Fire and Water

I spent the day at the studio, doing work and observing a soda firing. I learned a lot; and as the night wore on, spent a lot of time thinking. The notion of preparing work to be sold does alter the path of exploration I might take otherwise; there's a balance to be found there.

Making things, too, is a practice. Sometimes it comes together with a practiced ease that even amazes me; other times, the endeavour requires more effort.

I'd go into the kiln room, put on gloves, pull the peeps, look at glowing clay inside. Jayson taught me what reduction smells like. There's something special, purifying, maybe, about being exposed to the heat, inhaling hot dry air, feeling the radiance of the kiln bricks themselves. It's two thousand degrees on the other side. The experience produces respect, if not awe. There's a subtle intensity. There's something I've found in my favorite places for meditation. There's something else, too, I can't name.

When I finally made my way home, it was after midnight. The air was cool, moist, smelled like rain. Rather than a return to the mere earth from my place on a mountaintop, it was a return to the best that earth has to offer, with its own sounds, smells, sense of isness.

So, um, I spent the entire day in the studio, making pots, learning from a potter, talking claystuff, and I loved it.

Edit: the next day. It's now Sunday evening; I got in late, excited, awake, wrote. Got up late, and had a slow-passing and lovely day. I'm still excited about clay, still excited about the prospect of making work that is somehow... more. If my tired/wired ramblings above mean little to anyone else, for me they mark a turning point, the opening of a door.