Leaky vessels are the
bane of my existence. I try really hard to make sure I check all my
vases before they leave my house to make sure they do not seep or leak
but I always seem to miss one or two. I have come to accept that part of
me that misses those details. It is part of who I am. When someone
returns a leaky bottle it is another chance to deepen a friendship. When
we do a home exhibit or open studio I never know who will show up but
it is a thrill and reminder of all the different aspects of where our
lives have taken us--who we are and who we have been in our lives. These
aspects include student, potter, teacher, gardener, writer, yogi,
neighbor, storyteller, rememberer and forgeter of names, places, people
and events.
"Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as
leaky a vessel as was ever made, you have spent vast amounts of your
life as someone else, as people who died long ago, as people who never
lived, as strangers you never met. The usual I we are given has all the
tidy containment of the kind of character the realist novel specializes
in and none of the porousness of our every waking moment, the loose
threads, the strange dreams, the forgettings and misrememberings, the
portions of a life lived through others' stories, the incoherence and
inconsistency, the pantheon of dei ex machina and the companionability
of ghosts. There are other ways of telling."
--Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
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