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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon Who Gets A Kick Out Of You
Sick yet of hearing about the pieces with the Aisho's face? Well, they're out of the kiln anyway. (And I should just go ahead and explain how it is when you approach a kiln full of your just fired things and you're holding the picture of expectation in your mind and you open the kiln and come face to face with reality. It's like the old scissor-rock-paper game: expectation always trumps reality.) So I looked at the pieces, set them on a table in the middle of the studio. One attracted a lot of attention because of the writing that covers the hands and faces, but the attention was mostly of the "How did you do that?" kind. (With a brush and some oxide and some time and patience. Next question.) The other piece has a lot of texture meant to resemble coral reefs. You can guess the comments, right? "Nice texture" and "How did you do that?" (Thanks, and, with seashells, pencils, sticks, anything that I could find laying around that pokes a hole in clay.) And now I'm just babbling. I like the pieces, but the distance between the calibre of artist I want to be and the calibre of artist that I am...well, expectation trumps reality everytime.
I had breakfast with the ex and the ex-mother-in-law. I have to tell you, that is the last time such a thing is ever going to happen. First, she comes into town to meet her married boyfriend and then sort of calls to see if Max can have breakfast as a kind of afterthought. Now, I don't know where to start breaking that one down in terms of unacceptable behavior. I object to the whole married boyfriend thing. I think it's immoral. I think it's unethical. I think it's just plain disgusting. I don't fucking care how desperate you get, other people's spouses and significant others (boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever friends) are off limits. Period. (And, yes, I'm writing here as a woman who left her husband to go after another man. But I'm also writing as a woman who approached her husband with the truth of the situation before doing a single fucking thing about the situation. I gave him all the information and the opportunity to make a decision. I treated him like an adult and didn't sneak around. And he responded like an adult.) But the other part of it is that Max then becomes an afterthought to this married boyfriend visit. Now, I don't know what I expect from a family that once sent Max a 99 cent box of peanut brittle for his birthday. (I mean, don't send a fucking gift at all if that's what you're sending, right? Yeah. So that one went straight from the package into the trash. And it's not like I'm not grateful for a gift. Any gift. But you're talking a family that can afford to and does buy sports cars for one kid's birthday and peanut brittle for another kid? Fuck that.) Max deserves more. And the sad thing is that either he doesn't care, doesn't expect anything more, or doesn't know any better. My poor Max. (Yeah, I'm in "If I ran the world" mode right now. I should just stop, I know.) Instead, I show up for breakfast and am incapable of being polite to his mother. I am contentious. I argue over stupid stuff. I talk shit. I'm just a miserable bitch to be around. And for my part, I have this conflict with his mother because she has the classic psychologist stance on everything. She has to know The Truth About You, and if it doesn't seem like she's getting it, she probes with these questions that are fucking annoying. (And, yeah, I know that they're probably only annoying because they're so close to the kinds of questions that I ask people and I don't know why more people don't just tell me to mind my own fucking business or just haul off and sock me in the mouth.) Anyway, so that's me. And I hate that I turn into that person who wants to punish this woman for being an adulterer and a bad mother. I know I should just call it yet another case of Not My Problem and back away. (After all, she is the ex-mother-in-law and as such is Not My Problem, but there is Max, who is still my best friend, who I still care about, who I don't want to see hurt.)
So I came home, intending to go to the gym and work out some of my frustration. (I used to use food and liquor and sex to do this. And now I've wrestled the food aspect under control and the liquor aspect mostly under control, and that leaves the...yeah.) It was hot and I didn't feel very much like going to work out, but I gathered up my sweats to change. And I stripped down in the front room and the bed looked really inviting. Yeah, flying solo is not the preferential way to do things, but it is quick and easy and you can nap afterward if you have the time, right? So, I had a nice long nap afterward and woke up just in time to have no time at the gym. So big deal. I'll go tonight when I had originally planned on going anyway.
I am grateful. I am grateful for the studio, for Chun red glaze. I am grateful. I am grateful for Judi and Max and my ex-mother-in-law. I am grateful for the pinging sound of cooling glazes as they craze. I am grateful. I am grateful for expectation and reality. I am grateful for frozen blueberries. I am grateful for a cloudy and cool afternoon and a nice long nap. I am grateful. I am grateful for Cole Porter. Do you like Cole Porter? Man, I sure do.
More lies:
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