Where Oh Where Has the Time Gone?

Or I Blinked and It's 2012!

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get back to writing for this blog. It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I have. The above musing was written in December but for whatever reason I never posted it.

I also wanted to write about the conclusion of the platter commission. That will come as will more thoughts about life, work in the studio, health issues, and whatever else seems relevant at the time.

What keeps coming up for me these days is the importance of living the moment. I find myself in that stage in life when dear ones, not just my parents generation, but people my age and younger, are dying. It brings me more often to the question of how I am using my time. At the end of the day, what has made that day, those irretrievable hours, minutes, meaningful? There are times when I can’t even remember what I did yesterday. Unfortunately, this rarely has much to do with my failing memory.

So now, with a third of the year 2012 over, I intend to rearrange my life. Instead of hanging around the computer into the afternoon, I’m giving myself a deadline. I’ll be out of my emails, Facebook and any other “links” by 11 AM. I will give myself an hour to write. I will be in the studio daily working on new pieces and organizing a new strategy for getting the work out into the world. And at the end of each day, I hope to be able to fall asleep feeling good about how I used my time. 

That’s the plan.

So look for me here more often. See how my plan is working.

Or not.

Whichever way it goes, I do plan to write about it.   

Clay as Life’s Guru . . .

 Or How Many Cracked Bowls Does It Take To Learn To Let Go?

I’ve been working in clay for over 40 years. (Gasp! I just figured that out and can’t believe it myself!) After all these years, I still get nervous/anxious/excited/relieved when I finally have the work ready to be glaze fired and bring it to the kiln. It’s a weird bundle of floating anxieties, which begins as I’m glazing the pieces and doesn’t end until I get the very last fired piece out of the kiln.

If I haven’t mentioned this recently, it’s good to say again: The lesson you learn early on when working in clay is not just the parable about “letting go”.  Rather, it’s the huge slap upside the head that inevitably happens just when you think you’ve got it all figured out. In clay, as in life, you are bound to learn sooner rather than later, you are NOT in control.

Once you’ve handed over your painstakingly, lovingly crafted pieces to the kiln gods, it’s over. You have relinquished your authority. You can hope that the firing will go well, the glazes will perform as expected, the results will be as imagined and planned but, really, you never know.

Yesterday, I delivered twenty pieces including the commissioned platters to be fired by my fine friends at the Potter’s Studio in Berkeley. In 2006, I moved into my Oakland studio and found out there wasn’t a 220 amp hook up nor an easy solution to venting my electric kiln through the roof. The only alternative was to find a place which would take outside work to be fired. Voilá!  The Potter’s Studio has been my preferred choice for outsourcing the firing ever since.

At first, I was very leery about giving up this important part of the clay making process as I’ve been doing my own firing since 1977 when I bought my first electric kiln. When we sold our Berkeley property in 2006 where I had a wonderful studio, I still used that small kiln, a raku kiln and a new larger digital Skutt kiln. I sold the first two and moved the Skutt into the new studio.

The Skutt has now morphed into a largest most expensive display unit ever made.

Skutt kiln as display unit

I have to admit, both Bob and Jasmine, two of the Potter’s Studio technicians, are so versed in kilns, firings, etc., I’ve come to not just rely on them, but to actually feel a sense of relief knowing that they’re professionals who take special care when stacking and firing the work. While I’ve had a few disappointing outcomes, they were not the result of technical misfirings, but rather my own slipups.

Here’s one that happened to a couple of porcelain pieces. It took Bob to point out that glazing just the inside of the piece was creating stress on the thin unglazed outside porcelain wall as the glaze began to melt. The expansion of the glaze as it matured on the inside made it crack. 

cracked porcelain pinch pot with unglazed exterior

interior of the cracked porcelain pinch pot with matte glaze

I have since begun to use a clear matte glaze on the outside of the porcelain pieces to prevent this from happening. It rarely happens to the stoneware pieces because they have more grog or clay strength to hold the walls together, thankfully.

porcelain pinch pot with clear matte glaze exterior

interior of the porcelain pinch pot with matte glaze

So now I wait with baited breath to get the call that the pieces are ready to be picked up. Until then, I’ll be sending up little prayers to the kiln gods, hoping they’ll do right by the work. After all, it’s now in their hands. OK, theirs and the folks at the Potter’s Studio.

Lesson learned once again. We are not in control.

Collector or Hoarder? . . .

Or You See Piles, I See Creative Clutter.

“An artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: hoarders collect indiscriminately, the artist collects selectively. They only collect things that they really love.”

From How to Steal Like an Artist, www.austinkleon.com

Being an artist, I would like to think of myself as a collector. I can point to my collection of 13 tea pots (a couple inherited, some bought from other potters, some made by myself), 18 baskets – mostly bought while traveling in exotic climes) and textiles too numerous to count at this point as fine examples of my artistic penchant for having and keeping lovely things. But lately, this label has been called into question.

Our "basement" which will soon be transformed.

We are cleaning out our “basement” (really, just an overly large furnace area with shelving). My husband decided, oh, maybe a year or two ago, that our basement needed some organizational updating. Translation: Let’s just get rid of stuff we aren’t using, haven’t used or never will use again.

This presents a dilemma for me. I have a very difficult time letting go of things, especially things that, well, could actually be used or useful once again or even more difficult, things with a history, a story, a heart connection (I still have my Junior prom dress).

All you have to do is look inside our guest room closet. There you will see a lovely array of beautiful clothes - some, mine from the 60’s (the pink strapless is the prom dress), some, my mother’s from the 50’s and a few, my grandmothers from the 40’s, who, I might add, had many of her things made to order back in the day. 

A few of the lovely frocks from days past.

But luckily for me, we’re not cleaning out closets just yet.

The basement project started out slowly. First I had to get up the gumption to sell my prize antique full size wrought iron bed – the bed given to me by a college paramour. His dad owned a junk yard where he found it, had it restored and presented it to me with its original springs AND a new mattress. I had this bed for 14 years before I met my husband-to-be. It was the first bed we ever slept in together. We moved it from our first little home in the flats of West Berkeley into our huge master bedroom in our new home in the East Bay hills. 

The antique wrought iron bed we moved into our new master bedroom.

When we decided to get a new, bigger mattress, we decided to get a new bed. The wrought iron bed was put down in the basement and sat there languishing for six years.

I guess I always thought that I might redo the guest bedroom and use it there instead of the serviceable but not so romantic full size futon bed we have there now.

The iron bed sold for $200 on Craig’s List a year ago April.

The next big thing was my husband’s tatami mats and queen size futon. When I met him way back in 1986 this was one of the few possessions he had in his rented room in the Berkeley hills. Being a huge fan of things Japonesque, I was smitten immediately by his aesthetic taste. We used them in our guest space in West Berkeley but never arranged them here in our hillside home. They sat in the basement for eleven years.

They were sold as a unit for $140 on Craig’s List this May.

A few other things have been sold, given away or taken away by various non-profit organizations and e-waste outfits. Our garage has become the staging area for the piles of stuff we moved out of the basement. This past week, I spent at least 2 full days going through boxes of saved financial documents and other papers from 1998 until the present, where, to my delight, I happened upon all my old employers' and college professors’ evaluations (was that ME they were lauding?) And finally, I went through one box of my mom’s stuff when we moved her out of her last independent living situation. That’s where I found a treasure.

It was stuffed in the box with an old pillow and a mattress pad, balled up in a plastic bag, all stained and smelly. Luckily, I took it out and had a look. Here was this incredible hand cross-stitched quilt my mom had made years ago. But so stained I was afraid it would never be useable. Tide, OxiClean, a good spraying of Shout and a long soak did the job.

My mom's cross-stitch quilt now in our guest bedroom.

Our basement is on the way to being the clean, well-organized storage space my husband has been dreaming of. Thankfully, he rarely comes to my studio where I’ve collected hundreds of old Ceramic Monthly, Art In America, American Craft, George, and other nifty magazines, which I plan to use in my work or sell someday. And then there are the rolls of paper, the boxes of boxes, the piles of mat/foam board, the stacks of old frames, the drawers filled with tools, paints, craypas, pencils, erasers, foam cups, paper clips, straight pins . . .

Collector or hoarder?  It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Right?

Clap if you believe in Qi . . .

Or How I Got My Groove Back.

What would you be willing to change to get your life back on track?  A long held belief system? Or something as trivial as your small glass of wine with dinner? Or your nightly dip into the ice cream container? 

This is what it has come to in my quest to reclaim my life as I once knew it.

It’s totally against all of my innate beliefs to go to a doctor of Chinese medicine. My father was an eye surgeon and my brother followed in his footsteps. I grew up just outside of Davenport, Iowa, home of the Palmer College of Chiropractics, which my dad used to infer was the “College of Charlatans.”  In my family, if standard medical practice didn’t administer it or prescribe it, it was worthless.

My dear friend Roberta, who suffers from MS, is now taking Chinese herbs given to her by a doctor of Chinese medicine, Dr. Z. She went from being almost bedridden for months to getting on a plane and going to a mediation workshop in Denver less than two weeks after she’d started on the herbs.  When she suggested I go to Dr. Z to see if he might be able to help me with my own lack of energy, I’ll admit I didn’t race right over.  My familial background made me a bit skeptical even though I could see how it was helping her.

That said, three weeks ago, I went.

After looking at the three pages he had me fill out about my health and dietary choices and asking a few pertinent questions about my current lymphoma diagnosis, Dr. Z. took about 5 minutes to feel my pulses, look at my tongue and palpate my abdomen. He then gave me his Chinese diagnosis:

Qi/blood vacuity

Phlegm heat nodulation

Blood stasis

Spleen/kidney vacuity with some yin vacuity

Wei Qi vacuity

Liver depression/Qi stagnation

Blood heat

And I thought I being diagnosed with lymphoma was worrisome!

Of course, when I got home, I ran right to my computer to Google these odd phrases. What do I know about vacuity or Qi stagnation?  (After the fact, I realized I should have just questioned Dr. Z about them but I was in a “this-guy-has-the-OMD-after-his-name-just-nod-and-thank” mode.) Their meaning can be summarized in a few simple words. I’m clogged up. Nothing in my body is flowing.  Qi, (pronounced ch’i for those of you who are unfamiliar with this Chinese term), refers to “an active principle forming part of any living thing. Qi is frequently translated as ‘lifeforce’ or ‘energy flow’, and is often compared to Western notions of vitality, as well as the yogic notion of prana and pranayama. The literal translation of "qi" is air, breath, or gas,” from Wikipedia.

You could say Dr. Z found, not that my body has run out of gas, but rather it has difficulty getting the gas/breath/blood/phlegm to move around in a healthy fashion. For this he sent me home with a small bottle of powdered herbs I’m to mix with warm water and drink, twice daily. OK.  No problem.

The magic potion

My morning and evening brew . . .

. . . good to the last drop.

But there was another little problem. According to Dr. Z, my body’s fat stores are holding onto toxins. His thoughts are this could very well be the cause of many of my symptoms, even, perhaps, the lymphoma. For this he sent me home with a diet.

It's basically the Atkins Diet – very few carbohydrates, no sugar, no wine or alcohol, only certain fruits and vegetables, and of course, protein.  And on the first page of this diet, are these instructions: 

“The goal for you is weight stabilization. Your diet is the strategy for achieving. . . a 10 lb weight loss.”

For those of you who don’t know me personally, you might be thinking, “well, Bobbie must be a tad zaftig and could use to lose a few pounds.” You would be wrong.

I am 5 feet tall and I wear a size 4. Everyone who DOES know me to whom I’ve told this, has said, to a person, “You, lose 10 pounds? You’ve got to be kidding.” Exactly what I needed to hear because, really, did I want to go on this diet?

No.

The strange thing is when I brought this diet home to my husband, he took one look at it and said, “Let’s try it.”  This is a guy who goes through several loaves of Acme rye or olive bread a week and can’t do without his glass of wine or beer with dinner. He also isn’t really overweight but always thinks he needs to lose a couple of lbs.

OK, so I’m willing to give it a try. I can easily forgo bread, potatoes, rice, pasta (not as easily), and my occasional glass of wine (I’m not a beer drinker). I can cut my ½ of a banana a day down to ½ every other day. I can give up certain fruits and vegetables listed on the diet’s page marked “unfavorable” – i.e., mangos, prunes, figs, lima beans, acorn squash, turnips – and fill up on the favorable ones – i.e., apples, blueberries, strawberries, artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower.

But what I’m not willing to do is give up my chocolate and my ice cream.

The chocolate addiction is merely a habit I picked up over the years. I blame it really, on being female. I know very few women who don’t need their chocolate fix daily. And as we all know (or if you don’t, you should by now) good dark chocolate is a health food. Yes, it has lots of those healthy antioxidants, and there are now studies, which show those people who eat chocolate with 70% cacao or greater have a 400% less chance of getting Alzheimer’s! We’re not talking Snickers Bars. We’re talking the good stuff. I have mine, a small square once in the afternoon and once in the evening daily. Heaven.

My ice cream addiction? It’s genetic. Truly. My mother told me years ago that when she was pregnant with me she ate a pint of ice cream a night. A NIGHT! And you don’t think I came out of the womb screaming for ice cream? It’s always been one of my four major food groups. Even as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uganda, where it wasn’t that easy to get decent meat, I managed to find a source for buying a half gallon of ice cream to keep me from going through withdrawal symptoms. Now, I can’t say ice cream is a health food, but, in my case, it is a good source of calcium. And since my favorite flavors these days are strawberry (there’s my fruit/berry antioxidant) and chocolate chip (read above ¶) I think I can safely say ice cream in my diet is definitely a healthy habit.

But here’s the real justification for not cutting out the things I really love from my diet. If not eating the chocolate and the ice cream means I’ll live another three weeks in a skilled nursing facility, sitting in a wheel chair wearing an adult diaper, not remembering who I am or who anybody else is with spittle drooling down one side of my mouth, I’ll choose having my chocolate and my ice cream every time.

It all comes down to this. Do I care about how long I live?  Maybe. But I care more about enjoying the life I have left. Isn’t that what we all care about?

So here is the update on the results of taking the herbs and sticking to the major parts of the diet. I’ve lost 4 pounds in 3 weeks although that’s not really my goal. My goal is to get my energy back. The last four days I have gone without a nap. I have been working in my studio for hours at a time. 

Wedged clay waiting to be rolled. . . 

. . . into a nice slab. . . 

. . .which will become a lovely platter.

I have been out with friends and/or my husband after a full day and not felt totally depleted. And friends who have seen me at my lowest, dragging my butt along day after day, have said recently, “You really seem brighter.” I can honestly say that’s exactly how I feel.

Tonight, I think my Qi is flowing fine and feeling groovy. 

It’s late. I’m going down for my last dip of ice cream and ½ banana before bed.

It’s been a damn good day.