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.
Tag: esoteric
The Alchemy of Bird Poop
The real mystery does not behave mysteriously, but speaks a secret language.
–Carl Gustav Jung
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.
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.
The Selkies of 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.
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.
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.
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.
OLd Hand’s Indonesian Voyage part 4–The Wayang Kulit
Old Han’s Indonesian Voyage–part 4. I meet the Great Marlow
Soon, having to pump the bilges, I made my way to the back of the Stygian nightclub where I saw a distinguished, bearded gent who sat before an old Underwood typewriter. His gaunt frame mummified in musty, moth-eaten tweeds while his ponderous brows were wreathed in a smokey corona of golden light. On closer inspection, I saw he was merely one of the automated fortune-tellers found in the Batavian Capitol. His face was vaguely familiar. On the table front was displayed a sign which read: The Great Marlowe. Your fortune 25 cents.
I dropped a coin into the slot. There was a slight sound from under the table which again halted, began again and increased in speed and volume until the music of bellows and steam pipes sounded over a cacophony of grinding gears like the high registers of Saint Mark’s Cathedral organ. The tweedy automaton typed, sputtered to a wheezing halt and ejected a sheet of paper at my feet.
It read: You will soon meet a distinguished monkey.
Old Hand’s Indonesian Voyage–part 3
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.”
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.”
Old Hand’s Indonesian Voyage–episode 1
The bewitching breezes that had vexed our northerly course along the bleak, rocky coast gave way to an absolute calm as we steamed into Sunda Kelepa Harbour and brought up under the ornate, lofty spires of Jakarta. It was as though the anchorage were under the spell of some vengeful deity that held the stagnant seaport in irons– a fitful sleep of waking dream. I gazed up at Jakarta’s towers and heard, high on the ramparts, Rama’s gong-struck plea to deliver a flute-weeping Sita from Ranga’s jangling curse. A sword held against a blood-red sky by masked Barong tragediennes brought down the threadbare, red curtain in the ritual re- enactment of the primal leave-taking and arrival; when carved gods glared from the bowsprit, holding vigilant watch against marauders while we were moored off the savage isle of dreams. I too, have sat hungry around those ancestral fires, a villan, hero or common swab, subject to the changeable turns of karmic law..
.“Skip lively, Mister Spencer.”
The resonant voice was hoarse, as if weathered by eternal watches on the Greenland ice, or worn ragged from hurling oaths into the teeth of a gale. I flaked out 5 fathoms of chain from the locker with hamfisted elegance.
“Nicely done, lad. Ye’ll be a sailor before long.”
McWhirr is a pain in the ass sometimes. He’s a relic of working sail and can be as dark as Ahab in rehab on a bad hair day. He stood stark against the red sky like a weathered piling on a rocky cape. Light flickered through the dark shrouds, his shadow looming on the limp stays’l behind him, as if projected on a movie screen. The harrowing passage through the Sunda Strait had frayed my nerves and I groped clumsily the 3/8ths chain from the locker.
“All right, Mister Spencer.”
I let go the anchor. There sounded a low rumble as I paid out 3 fathoms of chain into the muddy bottom of Sunda Kelapa Harbour.
“Have you paid out enough scope, lad?”
“I cast the anchor in 6 fath…” I said.
“Avast, Ya greenhorn! You don’t “cast” anchors. This isn’t fly-fishing! My gorge rises at such lubberly misuse of sailing language.”
His wrath, like a line-squall, subsided as rapidly as it came.
“Did you know that to raise an anchor you must first let it go?”
“That’s true, sir.”
He always makes these pithy pronouncements like they were scripture. And, for McWhirr the act of sailing is a religious rite. He hails from Zoroastrian, Quaker stock and, for him, a ship is a vessel to carry his weary spirit ascending through the seven concentric spheres of corporeality to the final landfall of essential being. He has seen the beatific vision reflected on the sea’s mirror and it draws him ever northward in search of the true face of divinity behind the mask of appearance.
NEW PAINTING – THE PHILOSOPHER’S ROSE GARDEN
Temenos 5
A View from the Wheelhouse 