Jotun

 Jotun / Frost-giant:
clay: soldate;
oribe glazing.

Identification by CG.

Body English in Green

Clay: soldate;
glaze: oribe.

Dream: Office Exile?

The other night, I had one of my recurring dreams that I have a secret office at Berkeley, usually a closet of a space that locks, which somehow is always overlooked, and I just work there or ruminate there or drink there. I only have the dream once or twice a year, but I've visited that office off and on for, oh, 20 years now.

(Back in the early 1990's, for a few scattered semesters, I had solo-access to a quite nice office in Wheeler Hall due to the kindness of my dissertation director, but the dream-office is never quite that space, not usually quite that nice either.)

In this latest episode, the usual closet-office had morphed into a suite that I (a not-quite-me -- you know: dreams) . . . that I was squatting in, only to get busted out when a new hire showed up expecting to inhabit the place. She was not very happy about yours-truly, and as I was throwing books and clothes and gear into a rollie, I woke up.

I wonder if that's my last visit to campus.

Laws of Life

LAWS OF LIFE

Stone bruises;
Clay forgives.
Yet stone holds,
While clay slips.

Fire cleanses;
Fire burns;
Fire demands;
Fire yearns.

Under fierce fire
Clay becomes stone.

--Matt Duckworth

9/19/15

Clay: Glazing and Trimming

Body parts, tails, nonfunctional whale-oracrina, faces of various sizes, potbellied merman, and bowls:

Wet Clay!

Clay Work: Fresh From The Kiln

Wood-Kerne Wild

Old Herne the Hunter ornament.
Stoneware and shiny brown glaze.

Mary Oliver: "To Love What Is Mortal"

IN BLACKWATER WOODS

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

--Mary Oliver

Note: I came to this fine poem from Jennifer Cutting's fine tribute to her beloved cat Mr. Sunshine, who passed away just recently.  Wednesday will be the seventh anniversary of the passing of my own sunshine-orange-boy Rudi.

"Math Trauma" -- by Chase Twichell

MATH TRAUMA

If you liked geometry,
it meant you were a prude.
Girls who liked algebra put out.
The cool girls (I was not one)
sat cloistered, passing notes
and scoring high on tests.

The first time Mom and Dad split up,
kids from down the block and I lit the dry field
behind the development, then with wet towels
beat back the racing edge on the verge of panic
until we were sure it was out.
I always got that feeling from math.

I writhed like a snake over coals
if it came near me.
Mrs. X, drunk the year we did
multiplication and division,
never checked our workbooks
so no one ever saw the horses
where the answers should have been.
That’s when I first wandered off into
the white pastures on my own,
with nothing but a spiky quiver of words
and an urgent question.

--Chase Twichell,
from Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been,
Copper Canyon Press, 2010

Whoa! (Fresh from the Kiln)

Clay: soldate;

glaze: abalone.

Clay: soldate;

glaze: oribe.

"Like a Whole Soul in My Hands" -- Chase Twichell, Her Father, and a Trout

SORRY

I'm to press the pad of my thumb
against the trout's upper jaw,
its teeth surprisingly sharp,
more like berry cane than teeth,
its eyes already beginning to look back
from the afterlife.  It's limbless,
like a whole soul in my hands,
and slimy, so I clamp it
with my knees to get a better grip
and use both thumbs
to force back the jaw until the spine
breaks slowly, like a green stick,
and the jaws half close
as if by failing memory.
Then later in the sink we slit
open the belly, strip out the guts,
see if it's male or female,
see what it's eaten.  If it's female
Dad clicks sorry his tongue.

--Chase Twichell

from Dog Language
Copper Canyon Press,
2005

The Spiral

The spiral:

my favorite shape;

my favorite motion;

my favorite plot-line.

Small Blue Bowl:
clay: soldate;
glazing: sea foam.

Green Man, Weary

Clay: soldate;

glazes: oribe and sea foam.

I was lucky with the blending, I think.

Reprise: Shoulders of Clay

Self-Portrait #47.
Sculpture mix;
green and shino glazing:
live model.