Thoughtful Thursday: The Exhilarating Tension between Being and Becoming

Welcome to the January Intelligentsia.

#39: Elana from Elana’s Musings
#33: A from Are You Kidding Me?
#32: Lost in Translation from We Say IVF, They Say FIV
#31: Strongblonde from Strong Blonde
#21: St. Elsewhere
#19: Lori from Write Mind Open Heart
#16: Cat
#14: Sara from Aryanhwy
#3: Mina from Kmina’s Blog

Several times over the past couple of weeks, Intelligentsia Member Ana has blogged about the push-pull between trying to change yourself and resolving to just get through the day, accepting yourself as you are. This tension has become particularly relevant to me lately too, given my recent illness (which, by the way, now has a diagnosis, and since some of you have been asking, thanks, I am now better than I was but by no means fully functional).

Normally, I am someone who loves to challenge myself. In pottery, instead of working on things that I already know how to do, I constantly push myself with new techniques, new shapes, new sizes. I chose a career that involves constant mental stimulation, and even more than most in my field, I seek to learn new things and master new sub-areas. A couple of weeks before I got sick, I decided that I would soon undertake a new fitness regimen; deeming yoga too easy, I decided that I should take up Pilates.

I think that was the moment when the Universe said, “Hey now, yoga is too easy? Are you sure? Let’s see about that.”

Right now even with all of the medications, I can’t do a downward dog for more than a few seconds before my wrists give out. Meanwhile the students around me, most of whom are in their 60s and 70s because I am only taking the “gentle” and “slow” and “therapeutic” classes, stay upright the whole time. It’s not a competition, I know that, but if a 70 year old woman with a full cast on her arm held a pose long after you’d flopped to the ground, you’d make comparisons too.

Competitiveness aside, or perhaps because of that competitiveness, it turns out that yoga is exactly what I need right now. The first yoga class I took after my initial recovery from being unable to walk or do anything with my arms really cemented this fact. The class focused on Moon Salutations. I’ve done yoga hundreds of times over the years, and almost every class has focused on Sun Salutations. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as Moon Salutations. The teacher talked about how even in yoga people are typically trying to push push push, and that on this day we’d do something else. How most exercise is about compression, and that we were trying to expand. Most yoga focuses on yang, but that day we accepted the yin.

Yin, that’s what I need.

Perhaps if there’s anything good to come out of this illness, it is yin. There is still room in my life to work on becoming, which is my natural state, but now I get to practice just being. Not just during yoga, but in my daily life: accepting limitations, slowing down, taking a literal and figurative breath.

I have blogged many, many, many, many, many times about zen non-attachment as it pertains to pottery. I’m quite good at yin when it involves a breach in yang. I’m not so good at yin for its own sake, yet. And yes I realize that trying to improve on yin is in itself not yin. I can’t turn off yang entirely; I can’t stop being me. But maybe now I’ll find a little more balance.

How is your balance between yin and yang, between slow and fast, between accepting and pushing, between being and becoming?

P.S. Big big points to anyone who gets the reference in the title of the blog post without Googling.

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Perfect Moment Monday: Opening the Kiln

It’s the fourth Monday of the month, which means that it is Perfect Moment Monday!

I’ve written over and over about unfortunate pottery incidents that have happened over the years. There are so many things that can go wrong, at every possible point in the process. Even once you bring it home, you never know when a piece, or half a dozen, will tumble and crash.

Every now and then, everything goes right.

Find more perfect moments at Write Mind Open Heart.

Perfect Moment Monday: Zen Returns

Perfect Moment Mondays are back!

My perfect moment started with a non-perfect moment, one that harkens back to a post in 2008 and another one in 2008 and another in 2009. Pottery is a fragile endeavor, whether through my own error in the creation process, someone else’s error in the pottery studio, or a butterfingers accident at home.

Before Burrito and Tamale were born, I’d reached a pleasant pottery homeostasis. I’d made pretty much all of the projects I’d had in mind: a full set of dinner plates in three sizes, all sorts of bowls, cups, mugs, garlic pot, vases, even a couple of serving dishes. Then, a few months ago, I opened the kitchen cabinet, and every berry bowl I’ve ever made came crashing down.

(Sorry about the takeout containers, and the avocado pit, and the granola bar wrapper, and — uh — the dirty diapers.)

These demolished berry bowls had been some of my very best creations, and they were all gone. To make it even worse, I would have to live indefinitely without any berry bowls, because who knows when I’d get back into the pottery studio again. It would be years, right?

Wrong!

I’m back!

Oh, how I missed you.

Head over to Write Mind Open Heart for the triumphant return of Perfect Moment Mondays.

Thoughtful Thursday: Drawing Lines

Still in limbo. It has gone from being delicious to excruciating to a chance to practice being patient and back again.

One of the things I’ve been doing while in limbo checking out alternate scenarios in case this job doesn’t happen — how would it play out if we stay here, where else might we move, etc. Mostly, though, I’ve been keeping tabs on our potential new city.

Any new housing listings being posted in the desired areas? An exciting new option might come along, or the owners of the house we’ve already settled on may decide that they can’t stand this limbo any longer and need to rent to someone else.

I already know which organic market I’d shop at. Which farmers markets operate on which days.

I’ve drawn up a short list of preschools — not for this year, and probably not for the next year, but the one after that.

I know what route I’d take to get to work every day.

I know which gym my husband should join, and I know where to find yoga classes for myself and for my little budding yoginis.

I have scoped out every playground within walking distance. I know which museums have reciprocity with my existing museum memberships. I know which pumpkin patch we’d visit for Halloween.

The one thing I don’t yet know, the one thing I haven’t allowed myself to search for? Where I’d do pottery.

For each of the other cities we’ve thought we might move to in the past year, I looked up all of the options and settled on a pottery studio. By drawing this boundary, I’ve simultaneously given myself something to look forward to and kept myself from getting too entrenched in one possible future (as if the farmers market and yoga schedules are not entrenched). The line is arbitrary and artificial and silly, but the existence of a line means that I stay (vaguely) grounded in reality instead of only What Ifs.

Sort of like when I was in infertility limbo. In each city where we lived during IF, I had selected an OB, a prenatal massage therapist, a studio for prenatal yoga, a doula… I’d picked out names, and strollers, and car seats… I literally read a dozen books on pregnancy the first year I was TTC… but I didn’t allow myself to buy a single baby item. In that case, it was already too late to keep myself from getting mired in What Ifs. The boundary was more about waiting for reality to catch up with fantasy. It’s a good thing that I established that particular boundary: if I’d actually bought a car seat when I started TTC, long before I ever got pregnant with Burrito and Tamale that car seat would have passed the expiration date.

Do you ever draw lines for yourself? Do the lines represent real, meaningful boundaries, or are they arbitrary?

Show and Tell: Raffle Prize

This week for Show and Tell, I present a pair of nesting bowls. I did the glazing, but they were thrown by someone else (I can’t make bowls this big yet). I’ve donated these bowls to the raffle for Share Southern Vermont, the organization for bereaved parents run by my bloggy friend Cara. The drawing will be held on November 15, and you can enter online. You can even designate your raffle tickets toward specific prizes, so there’s no chance you’d waste the karma of winning on a prize you don’t want.

Side note about the glaze: This is an example of form following function. The glaze bucket wasn’t big enough for me to dip the bowls in one dunk, so I glazed each bowl in sections. The overlap of glaze in some areas but not others caused a wonderful pattern. This glaze in particular has different qualities depending on how thickly it’s applied, resulting in variation in color as well as texture. The photos don’t do the bowls justice, if I do say so myself.

For everyone who has said that they wish they’d win some of my pottery, here’s a great chance to control the odds — with the additional benefit of donating money to help bereaved parents. If you’d like a chance at winning these bowls or many other great prizes, enter the raffle right now!

Show and Tell: Zen Non-Attachment Revisited Once Again

Since I will not be leaving the hospital for at least a couple more weeks (currently 30w1d and counting), I might as well go back to the Show and Tell I would have posted a couple weeks ago had I not been hospitalized.

More than a year ago I showed you a lovely pot I’d made that I dropped on the concrete floor when I was taking it out of the kiln. This pot was intended to sit in my pantry holding garlic (hence some decorative holes for proper aeration). I talked about my approach of Zen non-attachment with pottery, and how that Zen does not extend to fertility.

I subsequently showed you other examples of ruined pots that required Zen non-attachment due to no fault of my own, ranging from smaller incidents inside the kiln to The Great Pottery Calamity of 2008.

I may approach things with a Zen attitude, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want replacements for the ones I’ve lost.

During my most recent round of pottery, I was set on finally replacing the lost pot. I decided to make some backups so that I’d be sure to end up with at least one for myself — having long ago given away three very nice pots with similar shapes, some for garlic, some without holes, to members of DH’s family, who showed a range of levels of appreciation (you can probably guess who was insufficiently appreciative). Finally, I have my garlic pot… and then some.

My favorite of the bunch, not intended for garlic because there are no holes, from a different angle.

A close replacement, in form and function if not color:

Not that any cooking has been taking place in my house at any point during this pregnancy. But whenever garlic eventually gets purchased, it will have a home, finally.

Show and Tell: Blogoversary Contest Prizes

Sorry that I couldn’t post last week to show you the prizes won by the winners of my Blogoversary Contest. Turns out that being horizontal is not conducive to climbing stairs, fetching cameras, photographing pottery, etc.

1st Prize which will be sent to Birdless whenever I can manage to put the package together and send my husband to the post office (she preferred a blue-ish bowl over the prize I’d originally planned). It’s cereal-sized — unless you’re my husband, in which case you’d need a bigger bowl for cereal. Hopefully Birdless eats normal portions of cereal; or, she can eat whatever she wants in it. The inside swirl was done with glaze; the pattern around the rim is carved into the clay when it’s leather-hard using the wheel and — get this — a pencil. That pattern at the rim is a bit of a trademark for me (almost all of the bowls in my house have that pattern). Thanks to the swirl, this is one of the bolder pieces I’ve made:

2nd Prize for Lori. Yes, those are L’s for Lori (or for Lavender Luz if you prefer). The L’s go all around the cup in a decorative pattern. I was experimenting with wax resist.

I won’t be making any more pottery for a loooong time, so in future Show and Tells I’ll keep showing you some of the pieces I made in this last batch as well as various non-pottery things. Next week: A resolution to my episode of Zen non-attachment, my very first Show and Tell from over a year ago.

See what the rest of Miss Lollipop’s class has to offer for Show and Tell.