Moon Dive (Also in Italian! for spaghetti)

[Fondueset]

Night before last was clear,cold and calm. Brilliant moonlight. The plan was to dive along the large limestone boulders of the marina breakwall and see what the lake trout are up to at night. We put a light on the float and brought a couple dive lights. Water temp was right around 12C and amazingly clear. We did the 200 meter swim over to the breakwall without turning on our lights. Soon the big rocks loomed up out of the gloom. Vis was dark but probably 50 feet with the moonlight shimmering in ripples across the dramatic contours of the rocks. At the end of the breakwall I started to see trout - they were cruising the breakwall and milling around as usual but much less wary than during the day. I swam with several and had to be careful not to spook them with sudden surges of current from my monofin as I rolled and turned around them.
A big carp made its way over to me but bumped into a rock when I shined my HID light on it.
At one point I sat on the bottom, admiring the awesome play of moonlight and looking up at the rocks. A pair of big Lake Trout came by, their bright ventral fins seeming to glow as ripples of blue-white light played across their backs. It was eerie and restful in the bottom gloom. The lights were best used indirectly - either aimed out at right or greater angles or reflected off the surface; otherwise they really limited visibility and messed with our eyes adjustment to the dark (which takes about 15 minutes).

And now, for Spaghetti:

Moon is having not wind for hold our breath to the water! The light is wrinkled!
From the torches there is too much for seeing. Trouts are not nervous! A carp!

[spaghetti]

Thanks for the your report! I am never submerged me of night because the our law it prohibits!!! Lucky you of the Michigan!!!!

Not have never heard this song?
When the moon hits you eye like a big pizza pie
That's amore
When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine
That's amore
Bells will ring ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling
And you'll sing "Vita bella"
Hearts will play tippy-tippy-tay, tippy-tippy-tay
Like a gay tarantella

When the stars make you drool just like a pasta fazool
That's amore
When you dance down the street with a cloud at your feet
You're in love
When you walk down in a dream but you know you're not
Dreaming signore
Scuzza me, but you see, back in old Napoli
That's amore

[Fondueset]

What a beautiful song! You Italians have so much emotions!!
Do you think the law is to prevent vampires from stealing all the fishes?

[spaghetti]

Originally Posted by Fondueset

What a beautiful song! You Italians have so much emotions!!
Do you think the law is to prevent vampires from stealing all the fishes?

oh, no, no for nothing! is known as "the Mandolin Act". The law is to prevent mandolins from filling of water (water is the enemy number one of the mandolins, and you know, in the dark you never know where the your mandolin could fall if handled improperly). Submerge of night? no no ).
BTW: thanks! Is true that we are full of emotion!

[Fondueset]

I think I remember this! It is from the ancient times of womens and things.
The ancient peoples thought women were made from salt and would dissolve in water. I think 'mandolin' means 'person with vagina' in ancient atlantian.

[spaghetti]

but it's not necessarily a woman....

[Fondueset]

If I'm not mistaken, the ancient mediterranean peoples believed everything was an activity so you never 'are' anything - instead you are doing it.

[spaghetti]

"There is only a mixing of mixed stuff"
Empedocles, Sicily, 5th century b.C. (british columbia)

[Fondueset]

I wondered when the Canadians would come into this!

[spaghetti]

The moon is more important than the canadians. I dedicate you a poem of the our greatest poet of the period romantic: in italian public schools our youth spends two or three whole weeks to understand the meaning of this poem.

Giacomo Leopardi (italian romantic poet)
"Night Song Of A Wandering Shepherd"

What do you do, moon, aloft? Let me know

what, silent moon, you do.

You rise each night; you go;

you contemplate the deserts; then you sleep.

Do you not have your fill

of ever ranging never-changing scenes?

Do you not loathe returning, are you still

eager for these ravines?

The shepherd's life to him

is like your life. Each morning

he rises at first dawning:

moves on his flocks to other fields, beholds

more flocks, spring water, grasses;

then drops exhausted at the end of day:

expects no other way.

Say, moon, what can be found

of worth in life to him

and to you in your life? where does it lead,

this transient drift of mine

and your eternal round?



Wizened, white-haired and broken,

barefoot and clad in rags,

a load, the heaviest, strung on his back,

by hill and valley track,

on knife-edged stones, through thickets, knee-deep sand,

in wind and tempest, when the hour of day

is oven-hot - or freezes,

he goes, goes on and wheezes,

fords waterfalls and bogs,

falling and rising, always stumbling on,

not resting to take food,

till lacerated, bleeding, he at last

arrives at where the path

and where his painful efforts have been leading:

a vast and horrid chasm

in which he plunges to oblivion.

Such, lunar chastity,

is life - mortality.



The life of man is labour;

just to risk dying is his lifeblood lent him.

He learns what will torment him

among the first things; his progenitors,

mother and father, start

consoling him for birth in their contrition.

Then, as he comes to grow,

one and the other help him. Ceaselessly

in utterance and act

they try to give him heart,

console him for his human destiny.

Parents do well to see

for offspring there is no more seemly pact.

Why bring to light, in fact;

why ever keep alive

one who must be consoled for having life?

If living has no cure

why do we so endure?

Moon, unassailed by touch,

mortality is such.

But, since you are not mortal,

words do perhaps not move you overmuch.



You in eternal, lonely pilgrimage

must be aware, as pensively you go,

of earth-life, what it is,

how we plod sighing as in pain we bend; -

also what dying is, the ultimate

diminishing of features,

how here the case is each man perishes

from off the earth, from every loving friend.

Certain it is you know

the why of things, for you behold the fruit

of evening and of morn,

the silent, endless, passing-by of time.

You know, you, for whom in her delight

the smiles of spring are born,

whom the heat betters, and for what device

the wintertime brings ice.

A thousand things you know, a thousand find,

which are from simple shepherds held from sight.

Often when I observe

your silent stay above the empty plain,

whose far rim gives the sky apparent bounds;

when with my flock I see

you dog my steps - with slow and steady gain;

when I watch stars burn in celestial heights;

a voice speaks in my mind:

Wherefore so many lights?

For what the sky's infinity, for what

the deep, non-finite air? What signifies

this solitude immense? And what am I?

Converse I with myself so: of the chambers

unmeasured and superb,

and of the kin unnumbered they contain;

but in so much activity and motion

of all those things above, and here below,

that with no resting go,

always returning to where they began;

no use or benefit

in them I see. But you must without doubt,

immortal maiden, know the truth of it.

This do I feel and know:

that from the endless gyres

and from my fragile pain

some profit or content

others may have. To me life is a bane.



My flock at rest, how great your happiness:

I do not think you know your misery!

How much I envy you!

Not just because you go

as if completely free,

and every strain and blow -

and every terror - you at once forget;

but more because you do not suffer boredom.

When you upon the grass sit in the shade,

you are content and quiet,

existing mostly so

without distress a great part of the year.

When I sit in the shade upon the grass

thick clouds of torpor pass

across my mind, and pangs as from a spur.

Thus from me, supine, ever more deferred

is any peaceful base.

Yet nothing I desire

and cause for grief had I none until late.

What joy is yours, how great,

I know not, but the gods to you are good.

For me joy has no place,

nor, flock of mine, only at this I sorrow.

For if you understood

I would ask why a beast

which lies down lazily

is calm, fulfilled and blest,

while tedium engulfs me when I rest.



Were wings to elevate

my soul above the clouds

to number off the stars spread everywhere;

or could I like the thunder roam the crags;

I would be happier, oh sweet flock, I would

be happier, moon, whose whiteness rules the air.

Or would truth deviate

at thought of other beings and their fate?

Perhaps whatever state

life may be born to, in a croft or lair,

the time of birth is a funereal date.

[naiad]

Originally Posted by Fondueset

Moon is having not wind for hold our breath to the water! The light is wrinkled!
From the torches there is too much for seeing. Trouts are not nervous! A carp!

Sounds like a great dive.

[Adrian]

Beautiful poem Spaghetti, I'dl love to be able to read it in Italian, as the translation always gives it subtle differences, as well as losing the melodious cadence of your language. Unfortunately, even speaking Spanish, I' would only understand around 30 or so percent, maybe more. Pero no tutti!

Here's my favorite poem, about the silence that hides in all actions:

The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs,
but no dust is stirred.
The moonlight penetrates the depths of the pool,
but no trace is left in the water.

If governments knew this, they would come crumbling down...

[Fondueset]

Beautiful Poems.

We went again last night. There were large swells on the bay, like ocean waves; which is really unusual. A floating dock we used for our entry made eerie creaking and moaning sounds as the swells seemed to come right through the breakwall. The bay is open to Lake Michigan in the north and the swells were certainly generated there. I took a less powerful light and the moonlight was less helpful but we had a great time. The Lake Trout are spawning and several of them seemed extremely friendly.. Obviously they are diurnal. I wish I could get pictures of the amazing way everything looks under there in moonlight.
There were dozens of small rock bass just resting on or hovering just above the bottom. These normally vanish at the end of august and I've always wondered where they go. They must have a rock bass civilization in the rocks and just come out at night.

[spaghetti]

hey Fondueset, the your points of reputation are arrived to 100!
Congratulations most alive!!!

PS-Adrian, the cadence of the our language is so melodious that on the italian television we look the Beverly Hill Billies dubbed in italian. I not understand why the americans look the Beverly Hill Billies in american: I tried but not understand almost nothing of what say the Billies...

[Groupermadness]

Canzone


GIÀ mai non mi conforto,
nè mi voglio rallegrare:
le navi son giunt al porto
e vogliono colare.
Vassene lo più gente
in terra d’ oltre mare:
oi me, lassa dolente,
e como degio fare?
Vassene in altra contrata
e no lo mi manda a dire,
ed io rimagno ingannata,
tanti sono li sospire
che mi fanno gran guerra
la notte co’ la dia;
nè ’n cielo ned in terra,
non mi pare ch’ io sia.
Santus, santus, santus Deo
qui in Vergine venisti,
salve e guarda l’ amor meo
poi da me lo dipartisti:
oi alta potestade,
temuta e dottata,
il dolze mi’ amistade
ti sia raccomandata!
La croce salva la gente
e me face disviare;
la croce mi fa dolente,
e non mi val Dio pregare.
Oi croce pellegrina,
perchè m’ hai sì distrutta?
oi me, lassa tapina!
ch’ i’ ardo e ’ncendo tutta!
14 Lo ’mperadore con pace
tutto lo mondo mantene;
ed a me guerra face
chè m’ à tolta mia spene.
Oi alta potestade,
temuta e dottata,
lo mio dolze amistate
vi sia raccomandata!
Quando la croce pigliao
certo no lo pensai
quelli che tanto m’ amao
ed i’ lui tanto amai,
ch’ i’ ne fuie battuta
e messa in pregionia
e ’n celato tenuta
per la vita mia.
Le navi so’ a le colle
in bon’ ora possan andare,
e lo mio amore co’ ’lle
e la gente che v’ ha andare;
o Padre criatore,
a santo porto ’l duce,
che vanno a servidore
de la tua santa croce!
Però ti priego, dolcetto,
che sai la pena mia,
che me ne facce un sonetto
e mandilo in Soria,
ch’ io non posso abentare
la notte nè la dia,
in terra d’ oltre mare
istà la vita mia.


Enjoy...RINALDO D’ AQUINO