Rough Ideas

It was as if I was on a search for color. On the evening walk I picked up some tiny pears that had dropped from a Bradford pear tree. They were greenish yellow and drank in the bright orange of the sunset far to the west and the clear sky being blown our way. I studied the mossy green of the wet stones on the path as well as the blond of the tall grasses and the deep dark green of the cedars. I notice that when I have been photographing the last few days I am drawn to the red pear or the brilliant pomegranate as if I need the spark to set my imagination going.

This morning during a break in the rain I walked the hillside below the studio studying vines. I am drawn to the orange and red of the berries on bittersweet, but it is such an invasive plant I will not drag it anywhere for fear of spreading it even more. Instead, I cut a few vines that were strangling saplings. I chose one to put in my image for the day, perhaps befriending an enemy within my landscape.

The color of springtime is flowers; the color of winter is in our imagination.

–Terri Guillemets, a “quote collector,” The Quote Garden.

A poem, a pot, a pomegranate, a photograph can serve as a star or a pointer on a foggy dark evening.

A book, too, can be a star, “explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,” a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

–Madeleine L’Engle, from her Newbery Award Acceptance Speech: The Expanding Universe, August 1963.

During the weekend of visitors I am asked many different questions about my personal history and inspiration. I try to explain about shape, surface, and weight; how I place all my hope in these small vessels of clay. I call up all the language I can muster to give clues to the essence that is beyond language.

Cuirim mo dhóchas ar snámh
i mbáidín teangan …

I place my hope on the water
in this little boat
of the language …

–Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, from Pharaoh’s Daughter, translated by Paul Muldoon, (Gallery Press & Wake Forest University Press)

I give you this poem.

One river gives
Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

–Alberto Ríos, “When Giving Is All We Have,” from A SMALL STORY ABOUT THE SKY by Alberto Ríos © 2015 Copper Canyon Press.

When I talk about pottery I often use the phrase the seeds of ideas. I describe what I have been looking at in nature, or what I have been inspired by historically. I might use words to refer to a line, material, or scent but it is the feeling, the heft, the impression I am searching for. The pot is like a poem that opens the reference to spring when the pond is frozen, or mentions planting seeds when stuck in the short, frigid days of December.

The Presence in Absence

Poetry is not made of words.
I can say it’s January when
it’s August. I can say, “The scent
of wisteria on the second floor
of my grandmother’s house
with the door open onto the porch
in Petaluma,” while I’m living
an hour’s drive from the Mexican
border town of Ojinaga.
It is possible to be with someone
who is gone. Like the silence which
continues here in the desert while
the night train passes through Marfa
louder and louder, like the dogs whining
and barking after the train is gone.

–Linda Gregg, “The Presence in Absence” from In the Middle Distance © 2006 Linda Gregg

I intend these images to be as if one is looking through a window. By choosing a pot, some plant material, and finagling the backdrop I find a way into seeing a little more cleanly. The process helps me discover a touch of beauty. When the sky gets dark, I have a record of the day, the light, the moment.

Every Poem

has a double-hung window inside it,
the kind that allows you to let in
a little more air when you feel as if you
can’t breathe. Sometimes, seeing through it
helps you find a new way to frame the world.
Sometimes it makes it easier
to feel as if there’s distance
between you and what the poem says,
as if you’re on the outside looking in
instead of the other way around.
Though when it’s dark, you can’t help
but see your own reflection.
When a poem makes you uncomfortable,
its window opens wide enough to let you
climb out, but not without things
getting a little awkward. I mean,
you are climbing out the window
instead of using the poem’s back door.
But mostly, the window lets the light change
so every time you re-enter the poem,
it feels different—familiar, but new;
and you wander around inside the lines
and wonder, did the poem change?
Or did you?

–Rosemerry Whatola Trommer, November 30, 2024

One year I bought Warren a Fitbit as a gift. He had told me that he wanted to get more exercise and so I imagined him taking longer walks to get in his steps. Instead, he began to join me on my evening walk. At that point in time I thought of my evening stroll as a time to daydream/meditate/ponder the landscape or re-imagine the frustrations of the studio. I did not always welcome the company. Our compromise was that I could tell Warren anytime I wanted to walk alone and there would be no hard feelings.

When we walk together we often talk about the trees. When Warren was a kid he disliked sycamores because in his Long Island neighborhood they always looked sick to him, dropping bark, being the last to leaf out, and among the first to drop leaves in the Fall. In the winter landscape I love the sycamore as the white bark stands out against the sky. We often like to walk along the Rappahannock River where we admire the woods, the water, boulders, and undergrowth. We love to identify the oaks, tulip poplars, and beech trees, talking about their habits.

This is the direction we get lost in. 
Beech, sweetgum, more oak. But she 
was impatient too, you say, it is possible
she willed him to look back. We do not love alone
is what I think you mean. When I walk behind you,
the back of your head is golden, ungovernable
light I cannot look away from. Is it love
that to follow you I find myself choosing
an unexpected path; should we find the tree,
will it be I who led us there or you? Long gone
are the leaves alternate, compounded, each
an arrow, the thrust of a green thought; 
along the forest floor centuries crack and turn
to dust. We have children, grudges,
a Dionysian mortgage, habits
mostly bad, and yet every December
I imagine spring, our time past
and to come, how when you follow me
I track the blazes to reach the river, and often
I have to stop myself from looking back.
To stay together, look away, some god said.
Here in these trees, our voices have no 
faces, we’ve walked like this for an eternity.

–Jennifer Chang, excerpt from “The Lonely Humans”

The waxing crescent moon is setting as I type. It was crisp in the sky hanging over the cold Virginia hills. Glimpsing the moon tonight was like participating in its immensity, silence, and its stillness.

Telescope by Louise Glück

There is a moment after you move your eye away 
when you forget where you are 
because you've been living, it seems, 
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky. 

You've stopped being here in the world. 
You're in a different place, 
a place where human life has no meaning. 

You're not a creature in a body. 
You exist as the stars exist, 
participating in their stillness, their immensity. 

Then you're in the world again. 
At night, on a cold hill, 
taking the telescope apart. 

You realize afterward 
not that the image is false 
but the relation is false. 

You see again how far away 
each thing is from every other thing. 

-Louise Glück, “Telescope” in POEMS 1962-2012 © 2024 Louise Glück.

Every December the long nights hit me hard. I know they are coming and I think I am prepared, but it still surprises me how easy it is to let my fear of the dark in the door. The process of writing and photographing in order to pay attention to my surrounding landscape is my way of fighting through this season. I make sure I take a walk before sunset. I notice the dawn colors. Through this process it’s as if I am sitting down with my demons and having a chat. Yesterday, when I got to the studio it was in the 40’s indoors. I wore layers including a lightweight down jacket under my sweat shirt, overalls, and a hat. I made a fire in the wood stove and stoked it until it was a balmy 62 degrees.

I worked all day prepping to glaze, then mixing glaze, and finally glazing pots. I took a break for dinner and made a peanut sauce rice noodle salad with tofu. Then I went back to work for another hour before my hands were too sore from holding pots in odd positions and too dry from washing off glaze. I returned to the house to write, take a bath, and sleep. I have to reinstate the habit of turning on the outdoor lights early so I can walk the otherwise dark return path between the house and studio. I relearn the path in the dark– listening to the rustle of leaves and the crunch of gravel. I try to find new names for the qualities of dark. I nurse the bruises on my shins when I walk into things in the shadowy way. I have not burned my fingers on the wood stove yet and I am enjoying its heat.
 

“Don’t fight your demons. Your demons are here to teach you lessons. Sit down with your demons and have a drink and a chat and learn their names and talk about the burns on their fingers and scratches on their ankles. Some of them are very nice.”

–Charles Bukowski (no citation available)