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?
firing of the DonnaGama wood kiln at New Prospect Pottery July 2020
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.
The Salty Widow 