I think about making pots all the time.Everything I do somehow seems to lead back to ceramics.I will be doing the laundry and the swirl of the soap bubbles will spin me off into a daydream about decoration. When we bought my new combustion stove home last week, I was thrilled to discover it had a slidy-outy ash tray thingy. My first thought on seeing that was, “Oh yeah! Now I can really get some good, pristine ash for a glaze.”
It is the same with my photographs. I was cloud watching the other evening and as I was photographing the sky my brain was busily skipping along on ceramic tangents.”Mmm a bold orange streak on a blue background, now that would work.Why didn’t I think of that before? Look at those colours, they work beautifully together. Oh look is that a dragon,why do I see dragons all the time? The Chinese made cool dragons,I wish I could make a dragon. I must make a ceramic horse as well, I wonder if I could slipcast one? And on and on it goes. The inside of my head is a very busy place.
The spouse will see me photographing the sky and draw my attention to a cloud he thinks I will like, but he isn’t privy to the racing torrent of ideas that fill my head with ceramic dreams.He thinks I just like clouds.
I borrowed a book from the library a few weeks ago on Innuit Women Artists. I didn’t get much of a chance to do anything other than skim through the book, quickly glancing at the photographs of their work. But a thought occurred to me and it richocheted loudly around in my head for days.These women make what they see, their art is inspired by what they see everyday.
Finally everything has started to fall into place for me artistically.I have started to make some large bowls and platters that have some guts, that work, that I actually really like and enjoy making, simply because I haven’t been making against my nature. (yay)
The piece of firewood inspired the large bowl that is shown next to it.
Here is a dragon in the sky, also this is similar to the orange and blue colour combination that I mentioned earlier.
I really like this photo because it is pretty but also because it inspires me to make a bowl with wibbly edges, all curvy and roundish.
This final shot of the moon could inspire a whole series of its own.
The weather is always a nice safe subject. A slightly bland or even somewhat boring topic of conversation, but definitely a safe subject. On the other hand if I was to talk about cholesterol and my husband I might venture away from safe and start frothing at the mouth and twitching.
Just a little bit, mind you.
I wrote on my about me page, that ‘The Spouse’ and I have been together for 22 years and I love him very much, he is my best friend. BUT, I do have my alibi prepared for the day that he finally pushes me over the edge.
Well that edge is a lot closer today than it has been for a while and I can’t decide whether to finish ‘his royal stubbornness’ off myself, or just give up and let him eat all the food that he likes and his heart will just go pop anyway. Death by deep fried fish seems a much simpler way to go.
I can’t remember the last time I cooked two proper evening meals in a row. By proper I mean healthy and balanced.
In the last few months of Mum’s illness I was stretched really, really thinly as Mum had become less able to do all the stuff healthy people take for granted. Simple things like changing the sheets on her bed had become akin to climbing Everest.
Everything fell by the wayside, as the physical demands of caring for my Mum didn’t leave any time left over for secondary shit like my own housework or cooking. I am an indifferent housekeeper at the best of times and indifferent quickly turned to non-existent.
After Mum died everything became a major effort and for a couple of weeks I suffered a massive case of the couldn’t be bothereds.Cooking? Bleh. Housework? Who gives a fuck, shut the door. I just could not be bothered doing much of anything.
And then it started to rain and it rained and rained and rained. The dreadful grey wetness of winter nearly did my head in. Please remind me of that, when I have to buy water this summer and I am stressing out about bushfire.
Last week The Spouse was splitting wood and he developed a painful tightness in his chest. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t a heart attack as there wasn’t any of the hormone blah blah blah in his blood which indicates damage to the heart muscle,phew.
The Spouse is off to the cardiologists tomorrow for a stress test which will give us a clearer picture of what exactly is going on. His cholesterol levels were high at 7.8, which is enough to statistically give him the chances of 1 in 50 of suffering a fatal heart attack.
So now my control freak tendencies can really be let loose up on my family. The Spouse needs to lower his cholesterol and all the food choices he makes from now on will be supervised by yours truly.It is well past time that I dusted off the pots and pans and started cooking again. As soon as I hit publish I am going to make a large pot of fish soup for tea.
If the tooth be told having multiple extractions wasn’t too bad.Dentists today are much nicer than the evil butchers that were about when I was a child. We stopped for a bit of a rest halfway through and I only needed stitches in a couple of spots.
My shiny plastic choppers were placed in my mouth and after about 15 minutes of face washing, deep breathing and generally getting my shit together,I was able to drive myself home.The Spouse rode shotgun though, just in case.
We made it safely home and I have been getting a little bit better every day.The false teeth are incredibly painful to wear for long but I was able to keep them in for two and a half hours yesterday and I keep on thinking small steps Kimmy. Small steps.
The first time I looked in the mirror at my toothless reflection I began to cry. I looked so different.Old and ugly and alien.I wanted to ring my mother and have Mum make it all better.*sigh*
I have been feeling as vulnerable and grief stricken as I was in the first few days following the funeral and I don’t like it. I don’t like crying, I don’t like feeling vulnerable and I certainly don’t like the bathroom mirror at the moment.
Small steps Kimmy. Small steps.
Mum’s house is definitely on the market now, it was advertised in Thursday’s paper. The real estate agent has been showing people through the house all week and it is impossible to pretend that it isn’t happening any more. All I can do is hope that a nice young couple buy it and are happy there.
So this week has been a huge week emotionally for me and I am desperately seeking positives to cling to so that my head doesn’t explode, because that just wouldn’t be pretty.
