imaginary outfit: shark researcher

As a crusading research/activist for our misunderstood cartilaginous brethren, most of my year would be spent on the seas, with only the trusty crew of my research vessel for company. Bone-chilling dives and long days on deck with a spotting scope slowly yield data, which is pored over and run through complex spreadsheets in the quest for clues to shark behavior. Back on land, after attending marine biology conferences where our meticulous research is discussed and debated and hashing out many proposals by would-be documentarians, I would visit the aquarium, marveling again at the wonders of the finny deep and wishing to be back on my boat.

shark lady

Not many appreciate the ultimate power and potential usefulness of basic knowledge accumulated by obscure, unseen investigators who, in a lifetime of intensive study, may never see any practical use for their findings but who go on seeking answers to the unknown without thought of financial or practical gain.

Eugenie Clark (b. 1922), U.S. marine biologist, author. From The Lady and the Sharks.

A hero of mine since I was a little girl and discovered this book.

Photo from here. I especially love the picture of her in a natty sun dress working with the lemon sharks.

diving into the wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Adrienne Rich, 'Diving into the Wreck'

Photo from here.

sun + a black sea

Wayne Pate silkscreen poster - Setting Of The Rising Sun.

four bruises

Four Bruises from Mike Mills' Humans. Via Hoping for Happy Accidents.

bite marks

Rick Myers' Bite Marks in Paper. From Nieves:

'Bite Marks in Paper presents a series of intimate structures which function somewhere between two and three dimensions. Over the course of twelve months Myers used the action of biting paper to create a series of blind embossed paper documents, suggesting fragments of the everyday, as unique records of the impulses that precipitated them.'

rise and set

The World Sunlight Map is a 'real-time, computer-generated illustration of the earth's patterns of sunlight and darkness. The clouds are updated every 3 hours with current weather satellite imagery.'

Nifty.

'the simplest example of the truly complex'

' ... a glass is an example, probably the simplest example, of the truly complex ...'

Dr. Peter Harrowell, University of Sydney

An article that made me look at my juice glass with a little bit of awe ...

fireflies

Happy weekend. Chase some, if you get the chance.

From Jane Tam's blog.

look out - sharks!

Alexander Calder shark pull toy.

burning river

When I was at school in Ireland, I only had one professor who knew anything about Cleveland. Whenever he introduced me, he would say, "This is Stephanie - she's from the city where the river burned."

The fire my professor was thinking of was in 1969, but the river burned many times before that. This is a photo from the worst fire, November 1952.

Photo by James Thomas. November 3, 1952. Via Cleveland Memory.

plywood sofa

This plywood sofa from Piet Hein Eek is making me wish for power tools. Spotted at Apartment Therapy.

overalls

George Hoyningen Huene, 'Lee Miller Wearing Yraide Sailcloth Overalls' - 1930. Via Royal Deluxe.

Mociun cropped overall at Beklina.

tools

Five Feet of Colorful Tools, 1962.


Drywall Hammer. 1973. From the Untitled Tools series.


Five Paintbrushes (second state), 1973

All Jim Dine.

lost found art

Lost Found Art. Found via d. sharp's journal.

become part of the poetry producing masses

'Let’s say you’re the average person who gets up in the morning, reads some poetry with your Honey Nut Cheerios, hops on a jammed subway car with your poetry newspaper folded vertically in half, works from 9 to 5 with only a few poetry breaks in between, and then after a long day comes home to read some inspirational sonnets in the warm glow of your inglenook. You’re tired of being part of the poetry-consuming masses and want to become part of the poetry-producing masses.'

from Poetry by the Numbers: Eight shortcuts to writing timeless odes and getting $$$ for it by Gary Rudoren.

mass migration

Beautiful.