All Saints

 

The day always feels like vacation. A chance to catch up with old friends. A time to apologize for missing feast-days and thank under-appreciated ones for secret support. And it is a day of preparation. A day to look forward at the new-born month with eagerness. There is so much potential here! I may have spent my October in a many colored haze of leaves and earth and dark skies, but November is here, and it demands a different rhythm - a bundled, reflective, and slow-moving rhythm. I’m drinking less coffee these days and remembering to feed the stove, even during the day. I’m wearing bright colors outside and lighting the lamps in early evening. The days are shorter and darker.

I’m planning sewing projects for the month: a wool skirt for me, a cushion cover for the rocking chair, pillow-cases, and curtains. Easy projects with straight lines while I learn to love working on my beautiful machine. I’ve similar plans for my kick-wheel: easy projects: sake cups and soup bowls, while I fall into the rhythm of kicking and working, working and kicking again. Hard work, but worth the effort - like everything in life.

 

 

Ink, Pots, and Poets

My new tattoo is lovely. I keep looking down on it with joy. I’d heard horror stories about the pain of hand tattoos, but my actual experience was wonderful, apparently it depends a lot on the artist’s skill and the quality of the needle. Yarrow had a fantastic time with the full-length mirror and the pictures on the wall. It’s definitely my most public tattoo, and I enjoy seeing the curling black lines move with my hand. I like seeing just a hint of it falling out of a long sleeve, or the small dots dancing up my arm.

 

 

I’ve pulled my half fired pots out of the shed, they’re lined up along my wheel in the kitchen, waiting to be dusted, inspected, and glazed before taking up rented kiln-space at the studio downtown. On Saturday I threw for the first time in almost two years. It will be a while, I think, before I really feel like I’m completely comfortable at the wheel again, but I was thrilled to realize how ingrained it all is. I am still a potter, my hands still belong in the earth. Throwing, my head is full of poems, and afterward, writing is easy, almost effortless for a while. I remember the poems I wrote in Pennsylvania, when I lived with my wheel, my good friend, and little else. Now we are on opposite coasts, she has a newborn son, I have a daughter who laughs with Jesus in the outhouse. Throwing again, I wonder where my life will go from here.

"If you like metaphysics throw pots."
      ~Annie Dillard

I like metaphysics, as a hobby. Throwing pots is more serious, more a part of life; but I like metaphysics, and so I throw pots. Recently, my husband moved my wheel from the shed to the not-quite complete kitchen where it'll live for a while.

I've missed throwing. For the past year I haven't had the space set up to throw, though I bought a kick wheel before we moved.  My etsy shop has languished and all the my pots have stayed in my mind.

Annie Dillard says it is the material that matters to the writer, the many things of life. I like the material things as  well, and I see what she means - throwing they are a distraction - writing, they inspire.