One Inch at a Time

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

I want to write. I want so intensely to write.

Actually I want to live my life. My own life. I’ve never had the chance to do that before. I’m — dare I admit it — very much into middle age, and this is the first time I’ve been able to claim my own life, even my own personhood.*

I want to return to making things. I’m a potter; I work at the level of a professional craftsperson though I was forced to avoid selling my work for many years.

I design clay bodies for various uses. I design glaze recipes. I’m experienced in working on a potter’s wheel, but my great love has been discovering the ancient traditional hand-building techniques of the Americas.

There are other things. I want to bake bread again. I want to return to my work with fiber, my spinning and knitting projects. I want to create.

I love to use the ancient crafts because through them I feel, and have always felt, that I share a human identity across the ages. For someone who was deliberately kept isolated and made a social outcast, such a sense of human connection has been unutterably precious.

Right now I can’t even begin to return to all these loves. A little bit of writing, just a little bit, not every day, though I am slowly building up the frequency… I can write on my phone while sitting, resting…