I am overwhelmed by my thoughts and how to wrangle them into coherency when I sit down to write. My brain is often tangled like a messy jungle of vicious vines. I usually get up immediately from writing, and sprint to go make something with my hands to curtail my frustration. I need to be able to create something right away that requires no editing or revisiting in the way writing does. Writing feels like the hands on the clay, and the 50 lb. bag of clay are all my thoughts, sealed with a long twist tie. Heavy to hold.
More than an actual diary, I just want this to be an imperfect, messy place for my thoughts to roam free like wild dinosaurs.
My mom has been watching so much Hell’s Kitchen that Gordon Ramsey was in her dream last night. But he wasn’t yelling, simply elegantly passing her by on the sidewalk. An elegant whisper of a presence, not a shriek.
I’m about to practice ram’s head wedging. It’s an advantageous first step, and preventative method for people working with clay that properly preps the clay. I’ve been working with clay for almost a year now and have never wedged before. This fact makes me feel like a bumbling fool. I kept saying to myself the other day: “I can’t believe I didn’t wedge my clay for a whole year! What the hell dude? Get it together you dumbass!” But when I opened up about this specific buffoonery to someone nice I know, they kindly told me to give myself a break because I’m learning about ceramics piecemeal. Slowly little bits of ceramic knowledge come together from every which way, and I collage them together until it all starts to make sense. This is ultimately one of the greatest feelings. And no matter how much you do know, there still remains a constant element of experimentation. Outcomes are surprises when working with clay, which actively helps me temper the expectations I have in the rest of my life, which often can be painfully intense.
I like practicing things in clay I’m not good at. Right now it’s wedging and throwing. Throwing to me has felt like a frustrating, but also recently quite satisfying, new language to learn. I have yet to not feel self-conscious about doing it around other people, out loud. Right now I need to practice in the shroud of night, alone in my studio. Just a lonesome night goblin hunched over a mound of clay, working her lil’ heart out to get good at something she’s bad at.
My phone was leaning against the toaster just now, and I was staring at it. Its dark, lifeless screen reminded me of the darkness of a bottomless pit. The kind you’d fall into and never be able to emerge from. I visualize this kind of frightening pit whenever people these days talk about society’s addiction to technology, and our general constant content consumption. (Side note: ‘ ___ pit’ would be a great Connections category. As in ‘arm pit, bottomless pit, peach pit, mosh pit’).
I’ve been dating since August for the first time in my life, and these last four months have felt infinitesimal, layered with a thick, complex garden of feelings. It’s been shocking, nerve-wracking, quite lovely, scary, and quite comforting. I’m finding out all this new stuff about myself from dating. And no matter how many ways my heart has been twisted up throughout these dating escapades, in good ways and bad, I find I remain at a baseline of hopeful and optimistic, which shocks me. I always feel like I should be more negative and depressed than I actually am. The glimmer of hope in my brain seems to be immortal. And I’m like, “What the hell is wrong with you brain? You should be reeling right now. How the hell are you seeing any silver lining here you idiotic, optimistic freak?” My optimism feels so out of my control that it almost feels like a separate entity outside of myself, one that I’m criticizing the hell out of. I’m like “Just tone it down already Optimism. We get it. Geez.”
