Up up and away.

So. You want us to, "Confession: fearful / scary moment. Dig deep and really recall that moment."

Okay.

Cod dammit.

Ugh. I know exactly what to do here.

Don't even have to think about it.


It was a few years ago.

I was at the San Diego Zoo.

I was in the bird exhibit. Some huge aviary filled to the brim with breainless feathery assholes.

I like birds.

I like how they can fly.


The aviary had some stairs built into it so that people could get a better look at all the birdies.

I am afraid of heights.

But I can usually handle myself with stairs, even stairs that are kind of thin looking. They are still made of metal. I just grab that railing like a boss and control myself.

But these stairs.

No. They were made of FUCKING

GLASS.

That was BITCHIN having to go up those. Especially since you HAD to take these stairs to get out of the aviary. It was a one way pathway, and there were a shit ton of people.

I was FLIPPING THE FUCK OUT here.

I could have filled a fucking pool with my sweat and I have the skin chemistry where I barely sweat in nearly all situations.

FUCK.

Even thinking about this is giving me chills.

AUGH.

Fucking heights.



I am a little better now. I worked on a few things in order to bring my fear of heights into line. I didn't like having such a huge weakness.

But god dammit.

That memory still fucks with me.

I'm just glad that I managed to get the fuck out of there without causing some kinda scene.




Seriouslly, who the FUCK makes a set of stairs and pathways out of GLASS. A FUCKING HUNDERED FEET IN THE AIR.

AUGH.

Fuck this.

And fuck them.


That's it.

Hubris.

UNRELATED:


Now that that is out of the way.

Let's talk about pride.

God ducking fammit not that kind of pride!

The kind you have when you do something good or cool!

Usually anyways.

I'm supposed to talk about a time where I felt pride after making a work of art.


This is kind of awkward for me.

I feel really great whenever a ceramic piece that I make comes out really nice.

But I feel this after each piece. And it always seems to be greater or different than the last.

Like that musical scale that seems to go up forever.

Like this:


This is because I see my past self as an idiot.

(And my future self as kind of a fucker too, but that isn't the point.)

So I go into this weird self depreciating spiral of

"Oh man this is great!"

"Wait fuck I should be doing better argh!"

"Workworkworkworkwork."

You get the idea.


So lets talk my most recent favorite piece.

I made a set of five small ceramic vessels, as a commission for a family friend, and I really enjoyed how my glazing brought out the delicacy of the forms.

They were all very small and intended for use in a tea set (With one being slightly larger to hold candies or sugar or some shit. Dunno, but it was awesome.)

But the glaze was a simple use of cobalt blue and clear glazes. Each was double dipped on the outside with cobalt (From opposite ends, so the line where they overlapped was darker.)

The insides were coated in clear (which makes a nice gray on B-mix clay bodies) and then splashed with some more cobalt blue glaze in a pattern I came up with. Using a calligraphy brush.

When I was glazing them, I had only the vaguest idea of what it was going to turn out as, but I was extremely pleased to see what my results had wrought.

I had even gotten some comments from other people at the studio over my glazing choices.

Yeah, that was showing off a little, but I guess everyone deserves a little pride once in a a while.

I try not to do it that often.


And that's it.