When the spiral gets to be too much; talking pottery & Truth
Dog-Ear: Feb. 5, 2024
2/5: We can just be & have our needs, can be awake & know the sun is still hiding something, can be going in circles & taking detours of dreaming. It’s all changing anyway. Nothing gets buried w/ time. The future too, an undead thing.
I have spent the morning in the Hologram. It’s always unintentional but things take the time they take - checking into the world and throwing something into it. I am having a hard time distinguishing my value in the Hologram from the creation of it - a tedious realm, a tedious medium, its meaning immediate, a day that goes by in a dry blink.
I am writing about it now, as one life feeds another. Identity all red, learning to tango. I am lonely in this, don’t know how to invite my friends over anymore. I am selfish in my home. Am I as bad as I think I am?
Toying w/ my morning, I had the afternoon to contend w/, ice in the drive resting cold in the hard sun. Do I go to pottery or do I clean my house? The house could use it, a week or two now, salty and scattered (I could rot here, you know). But that’s something I could do anytime, even little by little. While pottery well, I could use more practice. This beautiful craft is testing me deeply, quickly, all of me - and I am struggling more steadily these days. Jackson Brown in my head, except neurotic at 45 RPM. I am seeing myself more clearly. I am rippling out from myself like mercury drip, wet chrome in the sun. Fear battling love again; my words a rope to love and they are fraying.
I am the sound of static again, Truth cruel and timely. The Soul and I are both top-heavy around tight curves so I slow down, I feel it out, on days when impatience isn’t driving. I remember this is a precious thing I am driving, a precious thing I am doing. Anyway. I want to play w/ clay on my time, see if I can’t make something I love. See if I can make more mistakes first (mistakes are research). T isn’t home until tomorrow. I can take my time, dinner already in the fridge.
I get nervous over of the throwing wheel, like curiosity has an electric charge. I am so attracted to this craft, out of the clear blue sky. It is already answering my questions.
Yes, I have been preaching all year: living w/ the questions. Do you ever think preaching and prophecy is just a mantra on repeat of things we need to believe? Prayers, all prayers, repeated to keep them w/in reach. Don’t make gods out of preachers - they are not telling you any of it is easy, they are telling you what they have to tell themselves. Catch me at the bar and get me talking.
Clay in my hands, I learn about skin and muscle and pressure. I center w/ effort. Though I know where it is (the center the center), it is hard to get to, hard to hold, hard to find again. Water mixes w/ clay when it needs to, at any point of friction. But too much water makes it too weak to stand. It is all about moisture and time, each stage requiring planning and patience and temperature. Exact replicas do not exist w/out machine. Sound familiar? We are all manmade, so soft, so soft and strong but still so easily broken. Precious things, precious things!
Imperfect, these pots will feed me. These pots will quench me. They will collect and delight and crumble. I can make me something. I can make you something. I can give the archive something - not binary-built words and photos but something to hold. I am deepening my understanding of worth and it is built over time.
I battle my impatience w/ failure w/ the weapon of curiosity. Sometimes it’s a draw. The fear thing lives in my head but it’s been buying up my body, monument by monument. When I accept the gift of patience, I have to accept help - others’ time, others’ attention, others’ love. Another mantra I preach: ask for help, ask for what you want, ask for what you need. I have been stubborn in staying broken. Is love an even exchange? Tell me what my love is worth - plain, simple, everyone wanting something different. Tell me how I can prove it’s here w/ me, here w/ me to give to you.
I find selfishness in every shadow. I punish myself for the goods and the bads. All the gifts I give myself burn out fast. I am thoughtless in movement. I am only in thought when settled - it all gets sorted in the body, the energy of presence. In creation, we must balance both thought and movement - unify, scratch and slip and smooth the precious two together. Creation is nothing if not curiosity explored.
Flawed, I am still trying - going fast, going slow, trusting to know the clay that’s in my hands, creating care in the spinning. I hear, rushing is the worst thing you can do and I cartoonishly nod along. Dizzy on the wheel, I am spiraling, easily distracted and spiraling, to the center the center, trying trying, getting a feel for it. The clay changes again all over. We are changed again all over, by touch and time and temperature. We are always new shapes. We will carry life to each other. We will break when the world breaks, will crumble when the world crumbles. We will have been dirt all along.