Monday, May 19, 2008

Potter's Trestle

Like a potter's lathe that spins. Keeping myself from the position of the shards in the corner of the studio. Reach into the freedom of wet clay, loving the act of love.

Shaping wet rock in my fingers, I resist despair by suppressing memory, reworking the images, a quiet optimism. But it creeps in during the firing. Hidden behind the grate of burning heat, lies spread like cracks in the glaze.

Flashbacks. Stressors break the pots I am hewing for the paint that will colour my life. Angels wings are torn, become iridescence in the glaze. We are forged to be free.

The ground of being out of which we are born and into which we die, this fixing of the centre of the trestle. The making and unmaking spins smoothly.

The heaven that was closed to us by angels with wings of broken clay, when you fell and cracked, opens elsewhere in the scenes of etchings, and you are restored, whole.

It's a magical playground, this studio.

"You better start swimmin', or you'll sink like a stone," sings Dylan.*

The stone turning on the lathe
sings.


___
In "The Times They Are a-Changin'."

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