February

Today is the last day of February.  I spent yesterday out of town, at a funeral, my first since Papatya's.  I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, if it would send me reeling back into deep grief.  It helped that the experiences were completely dissimilar- a very southern religious service, complete with the creamy casserole church luncheon afterward.  I was grateful that his funeral felt like a homecoming rather than tragic unexplained loss.

This month I made two cranes.  One broke as I pulled it, seemingly perfect, from the kiln.  This crane is left, intended for a close friend, hung with leather cording from her jewelry supply kit. 

I can not make 10 cranes a month.  If I only make 2 a month, do I have 500 months left in my life? Will I be making pottery when I'm 79?  Is this a project I will complete? Does it matter if I do or if I don't?  Is part of the point seeing past the futility?

February, 2013, I have made 26 cranes.

10: January

Clearly, this is a process-oriented project.  2 cranes of the 10 are intact.  The rest shattered as they fired.  It is heartbreaking, and my grief has been heavy these past weeks.  Fitting that they should meet.

january, 2013

It was my goal to make 10 porcelain cranes during January, but it was hard for me to do so.  I'll do it tomorrow, I thought, day after day after day.  Finally, on the 31st of January, I sat down in the studio, folded 10 out of the rainbow of origami paper I'd bought before Christmas, and began coating them with porcelain.  My last batch was too fragile- several broke in the kiln- crumbling to ash-like bits as the paper burned away.  I cut pieces of wire to hold the cranes upright as they dried, impaled the paper birds through their center so they'd be able to hang once fired, and coated three of them.  Today I coated three more.  It's been quiet, almost meditative.  Painting one side of the paper bird, making sure I coat all of the nooks and crannies, letting it dry, then coating the other side. 

My studio is my my attic "bonus" space with a single, large, west-facing window.  At 4pm it was filled with light, so much so that I forgot to turn on the switch as I ascended the stairs.  When I leaned down to take this photo, I was struck by the beauty of the light.  Even though I know it was just the sun beginning its slow setting, it felt like more, like she was with me.  Sometimes I feel like she's very near; it is rare that I don't.  The overwhelming sadness is easing past, except when the phone rings and her brother is on the line, telling me he's be in town, or it is her partner, asking about something she always took care of that he can't figure out.  She's never gone, quite.  Absent physically, but still here.

These 10 cranes make 24 out of 1000.  This is going to be a long process.