pieces
June 10, 2005
she made us break the pots. perfectly good ceramic plant pots. big ones. we had to wrap them up in newspaper and hit them with a hammer. perfectly good pots. broken.and then we had to put it back together. no glue gun. just elmer’s glue. put it back together. it’s in pieces on the floor and it has to go back together? she said it didn’t have to be
a pot again, but we needed to put it back together. hell. . .
it was day three of our class on spirituality and art. i had been there all three days. i attended the lectures, i completed the assignments, i showed up. but i hadn’t really been present. too much traveling: my soul hadn’t caught up with my body yet; too much missing: i love him and he’s traveling to the middle east for 85 days (not that i’m counting).
break the pot and put it back together.
i liked the breaking part. i whacked that sucker with a hammer . . . hard . . . three times. it was great. no qualms about breaking the pot. but then there were all these pieces. i don’t feel broken. but there are all these pieces in front of me. so i prayed. oh holy god, what are these pieces? what do i do with them?
pieces of my life. they are so very clearly pieces of my life. but i don’t feel broken, and if i try to glue them back together, then it will look broken, and i don’t feel broken!! but there are all these pieces . . .
maybe i’ll just paint them. blue. i’ll paint them blue. i like blue.
they’re dry now. still pieces. i still don’t feel broken. forget this. i’m just tying these suckers up - i’m done with this assignment.
it’s the third evening: one full day left. i have all these feelings inside of me and i can’t get them out onto the paper. we’ve tried so many different mediums and still - i can’t get it out.
sleep is so close and so far. how do i get these feelings out - how do i produce something before the class is over? how do i make sense of that damn broken pot? i feel so scattered . . . scattered . . . pieces. i am in pieces. i AM broken. i know that. it’s not that i’m not broken, i just don’t feel broken. but i’m still a collection of pieces; i’m still scattered. maybe it doesn’t have to be one big piece. maybe i can make lots of smaller, contained pieces. i can be whole and still contain pieces.
[these are the pieces i made this week - there are close-ups in the album on the right - more pictures to come later . . .]
Posted in spirituality by Sarah
