As always the short days of December take me by surprise. This year on my return from Montana I entered into the cycle of studio work for our anagama. With every shortening day I have found myself focusing on dawn. Each morning I note the colors and angle of the light. When we are firing the kiln, waking in the dark to stoke the kiln it's a treat to note the early morning shift in the sky from fully dark to just discerning the dark lines of tree branches against the horizon of the bluish brightening sky. When I am firing I always lose track of the days. Watching the dawn allows me to breath and tend the kiln in the space between yesterday and tomorrow.
"In that crest of daybreak, we move from darkness, chaos, timelessness,
and space without boundaries, into light, edges, time, and language. For
a few minutes, there's a place between yesterday and tomorrow. To take
it in, even just for a moment, is to experience a glimmer of
immortality. There is time for everything. Dawn is the prophecy and the
potential, the abyss and its opposite, the end and the beginning. Each
day, it gives us the opportunity to touch both at once. We watch, in as
close as we can get to silence, as the sky fills with sky. "
--from the Sight of Dawn by Nina MacLaughlin published in the Paris Review
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