3/30/26 - 4/5/26: Dr. Pigeon, Tinky Winky, & the personality of an earthquake
“…tending an abundance of life in the face of death.” -Olivia Laing from the book Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency
3/30/26
I keep thinking about pigeons, and so I started reading about them. In a 1950’s pigeon study they were trained to discern between the artwork of Monet and Picasso. Additionally, the pigeons could identify work they’d never seen before as impressionist or cubist. This study sounds like it was art school for pigeons.
Fast forward to 2015 and pigeons are being taught by researchers to distinguish between benign and malignant breast tissue with 99% accuracy. The 60 year trajectory of the pigeon going from an art school nerd to Dr. Pigeon needs to be a full-length movie.
In addition to being art and medical geniuses, pigeons are also insanely adept flyers and navigators. The fastest ever recorded pigeon flying speed was 110 m.p.h. in 1965. These adept-as-fuck, feathered, milk-producing navigators use detection of the electromagnetic field, light receptors, an infrasound map, and even smells to navigate home, even on routes they’ve never encountered before. They’re glorious creatures that are so intensely mischaracterized.
I had a five and half hour phone call with someone. I wasn’t expecting to talk for that long. During this talk I had the car on, but not the engine on, for a long enough period to kill the battery. I was on my way to a date when I found out I killed my car battery. So instead of going on my date I spent hours on the phone with my brother and he was walking me through how to open the hood, check the voltage of the battery, and then how to jump-start it. I also learned that driving the car charges the battery. I love learning basic stuff I feel like I should’ve already known about my car.
The battery dying was a blessing in disguise because it helped me avoid wasting my time on the date I was supposed to go on. After experiencing their pushiness and neediness through text during my car troubles I realized how unsuitable they were for me. I was trying to keep an open mind when I downloaded a new dating app recently, but I quickly realized that I have to actually be attracted to them, and also anyone that makes me feel constricted in any way is definitely not for me. Feeling free is my bread and butter. I loathe people that make me feel like they’re trying to squish me into their teensy-tiny little box.
This is an example of how I conduct myself on dating apps:
In response to Ethan’s opening move of Guess my pet’s name, I respond with “Why it’s Sir Jingle Jeffrey McBottoms the 3rd of course! They come from a long line of canine royalty. They must always be hand-fed only the finest cuisine. They’re very respected among humans and dogs alike.” I got no response.
On my way to the clay studio today I had the privilege of seeing a bumper sticker that said “keep it shrimple” with a shrimp on it. There are no wiser words to live by.
While I was slip trailing at the studio someone lovely I had been in a class with was sitting across from me working on a petite vase to keep their cat’s whiskers in when they fall out.
There is almost nothing more enlivening to my Sam soul than studio time.
I saw something on the freeway in the dead of night that was the best visual of no-going-back destruction. Of chaos and death. It was a car on fire. When I saw it it was already so burnt-to-a-crisp destroyed, and aggressively continuing to burn. Outside of the environmental impact and the people’s lives effected (hopefully no one died), I found this all to be visually pulchritudinous and poetically meaningful. There is an appeal for me of anything that symbolizes complete destruction. Mainly because nothing stays destroyed. There is regrowth and rebuilding that emerges from it. And that is the part of life I’m deeply entangled in right now and figuring out how to navigate.
I just figured out the other best cat name besides Gothmog. It’s Mr. Fishticks. So now I have to adopt two cats.
I’ve been carving a lot of older hand-built clay pieces to under a pound. A few of my older pieces are 1-2 pounds and that is crazy. I have a fettling knife in my hand, and a small scale next to me, and I’m just shaving that clay down and I’m over the freakin’ moon. Does there exist a more joyous activity?
3/31/26
I had the best class tonight. My whole brain opened up to new creative ideas. I cannot get enough of learning and being exposed to new intriguing techniques in clay. I also learned about the milk line and heard the phrase “vestigial nipples” for the first time tonight. I told them it would make a great band name: “Please welcome to the stage Vestigial Nipples!”You just never know what you’re going to learn about in a day. It’s thrilling.
4/1/26
After I checked the car battery voltage I sat looking at the birds in the sky for a bit. I got to thinking how crazy it would be to predominantly defecate while airborne. Once you experience that kind of freedom you’d never even consider a toilet for one millisecond. How boring. Though a miniature bird toilet would undoubtedly be quite cute.
4/2/26
There was just an earthquake. I like the personality of an earthquake. The disruption is appealing to me.
4/3/26
A date is a thing where they buy you tea and they leave the last cucumber on the plate and you think “why are they leaving the last cucumber on the plate?”. It’s when ramen is eaten and the free plate of noodles congeals into a noodle pancake. A date is when they describe themselves as chivalry incarnate, and yet you’ve always found the concept of chivalry to be antiquated, asinine, and devoid of the meaningfulness of true compassion and selflessness in the moments it actually holds weight in a relationship. A date is them walking to open the passenger side door for you in their Subaru Outback and you saying, in your anti-chivalry confusion, “Oh, so am I driving?”
A date is explaining the Fluxus art movement when you weren’t expecting to have to explain the Fluxus art movement. It’s laughing a lot but it’s also having them not know who David Byrne or the Talking Heads are. It’s them insecurely bringing up dying their hair when I mention the bits of white they have coming in. A date is finding out they didn’t take the Covid vaccination because they didn’t trust mRNA technology, but they did confusingly happen to trust MDMA. They knew a lot about MDMA. And to use an anagram of MDMA, I thought “DAMM”. I was disappointed in the hypocrisy. I know we’re all hypocritical in some way, shape or form as humans but I truly despise this particular flavor of it.
A date means them wearing a covered-in-fuzz baseball cap for the entire date and pants that are too tight for them. It means me wearing my black sweater that I’ve extensively embroidered and having them not notice it. I embroidered a line from an Anne Sexton poem on the back of it: onions as ingrown as hearts.
A date is pointing out a growth from a cactus in someone’s yard that looks like a long, pink nose and having them express zero intrigue. How can you be uninterested in this new species I just discovered called the Nose Cactus? A date is learning that the book The Secret had a meaningful impact for them as a teenager. It’s me observing out loud and lightheartedly that they listen to what I call sensitive boy music, but realizing they were even too sensitive to hear this. A date is learning how bad their musical taste is and learning that they weigh their food on a small scale. A date is disappointment. A date is also a fruit.
4/4/26
Is drinking my bubbly, probiotic, mango & passion fruit drink and eating my salty chips in the shower tonight unhinged or just cozy?
I’ve now added to my list of questions to ask potential suitors after these new, abysmal dating experiences:
“Are you a Republican?”
“Do you know who the Talking Heads are? Do you know who David Byrne is?”
“Do you acknowledge that Netanyahu is a war criminal?”
“Do you use ChatGPT? Are they your friend?”
“Have you never heard of the Fluxus movement? Are you going to ask me to explain it to you?”
“Do you believe in constant cunnilingus?”
“Do you love clay?”
Clay has really become the glue of my life. The backbone of it. Thank you clay. I love you.
4/5/26
My studio just created a new purple glaze that I’m beyond excited to use. Wisteria was thrown out as a possible name for it. Tinky Winky was also thrown out there. It’s the name of the purple Teletubby. I’m very aware of the Teletubbies but I never watched it growing up. Unbeknownst to me the creation of the show was inspired partially by the Apollo moon landings. They’re apparently what two people named Anne and Andrew imagined toddler astronauts might look like.
I applied to a job I really want tonight. And I sign up for summer classes next week which I’m very excited about.
Here’s a new poem of course:
Light-er
My whole brain
shuts down
when the light
gets soaked up
by the towel of night
that eats
sun.
Light-
er
like a backpack
turned upside down and emptied
like what happens to a life
sometimes.
It sits in a bowl
like cereal
waiting for the
moment it enters
it’s destiny determined by motion.
4/6/26
The only person I had a meaningful spark with in my short-lived dating history thus far I met naturally in a creative, artistic setting I felt at home in. Not a dating app. So, instead of using dating apps I'm choosing to fully trust my art to bring everything into my life that is right for me. It should always emerge from the art. Art will always be my natural guidepost.
