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Seedling

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I go to glaze pottery for Amma. The ashram in California is planting trees. Tens of thousands of them; like everything her organization does: be it hospitals, schools, homes for disaster relief victims etc etc etc.

Making art and then giving it away, leaving it there as I drive off is very liberating. I do my best and leave. There is no exhibition to worry about, no sales to hope for. I have a bit of a hope (as I stand in the balcony watching next month when Amma is here) to see someone in the line to be hugged, who has bought my pot with it’s seedling in it, taking it to Amma, who will hold it for a moment and then pass it on to someone else who will also pass it on and eventually it will be planted.

The seedling is the important thing, the glazed pot is just the carrier. I don’t even know what happens to it in the end. Perhaps it gets broken to release the grown seedling, which is, of course, no longer a seedling.

As I am glazing pots, I am talking to a woman also glazing pots. At one point in the conversation, she refers to the divine plan; as in one can’t argue with it or control it much. I tell her, not without sadness, that I don’t much believe in the divine plan anymore. I used to but…
This is received by understandable silence. I think of a New Yorker cartoon I saw a couple months ago where the person is sobbing, head down on the desk, the caption reading , “There is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny and no God!”

Still, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as that.

Holes Drilled in the Past

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Saul had always wanted a nice drill press but never allowed himself to buy one. Somehow, he just couldn’t justify it.

“Aw, I don’t drill soo many holes.”

The fact was, that he did.

When he was in his fifties he realized really just how many holes he did drill and therefore one day almost by surprise he came home with a big box from Home Depot and a nice new drill press inside.

Funny thing is though, now he doesn’t drill so many holes. The drill was bought for all the holes drilled in the past, the hard way.

Still, he’s glad he bought it. Makes him feel secure. Like, just in case.

What’s gone

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I look at the framed photograph on the window sill of my mother with my daughter and all of a sudden my mind jumps to “she’s gone” and for a moment I wonder “who?”

The sure side comes in and says “Mom died”  but somehow my daughter in the picture as a three year old is gone as well. An almost seventeen year old is not a three year old.

Still part of the three year old remains, just as part of my mother remains.

Here and not here. Like most of existence; here and not here. Partly somewhere else but where?

Dylan

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Dylan is old enough to vote. He is also old enough to serve in the military, which means he is old enough to kill people for his country. But he is not yet old enough to drink. He is not 21.

In Spanish class when the professor asked him conversationally (for practice) if he drank, Dylan became confused and didn’t know what to say because of course he drinks (he’s in college) but he didn’t want to admit to anything illegal so he tripped over his tongue and pretended he didn’t know how to say it in Spanish.

The Devil

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This is the Devil. Why? Because he’s everywhere preventing things. There is NO ART FUNDED by the government in the public schools of San Francisco!!! “frivolous” is what sarah Palin calls it. Making Art is about learning to have an inner dialog with yourself where there is no good or bad, right or wrong) and this activity is NO WHERE in the schools. How are these kids who are taught to memorize the right answer and then fill it in in the bubble on the ever more frequent tests, ever going to be able to decide anything for themselves?
so,
I interviewed today to be “an artist in the schools”. I will get paid (if you can call it that) a small fraction of what I normally get paid to teach a class. Wow. the payback is elsewhere.