Category: Uncategorized

Posted in Uncategorized

Mesopotamia Voyage

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

“What do you do when you see a gauge rise?”

Professor Budge asked sharply.

“I’d open a valve” I stammered.

“All at once?”

His intensely earnest tone unnerved me. McWhirr had told me how the engineer’s—we called him the Professor—long, solitary hours below decks had gone to his head. Apparently, he was also an amateur linguist and had recently developed a keen interest in ancient Mesopotamian texts. Beyond the maze of pipes, gauges and boilers behind him, a blackboard was mounted on the steel bulkhead on which was written in chalk:

Climb the walls of Uruk, walk its length.

Survey the foundation, study the brickwork.

There—is it not made with oven baked bricks?

Did the Seven Sages not lay its foundations?

The professor went on: “Of course the amount of change in the glass will depend on where the pipe connects to the bottom of the boiler, because there the water column is cooler and gives only a partial…”

“Stations men! We’re in for a dusting!” McWhirr called through the speaking horn.

I rushed up the ladder to see McWhirr squinting through the wheelhouse windows at the dark, lowering clouds. Our boat began to pitch violently in a chop that had suddenly transformed the placid surface of the river into a seething snarl of whitecaps. I’d heard of storms on the Euphrates but, being a strictly blue-water sailor, thought them merely overblown yarns told by salts in the far-flung grog-shops of the globe. But here it was, a veritable hurricane, as if the whole river was pounding against our bows like the fabled flood that crushes walls of stone.

“Steady Mister Budge, it’s only a capful of wind,”

Wrestling the wheel, McWhirr yelled: “Nebuchadnezzar’s Quay is only around the bend. If we can get there before fetching up on a mudbank we’ll be golden. And Mister Spencer, pay heed to the professor. He may have a few bolts loose, but he knows his stuff!”

We’d been commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania Museum to ship antiquities found by the Punnett excavations upriver at Nippur. Captain McWhirr had taken the opportunity to make a few lira by hauling priceless artifacts down a pirate infested river on the paddle-wheel steamer, the Samaramis.

Map of Nippur

Posted in poetry, Uncategorized

Occident II—-a family history

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

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.

Posted in Uncategorized

Reblog of a ten year old post

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

The return of Saturnius McWhirr

https://aviewfromoldhand.com/2014/11/10/babylon-saga-skirmish-with-the-nihilists/?page_id=5175
I’ve decided to get back to work on this sailing yarn set in Mesopotamia. Our story fetched up on a mudbank somewhere on the Euphrates–or did it founder in the rocky pass of Is Geria in the hurricane of 1889? In any case, dear reader, forgive the faltering ellipses; they are nothing compared with the vast stretches of time and space that lie before us as we resume our voyage into the very cradle of civilization.

Posted in Art, Musings, Uncategorized

The Alchemy of Bird Poop

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

The real mystery does not behave mysteriously, but speaks a secret language.

                                                                       –Carl Gustav Jung20160919_101939.jpg

Bird poop is the Prima Materia of the opus, the alpha and omega of the great work of the philosophers.  Transmuted and transfigured by the alchemical fire in the sealed retort of the adepts, the excretions of our winged brethren reveal the grand pageant of creation on the microcosmic scale.  I shall endeavor to elucidate the arcana of avian excrement and thereby elevate my humble office of brush bearer to that of high art; to seek amid the white glyphs that adorn the docks a sign that might illuminate secrets of a hidden world.20160504_183526

 

Bird poop is the mother of all elements, without beginning, existent from all eternity and mixed with the handful of primal earth Adam brought forth from Eden.  It is found always and everywhere.  It contains the Divine presence in the obdurate whiteness of its adamantine– and often goopy–reality.  It is both the beginning and end of the great work, the primal ooze from which the aspirant takes flight into the rarefied spheres of heavenly gnossis.

This post is the first in a series logging my daily circumambulation, bearing the broom of my high office.  The broom is the emblem of adepts, the standard of those who seek the philosopher’s stone among the crustacean beasties that reign over the intertidal zone.

Posted in Musings, Uncategorized

Tales of the Tot Lot 2

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

So the land swap was stopped when the City Attorney admonished the Council it was their obligation to compel Parks to abide by the terms of the transfer and honor the restrictions.  The Council then voted unanimously to record a conservation easement which would preserve the Tot Lot in perpetuity.

But then, Val Tollefson moved to delay the recording of the Conservation Easement while an access road was worked out between Laughlin, Parks, and the adjacent, Madison Cottages community. It seems the Madison Cottages folk decide it best to accommodate the access road because if the Wyatt Cottages proposal is not granted, a more intrusive and aesthetically disagreeable development might replace the good work of Cutler/Anderson Architects.

Point well taken, but too smacking of defeatist accommodation for me. And since the good folk of Madison Cottages represent a mere fraction of Park’s-going public, why should they have such disproportionate influence?

We await the announcement of the Wyatt Cottages proposal to the Design Review Board with a mixture of dread and anticipation. Will the concerned parties present accurate information this time around regarding the Declarations of Covenants, Restrictions and Reciprocal Easements–remember those?

This is but a sketch of a convoluted tale of intrigue. There remain such details as the erroneous reports by the County Assessor, a land value increase of nearly 80% the very year the property was transferred to Parks, the “disappearance” of the studio from the assessor’s building report 2 years before it was demolished, the miraculous appearance of a ghostly pole-frame building, mysterious address changes, and specious readings of legal terms.

It seems we are afflicted with a double denial of many troubling aspects of the concurrent Wyatt Cottages and Suzuki developments. On the one hand, the Madison Cottages community–as well as the Friends of Suzuki– sweep the shady history of land transfers to Parks under the rug. On the other, we have the present Council embarrassed by their part in obscuring Parks and the previous Council’s questionable deeds. Add to this HRB’s reluctance to jeprodise Council support by allowing public scrutiny of these sketchy practices, and the tight-lipped, good old boys in the Building Department, and you have a first class cover-up.

All sides of this debate can be said to lack transparency.  We need a fresh and honest perspective on the issues that shape the island’s future. We need tranlate our high ideals of inclusiveness and economic equality into practical solutions while preserving the precious remnants of our natural environment.

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 Uncategorized

Old Hand’s Indonesian Voyage–part 3

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

We piled in the skiff and I rowed toward a dilapidated pierhead while McWhirr continued his narration.
“My grandfather also told a darker tale. He said the streets of old Batavia were paved with sorrow, the walls built with the grief of mothers who toiled over an illusory harvest, it’s ramparts manned by desiccated souls who invested all their goods in the virtual fun-house of Mammon.“

We ascended the quay to the cobbled road.  McWhirr’s words had conjured a fantastic image of despair, though, in my green youth, I could scarce fathom the depths of his narration.
McWhirr hailed a bicak.  How this small guy was going to haul us and our seabags in the little tricycle was beyond me. His name was Rubio.  He was a grinning, eager pilot who pedaled like a fiend and navigated Jakarta like some Vasco de Gama of the alleyways.
Rubio brought us to the crumbling, neo-classical facade and we passed through the weathered teak door into the club.  While McWhirr ordered a couple pints I looked around.  A Strawberry Alarm clock tribute band blasted onstage.
Soon McWhirr came with the drinks and said: “Here’s to the Queen.”

I picked up a battered book lying on the table and read:
–And it came to pass that a great swarm of splog descended upon the land and the
soundcloud was darkened with idle slander and empty promises of sensual delights.  Worshippers of the true faith were subjected to the false blandishments of priests and the perfidious purveyors of illusory commerce.  And the once mighty creatives of the realm looked upon their followers and found naught of artistic merit and grew heavy in spirit, seeing therein ought but Jezebelian allurements by comely maids in unseemly attitudes of licentious repose–

“I’m glad I wore my sea-boots,” said McWhirr.
“Listen to this, Captain:”
–And lo, the verminous swarm of splog grew apace, and the goodly scions of the realm gnashed their teeth in anguish, for their earnest, artistic efforts were devoured by the black vultures of Satan. The fat herds of the righteous became but reeking carrion for the voracious appetites of the infidels–
“What fools would steal such windy bombast anyway?” asked McWhirr.
The joint appeared to serve a clientele of wharf-rats and scurvy rum-bots from dilapidated bum-boats.  One smelly clutch of waisters clicked madly at their laptops, their rummy faces aglow in the in the villainous blue light.
“Get this, a real Byron he thinks he is,” said a muscled hulk in a pink tutu.

“Ya really read that BS? “
Asked his mate in a voice  that sounded hollow and grating-like 50 fathoms of hause-fouled chain.
I’d heard of the splog pirates, but thought them mere paranoid tales by rummy tars around the fo’c’sle stove. And now here they were, as big as life, waylaying the earnest efforts of my myself and my literary colleagues like the nefarious ship wreckers luring unwary vessels with false
lights on the storm-wracked coast of Cornwall.

I continued reading:

-The once proud sites of the righteous became barren wastes of vacuous splogs and brazen images of bouncing titties–

“Maybe there is something to it after all,” says McWhirr.

“Aye, Captain. And look what we have now in this rank grog-shop of the internet-a foul lot of brazen cut-throats  who’d just as soon steal your traffic as say how-do-ye-do.”

One such galoot, a skanky brigand with a striped shirt and cutlass, approached the bar next to McWhirr with the slithery movement of a wolf eel saying:

“Eh mates, stand us a pint.”

I hastened to intervene.

“My good sir, may I introduce Saturnius Machirr?”

At this, the miscreant grew pale as an albino beluga and withdrew with an obsequeous bow.

“Most honored to meet you.”

Posted in Uncategorized

Old Hand’s Indonesian Voyage–part 2

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

The gamelan orchestra still echoed over the calm anchorage as we sat in Old Hand’s saloon scarfing a late dinner of kippers and ale.
I’d signed  aboard the stout cutter for a perilous voyage across the Indian Ocean in search of adventure.  But adventure appeals only to clueless greenhorns like myself, it being but  a foolish, romantic notion to seasoned salts like McWhirr, a pragmatic Quaker who has had his fill of adventure on the seas.
I’d heard he’d fallen among adherents of the Zoroastrian persuasion. Or was it some Sufi sect whose adherents await the 12th Imam’s return and wander the storm-wracked shores of this world seeking some vestige of a golden age–a relic safeguarded from the literalist creed by occult signs that can be decoded only in the secret halls of pure imagination?

McWhirr, his face lit amber in the oil lamp’s amber glow, leaned back and lit his battered pipe.
“I first heard of the India Rubber Theme Park when but a nipper on my grandfather’s knee. He told me of the Neo-Liberal Art Exhibition, the wonders of the Pharmaceutical Pavilion and how he once saw the CEO of Walmart. He told me yarns of how it’s foundations had first been laid in the 21st Century by drones captured during the great rubber wars.

That was a simpler time, when India Rubber ruled the whole archipelago.  Now it’s dog eat dog, with upstart pirates trying to challenge the Dutch rubber monopoly and their quasi-governmental powers by fair means or foul.

Posted in Uncategorized

Old Hand’s Indonesian Voyage 1–A reblog of an earlier post

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

wpid-2014-12-08-14.04.04.jpg.jpeg“Ashadu-an-la…”
Came the loud scratchy blare of loudspeakers over the still anchorage.
“Ilaha illa allah…”
I rose disgruntled and ascended the companionway to see McWhirr standing on deck, still in his black watch coat despite the fast-
rising heat.  His normally stark, grim profile appeared transformed by the dawn light with an aura of rapturous praise.
Not wanting to disturb his meditations, I returned below and put on a pot of joseph.

After a harrowing passage through
the Sunda Strait, we’d anchored in the Sunda Kelapa harbour the night before under the tall spires of north Jakarta.  I’d had a fitful sleep, and the portentous imagery of my dreams had been confounded by a blasted, bleeping racket that still echoed over the calm anchorage.  Turns out we’d brought up just off the Ancol Theme Park.
McWhirr came below.  I handed him a cup and ventured:
“Captain, why have we sailed into this steaming latitude?”
For indeed, it was cruel muggy and a pall of charcoal gray hung over the city.
McWhirr lit his pipe and said:
“I was but a green swab surfing the long fetch of the seven cyber-seas when I first heard of the East Indies.  That was a simpler time, when a single multinational corporation called the IndiaRubber.com ruled the whole archipelago.  Now it’s dog eat dog, with upstart pirates trying to challenge the Dutch spice monopoly and their quasi-governmental powers by fair means or foul.”
“But take care son,” he said darkly, “one word from the Dutch, colonial CEO and we could be standing before a firing squad before you can say: Garcia Lorca.”