Today is probably the very last day this year for picking Queen Anne’s Lace from the side of the road. I kept my eyes open on this rainy, grey day, keeping up with 69mph traffic but still trying to spot my prize. There had to be enough room to pull over, traffic had to be far enough away from me that I wouldn’t panic, and finally, I saw it. The telltale long legs with flat, white faces tilted to the sky. I know this is the last shot I’ve got.
I signal, slow down, stop. Hazards on. Jump out of the car, run around to the passenger side, gingerly step across a water-filled ditch and grab her. Enough lovely ladies, small and delicate, and finished ones as well, right on the stalk, root and all. I do a quick once over to look for winged passengers, open the door, and unceremoniously toss her inside.
I get to the studio, fill a plastic goblet with rainwater, plunk her in the bowl to wait.
I took a long time getting other things done at the studio, nothing towards this little wild carrot waiting outside, patiently, for me to be ready. Checking the light, the time, She Who Leads The Committee in my head murmurs, hmm, it’s getting late, maybe you shouldn’t bother. It’s getting dark. It’s raining. I deflect; i worked hard to get this last one, this last one! There will be no more especially if I do nothing with this one. No.
So I make a little more space in front of me, no, not really enough space but it’s okay, and I garrote a thick, creamy slice of porcelain from the perhaps ten pounds I have left. I tear off a handful of it as if a handful of warm bread from a fresh loaf. I am looking at the flowers and I know exactly what I want to do with every single one of them.
Every single one of them has a place.
Tag: ceramics
ancient artifacts
I look at this
it looks like a cookie
i wanna eat it
I look at this and I think you might have liked it.
Like really liked it.
It has that stone boulder-type look that you loved
you made your file folders and icons all have it
It has that riveted, homemade robot-type look to it
that wonky, wabi-sabi ancient technology look.
something you could have unearthed on a dig
or found in our backyard, sticking half-up out of the dirt.
You can see my fingerprints in it, for now.
You can see the literal hand of the artist.
The linen cloth I use to protect both surfaces
above and beneath.
I had to come forward this far.
this far.
Three years.
I had to come forward this far
to make something I truly think you would like.
I think so much that you would like it.
but why am I trying so desperately to please my dead husband?
summer is full of fire
summer is full of fire.
summer is full of rage and fire and heat and no.
summer is full of can’t, of won’t.
summer is hateful and vengeful and all together too much.
too much.
the rage in my brain and the rage on my skin
on my body
this heat.
it is boiling my brain,
i can feel it shrivel and pucker
it is pulling inward all my tendons, my ligaments
it is contracting my soul, dessicating it
my plant is thirsty.
the planet that is my body is cracking under the drought
i am feeding her, watering her
soaking her.
it is barely enough.
it is enough to coexist on the slightly softer edge of civility
but the near-constant TARDIS-like screaming of the emergency brake
the cacophony of heated elements in continuous collision
heating too quickly for safety
safety is nowhere to be found.
it isn’t even looked for.
not for me, no.
not for me but for another.
her safety, her (((relative))) sanity is my priority.
through her i have found salvation.
so when i see, when i observe
when i walk into a scene and e v e r y t h i n g everything is tangled
a nest of snakes and snarls because someone isn’t listening
almost at once i can see
oh gods i can see! I can see what needs be done
and i turn, slowly.
and i direct my rage, my fury funnelled
directed as a firehose would be
put the wet stuff on the red stuff
i am using my fire to put out a potential backdraft
i am raging and it is working, slowing the progress.
progress.
again, though, someone isn’t listening
someone is risking everyone else for their what, big dick move?
someone is risking everything.
no.
NO.
summer is full of fire, and don’t, and no.
it is my place to draw the line here, it is
i am one hundred per cent sure of this.
i am
for the first time in my life, backed up on this.
in every single other case
in every other single moment in my life.
every single one.
you are too much.
you are too intense.
you are.
we got this, you can stop now.
too much.
stop.
I am not too much.
I tell this man he needs to stop.
I tell this man
“you need to chill the fuck out right now and stop.”
and he looks at me, stops, hesitates.
I can see his body wanting to continue.
“you’re not listening and you need to listen.“
he isn’t, but he is looking at me intently.
“who are you?” he thinks
I don’t care who the fuck you are.
I have never done this before, this woodfire but i do understand science
I do understand and so should he.
I don’t care who he is, only that he doesn’t care to listen
and so I am outrageous in my language
I am extreme.
outrageous?Rageous.
Righteously raging and definite.
I use the skill and dexterity and froth that I keep so tightly locked away
the fire that i only unleash in the bedroom
and i direct it all at this man
and he stops, deflated.
defeated.
finally.
slinking away to complain to another
(she knows i’m right, too)
((and what is this, high school? have you learned nothing.))
I don’t care that he is embarrassed
(don’t do stupid fucking shit then, asshole)
I don’t care who you are all I know is that you are dangerous.
You will not rise over me.
You will listen.
Or you will leave.
The fire has emboldened me, lent me her strength, her fury.
I listen to stories of needing the fire, of missing it.
I have understood missing Saturn;
I am understanding the fire, now.
this morning as I sat dissecting the weekend, the experience
as I sat discussing the ineptitude, the abject narcissism of one person,
the overwhelming love and support of nearly everyone else I realized
I realized my gratitude for this asshole, too
that for the first time (a weekend of firsts)
for the first time I was able to use this rage this dysphoria
this reliably unreliable tool
this weapon.
I was able to harness the power of the sun
focus it on something harmful
burn it out like a cancer.
leaving room for new, healthy growth in its place.
Fire burns; fire renews.
She is an explosion of hope.
summer is full of fire.
Home. 10 November, 2019.
Gary is finally home.
It doesn’t hold all of his cremains that I have left.
It doesn’t have to. It holds enough.
I’ll scatter the rest in places he liked.
I think I can finally go, now.
17 September, 2019
Sunday brings your birthday, and with it, more work on the cinerary I’ve finally been able to make for you. I thought I’d be able to make it and fire it that first year — I thought a lot of things that first year.
I thought I’d be able to get this place cleaned up and out.
I thought I’d be able to handle getting our taxes done.
I thought I’d be able to apply for your social security death benefit.
I thought I thought I thought…
I knew nothing of the overwhelming and all-consuming grief that would completely take over my life: not all of it, no, but it is insidious, its tendrils curling into every single aspect of my life, twisting around the things that keep me going, threatening to cut off air, blood, sanity.
I am not the same person I was a year ago.
I am not the same person I was two years ago.
I have become more patient and less tolerant.
More open and less willing to bend.
More sure, more confident. Quieter, calmer.
I react differently to things now.
I am able to let go, to let things slip away when they matter not.
It is taking me by surprise; I wonder how you would react to this girl?
This girl who has finally had to grow up?
It’s you, you know, you’re the reason. The catalyst.
I only wish you could see me now.
I think you would be proud.
I know I am.
letters into the void — wishing you a happy Fourth🇺🇲🎉
dear Mike,
(here’s me, with some Seattle’s Best in a mug my friend Dave made, with some good coffee and relaxation)
I’m supposed to head to Caramoor today with B; her husband, C, is playing with the band. Knitting, food, music, naps, staying pretty much baseline stoned all day, packing extra sunscreen and bug spray and water. Knowing I’ll need a way to go inside my own head when being surrounded by couples and families gets too overwhelming. I am grateful to my friends for including me in things, and the balance between this gratitude and feeling so very alone, so much “which one of these things is not like the other?” is shaky and blurred. Desperately wanting to go, to not be weak.
She and I went to a Yoga Nidra class last night, guided meditation, and while I’m the least woo-woo person I know, something about it was truly magical. It’s the second one I’ve been to in as many weeks with the same teacher, and after a lifetime of not being able to meditate EVER with this noisy head of mine, it appears that I’ve found the way for me. I don’t believe in chakras and stuff but she’s telling us to imagine the color orange when we inhale and exhale, to imagine that color coming from a place right above the navel. Orange. Feels like a fire to me, breathing in and out.
I was able to focus on the sound of the teacher’s voice, to allow the noisiness to enter my head and then just sort of flick it away, dismissing thing after thing after thing. It was harder, this second time; I’d been at the pottery all day, prepping for tomorrow’s firing, and thinking a lot about my upcoming move and everything I need to get done (and just how much I’m not getting done), feeling the pain in my shoulder and trying to disassociate from it, feeling that I want to share this with you, this destressing thing, feeling like you might find some value in it. Feeling energized afterwards and wanting to share that, too. Remembering after the last class that I was able to recall the feeling of peace I’d had even when at work, and that I was able to carry it with me. Wanting to share the small things that are helping me find a measure of peace and comfort in the hope that perhaps they might help you, too.
Having no idea if you even read these anymore and knowing I need to write anyway, that writing always soothes me, that it’s one thing I can do alone and anywhere that is at once cathartic and productive and that some version of this will make it into my work.
xxoo
(after writing this and editing for an hour I’ve decided to not go to Caramoor. Heading across the street to K and B’s at 4 for a small bbq instead, then back here for an air conditioned bedroom and Netflix with Mojo.)
4 September, 2018
Nine days before Gary died, I made this.
It has never felt more true than now.
This piece sold; I’ll make another.
And another.
And another.
Nine months gone. 13 June, 2018
Nine months.
Nine months, six hours, and twenty-nine minutes ago, the doctors called your time of death.
You’ve been gone the same amount of time it takes a human baby to be born.
I spent most of today hoping for distraction; trying for oblivion, something to keep me occupied enough to not think. I went to the pottery; that piece I’d hated? I reglazed and put back in the salt. It is gorgeous, Gary, transformed, glowing with a deep intensity and quiet. Nothing resembling calm, no, but definitely Quiet. There is a depth to its finish, a complexity in details that didn’t exist before; details that only came through after another 2300° fire. There is a warmth, there, as if it holds on to some of that fire.
I’m trying so hard to make it through a day without weeping openly, trying desperately to choke down all of the sharpness, and then I think, why? Why bother trying to not feel? I mean, sure, keep it together in public but in the car? The bathroom at work? At home? Why not just melt? Why not just give in? Why try at all?
This is why. Keeping enough of my head level and my hands steady so I can make this. This is why. Bringing this bowl from a hunk of raw clay through three firings, neglect, dispassion, disapproval. This result, this bit of beauty, this is why I need to try.
I know that if you were here, I’d be excitedly explaining to you why this piece is so special, the unpredictability of this perfect a finish. You’d listen, not really getting why I was so excited about something at the furthest extreme, an unorthodox version of beauty, but maybe by now you’d be able to appreciate my passion, even without agreeing with it. Your inability to appreciate so abstract a piece was just beginning to soften when you died. You were getting it.
You were getting me.
I can be happy, with that. That very beginning; I can be happy with that.
I miss you, today and every day.
always,
your curious girl💜💜
The Salty Widow 