I also really needed to focus on my clay rocks -I made about a dozen clay rocks. In the end I had two stacks of clay rocks that had five rocks each and one stack with three rocks. They are all drying slowly and it will be a few weeks before they are fired. Who knows if they will come out for the next step which will be glazing. It will be a month - but however it turns out I'll show you all a picture in the end. I try to prepare for the fact that things crack and glaze doesn't do what you want it to do - so I may be showing you more a picture of failure - but that's life in ceramics........and there are always pleasant surprises too..... I know I've learned something so far.
Eliza left me a comment and a question in my color post about green. Yes, Eliza - you did read that right - spring has been painful for me. I first remember spring pain when I was in college. How is it that during a season with more light and flowers I will actually feel as if I'm having a nervous breakdown. It became very acute the year that my dad died. He nearly died in late January and was given a month to live - but he managed to live 5 months - all through spring. Many years after that I would re-enter a grieving period from Feb to June. Time has healed that wound now.
Yet, I know that some of my seasonal trouble with Spring is allergies. I have terrible allergies to juniper and mulberry and milder allergies to ash and cottonwood. But they all grow here and juniper is a huge pollinator in NM. I'm already starting to sneeze. I swept my husband out of the house this morning with sneezes - ugh! Every year I say I am going to leave this state for the month of March - but each year I find myself here sneezing. I've never gone the route of allergy shots - but one of these years I may do that.
In recent years my spring anxiety is less acute - although I think it is just I'm aware of it now, so it doesn't seem to have the same control over me. So when it comes I say to myself this is just spring - it's birth and birth is never easy. I have a dear friend who gave me these words several years ago:
spring is this monstrous
sort of labor, too-
tight winter birthing
greedy green life!!!
ouch.
and I clutch hold of these words every year to remind myself of this phenomenon. If I take the whole process less personally and try to see that it's just a seasonal cycle I do a lot better. In recent years I really haven't had to fight against all the feelings of depression and anxiety. I trust more that "this too shall pass." Like I said in my green post - this year I feel a renewal and one sign of that is my new favorite color of green. I was thinking about color more after reading Tess. She took back her childhood color. Greenishlady also has a post about colours, and this morning I discovered Endment's lovely words for gray.
It's funny that green has come back so strong. When I was kid I wanted a matching bedroom set. You know the kind with the headboard and bookcase and desk and nightstand - all the same. Well, the solution we came up with was to paint all the furniture the same color. So I had mix matched furniture but it was all - yes you guessed it - green!
Eliza, I don't know if I've ever heard Ray Charles sing "being green" But that song does tend to choke me up. Oh, and one more thing - I no longer collect frogs - but I used to until it got out of hand. Frogs - green - spring - sneezing and if you live in New Mexico its March =wind!!!
Ah choo......ah choo......and she swept herself off to bed.
