Day One Hundred Ninety-Eight

I decided that I was off vacation the past Monday. I say I decided because I came back last Thursday from the Pacific Northwest, with the later part of it being at an off-the-grid cabin in the Olympic Peninsula, with long walks in the thousands-year old rainforests and the vast beaches with sea anemones and drift logs. In this living landscape I felt insignificant, both in scale and the history of time, and became quiet. Discontent, explanations, meanings, do not matter. They just are. Coming back was uninspiring. In stead of going to the studio I spent a half day sewing together sunflower petals that dried and fell on the dining table after these two weeks, and other time reading, finishing the one I started during the trip and two new ones, wanting to spend some time in other people's brain. At the computer screen I tried typing up the log but I did not seem to have anything worthwhile to share, and was afraid that I would end up casting negativities through this small window to the infinite world with no sense of smell or touch. 

But routines and deadlines help. Today I had a better studio day. I sat down on a wheel and had a long throwing session for the first time since I hurt my shoulder almost a month ago. I'm working on an idea on medicine cabinets, which I will talk more at some other time, making hundreds of small bottles. By two hours in I started to feel the silence coming from this repetitive task. I missed it. I needed it.  In this silence many ideas popped to mind. I wanted to write them down before they slipped out. I cleaned the clay off of my hands and rushed to the notebook trying to write them down, some lost already, some made to the notebook. Now go back to the wheel again and throw. 

Day One Hundred Seventy-Three

I woke up this morning feeling weak. I thought it was just a few days but I was told that it's at least a few weeks that I had been in a weird mood. I wanted to stay quiet and work alone. I went to the beach. I read. I made things in clay. I kept my journal in my notebook every morning. Somehow writing on paper with a pencil feels different from typing. 

My shoulder is still not perfect and sometimes my fingers feel numb in the morning. I seem to have a compression of nerve between my collar bone and my first rib from what I read. I came across an article that it is common to experience a psychological change in people with this condition. I have not decided that I'm one of them but having a possible reason to help explain the weird mood can be comforting.

So I started the morning feeling no strength in my core. But I saw photos my friend sent me from his show in my inbox and this lifted me up. I have to get up and get to work. This is not a joke.

A bit more than a week ago I saw a stack of large boxes ready to be picked up on the loading dock as I was leaving the building. From the size and the number of boxes with a red fragile label I assumed those were his work going out to his show. Then I felt depressed. There shouldn't be anything to be sad about. But somehow when works are complete and are going out I don't feel cheerful. They are gone and gone from the studio where all works were done. A release. But works are supposed to go out the door, to the world out there. I can't connect the thought but I'm thinking about the Little Prince's sheep in the box.

Day One Hundred Sixty-Three

I accumulated the time pieces on the shelf to dry. Haven't done firing a while I almost forgot the excitement of opening a glaze kiln. It is exciting because I never know exactly how they turn out until I see them.  The heat journey is something I could never touch. It is capable of bringing both good surprises and big disappointments at the same time.

I stared at the fired pieces for a while, unconvinced, and shifted my eyes to the glaze test tiles. The grey ones are good and I know which ones I will use. The pink ones are failed. The colors faded after I expanded the recipe to a larger batch. I can move on quite easily with test tiles. Keep, try another, discard. But these time objects, I don't know it but I should know it. And I run another glaze kiln to be done and out for tomorrow. 

Day One Hundred Fifty-Eight

I work on time vessels because I have problems knowing time. What is time?  I'm always chasing time and I want to hold on to it. My ten minutes now does not seem to have the same duration as the ten minutes from the other time. Working in forms forces me to think and see. So I read books and hear things about time. We make tools. New devices are supposed to save us time but instead seem to speed things up so much that now we can't catch up. We save time so we can do more and do it quick. but I want to have now a bit longer.

But we do manipulate time. We collect our spotty memories and make up a story of the future to tell ourselves.  We stay in one thought as if the time has stopped. I write now. You will read it in my future what I wrote which is in my past. I will know the next word in my future, and it is my past by the time you read it. It's a zen dialogue. 

Day One Hundred Fifty-Seven

I write more about the time project.

It is going to be a room filled with vessels that used to operate time. They can change the flow of time. They can hold time. They can pick different moments of your past and mix with my future. 

Some look like a distorted hour glass.

Others have a large opening like a satellite dish. It looks like a plastic funnel that sits in the middle of a board game I used to play on New Year's. I throw in four bubble-gum size balls. They go round and round chasing after another. One by one they get sucked into the tube and fall on to one of the paths underneath - where they come out determines my next move.

The funnel on the vessel is connected to a closed vessel. There is no neck, a mouth or a bottom. It is not clear if whatever you put in will come out.

They are dusty pink and blue like a furry growth on your bread that is now old. These vessels were gone and disappeared for a long while because we forgot to look. 

They look like human organs.

Day One Hundred Fifty-Six

I wrote the first draft statement on the time vessels. My argument does not come out well. I don't even want to argue about it, but I try to tell what I am thinking about and why I make them. I try to explain the ambiguous thing I am figuring out through making them. I don't like any of the words I write. I relate same things over and over. And it does not get to a point. 

There is a joy in working on things, trying to figure it out. But when I don't hear my own voice it becomes frustrating. What is the word, the thing I'm thinking? And then I say I wish I knew how to play an instrument. 

Day One Hundred Fifty-Five

I am taking a day off from studio work to give a little rest to my shoulder. Good thing that I'm not feeling social. Reading and taking a bath suite me well.