Winter Waters

walking by the lake blue-white in half-melte
distant scraping resolves to
sails further out, skaters with parasails
in just enough wind, metal on ice
wet gliding, steel shaving, memory of iceboats

several hours' drive further north
there are bear tracks in late snow
some kind of quiet god woken too early
to own his still-twilit domain
long summer evenings have not yet sprung
out of blue bogs, green cattails, moose brown

there's a river only half-awake
this blue hour of year, stone clatter
musical chime of cold flow on icicle
blue tears hung by spray on granite over shale ledge
this single river carving its shallow valley
scrapes dense kraton, tough sheets, resistant caprock

even further where loons will migrate later
hallow sea-edge open watered haloed green
white pack ice wind-sails into the corner bay
lead left half-open, ready someday for seals
where shallow river-mouth meets tidal swell

we write what we have, when it comes
on shore sand, on half-drowned leaf
brown with tannins and river rust
the land writes on my own waters
circulating sea-tide of red blood and bone shell
skull under skin just waiting its time to emerge

back south in more habitable home
late snow coats milkweed pods whiter
than white, late broken buds exploding with cotton
wild rice stalks clump like black bamboo
and the ring of open water mudding the shore shines

long waves pull us across

Another dream of water rising last night, interrupted by waking. Whenever I have one of these dreams in which water rises out of the earth, and moves with a life of its own, usually it means that soon a creative surge will wash over me. They are waters of the spirit, rising from that black underground river that is the source of and power behind everything that I do. This wave rising last night felt like the end of a period of dry tribulation, a closure on the aches of recent days. I wake to wind and cool skies, the flowers in the garden shockingly bright in the morning sun.

•

water clear transparent foamless
only a little floatsam in its crystal polygons
surges up in tall waves that we ride
across the concrete dock

we came here on a mission
urgent laconic well-informed
gathered in this concrete shelter
as storm floods rose high outside

now waves rise and pull us smooth
across the long floor's scatter of tools
I receive a call from the home office
I am summoned there directly

to solve some unnamed problem
so our group splits up for now
waves of water rising clear not cold
carry me past docks to open sky land

•

In recent days I find myself wanting to record significant dreams, when there are any, in the form of poems. Poems, rather than prose, because I can use in a poem dream-logic language, compressed and telegraphic, full of archetypal images that you can just present without feeling like you need to explain them. Poems are closer to dream-language anyway. Much closer than most prose, except of course prose-poems. There is a tradition of dream-poems, of course, from ancient times to modern. Maybe I'll end up with a set of dream-poems, a small body of work, before I move on to the next thing. I don't plan poems ahead like that, though. I just wait to see what happens.

That source of creative power, that underground river, when it surges, you do best to ride on its waves in the middle of the current. You cannot force something so much greater than yourself into a narrow channel of your own ambitions; it will explode outwards and break through the banks. Don't try to get too close to shore, just stay on your raft. The surge will eventually level out, although it's likely to return again later on, and meanwhile the water level is higher than before. A bard surfs these waves rather than being so unwise as to try to paddle against them. Going with the flow, indeed.

Autumnal Equinox

Waters Rising

Waterline I, San Gregorio, CA, 2005

I’ve been having dreams of waters rising, several times over the past weeks. Last night, the last image before waking of was looking over a deep wind-rippled pond or lake at dusk, lights reflected in the water; the surface of the pond was restless, but there were deep waters underneath, half-revealed, half-concealed by the lights reflecting on the water. A week ago, I dreamed of flood waters rising, making the land where I lived into mud, and threatening to flood the dwellings where we lived. Inn the past week, I've dreamed more than once of sleeping outdoors, under the stars, sometimes in group urban tent-camp settings (which you sometimes do during a weekend art fair in university towns); each of these dreams of sleeping outdoors, on the land, has ended with imagery of waters rising.


Willow River State Park, WI, circa 2001

I’ve learned to associate these dreams as harbingers of the rising of the waters of the deep mind, the unconscious. The deep waters of the unconscious are a source of mystery, wonder, power, and healing, for me. (This is actually a Jungian archetype of the collective unconscious, not only my personal symbol.) Sometimes the rising waters appear as flood waters; sometimes as deep wells in the earth, sometimes in a cave, full of cold, clear, sweet-tasting water. (The well of wisdom in a cave is also an ancient Celtic religious symbol, I've discovered.)

There was one dream that was so unique I've never forgotten it: In that instance, the waters appeared as lines inscribed into a red stone patio; the red stone was of the red sandstone type found in the Southwest, vivid red; the patio was hot underfoot in the sunlight; the water was moving through inscribed lines and patterns and channels in the flagstones of the patio, like a labyrinth made of water; and the water lines reflected the pure blue of the sky overhead. Blue lines of water flowing through hot red stone, going somewhere I couldn't see, perhaps to a pool nearby and out of sight; but it was clear the waters were not still nor stagnant, but constantly in motion, flowing through the stone.

When such images and/or symbols appear in your dreams, especially several times within a short period of time, it's wise to pay attention.

The rising up of dark waters into the light of day is associated, for me, with the rising up of power, of creativity, of intuition, of information. Waters rising from the depths and flooding out over the land, over me. Every time I’ve had dreams like this, something big has moved upwards inside me, or some block has been opened, or new insights are gained, or I’ve experienced a huge surge in creativity combined with insight and intuition. The waters of that black underground river which is the power under life, which sustains me, which is the river of creative force that feeds my ability to make art. The black river underground that rises up through the wells, that flows into the creative work I'm doing, no matter what medium I'm working in at the time.

I welcome these dreamtime events, when they happen. They are a gift of grace and power from the gods, and not to be ignored or dismissed lightly. As I said, they have often been harbingers of change in the waking world.


Water drop in pothole, Interstate Park, MN, circa 1998

Water is a constant theme in my visual art. I make many photographs of water in nature. I love reflections in water and glass, that give a sense of depth and movement to an otherwise static scene. I spend a lot of my time out in the world making nature photographs near bodies of water. Rivers, lakes, the ocean. Ponds, streams, sheets of water making tidal flats into mirrors. Many of my own favorite photographs have water in them, in one form or another. We live on a planet that is mostly covered with water; and our blood has the same mineral mix and acidity as seawater, from which we arose.



I was once invited to present an exhibition of my photographs in a community center in the Twin Cities. I chose water as my theme, and made the logo above to represent the show. I set the type in Illustrator, then turned it into an art object in Photoshop, chromed it, and built the water reflection underneath. The show was a critical success (albeit not a financial one).


Water Gateway, unused image from Spiral Dance

Waters rising. I wonder what they will bring forward, this time, out of the depths.

Autumn, Sky, Waves

Stairway

Stairway

Every so often, browsing through my photo archives, an idea for an image comes to me, when a few elements start to come together in my mind. Even on roadtrips with planned subjects, I also shoot a lot of photos not as pure photos, but as stock images, or as elements for future Photoshop collages.

Every so often, when browsing through photo elements, an idea for a collage image comes to me. These are not really Surrealist images, but post-surrealist. They owe more to the influence of one of my favorite photographers, Jerry Uelsmann, who for many years has made post-surreal photo collages in his darkroom, working with many negatives and masks and exposures to create master prints of his visionary art. From the very beginning of my work with Photoshop, I began doing something similar, albeit in the primarily digital domain.

This piece, Stairway came together over the las few nights, as I was looking at recent photos. The river image is of Turtle Creek, my local beloved river. The stairs are from a mountainous city park in Portland, OR. The model is from an outdoors model shoot I did over a year ago.

I like the combined result for its synergy, the combined effect that creates something new out of the individual elements, taking the finished image in a direction none of the elements implied only by themselves. The river becomes a tiled path, perhaps, with a traveler walking along its surface. Or a wet pavement street, or waterway. The reflection of the stairs in the sky becomes perhaps a shelter, or another path entirely, or an echo of the basic forms.

Here's the original color image of Turtle Creek, that served as a base for this collage:



The idea of superimposing the stairs came along as I continued browsing through images. It seemed like a natural fit, and I worked fairly extensively to get the right positioning and layering effects to their final state. The model was almost an afterthought, but quickly became essential to the concept of the piece. I did create a new wave reflection of the person to superimpose over the water, and the stairs.

In making these photocollage images, I often end up working in B&W rather than color. That's partly because so many individual photo elements don't match up in color, due to lighting and location. But working in B&W is also partly about making a composition in unified tonal effects, with unified lighting and tones, which is easier to assemble in B&W. So, those are the technical reasons for working in B&W.

There are aesthetic reasons, as well. Partly the history of photography, not to mention gallery culture, still recognizes B&W images as more "fine art" than color images, most of the time. That bias is still present. More importantly, there is a pleasure in B&W imagery that is purely about shapes, compositions, forms, lighting, and sensuality. You are freed up in some ways to think outside the usual photographer's mental box, when you don't also have to deal with color.

There is something very sensual about B&W, a different kind of sensuality than color: more of artifice than reportage, more subject to creative mastery. B&W is inherently more artificial than a color snapshot—which is one reason it's taken to be more fine art than color, still—and as a more artificial artform, it shows the artifice, the conceptual toolmarks of the artist's imagination, visualization, and execution.

Another way of breaking out of photography's sensual box that I have been experimenting with lately is to convert a color image to B&W leaving only one key element in color. I find that monochrome color often works for this approach.

Spring Rain at Devil's Lake

images from Devil's Lake State Park, WI, April 2010

After a short roadtrip up to Minnesota, I spent the night at Devil's Lake. I slept in the back of the truck, warm and cozy. During the night it began to rain, hard at times, with high winds. In the morning, before heading on down the road towards home, I spent some time in the rain-sodden park, making photographs.









clouds cover East Bluff,
threading the Devil's Doorway—
needle of memory

Three Worlds

inspired by a woodcut by M.C. Escher

the marriage of gold and light

Every so often, here at this latitude in the Upper Midwest, usually in autumn, circumstances converge to create an unusually spectacular sunset. It usually happens in October or November, after a clear, unseasonally warm day, with a clear sky at sunset, sometimes after a rain has scrubbed the air.

For about an hour before actual sunset, the world is turned to liquid gold. The sunlight is pure golden in color—a rare metallic gold, different from the soft amber of summer sunsets, different from the red-pink of winter—and every water-like surface, lake or river or puddle or glass-sided building, takes on a sheen of liquid gold. The light is completely horizontal, and very strong, almost unfiltered by air or cloud or mist. It's a particular strength of illumination coupled with angle-of-light and intensity of color.

I've seen this liquid-gold sunset a few times in my life, when I happened to be out walking or riding at just the right time. It doesn't happen every year; the conditions have to be just so, and they don't converge every autumn to make this happen. So, it's rare. You have to be in the right place at the right time, the atmospheric conditions timed just so.

I'm always aware of the quality of light. My photography is really about light, more than anything else. When this sunset happened here last week, I dropped everything I was doing—out on errands, dropping off library books—and chased the light. I got only a few good photos, as this light is very hard to capture, it's quality of living warmth, its almost velvet texture on the skin. It passes quickly, peaking for less than half an hour.

Twenty-five years ago I was out walking in Ann Arbor, just west of downtown, after a rain, and this same kind of sunset happened. I remember standing at the top of a hill, looking down the still-wet road towards the sun, and the road was literally paved with gold for a few minutes. It stopped me in my tracks, and I ended up standing there watching till the light had completely faded to indigo.

I've seen this kind of liquid gold sunset only a few times in my life; as I said, they're not that common. They seem to happen at this latitude, not much further north or south. I've tried writing about it. The poem below is a revised version of the poem originally written in Ann Arbor, all those years ago; it's not my best poem, there are some problems with it I don't know how to fix. Not being a perpetual tinkerer, I usually abandon a poem and try again fresh, if I can't get it right after a few revisions. So this poem is abandoned; I might try again later, on another day. The poem was brought back to mind—and I had to go hunting for it in my archives—because of seeing the liquid gold sunset once again.



the marriage of gold and light

like a banner of gold
rising behind a curtain of clouds,
lifted into the air like the rolling of thunder;
like a phoenix spreading newborn wings,
to catch the sun
and dry the waters of birth;
like the turning of a butterfly’s wing,
wet with dew in the twilight dawn;
like a procession of clouds, silently gliding, distant, obscure:
a newborn power within you stirs, stretches bloodbright wings,
yearns for the sky.
you watch it unfurl.
something unnamed,
the ghost of an eagle,
some part of you, distant and dark, rises up;
you would shape it, catch it and lift it into the light,
shivering, newborn.
a sigh like an owl ghosting from tree to tree;
a wolf pauses in the midst of a field of golden wheat,
stops and tosses his muzzle at the sky,
seeking a scent from some other place,
lifts and paws at the sky,
and turns to look into your eyes.
gold becomes light, and reflections pass
in his eye, gold upon gold.
you hold yourself in your hand,
shivering, and gently return gold from gold.
you are who you are; a wolf
could teach you that, or an owl.

water & light

Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior, MI

placid cold water
reflect dim northern light:
autumn Whitefish shores


Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior, MI


Lake Michigan, Manistique, MI

Restless in early spring, nothing yet emerged from flower beds or under the juniper. Tepid warmth not enough for lounging in the afternoon, still too cool for travel. Monks stay in their cells, cool dew musking the air from walls carved into living rock. Melte makes the trickle a water cascade down cliffs each spring, then dessicates by autumn's late heat. The time of cicadas a long way off, still. The time for woolen robes still too close. Cabins fevered by agitated dreams, short nights full of tossed blankets and rumpled sheets.


Lake Michigan, near Cedar River, MI

We want to go, go, get out, go, power over the next hill, see the next rise looming before being crested, walking faster in the cool morning, calves cramped each dusk, till the rhythm takes over, the rhythm of running, of speech before the empty quarters, the sky widening till it covers everything, till it corners us by rain-washed groves and grottoes. Too soon to go, we want to go, go, go now, leave now, leave everything behind, just to go, the religion of pilgrimage and journey-bread, set out in haste, return in sated sorrow. Too soon to want to go, go, still want to go, leave now, go, and return again only late in the year, in the first real snowfall's embrace.


Lake Superior, Upper Peninsula, MI

taunted by warm winds
of mid-March, the mendicant
longs for summer's road

Winter's Edges

images from Green Lake, WI



March can be the ugliest month of the year, in the Upper Midwest. It is the transition time between high winter and actual spring. You might get a few more winter storms, but they cold be snow-ice mixes rather than snow, making the roads treacherous and slippery. The sky can be overcast for weeks on end, making spring seem like it will never come, making cabin fever all the worse.



It's still too cold and wet to go outside for the entire day, but it's warm enough that your body yearns to leave the shelter of walls and be in the sunlight; if there were any sun, today. You get impatient with the world, waiting for actual spring, restless and irritable. You can wait weeks for any sign that life will return to the land.



The trees might start to bud during March, but they rarely leaf out till April. The lawns are green in patches, from where the grass was flash-frozen in fall, but mostly they're a dingy tan. The brush under the trees by the river is sticks and twigs a uniform brown-grey, the ground spongy and muddy, carpeted with the rotted leaves that fell last autumn.



if the snow has melted already, the roads are ugly with sand and dead leaves and other natural trash that was frozen into the snow and ice banks all winter, now left behind as the ice goes. It will stay there until the first hard, heavy rain washes everything into the gutters, eventually to flow into the river.



But March also has its particular beauty, and its charms. The lakes are still ice-covered, and after a winter colder than usual, you can still walk on the ice, and ice-fish if you're brave. The ice surface can be slicked and slippery with a thin sheen of melte, or crackled and spongy where the ice has degraded but not fully collapsed. The ice in March can tempt you to walk all the way across the lake, but it's much riskier than it was a month ago. Some few folks die on the lakes every year, as the ice goes bad faster than they realize.



The crocus flowers start to appear in early March, if it hasn't been too cold, and by the end of the month, daffodils and tulips will be up and soon to bloom. The rose bushes will leaf out again by month's end. You might have to mow the lawn once or twice, if not yet on a weekly schedule. In spring, the last leaves fall from the oak trees where they've stayed on their branches, dead brown tinged with red, all winter long. There is always one or two last leaf-piles to make, connecting early spring to late fall, bracketing the winter with identical chores. The pine and spruce trees become home again to hundreds of returning birds, gone for the winter, now back in time to nest, breed and hatch. In the pine trees outside my window, a pair of cardinals appear more often, having spent much of the winter nearer the river, nearer other homes with bird feeders.



The first sign of true spring, even if the roads and still cluttered and the brush dead brown and prickly, is not the return of the robins, but the first return of the redwing blackbirds. These marsh and river-loving songbirds, with bright shoulder patches on the males, move back into the cattails and reeds by the river, nesting deep inside the wetland places where their nests are hard to see, hard to approach. The males perch on the end of reeds and branches, singing mightily to mark their territories. It's often loudest in the late afternoon, approaching dusk. Meanwhile, the robins start returning a little later, and other birds pass through on their way further north: orioles, scarlet tanagers, the first wave of hummingbirds. By late spring or early summer, the great blue heron returns to the bend of the river. Redtail hawks watch from the sky and the tall trees for voles and mice in the greening lawns, and the golden grass zones near the river. You might see the deer gather in larger numbers by the river than they have all winter. Soon you might catch a glimpse of twin fawns, all dappled backs and awkward legs, gamboling under mother's alert eyes and ears. That's when you know spring's finally arrived.

still waters, reflecting sky

a ribbon of creek, mirror surfaced, reflecting sky
glimpsed out of corner of eye, driving by at speed
reminding me of dreams

When you keep a dream journal for long enough, you being to notice patterns, and see symbols not only as signs but messages. I've recorded my dreams for over 25 years; not daily, but almost. There are periods when the dreams are just churning the daytime stuff. But I have recorded several significant dreams, over time. Enough to be able to recognize the imagery, when it recurs, in repetition or variation.

still waters, reflecting sky
a blue ribbon of water, reflecting blue sky
cut into red rock, red brick, a patio, a mountain plateau, a redrock mesa
sometimes a cloudless sky, sometimes small white puff clouds
that you see in summer over the great plains, or often in the southwest during monsoon
blue ribbon of water and light incised into red earth surface
clear light of day, cool silver of night

a still circular pool of water
deep in the heart of a dense forest black at midnight
the moon reflecting in the waters of the pool
even on moonless nights
sometimes a single rivulet of spring or stream
emptying cold clear water into the pool
whose surface ripples only slightly

calm clear light of mind
clear mind, clear light
a lightning stroke clapping through
to wake up the broken air

When dream-symbols recur, it's a message from your own depths (and is there a difference between your own depths and divine guidance? there seems not to be) to wake up and pay attention.

I've had the water-stone-sky dream several times in my life, with variations, every time a major upwelling of dark water is about to arise from the deep wells of the unconscious, and into the light of day. Energy and inspiration upwell from the unconscious, our richest source, like mineral-rich cold water rising from the bottom of the ocean to the surface, causing a plankton bloom that then attracts fish, and larger fish, and finally fishermen. We are fishers of our own deep selves. We need to navigate our surface waters to find those upwellings that will feed us, and our lives.

The moon-pool began as a meditation visualization, a symbol of a personal sacred space to go to when seeking tranquility, solace, calmness of mind. It has also appeared in dream, and in vision. An image arising out of the abyss, containing the abyss, and the miracle of a moon always reflecting in the water, even on moonless, starless, cola-black nights. When there is nothing in the heavens but dark cloud and dense shadow, when the woods become so thick and dense that they are impenetrable, still the moon's reflections glows calmly in the waters. Sometimes the waters are as mirror-still and black as obsidian glass; sometimes the image of the moon ripples slightly, as though the moon were reflecting in rippled water, even if the water itself is not moving.

Sometimes I make these dreams into artworks. I have said before how Photoshop allows me to show my visions and dreams to other people, so they can see them too. I've made dreams into poems, into artwork. Once or twice, very rarely, music has been in my dream, that I have been to recreate upon awakening. Once or twice, poems were recited in my dreams, that I could then transcribe into my journal.


Moon Vision, from Spiral Dance

These are the gifts of the deep waters in the sea-caves in the dark wells at the bottom of the mind. They are fish that are always good to catch; like the Salmon of Knowledge in Celtic lore, good to find, good to eat, and the gifts they bring are beyond price.

Water is a Religion

the Pacific Ocean at southern Redwoods beach, CA

In 1993, on All Hallow's Eve, when they still allowed camping here, I camped here overnight with a friend. We pitched the tent in the sea-wind, and built a bonfire in cement ring made for that purpose. We took photos of each other crouched by the fire, naked, Paleolithic, lit by the turbulent flames. We huddled together in the tend for warmth, and made love that night. The full moon rose in the east, climbing over the low hills and illuminating the tent as bright as day. In the morning, we played with the surf in the warm sunlight. I found a flat, round black stone, smoothly polished, on the beach, and carried it in my pocket for a decade afterwards.

On this visit, over 13 years later, I found another polished stone to keep in my pocket, black-green with a single vein of white running through it.


low-tide-exposed boulder, Fort Bragg, CA




arched rock, Myers Creek, south of Humbug Mountain State Park, OR


stream, Humbug Mountain, OR

•

Water is a religion.

We want to feel it on our skin:
soft rain, waterfalls, rivers,
the encircling ocean.
On skin it slides smooth;
clothing makes walls
between our lives
and our selves.

We want to rise cascading
from the waters,
dripping with scattered sun-diamonds;
to stay in the waterfall
till we lose ourselves
in its mind-releasing roar;
to merge with the salten sea,
blood calling to our blood,
calling us back to the mother.

We want to immerse ourselves
full fathom into the river’s pools,
red-striped fish brushing our calves,
rising draped by green willows,
the air drying our bodies with cool time;
sun warms us, the waters refresh us,
the earth and air our wine-bright loves.

Lakes for the spirit,
Oceans for the mind,
Desert springs for dusty feet,
Deep rivers for the soul.