Looking Into Mortality

Because I can't help myself.

Poor Motley-girl feeling miserable: last day.
20 years old.

"You Too Are Mortal"

Wasn't that what the official anti-hubris clerk kept whispering into the Great Emperor Darius' ear?  Or was that Xerxes?  ("Remember the Greeks"?  "Give the Hellespont 300 lashes"?)***

More appropriately, The Humble Potter's Handiwork.  Or, Look Ma, Hands of Clay!

Ugly pot.

I let this one dry too much before trying to trim it, and then I failed to secure it properly to the wheel so that it went flying off during that belated attempt at trimming, though I did catch it on the bounce. You can see stoneware clay improperly mixed with this Navajo wheel /stoneware hybrid at the rim, a failed stamp on the side, and that odd, flawed bottom.

I did manage to put a decent foot (that you can't see). The glazing will be a crucial step.

Just a run of the mill off-piece, truth to tell.  I like to try to save such pieces too.


***A reliable source nudges me towards the Romans and the triumph as the source of the memento mori. 

(I thank EHS and trust the correction -- of course, of course -- but I also continue to resist checking, despite how easy that would be in this day and this age.  There's a perverse pleasure in quoting or citing from memory.)

Fatality Knocks

"Dead people and dead thoughts and supposedly dead moments are never, ever truly dead, and they shape every moment of our lives.  We discount them, and that makes them mighty."

--from Caitlin R. Kiernan's The Drowning Girl: A Memoir