Rough Ideas

Each cycle of a firing feels like I am growing new bones. As I photograph pots with materials from the garden it’s like I am relearning my work by re-imaging a vision. I aim to see with an inventive view maybe that of a bee or to capture the novelty of a new home or to see afresh with the eye of a traveler. Today is my birthday, which marks another spin around the year. There’s no idea how long I have or how strong we are but I aim to keep trying to capture something specific, perhaps as clear as the view when the sun emerges after a long rainy stretch.

new bones

we will wear
new bones again.
we will leave
these rainy days,
break out through
another mouth
into sun and honey time.
worlds buzz over us like bees,
we be splendid in new bones.
other people think they know
how long life is.
how strong life is.
we know.

–Lucille Clifton

I used to tell people that my daughter had grown up with a Tom Sawyer vibe. We ended the school year with a pond party where all her friends and many parents came. We all swam, ate and celebrated the beginning of summer. Initially, some of the kids were not sure they wanted to swim in the pond. But by the end of the night they had experienced what to me feels like the chemical change that happens when you swim in local water.

Today while she celebrated with childhood friends I walked around our hillside with our seven month old grandson introducing him to leaves, trees, flowers, and the pond. As we studied the milkweed my monologue reminded him that the monarch butterflies and their essential milkweed are now his responsibility.

Water USA

america, tom sawyer, is bigger
than your swim
hole. You meant, the union, water-
falls, one waterfall
a path near, from which you
jump, folklore, holding
your nose. a chemical change
takes place as you pollute
the water i drink. as your
jet lands, crashing my
environment. tom sawyer can’t hold
all the dead bodies upright
nor get anything
out of a lecture on control
systems. and bigger
thomas didn’t have an even
chance to study chemistry

–Clarence Major

This morning my daughter did yoga in our bedroom. She loved looking into the Mulberry branches that fill the window looking north. I remember the first time the trees seemed big enough to fill the framed view. It was so exciting to have an inkling of shade and life among the trees rather than on a bare hillside.

When I fire the woodkiln I am struck by how far I have come in the years I have lived in the country, now able to identify trees by leaves, bark, interior grain, or seed pods. Recently when I arrived home the green of the Redbud seed pods and the peculiar way they hang from the branch called out as if saying “stay a while.” Over and over again I learn the lesson of the trees, to be filled with light and to shine.

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

–Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees

I always find it easier to work on my series of images in December. Because December with its shorter days is a harder time of year for me I push to find the beauty in the moment. In June the lush greens of Virginia, the long days, the heat, and the abundance lull me into a slow dance. I weave between the lists of things to be done, the exhaustion woven into the humid heat of the day, and a love of lingering in twilight.

At the end of the afternoon I raced to take a photo while I still had light before the brewing thunderstorm arrived. I chose the pot and the backdrop then set off to the garden for the perfect object to perch. Just then the rain pelted down. I reached in my pocket to find a red onion I had pulled by mistake while weeding. It was the perfect token to balance in my pot.

“There is a particular madness at both of the year’s extremes. Each point carries its own depths of longing. Each point moves us on. Between them, we find a kind of unsteady balance. Over the course of a lifetime, we will live out long cycles of high and low, and we rehearse that in the cycle of each year. Such is the tough love we are given by the world. It shows us exactly what it means by living, over and over again, until we remember it.”

–Katherine May from her newsletter Stray Attention

When I am headed north to Maine each body of water seems like an invitation to swim. I study rivers, lakes, bays, ponds and the ocean as we make our way up the east coast. During this year’s early trip to Western Massachusetts the rivers seemed to call my name as I drove past. Now home in Virginia the pond is singing like a river in June.

“You taste like a river in June.”

–Arkaye Kierulf, from section 11 of “Spaces”

When the mulberries come out the deer come closer and closer to the house. They sample more plants and as our tree grows bigger more berries land on the back deck. It is as if we set out a snack bar for our four legged friends. Putting pots on the back deck is an act of wishful thinking, almost as if I have been sitting under the tree of forgetfulness.

“This is the Tree of Forgetfulness. All the headmen here plant one of these trees in the village. They say ancestors stay inside it. If there is some sickness or if you are troubled by spirits, then you sit under the Tree of Forgetfulness and your ancestors will assist you with whatever is wrong.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness

The Cardoon in my garden has been happy. It has many self-seeded babies. Often I am working at the edges of daylight. While weeding, picking herbs and veggies I admire the first fireflies. So distractedly reaching for the edible thing I often grab the thorny stem.

foolishly in the darkness
I grab a thorn
hunting for fireflies . . .

–Basho

“When you’re making something, you don’t know what it is for a really long time. So, you have to kind of cultivate the space around you, where you can trust the thing that you can’t name. And if you feel a little bit insecure, or somebody questions you, or you need to know what it is, then what happens is you give that thing that you’re trying to listen to away. And so, how do you kind of cultivate a space that allows you to dwell in that not knowing…”

–Ann Hamilton

I have been making plates with my students. I try to explain about the way our fingers touch clay. I aim to touch just right, to create expressive edges. I am letting the past inform what I make for the future, leaving fingerprints like fossils left behind by the sea.

There’s a soft spot in everything
Our fingers touch,
                                 the one place where everything breaks
When we press it just right.
The past is like that with its arduous edges and blind sides,
The whorls of our fingerprints                                                     embedded along its walls
Like fossils the sea has left behind.

–Charles Wright, from “Two Stories,” The Other Side of the River (Random House, 1984)

I am teaching a workshop this weekend at Snow Farm in Western Massachusetts. We have been making what I call dust prints while talking about materials and the seeds of ideas.

“You begin with the possibilities of the material.”

—Robert Rauschenberg