and master and protector of seals

 

Among Northwest tribes, seal people played a role as emissary of their guardian King, Komokwa, in the winter Tseteka–shaman–dances where supernatural beings came from the spirit world to initiate the young into the dancing societies.  A seal conducted the novice into the submarine world where, after a period of fasting and prayer, he returned to the tribe in a canoe laden with a wealth of copper, to found a new lineage which was then honored in the dancing houses.20160317_201531

By day, the lumbering hulks of seals lounge on the docks.  One night, I saw a flash of green phosphorescence as the seals sped below the surface of Dogfish Bay.  These mercurial denizens of the deep bridge the yawning divide between the conscious and unconscious energies, and guide the seeker into timeless mysteries where shadowy beings lie below the reflective surface of the sea.  Their uncanny visitations shake up our smug assumptions of human supremacy and herald a new awareness based in feeling, compassion, and illumined by the transfiguring light of dreams.

This is my first post telling of my experience as pinniped ambassador, documenting scientific observation, and evoking the mythology of seals.  I hope my blog is informative as well as therapeutic.  After the traumatic death of Bobby last Summer, I wish to be better prepared to deal with all the many, tragi-comic aspects of the birthing season.

Posted in Art, Off the Wall, Poulsbo, Uncategorized

Winslow Heat–Flashback

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

So I took the Prince Ivan thoroughfare up the hill to the east of town to where Joel had said E.G’s new developments were. It seems a big mall was in the works and EG, with the backing of some Ohio LLC, was building a pharmaceutical emporium and a corgie day care center. There was a broohaha when local poodle lovers had protested this plan as being discriminatory against their chosen breed, and had filed a complaint with the City to that effect. But the mayor, being a member of the Little Siberia corgie society, set them straight on that score, and the permit had fairly sailed over the desk of her brother Vinnie in the planning department.

I turned onto a gravel road that led north into the woods. A white and yellow building notice was spiked on the wide based of an old-growth cedar. I got out and walked down the road until I saw a short old guy with ruddy complexion being led by, what appeared to be, his grand daughter. After a respectful greeting I asked:

“Did you know this parcel is being developed by a mobster?”

I’ve been told, that for a private eye, I exhibit a marked lack of discretion, and this was not lost on his grand daughter who attended his obvious infirmity with touching solicitude. He hobbled, leered at me with a sideways grin, and said in a thick, southern Italian accent:

“That’s good. It will be protection.”

I got back into the Dart, lit a cigarette, and thought it over. All the seemingly casual series of events now funneled into an inevitable vortex in which the alluring image of Lupe flowed with languid abandon in the smoky arabesques of my square.

I suddenly became quite nervous indeed. For here in this lonely stretch of woods, all the crazy, disconnected events that transpired on the rock added up in a most disconcerting manner. It was as if all the paranoid imaginings of my troubled adolescence had come to realization; and the events of the past week had formed into a clear pattern. Most of all, I saw that no interference in the schemes of real estate speculators to realize a tidy profit would be welcome—especially such interference as might be offered by a simple artist like myself who does detective work as a sideline.

I was having, what we used to call, a flashback, and all these horrid imaginings unfixed my hair and made my heart knock frantically against all the studied uses of cool. The line between real and imagined dangers  becomes very sketchy at times, and steadier mugs than myself have found serious trouble in extravagant delusions and a swell dame in a skin-tight, sequined dress. At such moments it behooves a simple gumshoe like myself to breathe deep, take a powder, and intone the sacred mantra: Fuck that.

Posted in Art, Poulsbo

Little Siberia

Posted on by Dogfish Bay
Past the Old Man Bridge is a harbor town founded by Russian emigre’s during the great War who had settled along it’s muddy shores to ply the dog-fishing trade as had long done in the home country.  I was led to this quaint town by a tip from Joel the barkeep at the Boundless Euphoria nightclub, who had said that the shady history of my new client, Edward G. might be found behind the gaudily painted facades of Little Siberia.  Joel is a failed impressionists who’s only hook seems to be early Peter Lorre.  In fact, Mochtar the Sikh says Joel really is the 21 st Century Avatar of Peter Lorre himself.  Be that as it may, Joel is prone wild imaginings when under the influence of his latest intoxicant dou jour which, as became evident as he waxed morbidly poetic with bug-eyed intensity about the satanic influence on local politics, to be of the hallucinatory variety.
 
  “Sy, I heard you were working for E.G…”
 
  “Yeah.  What do you know about him?”
 
  “He is, shall we say, in league with Mephistopheles.”
 
Dealing with nut-jobs is part of the job description.  I’m Sy Caymore, private eye.
 
Edward G,  the tragedian mobster–who did real estate transactions on the side–had hired me to help with his scheme to move the Grandiose Forest to Eagledale.  He had this hair-brained plan to reverse the course of western history, restore the sovereign right of kings, and score a nifty forest for his new racket club; a scheme that had all the makings of some looney, Shakespearean Tragedy for which, it appeared, Edward G had cast me in the role of unwitting stooge.  Against my better judgment, I’d taken the case in hopes of enhancing my meager bank account and getting some new material for a mystery novel I had been wrestling with for some time.
 As I crawled over Old Man Bridge in my ’66 Dodge Dart I had plenty time to think.  There is no better automobile for traversing the City of Night.  It’s revolutionary torsion air-ride and flight-sweep styling commands respect among the pale hipsters who haunt the labyrinthine city of delusion; and though the dashboard may go pixilated, technacolor haywire and transmit coded messages from the outer reaches of space, she now exhibited the sure-footed dignity of a thoroughbred as I negotiated the snarled Island Expressway. 
 
Joel had said the Mayor of Little Siberia might shed light on the Grandiose scam, and clues to E. G,’s shady past might be found among the brick, archival vaults of Little Siberia’s City Hall.  I pulled into the parking garage and took the elevator to a lofty hall where maritime artifacts were on display.  A Grand Banks dory, still manned by a skeleton in foul weather gear, lay under florescent lights, looking like it had just been hoisted from the murky waters of Dogfish Bay.  Display cases held models of the old fishing fleet that had once fitted out here for their seasonal voyage to the Bearing Sea. 
 At first, the place looked empty.  Then I saw a curly haired woman in overalls and Birkenstocks seated before an ancient laptop.  She had the wholesome aspect of an organic farmer.
 
“Excuse me, I’m looking for the mayor.”
 
 “That would be me,” she said with a bright, welcoming smile. 
 
I was pleasantly surprised.  Such open-faced candor is rare in Winslow, where getting a word—kind or otherwise – from city officials is like pulling teeth.
 
“Would you know anything about Edward G Snobinson and some wacky scheme to heist the Grandiose
 forest and remove it to the Dunsinane Racket Club in Eagledale?”
 
 Her pleasant manner suddenly vanished and she said with thinly veiled menace:
 “Questions like that can get you a permanent mooring on the bottom of Dogfish Bay.”