Day; 239. Overcast and really cold yet again. Snowing lightly most of the day...
Temperature on outside kiln; 26 degrees
kiln firings; unloading Big Mama Kiln
Music in the studio; Ipod mix...
OMG!!!! A red-letter day if ever there was one.... I drove up Cerrillos Road today screaming and whooping it up... Not sure what the other drivers thought and I didn't give a damn anyway....
Why? you ask, well.... I FINISHED THE 273-TILE COMMISSION that I have been laboring under since last fall and delivered it to the tile store at 2929 Cerrillos Road today. Never have I been so relieved to get a particular project out of my studio, I just didn't even want to look at them one more day...
A nice thing happened while I was there... As I was waiting for the last check to be printed and handed to me, the interior designer that I have been working with and that hired me, walked into the store. What timing! We have had many meetings over the last couple of months on pattern, design, glaze color, and she had talked me off a panic-y ledge more than once. To have her standing there while I brought in the final box of tiles was very sweet, and it was all a so-call coincidence!! I love how the Universe orchestrates things like this, so beautiful. Just a little gift for all my sweat and tears....
For whatever reason it brings to mind a movie I watched for the 3rd time last night, The Strange Case of Benjamin Button. Dear Reader, if you have not seen this movie I implore you to do so, no, I command you! Rent it tonight and settle in for 2.5 hours of pure magic! The basic premise is this (but it is so much more...!), A wrinkled, ugly baby is born at the end of WWI and is so hideous looking that the father abandons it on a nearby doorstep. The rest of the movie is the life of this baby and the woman who loves it over the course of many decades.The story unfolds as a flash back of this woman as she lay dying in a hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The extremely interesting part of the whole affair is the reason the baby is so ugly to begin with; this seemingly unfortunate human is aging backward. It starts out with cataracts, RA, and old skin. As it gets older, every year it's body grows younger!!?? The implications of this for Benjamin and the love of his life are extremely touchingly played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchet. As she grows older, and has his baby, he is getting younger. It is so wonderful to see Brad Pitt gradually transition from old man who cant walk to beautiful young boy... Anyone who has had doubts about his acting ability previous to this movie, can rest assured that those may be put to rest.... He is fantastic. I can't remember if he was nominated for an academy award for this film, but the picture itself was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Slum Dog Millionaire.
But really it is the scenes as they live and love over the course of their lives at different ages that is so very poignant.. he as an old man/she as a young woman, both of them in middle age, she in late middle age/he as a teenager, she as an old woman/he as a baby... Such an interesting dilemma!
What has this all got to do with me and my life as a potter? Absolutely nothing! Well.... there is one point in the film where after they live together for awhile and have a child, he decides to leave. He just can't in good conscience ask her to raise both a baby and himself as he gets younger and younger. He packs his bags one night and leaves for India... He starts over and goes on walkabout, not sure of what else to do. There is a very beautiful voice over as you see him trekking around; something about starting over, and that it is never to late to begin again. And that if you find yourself in a situation that isn't working, it is ok to scrap it and light out for new territory... I watched this as tears slid down my cheeks; a confirmation that an unsustainable life can be left behind and a new one can be begun, at whatever age you find yourself, even 58....
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