sculpted

I wasn't happy with the results of some of my last projects, but this last kiln batch had three gorgeous drinking vessels in it, one dramatic with its red and blacks, one swirling with blues like the ocean, and one with the perfect drips of white and orange over dark blue. Reinspired to pound out clay and shape into more graceful forms, incising and rolling, immersed in the act of shaping. These were meant to give away but they're so pretty that I have them sitting on the dining room table as inspiration while I plot future projects and refires of the duds.

It was so beautiful out that after dinner we walked down to the carnival where the life-sized cardboard cutout of Pope Benedict stood watch over the revelers singing Italian standards, eating greasy food, and screaming on gloriously creaky carnival rides. Bad tattoos and cutoffs, hipsters and guidos. There were even quarter games for the kids, gambling for the grade school set, colorful ducks floating in an inflatable kiddie pool.

I didn't have my camera or any cash, but one of my good friends from the suburbs to the east is coming over for a night of chillness that will probably consist of what most of my hanging out with anyone consists of... some combination of random discourse, loud music, food, and hanging out on the beach or wandering through the city. I'm easily entertained and like it when others are just as easily amused. It's the pleasure of the company after all, the destination is the afterthought.

I've set up a kitchen chair on the balcony, to pick up the neighbor's wireless signal, do some writing without being social and listen to Dead Can Dance while being the premature old lady watching the world go by. I've loved the sky these past couple nights, the way the moon ascends through a lace mantle of grey clouds tossed across the sky. I tried to take pictures off the balcony last night but they didn't come out so well, so I just try to remember, and think of samurai writing haiku about cherry blossoms in the twilight.

The inspiration has come from so many places, from stained glass and the myriad hues and shapes of leaves and flowers, wisps of sky and glimpses of sun, reading and listening and trying to soak in everything. There is only one true creator, and we made in that image have that impulse, but can only document the beauty of the light and what it reveals and rearrange the matter already in place, repurposing and recycling, taking ink and paint to paper, shaping the clay of the earth into things of use and beauty, painting with chemicals and flecks of glass and crystal, to catch a glimpse of vision and be able to hold its gaze for just a moment.