Always Expose for the Shadows of the Subject even When you Aren't Taking Pictures

A reposting from a few years back...

"Always expose for the shadows of the subject..."   so says my 1948 focal guide retrieved from storage a few weeks ago.  Somehow the advice suggests other connotations....the realms of metaphor... " always expose for the shadow of the subject."

The other day it was the Walter T. Foster painting book  Seapower that got me thinking this way.
I had looked at the  10" x 14" teaching book  with absolutely no intentions of trying to paint the ocean or the cliffs I live above and yet

 I enjoyed perusing the step by step paintings and the tips and clues to doing the same.

"If you continually think in large masses of light and shadow ..."    "Always think and paint the large masses first..."   "...pick out the lighting...then you will know exactly where you are going."

  So if you know from where the light emanates, you will know where you are going.

That makes more than sense to me. 

Later in the day, out and about on the land,  I found  the painting advice impacting how I saw the ocean waves, the light on the rocks, the blue of the sky.  Lessons for painters are first and foremost, lessons for the eye.

Writers must see carefully too and one's eye must be attuned to many realms.  It's good to be able to see one's own framework of understanding, to filter the light from the dark.  Every heart frames reality in its own terms, its own limits.  To have an impact it needn't be large, but there must be an intersection with other frames of reality other than one's own.

I look at the sea.  Clouds are stretched like peach tinged taffy along the horizon. Light is scattered across the waters so white and shimmering  in areas that the eye can barely absorb the beauty without reflexively looking away.   I can change my visual perspective and for a moment the waters in front of me appear like a bowl, but I know the horizon is distance beyond my scope.

There's a boat out there carrying its own reality across the waters, but to me it is little more than a dark speck.  We are often in each other's view, but seeing eye to eye, well the eyes and the heart can take a lot training.

Such are the topics that have been on my mind lately.  You might enjoy the essay I  wrote this week and posted on Write Purpose  "Why We do the Things We Do "

Now that I have read  my old focal guide, I want to see if I can translate it to my digital camera.   My  notes to my self need to say.."Always be aware of your tendency to just point and shoot on automatic..."   and of course that too has metaphorical implications; I'm not just talking about taking pictures.

 ~~~~~~~~~

Two Years Before the Mast by R.H. Dana Jr. Classic California Lit & History

(Monday, March 16th)

To read a classic such as

 Two Years Before the Mast

by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and not share a little about it seems selfish.  If one finds a treasure, why not share it?

I have been trying to be a bit more generous about reflecting on books I have truly enjoyed.



It's tempting to dive right into another book,  but I know my good intentions to write up at least an encouraging note for others to consider the merit of this book would then more easily be derailed.  I know that it's more likely to happen the sooner I try to distill my thoughts and before I'm too far immersed in another tome.

I have only moments this morning,  but I will leave this opener here for myself  as a magnet to draw me back to write a bit more on Dana's tale of shipping out of Boston  'round the Horn to California in the year 1835.


(Wednesday, March 18th)

A student at Harvard, Dana's eyesight suffered from a case of Measles,  so he took leave of intense studies and rather than voyage as a passenger, he signed on a merchant ship as a common seaman.

The change from the tight dress coat, silk cap and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trousers, checked shirt and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well as a jack tar.  But it is impossible to deceive the practiced eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by everyone on board, as soon as I hove in sight. ( page 2- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

He  kept a daily brief diary of his experience and when able also wrote out his experiences at more length in a different journal.  His sea chest, where he kept his more extensive writings,  was lost upon his return to Boston. Happily for posterity, while back at law school, he rewrote his narrative from the framework of the daily log which he had  kept with him.

His determination inspires me.


 (Sunday, March 22nd)
Before I go on,  I admit that not only did I not discipline my free time to write on Dana this last week, I read a Pushkin story,  "The Captain's Daughter."  Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 to an old noble family.  Pushkin was sixteen years old when Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a family who had distinguished themselves in young America, so my excursion into Alexander Pushkin's tale of a young man coming of age in a remote military outpost was not totally removed in time from Dana's true tale.  Each story is told in a young man's narrative voice as struggles with self, nature, and the shifting hierarchies of mankind are faced and both  men esteemed honor and purpose.

This was my first reading of  Two Years before the Mast from cover to cover.  I was familiar with excerpts of it from my studies at University of California at Berkeley when obtaining  an undergraduate degree in American Studies.  I was reminded of it again several years ago as my eye doctor, as has been true of many an oculist over the years, used  passages from Dana's journal to test acuity of vision. In other readings of histories of the peopling of the West, quotes and commendations of Dana's work finally spurred me to read him in full.

Thus far, I realize I have primarily documented that I am often slow to pursue challenges, but this is, after all, my web log so I might as well tell the truth.

( Tuesday March 24th)
Dana was acutely touched by the day to day dangers and difficulties faced by seamen and profoundly touched by an unjust flogging he witnessed.   He vowed that if he were ever in a position to be a help to them, he would be.  His desire for equity and justice inspired his writing.  He noted that while there were already masterful of tales of sea voyages, "a voice from the forecastle has not yet been heard."

Dana has such fine powers of description in his clean prose that I was glad to travel over the seas with him, but I was even more pleased when the brig Pilgrim docked in ports I know and love.  Have you ever been to San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, Monterey, or Yerba Buena,  San Francisco?
Dana spends long periods of time on shore. It isn't an all "...aloft to furl the sail..." story.  One of the striking aspects of Dana's recollections of California in 1835-36 is how brief the lifestyle he encountered on the coast of California was to be.  He saw California and met many of her inhabitants and visitors before the 1849 Gold Rush and huge influx of overland migrants.

There are three basic editions of  Two Years Before the Mast.

1.The original 1840 edition.
2. The 1869 edition - this is a revision by Dana when the copyright reverts back to him. He removed  the "sharply unromantic opening paragraphs" and the final chapter and he added a new chapter "Twenty Fours Years After."
3. The 1911 edition - prepared by his son Richard Henry Dana based upon the 1869 edition. His son adds research about the Crew, and a Dictionary of Nautical Terms based on Dana's "The Seaman's Friend" as well as an Introduction and a new chapter "Seventy Five Years After."

 The book is available online from Project Gutenberg.

(Wednesday, March 25th)

The edition I read included  "Twenty-four Years After" where Dana revisits California.
How often do we see our own place and time in the world and not realize how fast it is changing?
When I look back through my own private journals I see notes I have made of national and international events which I have almost forgotten about in the rush of new developments, yet the impact of those events and changes is deeply shaping today and the future.

One of the sentiments Dana expressed that I found very powerful is that while social troubles need attention, the changes needed are not always the ones brought about by  the exertion of more control or the enactment of more laws.

I know that there are many men who, when a few cases of great hardship occur, and it is evident that there is an evil somewhere, think that some arrangement must be made, some law passed, or some society got up, to set all right at once.  On this subject there can be no call for any such movement; on the contrary, I fully believe that any public and strong action would do harm, and that we must be satisfied to labor in the less easy and less exciting task of gradual improvement, and abide the issues of things working slowly together for good. ( page 361- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

There was one regret I experienced in reading this book, for there was a passage where I wished Dana had not been so focused. In his final chapter he begins to describe his  excursions to various parts of the state, traveling in coaches, in boats, and  on horseback as he radiates out from San Francisco into the interior, to Santa Clara and San  Jose,  up the San Joaquin river,  crossing the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and the Merced, to Mariposa, the big trees, and as he called it, Yo Semite Valley. He is briefly in full descriptive force and then he writes:

 These visits were so full of interest, with grandeurs and humors of all sorts, that I am strongly tempted to describe them.  But I remember that I am not to write a journal of a visit over the new California, but to sketch briefly the contrasts with  the old spots of 1835-6, and I forbear. ( page 392- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

I hope I have conveyed enough enthusiasm about this classic to tempt you to add it to your reading list.
with best wishes,
Jeannette

Driven to the Coast by April's Wave of Heat

April 30th I saw in the sunrise what the weather watchers had predicted, it was going to be hot. The morning cool passed quickly under pulsing sun rays. The mercury was headed for 90.  

We don't live far from the western edge of the continent and, in an automobile, a car, we can be at the coast in 20 to 25 minutes.

 I say "in a car" because I am grateful and self conscious about the privilege of being able to travel with the ease we do.  I am reading What I Saw in California,  a journal of an 1846 journey west across the continent from what was then the United States.  Edwin Byrant, a news reporter from Kentucky, described the step by step progress in a daily journal, often closing each day's entry with the number of miles traversed.  It wasn't unusual for a whole day's travel to be no more than the distance from  my town to Bodega Bay:  15.6 miles, as I said,  achievable for us in twenty minutes. 

          Looking  toward the bay and the Pacific Ocean beyond

 from Bay Hill Road

The Point Reyes Peninsula is visible in the distance. It was one of those days when the off shore winds made it  almost as warm at the coast as inland.

                  This photo, taken from the driver's seat  through the skylight gives a little prospective to these Tower of Jewels, flowers that are growing wildly along a road above Highway 1.  The bees and butterflies like them ever so much.

               Native Cow Parsnip about to open in bloom in a valley just inland.

                                            Cow Parsnip Heracleum maximum is also known as Indian Celery or Pushk and it is important not to confuse it with the dangerous giant hogweed.  Cow Parsnip is a native of most of North America and was used by early inhabitants in multiple ways.  Here is the best link I found for distinguishing it from dangerous look a-likes.

                                 

                          Willow Creek waters making their way to sea...

               Looking north...some of the northern coastline has but little beach,

                                       especially when the tide is high and in.

            About four miles inland on a road that no longer allows full access, this barn is still being used.

                             When I see relics of farms now gone,  I think of some of my dear friends who would love an old shed or barn in which to set up an art studio or raise donkeys or goats. These buildings have been unused for many years now, but they belong ever more deeply to where there are, just as they are.

                     
                                              Was this once a  Home Sweet Home ?

     
                                              A long shot from high up on Coleman Valley...

                       and a close shot at the beauty at my feet...  Blue Eyed Grass
                                                       

                                               Almost time to head back to the barn...

                 
                                            traveling east again now through the lovely hills.

As I  suspected the heat of this last day of April opened many of the roses in my gardens.

    At this rate, What might  May bring?

~Shared with thoughts of friends in climes not quite yet warmed up~
with best wishes,  Jeannette

               

Memory...a Swamp of Nostalgia or a Call to Action?

Memory is at best,  says John Steinbeck, "a faulty, warpy reservoir."  And so at 58 years old he, with his poodle, Charlie, took a  transAmerica road trip to  reacquaint himself with his country so that he could do more than write about the United States and her people from memory.  I recently finished reading  Travels with Charley. This won't be a book review,  I'm just sorting out some feelings it brought up in me.

  I enjoyed much of his perspective of places I have driven

through and a few I haven't, but my interest intensified when he returned to the place of his birth, not only because of Steinbeck's unique history on the Monterey Peninsula, or even my recent sojourn of seven years there, but because he captures the commonality of the feelings of returning to places dear to the heart only to find them so changed as to be near unrecognizable.

  That was a woody hill with live oaks dark green against the parched grass where the coyotes sang on moonlit nights.  The top is shaved off and a television relay station lunges at the sky and feeds a nervous picture to thousands of tiny houses clustered like aphids beside the roads. (p.194-5)

His descriptions of Monterey, which I admit I am missing some these days,  were tripping off deeper switches of the myths I swaddle of my childhood spent at the foot of a mountain.  

There was a little town...      

  Can't we all, in some way,  fill in the blanks that those ellipses create?  

I find it difficult to write about my native place, northern California.  It should be the easiest, because I know that strip angled against the Pacific better than any place in the world.  But I find it not one thing but many-one printed over another until the whole thing blurs.  What it is is warped with memory of what it was and that with what happened there to me, the whole bundle wracked until objectiveness is nigh impossible. (p. 194 Penguin Ed) 

Steinbeck knows his complaint  is typical, sees how common is his resentment of what is new and those who have brought it, but no sooner than he has acknowledged that we are all the newcomers to someone, no sooner than he has labeled his observations as a "flurry of nostalgic spite" ( p.205)  and a disservice to the Monterey Peninsula, he laments other changes he encountered.  

Nostalgia can be overwhelming, and nostalgia is one  element that can blur and warp memory.  I see it in myself.  I coddle memories of things as they once were as the world changes  around me.  And it isn't that I couldn't make a case for it;  much beauty I have known has been destroyed.   There are other aspects of social change that I don't experience as  improvements or  necessary as well.  

So somehow, taking this little road trip with Steinbeck highlighted for me the need to step carefully around the mushy ground of nostalgia which in its self-focus tends, to keep us looking back.  But there is firm turf in history and informative power even in our own memories worth  keeping and sharing to  encourage and inspire in self and others,  forward focus to protect and strengthen that which remains.  

Bare Bones Anatomy of a Move

There is a great antidote to times like these...when you've rolled up the rug and  are packing up and saying good-byes and wondering how you ever got so many books 

and what box you put the aspirin in..

                                         You just leave your drawers on the floor...the desk was already in the truck...and your keyboard  perched on a cardboard box

and let someone you had only met via her blog take you for a lovely walk in a canyon you have never been in before.

Nothing to do here but to wonder at the forces that shape our world...the winds off the Pacific can topiary even the Redwood trees.

                                       Yes, thank you Katie and blessings to Steve's memory.

 But back at the ranch ( think seahorses) ... that truck is waiting...to be filled to the gills and not everything we had to pack would fit in a box.  Klaas had gifted us with plants that had grown big and beautiful and we didn't want to leave those behind.

Fortunately we didn't pack alone.  David and Susan came armed with  boxes and wrapping paper and know how!

Blago got back in town just in time to make one more amazing dinner for us on the fire in front of the cottage.

Jeanette not only squeezed me onto her busy acupuncture calendar but came over after work to take a walk with me.

 Bashar, who is very dedicated to the new World Education University,  came and sat on the cliff with us.

The ever faithful Faisal hosted us at his and Bashar's restaurant, wonderful Dametra.

Bonnie and Steve met us for a lunch  out at Jeffrey's.

Artist Daria braved our rough stone paths bearing her energy giving chocolates.

 Debi and Stan stopping by with yet another present after a lovely tea in their home.

Angel helped us constantly and then his beautiful wife Victoria showed up with homemade tamales.

Yes, you all helped us to get on our way, but ironically it is also you who made it hard to leave...and yet...

                                 On Tuesday October 1st  I followed Mark who was driving the big truck, northward bound. We left  Carmel around 4:30 pm.  Our first stop was Inspiration Point on Highway 280  where we  watched the sun set over the Crystal Springs Reservoir but

we couldn't  linger as the rest stop we really needed was one exit north.  So we stopped again and that's where I broke out Daria's chocolates; I don't think I could have driven much farther without them!  

No more stops after that, but a moving truck is slow way to travel. It was after 9 pm when we pulled into the inn behind the old train station in Sebastopol.  We'd be ready to face the next stage of moving in the morning, but for the time being all we could manage to do was sleep...and we did!  In the morning we watched the sunrise above the mountains to the east of us, got coffee and drove the last little way home.

                                       It's overgrown and a little worn down in some respects, being the man who fixes everything hasn't lived here for seven years, but we are oh-so- happy to be back in our own little house.

And the weather has been so lovely that even though we aren't all unpacked we keep running outside to do a little gardening.

So that's it ...just  the bare bones of course...but I've kept you from your own glories long enough for today.

best wishes!
Jeannette

Seven Years by the Sea

There are times where it is much more likely for me to share here if I just plunge in and type as if I am not going to post anything...not even a photograph of some pretty scene like this...

Years of hand written journals,rarely shared with anyone, have created a deep demarcation in me. While it helps me to write I don't necessarily expect anyone else to find it interesting or helpful. There really are a number of roadblocks to my popping up posts; there is propriety, privacy, and...hmmm...there must be other descriptors that probably also start with a "p."  

Yes, in this world of divergent views it is easy to wonder about  "political correctness" ( I'll just leave that one sitting there in quotes...)

and of course there is the question of profundity or more likely the lack thereof. 

I often ponder the pain I see going on in our world, the lack of peace and prosperity so many experience but I don't want to simply remind others of what they also know. How to touch the giant troubles with purpose, how to inspire each other to make the world a safer and happier place ...? 

The other day four very kind neighbors, retired people, a doctor, two nurses and a military officer and expert in defense, spent the afternoon with my husband and me... they gave us a little good-bye party as we prepare to leave our job here and move home. The way they spend their free time is humbling.  Many hours are being devoted to others by these four people alone. Meals are being delivered to shut-ins, rides given to doctor visits, letters are written to  elected officials, efforts are made to understand the dilemmas of the times, docent duties are under taken for educational programs, bereavement ministry services are manned and  hospital patients are visited with therapy dogs,  (yes, even their dogs are helping!).   I'm encouraged by who they each are.

I'm reminded that the world is a complicated place and yet  simple responses are ever so helpful and they are what one can do while pondering what else can be done...when the headlines make you feel blue...

What we are doing right now is moving...and the bird house and the kitty cats are going too. 

  For seven years we have lived on an astounding  cliff

above the Pacific Ocean in a cottage from which we stewarded the gardens and oversaw the visitation of the other houses. 

It was much work. It was good.  It also feels good to be entering a new season.  While we return to our house where we lived for the 17 years prior to coming here, we know we won't be going back to things as they were. We are not quite the same ourselves.  But there is a sense of returning home after a long adventure. 

 As I wrote to another blogger who shares my love of nature, I  will miss the sudden spouts that alert me to watch for whales surfacing. I will miss the sounds of otters cracking open their dinner and miss spotting them on their backs in the beds of kelp.

 I will miss sighting the flash of dolphin fins and the orange of star fish clinging to the rocks.  I will miss the strands of pelicans flying over and the white egrets walking on the water in the groves of kelp. Seven years by the sea has been a lovely privilege and I have tried here on "bread on the water" to share the beauty of this place as a balm for others. 

Ironically, even though my watery neighborhood fits my blog name quite well, and many posts document seaside nature encounters, the inspiration for the name of my blog preceded living by the sea. In many ways the move we are about to make back up the road, north and a bit inland is just another response to the Word that tells us to "cast our bread on the water..."

I hope to post more often in the near future. I have hundreds of photos to organize and new -old vistas to capture and many thoughts to tease out and just maybe I'll type them up and deposit  them here rather than drop them in that drawer of files which I might also take the time to cull.  

But you'll understand if I disappear for a little while...yes? I hope so, because the little bit of sharing I have done here has meant a lot to me. I appreciate all of my readers, especially those of you that actually read to the end of my missives ( you must be one of those...) and those of you   who return to check up on me and leave comments and a trail back to the thoughts and pictures and hopes of your own lives.  

 So though I hope to be back when set up to post from a "new" location; for now it's time to pack it up!

with very best wishes! 
Jeannette

A Much Appreciated Rock

Recently I sent off a photo of this rock to an artist who had painted it after a visit here several years ago. 

She captured the rock  in one of its manifestations beautifully.  I mentioned to her that the rock and all the vegetation around it  has changed significantly since she had seen it and she asked me to send her another picture.  I took this one last week for her and then today I wandered around in my some- day-they'll- be- organized photographs and found a few more photos of this narrow rock  island in the southern cove. 

Looking south  in 2013

Rocks, substantial as they are,  change.  Over the last seven years I have watched the wearing down of this crop which sits centered in a tight cove with ocean lapping on both sides.  Tenacious cypress seedlings had worked their roots into fissures in the rock, growing, but miniature versions of the parent tree well rooted in soil on the cliffs above the cove.  Elemental forces, the winds, the rains, the crashing salty waves, the tremors of the earth and the roots of stunted trees  erode and weaken rock...and whatever strata is loosened or dislodged eventually slides and tumbles into the sea.

The first picture I ever took of the rock in 2006  looking south west.

In July of 2008 there was a ledge and we sat on it!

It seemed quite stable at the time.

I took this photo in a brief lull in a  storm 2008

The perch and several of the trees are gone. 2012

2013

 One of its faces of beauty was well captured by artist Sunee Jines. 

Carmel Highlands' Mists (c) Sunee Jines
                                 Prints & cards available                                                    

   Monterey Peninsula Art Foundation

            425 Cannery Row, Monterey Ca. 93940

 phone 831-655-1267

 I have been captured seven years on these cliffs of beauty ever changing. Now a season of change is upon us, and we will soon part company with the rocks of these coves.  I have a trove of photos and memories, some already shared in posts in this blog, but I look forward to more exploring while I gladly carry an inner cache of much appreciated rocks and waters.  

Ever changing Beauty 2013