A candle flame approaches a polished surface; a ray of sunshine approaches a brick wall; sun shining on a cobbled pavement; sand ripples; sunlight on the edges of a wave; contours, interstices, dimples, roughness;
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As time goes by, your closest blood relatives dwindle in number. Those who know your story from the beginning die off or lose their memory. Memory is replaced by the stories they tell themselves, often with your own collusion, and reality is replaced by understanding. As I grew up, I stumbled now and again. I felt nervous that the stumbles were the reflection of who I am, rather than what I did. I felt shame and uncertainty; I wished my mother would teach me to deal with difficult situations and thought her totally incapable, not up to the job, ignorant, small. I blamed her for the pain I felt when I had to take a chance because I simply don't know, and blamed her twice over when I got it wrong. When I was already in my late fifties or early sixties, true recollections started to shed a different light on some of those episodes. Not that it hadn't happened before, but the big things started to open up then, the ones no one talks about but which lie dormant and unspoken and now and again rise and pose questions of me. These unnoticed question marks - I imagine them as grey tone floating in an inky background - suddenly trigger small but sharply focused cognition events - you are going about your business in the supermarket and suddenly someone's look, or word or sound explode into an idea that takes over everything around and demand that I go quietly to one corner and figure out what it is that I have to take responsibility for. Like seeing a rose for the first time, so clear, so obvious. It is true what they say that mothers get blamed for everything. My mother was in sole charge. She had to take all the decisions; she had to make the available resources go round and cover all the necessities; she called the shots and handled problems as she saw fit. She upset me sometimes and she hurt my feelings. And vice versa. I saw her the pillar of the family, the one strong fixed support. With that, come responsibilities. She was a child of her time, a time when boys were valued above girls - but I didn't feel under-rated by her - and a time when a girl had to stay above reproach and unstained by suspicion or scandal to avoid causing her own and her family's reputation great and lasting harm. The business of 'Honour' has been very much in mind lately and I remember how hurtful it felt to be treated as a parcel that has to be wrapped in shiny paper for the approval and admiration of others, rather than allowed to be a person and valued as such. To be loved just as I was, good and bad. It still feels like a major amputation has occurred and the loss is all the more poignant as I don't know what it is exactly. So, as these shadowy question marks meet their resolution over time - aided by a relentless search - my mother has been rescued from a state of impotence and ignorance into a state of wisdom and unfailing care. Others have not fared so well in the unforgiving light of time passing. The clay form arises out of a plastic formless lump of mud. By the time I lay hands on it, it has been through some processes, where stuff has been added and stuff has been taken away since it was dug out of the ground. I think of this as the social pressures that predetermine how human beings will be directed and raised. To that extent, each different type of clay is a different country, able to withstand different temperatures, having different resilience or plasticity, different colour and so on. I decide which clays to buy and which not to buy; I chose among my selections the one particular type I am going to use at a particular moment; I envisage a result and I strive towards it; my hands seek to fashion what my feelings and thoughts, opinions and tastes demand. I create in three dimensional form what is inside me: I invest in each piece much more than is apparent when you look at those imperfect results. Even I don't always know how to read the results. Quite often I wonder why I made certain choices and ignored others, perhaps more obvious and sensible. It is not necessary to brag or complain about the exhausting stress that accompanies the finishing of each form. It is hard to believe, when you look at such ordinary objects, that they are borne of pain and regret... but I think all artists know this process to a lesser or greater extent and all are prepared to visit these dark and fraught moments to realise their need for expression. It seems to me, however, that some distressing question marks seem so threatening of my integrity, that I cannot find a way of sculpting them. Don't know where to start, even. And if I try, the most horrid pieces are the result: ugly, distorted, offensive visions of horror and evil. Pieces that the family repudiate and will not look at. Strangers are treated to this spectacle and they, too, are taken aback and move on... I know, however, that they, too, will bubble up one day on the wings of a small event, or a newspaper article, a photograph or a bird's feather; I will get there eventually before I die. I just need to know what it is I am accused of.
No. 149, bottom 149 is back by popular demand. Some of the ills of the former versions are cured and resolved, but there are still problems presenting. For a change, the lid did not stick and the cleaning was successful and thorough. But I still manage to be careless of scuffing and contamination (dirty finger marks that mar the interior white curve) and it was a bad idea to stain the lip of the box as a dirty ring transferred to the interior of the lid. Talking of the interior of the lid, the flange was carefully rounded and makes a good frame for a blank oblong: a missed opportunity. The flatness of the parts are good and bad. They are good because they are unequivocal, but they are not characteristic of me: I incline to rotundity and therefore want to bow the sides and curl the toes. There is a landscape quality to some of the decoration and I would like to explore that a little more. I find the white of the overall background too white, too milky. A little iron would help. Perhaps a honey glaze would do the trick, instead of the chilly leadless. So, does this mean I will do some more of these flat "The moment I was old enough to play board games, I fell in love with Snakes and Ladders. O perfect balance of rewards and penalties! O seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice! Clambering up ladders, slithering down snakes, I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When, in my time of trial, my father challenged me to master the game of shatranj, I infuriated him by preferring to invite him, instead, to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes. All games have morals; and the game os Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot and stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosity of the serpents; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see , metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; ...but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity - because, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down ladders and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake..." "a person must sometimes chose what he will see and what he will not; look away, look away from there now..." "This was the last and worst of the jungle's tricks, that by giving them their heart's desire, it was fooling them into using up their dreams, so as their dream-life seeped out of them they became as hollow and translucent as glass." (from: Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie Time, duality, ambiguity, |
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