Images of Me (10)

 

Antarctica 1980

Something Tangible After a Bit of a Break

I've been thinking . . .

Yes, this little blog has been moribund for nearly two years; but I have something nostalgic to share and not all of my friends of the last 10 or 30 or 50 years are on the proper social media websites. Hence a mild resurrection of my blog for this bit of personal remembrance.

It seems I have a quilt.

 this is the 1997 side

and this the 2018 side

Of course there is a story (or three).

Back in about 1997, a good friend [Janet] offered to make a quilt for me. She wanted it to be personalized, so I dipped into my t-shirt drawer and came up with half a dozen or so culturally significant cotton visuals.

For instance: 

this is the oldest image on the quilt, from my 1980 excursion to Antarctica

This whimsical logo sets the quilt images into a particular segment of my life. I was departing L.A. in 1991 and heading down a new path in San Francisco. Leaving my partnership in a mortgage firm and a somewhat typical Southern California lifestyle for a Ph.D. program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in Haight-Ashbury. With this shirt, two of my dear friends, Bruce & Faith, summed up the South vs. North feelings among my friends about my pending transition.

I knew not a soul in San Francisco, but uprooting was and continues to be a signature move in my wanderings. Still, leaving Hermosa Beach wasn't without deep rumblings of emotion and loss. My best friend and business partner, dear Tom, had disappeared far too soon from all of our lives. We had both developed plans for what was to be next for us, mine was to be a doctoral program, Tom's future was cut tragically short.

In the summer of '89, Tom & I plotted a month-long roadtrip and invited family and friends to join us for bits & pieces of the chautauqua. A gang of Carl, Deanna, Gary and his parents joined us for Yellowstone and some local color around the Schorzman homegrounds in Idaho.

Leap ahead several years, this naughty (look close) knot artwork comes from my friend [Tina], life in San Francisco had become transformational.
That was the plan afterall.

One of the highlights of my time at CIIS was a 1997 excursion to Indonesia, specifically Bali. My friend and professor, Daniel and his partner Fariba led a group of spirtual adventurers into three weeks of Balinese immersion. Note the masques.

Friends from the L.A. days, if the colors of the quilting thus far seems evocative, tis perhaps because the pinks and greens are made from leftover pieces of the cloths we used in Tom's AIDS quilt panel.

lower left

Now on the to 2018 flip side. I gave Mo, another new friend, a whole mess of chopped up t-shirts and left it to her artistic sense to cast the imagery for side two of the quilt.

I found her edging (non-quilter terminology) to be fascinating; all of the bits and snips woven around the splashes of t-shirt memories.

Interesting, the Indonesia masque t-shirt on the '90s side and this one many years later. You see this painting of me was done by a street artist in Ubud, Bali on that same trip. A much longer story about the masque and dance that went with it, but the shirt was with me for twenty years before it too found its way onto the other side quilt.

Another enduring feature of my time in grad school at CIIS ('91-'99) was the annual conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness. Life long friends were met and remet at these yearly gatherings, t-shirts often reflected the ongoing happenings at those meetings. Strange though they may have been.

The artist of many of these images was and is the previously mentioned Tina, now a successful professor and still a wonderful artist.

this one should wrinkle a few in time

My friend Scott gave an amazing presentation at this meeting. Seems like a lot of mushrooms . . .

 and then there are the deep flashbacks, the shirt was obtained at one of the many reunions we have attended but the years actually at K College were 1965-69.

Weed, California: I have been visiting long, long, long time dear friends Gary & Cyndi there for three decades. They and their blissful place with a full compliment of critters both wild and semi-tame.

The 2018 side of the quilt was commissioned while I was residing in a solitary aerie in Berkeley (2010-2015), the room with the magnificent view of the San Francisco Bay and the beyond belief landlady.

What more can I say.
You know what that's like, right?

p.s. it's a big quilt, room enough for two

Antarctica (1981)

I don't think I've ever written about my trip to Antarctica 35 years ago. I was prompted to do so now because of the picture above. That photograph is an entry in the 2016 National Geographic photo contest.

I know this place, I recognize those mountains, this is the Bay of Isles on South Georgia. I was there December 19 1981.

The foothills are just under a mile from the beach. We landed in our zodiac down the beach to the far right. This is a king penguin rookery, on that day the only birds at the shore we either going or coming from the sea. We had to hike about half way to the mountains to be close of the clustering colony of adults and yearlings. The young chicks and parents were even farther away, I and my two companions did not venture near the rookery, best to stay far from the chicks.

So I walked to within twenty yards of the colony edge and stopped to watch and photograph. Slowly the adults returning from the sea would either push through the throng to get to their hungry chicks or, if they were not brooding parents, they would just stop at the edge of the colony. Over the course of an hour without moving I was subsumed into the colony.

The returning penguins eventually reached me and surrounded me as the colony edge expanded, I was one tall, red-jacketed bird.

Eventually, the ship whistle blew calling us back to the shore and our boat ride back to the safety and warmth of the Discovery Expedition. I edged my way out of the pack, to many squawks and a few beak pecks to my well-padded arctic coat. I worked my way towards the nearest open ground, which soon was to cause a problem.

I was headed back to the sea shore by the nearest route but not the one I had used to reach the penguin colony. My plan was to make it to the shore and then walk on the beach to the landing where the zodiac raft awaited.

Unfortunately, I had waded several small glacial streams deep inland on my way in but now near the shore, those streams had merged into a icy, eight foot wide flow of indeterminate depth. Looking back it was a big hike inland to where a crossing might be more sensible.

As I pondered my options, two penguins arrived on the opposite of the icy divide. I looked at them, they looked at me, they looked at the swiftly moving water, so did I. Then they looked at me again.

I took a single cautious step into the water with my water-tight, well-insulated booted feet. Six inches of water only. Another step and I was a foot deep. A quick calculation told me at this rate mid-stream might well be exerting enough pressure to knock me down, hypothermia was not a suggested course of action.

Just as I was about to step back on the bank and head back inland, one of the penguins stepped into the water on his side of the stream. With a knowing nod, he leaned forward and with his beak, tested the depth for his next step. Slowly he located a rocky ridge of stream bottom that meandered a bit upstream but stayed at the depth of less than a foot.

Once he was midstream, his buddy followed him and there they stood. If they fell in, they just swim out, being much better insulated than I was. I was pondering our situation when a loud squawk brought me back to my, I mean, our predicament.

I swear the penguin was suggesting I get with the program and do my part.

I backed out of the water where I had originally entered and moved upstream to where the two penguin buddies stood about three feet from my shore. There was clearly a deep, swiftly moving gully between them and dry land.

I noticed another shallow ridge just a bit upstream. I easily took two, three, then four steps on the ridge and found myself even with the penguins and just a few feet upstream. Taking the initiative, I hopped over to where the penguins stood. The buddy gave me one good, hard peck while his trailblazing friend duplicated my hop in the reverse direction. His buddy followed and now we were both within shallow sight of our goals.

If there had been an observer to our inter-species cooperation, they would have noted my three foot leap across the watery divide was much more elegant than the splash and dash approach taken by the penguins.

Then again, I was the one who had to be reminded that we were involved in a joint venture to ford the stream. The penguins had been there before, I was the rookie in the rookery.