In the Water

[For information about this photo, called “Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida,”
see the Note at the bottom of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Adrift

Let my dreams while I’m wide-awake
loose. Let me be drowned, bap­tized,
in the light given me. Day comes around,
night, fall, win­ter, spring,
sum­mer. Leaves over­head, under­foot.
Waves arrive, buf­fets from friends
offended, ene­mies. Let it all come:
this is my way, this is the canoe I’m in.

(William Stafford [source])

Not from whiskey river…

Mom’s Canoe

Do you remember your old canoe?
Wooden wide-bellied, tapered ends
made to slip through tight river bends
swiftly, like shadow.
Hull ribbed delicately, wing of bird
Sometimes seen, never heard when it flew
through the water more glider than boat,
ponderous in portage, weightless afloat.
Frail origami, vessel of air,
wide shallow saucer suspended where
shallows met shadows near the old dam.
Remember how it glowed like honey in summer
rubbed with beeswax and turpentine
against leaks, cracks, weather and time.
All your housekeeping went into that canoe,
then you rode high, bow lifted,
arced up like flight, all magic, power,
evening light. You j-stroking,
side-slipping, eddying out, frugal
with movement, all without effort,
just like you walked and ran.
I still see you rising from water to sky,
paddle held high,
river drops limning its edge.
Brown diamonds catch the light as you lift, then dip.
Parting the current, you slip
silently through the evening shadows.
You, birdsong, watersong, slanting light,
following river bend, swallowed from sight.

(Rebecca Foust [source])

And (the author is learning about the perils of life in the Merchant Marine)…:

Andy once said to me, “I love being up on the bridge when it’s rough. I enjoy being on watch in rough weather. It’s so impressive. It’s spectacular. Huge seas. Strong winds. At some point, you cross from awe to terror. I haven’t been at that point yet — the ultimate storm. It could change my attitude.” Andy hasn’t seen anything worse than a fifty-five-foot sea breaking over him when he was running coastwise on the Spray in the winter North Atlantic. “My height of eye was fifty-two feet off the water, and the water broke over the bridge and hit the radar mast. Water went down stacks into the engine room.” Not enough water to change his attitude.

That wave was what the Mariners Weather Log calls an ESW, or Extreme Storm Wave — a rogue wave, an overhanging freak wave. Coincidence tends to produce such waves — for example, when the waters of colliding currents are enhanced by tidal effects in the presence of a continental shelf. Often described as “a wall of water,” an Extreme Storm Wave will appear in a photograph to be a sheer cliff of much greater height than the ship from which the picture was taken. Captain Washburn calls it “a convex wave.” He goes on to say, “You don’t get up it before it’s down on your foredeck. The center is above sixty feet high. You can’t ride over the center. You can ride over the edge. A ship has no chance if the wave hits just right. It will break a ship in two in one lick. Because of the trough in front of it, mariners used to say that they fell into a hole in the ocean.”

(John McPhee, Looking for a Ship [source])

And:

Many years ago The Boy had been warned away from the river by his parents. His father had threatened him with a sentence beginning, “If I ever, ever catch you down there…” and ending with a phrase whose exact contents did not matter, since all such phrases always promised total annihilation. “A dragon lives there,” said his mother, more fancifully.

This dragon, The Boy imagined, was long and undulant, its silver skin scaly and iridescent; its head looked like an automobile hood ornament, steely and unforgiving. There would be a splash as it surfaced when adults (but never their children) were present, and it would glare at them with its red, hungry eyes, projecting telepathic thoughts at them like Bring me your children. It would look at The Boy’s own parents and add, Yours first. Whenever there had been a so-called drowning, whispered, half-overheard adult conversations hinted at the truth: “…draggin’ the river,” the adults would say.

For that matter, what was it with this stupid fascination with immersing your body in water, anyhow? Talk about unnatural! The Boy had once read a fantasy story, set in the distant future, in which the human race were “returning to the sea” to live. The author noted the way the hair grew on people’s backs in convergent tufts, clearly indicating (like waving fields of seaweed) the flow of the water which (so he said) we had left for land centuries ago.

The Boy laughed at the idea when he wasn’t worrying about it. He tried to imagine his forebears — his grandparents, say, graceless on land, hobbling about on pale thin legs and bunions the size of cupcakes — leaping up-river like salmon or crawling out of the bay to balance beachballs on their noses. Ridiculous.

(JES)

Finally: in this area, the old Creature from the Black Lagoon horror films are regarded with something like tongue-in-cheek reverence. Some scenes were shot at nearby Wakulla Springs (a/k/a Edward Ball State Park), and The Missus distinctly remembers portions being filmed in the ocean off Jacksonville when she was but a mere slip of a girl. The video below was offered up to the gods of YouTube as a posthumous tribute to Ben Chapman, the actor who played The Creature in the scenes shot on land.

According to the Reel Gillman site’s account of the film’s 50th anniversary party at Wakulla Springs:

“The creature suit was a one-piece outfit that zipped down the back with dorsal fins, hands that were gloves, feet that were like boots,” Chapman said of his costume. “They had to lay me on a table, take a complete Plaster of Paris mold of my body, then design this costume. I couldn’t lose or gain weight, or I wouldn’t fit right. The whole experience was like climbing into a large body stocking with creases where you needed ’em.”

The Gill-Man had no dialogue, so Chapman had to use body language to communicate.

The music accompanying the visuals in that video, by the way, is Dave Edmunds‘s “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” The lyrics:

All he wanted was a lady,
When at night he came up from the deep.
He was feeling like any other lonely fella,
Decided to take one while the city was asleep.

The unsuspecting maiden
Was clutched from where she lay,
And taken away to a hole down under
The waters of the local bay.

By the Creature from the Black Lagoon-a
Strange to see him back so soon.
After his last intended did the dirty on him,
Didn’t last five minutes in the swim.

With the Creature of the Black Lagoon-a
Be seeing him again real soon.
After this intended lets him down,
Won’t last five minutes with him around.

Only surfaced for a companion,
‘Cause of that he’s never been seen.
Just a big look written in the eyes of his baby,
And a cry of terror, a honeymoon scream.

The unsuspecting maiden
Will be clutched from where she sleeps,
And taken away to a hole down under
The water, and that’s for keeps.

By the Creature from the Black Lagoon-a,
Strange to see him back so soon.
After his last intended did the dirty on him,
Didn’t last five minutes in the swim.

The unsuspecting maiden
Will be clutched from where she sleeps,
And taken away to a hole down under
The water and that’s for keeps.

By the Creature from the Black Lagoon-a
Strange to see him back so soon.
After his last intended did the dirty on him,
Didn’t last five minutes in the swim.

With the Creature from the Black Lagoon-a,
Be seeing him again real soon.
After this intended lets him down,
Won’t last five minutes with him around.

_________________

Note: The image at the top of this post is called “Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida.” It was shot by photographer Toni Frissell, on assignment from Vogue, and appeared in that magazine’s issue of December, 1947. According to the Library of Congress, to whom Frissell donated her entire collection of over 300,000 items:

Even though her work spans the spectrum from society photography (amongst others, the Kennedy-Bouvier wedding) to social issues (ranch life in Texas and Argentina; Frissell also volunteered for the American Red Cross during World War II), she is remembered as a fashion photographer and recognized for her stark imagery and as being among the first to take fashion models out of the studio into nature, as this 1947 picture at the newly opened Weeki Wachee Springs roadside attraction shows.

Update 2010-05-22: I kept coming back to the photo at the top of the post; something — something — kept haunting me about it. On a whim, I rotated it 180 degrees:

Whoa. Instant subtitle: “Mermaid Coming in for a Landing.”