Secrets, Pots, and Lace

The difference a day makes - or a couple of hormones
Yesterday I hated my hair, today I love it. And everything else, secret smiles in the forest, I awoke with huge energy this morning, I don't know why - perhaps because of gale force winds overnight - the trees rushing about in the dark, the fallen ones leaning into the standing ones creaking alarmingly. I sat under one just to see if it would fall on my head! It didn't. The moon is waxing again.
......................................................

I like these words from Semisonic's Secret Smile:

Nobody knows it but you've got a secret smile
And you use it only for me
So use it and prove it
Remove this whirling sadness
I'm losing I'm bluesing
But you can't save me from madness


It's lovely to think of a secret smile.
There is one in the forest by the waterfall.


Finally it looks as though we will make real progress on the shed! Some of you may remember from the far mists of time when we all shared a Different World the saga of the constructon of the log-cabin which will be our pottery. A never-ending saga; only we could choose to construct a shed over the winter in the Scottish Highlands. A Good Man was so hard to find, but we came up with some fine ones in the end, and labour and weather permitting, the shed slowly took shape.
On Monday the electrician and plumber will come. I won't hold my breath. This will be the penultimate work before we can begin to move all the equipment in and very very soon we will be able to pot again!
I haven't brought any stuff with me from the Other Place, but I will put this here to remind you of how much I am looking forward to starting again.

I can picture myself in the shed, one day when it’s all finished, perhaps sitting at the potters’ wheel by the window, in that moment where you pause at the edge, catch your breath, and gather in your focus before the wheel spins and you jump off the edge of the world as you begin to throw. I will be looking at a different universe on each tile . . . but, stop - I mustn’t get ahead of myself, I have an agreement with my heart not to think about the day when the shed is done and we begin to work once more.

The picture above is of one of my small bowls. The torn rims are exactly the horizons of the mountains and hills which wrap around our home. I used a stoneware clay with manganese kneaded into it's body to darken it, then a paper-thin layer of industrial porcelain, manipulated and scratched into to make the picture. I'll show you some more of my pieces soon - but I don't want to get too excited!



A piece of old linen hanging over the iron bedstead.

The light shows its warp and weft as shadows, and punctuates each tiny entry hole of the needle as it plied the thread, weaving curling stems to soothe our tired eyes.

Tatting edges it on all four sides, slender bobbins flash in their creation: airy nothings to delight.

Punto in aria - stitches in the air that draw dreams of grace, spin starlight into a net, stitch patterns of pleasure and pain into nothingness.

Eva Loewe, The New Lacemaker
SPHINX Journal for Archetypal Psychology and the Arts
Volume 4 1992