Ceramic dynamics or my most embarrassing moment...last week

http://homepage.mac.com/amv12/.Public/ceramichole.mp4

okay, Dad, click the link above for the audio. then cover your ears.

Happy Monday.

Amanda

Sorry the Audio is not coming through. Here's the piece I read...


Good Morning,

This is a case of the child playing with the wrapping paper and not the present or the dog sleeping in the cardboard box not the house that came in it…

Vermont with all its beauty, the Green Mountains, Lake Champlain, sunsets that bedazzle with a plethora of colors I will perhaps at least on this trip best remember for this…buttholes

And don’t get me wrong here. The people were nice, remarkably so…At the Burlington airport I almost had to pat myself down and punch the doe-eyed security lady in the nose to get her to touch me. (You always get the patdown, glove treatment when going through security in a wheelchair). There were 15 minutes until plane departure and she wanted to hold a discussion about my sensitive areas…

She said, “I’m going to use the back of my hand and sweep under the breast. Is this okay?”

Let’s just say on this trip there was a panicked dash over cobblestone streets in Montreal…a bit bone jarring when in a wheelchair but…sadly my harness (upper undergarment), I surprisingly determined was not needed. More sad what came to mind in those feared last moments before death…as we made our way over the cobblestone street there was an approaching tour bus. My thought wasn’t “gee mom hope there’s no brown spots in my underwear.” It was “wow there’s nothing jiggling?”

So no, lady I don’t think you need to sweep my sternum to see if I’m packing heat. But the plane leaves in 15min. pleeease sweep away! But then she wanted to discuss the mechanics of my chair and where she might be able to place her hands and push me when she was done.

I almost said off a cliff…

No, I am not talking about people. I am talking about a certain bodily orifice. I will explain, but first you/I needed to meet someone.

One thing I learned on my trip. It’s not who you know but the people you meet along the way that matter.

I’d never met a real live artist before. On the last night of my stay I had the opportunity to meet…Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a brilliant ceramicist my friend Mary had dated years ago. They remained friends and Elizabeth was in Isle La Motte a couple days to rest and visit.

She had been in Maine where she’d been attending a week long artists’ camp. Think rustic cabins, Pollack throwing paint not Demi Moore and Patrick Swazy spinning dirt at the pottery wheel. They were there to learn technique, network and bond over the good quality materials Mother Nature has left us. (I saw pictures of dirt).

When she arrived, I learned she had gotten some work done. It had been a very dark period her past…baby dolls with missing limbs, charred stuffed animal collections, a ceramic vagina with teeth and a penis well…connected.

What do you say to someone who’s charred and maimed baby dolls, placed them artistically on an antique babydoll bed and called it art?

“uh, hello?”

Mary invited me to join them for dinner. Did I want to go?

Did I? to my writer’s mind this lady was like crack!!!

She was also a well-degreed and well-educated professor at several big school universities.

The years have matured Elizabeth. Instead of an official crazy person (I dusted off my Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) over dinner I met in appearance and character… Wednesday from the Adams family, a sensitive, delicate soul not really meant for the harshness of “our” the real world.

Elizabeth is the kind of person who will take in a homeless cat and passionately believe his glazed over milky blue eyeball is beautiful. She was devastated when the blind, defective eye had to be removed by the vet. (I’m still guessing she probably keep it somewhere or is wearing it on a charm bracelet on her wrist)…

The kind of person who can quote Proust, rattle on for days about Frost’s poetry and Dickenson but can’t figure out the drain in the bathtub. As I readied for bed, I heard a small plaintive cry coming from the nearby bathroom.

“Mary the water won’t go down.”
“Well, did you remove the rubber cover over the drain?”
“yeah”
“Well, okay did you pull up the plug?”
“oh? “

(pause)

I believe life’s not about who you know. It’s really about who you meet along the way…Some come to us with great experience and wisdom. They become our great teachers. Others come to us as difficult people. Some we will call our “enemies.” They push us to deepen our spiritual practice. And others…

Are sent from a land or place that is purely their own. Just put here to make us go,

oh?

I fell asleep that night…counting

Fried mozzarella sticks not eaten until the gooiness inside was unwrapped and strung into the air like a smiley face. Then without any self-monitoring humility or embarrassed awareness…she lunged forward in her chair to eat it out of midair. Then she decided to make a sculpture out of the wax beans…

(I am not that cool. I myself had to know if the wax beans were squash? This rubs off on people).

Anyway, I was very nice to meet Elizabeth.

The next morning…

Every morning there were two buttholes on the kitchen table, Romeo and Truman the cats. This is their nighttime sleeping spot. But this morning as I sipped the milk out of my Buddha bowl, sleepy-eyed I noticed there were two other roundish looking objects on the table. Elizabeth had brought her work in the night before after all had gone upstairs and off to bed...two pieces to get ready to pack and ship to her home in Florida. A tingle of thrill and excitement shot up my spine. “How cool! A real artists work!” A study in shape form and texture. My Buddhisattva mind grasped at the five aggregates ready to dissemble with my eyes, break the object down into its components…I put my hands where the artists had been, feeling the groves once again with my proud, strong, hands, lithe and nimble fingers probing…wait a minute.

That’s not right. I picked up the piece and turned it to the back. I mean what’s this… nothing, just like two rounded bubble things with a crease. Uh oh!

Here’s the last thing I forgot to tell you. While at the workshop/retreat another participant had identified a theme that was starting to emerge in Elizabeth’s work. It seems Elizabeth has started making suggestive holes. That is, work that, well, you know looks like certain well holes in the body. I found myself holding a butt staring into what I do believe is a butthole. “Oh my god!” Thankfully, I did not drop it, scream loudly or curse. Attached is the picture of the work and the second piece (not pictured), I believe looks like a giant candy corn.
Okay, I’m still a little flustered.

Happy Monday,