For those who know me IRL, it's understood that life has been crazy busy with news and activity about a non-profit children's charity I've been working on with some great potters, philanthropists and other do-gooders in Austin. 

The name of the organization is Project ClayPlay, and our goal is to foster community and creativity through clay. What does that look like? It looks like a funky muddauber, otherwise known as an Airstream motorhome, gutted out and converted into a mobile ceramic arts studio. 

Taking the muddauber directly to Austin's underserved communities means actively supporting Austin's children with the social, emotional and cognitive skill development that goes hand in hand with the creative process. Bringing classes to the children means eliminating the biggest obstacle to the creative arts: financial or physical access. 

To fund this initiative, we've worked with great corporate sponsors, local businesses and private donors eager to see us take ClayPlay from vision to practice. Our first big fundraiser is coming up on March 25th at the Austin Playhouse. There will be great theater, laughter, food and fun...not to mention an auction with great prizes including a laptop, massage gift certifications, free pottery classes and certificates for some of Austin's great eateries. 

If you're interested, buy some tickets and come on out. The muddauber will be there. Our Board of Directors will be there. I will be there. If you can't attend, there's lots of great ways you can support the initiative. 

So that's my excuse for being so absent from my own personal space. I hope you'll deem it a suitable excuse. 

I was in the midst of a flail about something a few years ago (man does time EVER fly), and my mother said something that hit me like a bat between the eyes...in a good way. 

She told me that I needed to find a way to steady my pendulum. 

As an emotional creature and all the pros and cons that come with that nature, I tend to feel everything...to great extreme. That means when I am happy, I am euphoric like some sort of chemical high. Alternatively, when I am not happy...I can slip off my own axis into a sadness or anger that renders me temporarily incapable of anything but blind grief. 

I'm trying to find a way to steady that wild swing. Swinging too high, you might miss the landing instructions to help you keep from missing the strip. Swinging too low, you might mistake a speed bump for an out of control meteor heading for your face. 

Nothing is as ever as good...or as bad, as it seems. Without the swing, I think I'm more inclined to see what is really headed my way. 

Good news is...I think I like what I see on the horizon. 

Steady as she goes. 

I've often thought that the loss of love was a terrible, heart-breaking thing. To some extent, I still do. But I've come to realize over time that there are more painful things to experience and acknowledge.

Love, if you've had it, doesn't ever truly go away. It might sink to lows and wear the mask of hate when you feel angry or exposed, but by an extension, hate is love going through a very violent cycle. Hate is love, very afraid, neglected and worn threadbare.

I've mourned love lost. We all have. Pining for what I thought could be, fictionalizing what I believed it was. I don't lament that I moved through some elements of my life and the people who have shared time in it wearing a pair of rose colored lenses. No matter how old I get, I will always be a sensitive child that desperately wants to believe in the best of people. I guess the difference is...now I accept that when the beauty of the human spirit meets the potentially base element of choice, even the most beautiful spirit often gets buried or defined by regrettable decisions. In that exchange, you will always find the true measure of any man or woman. In that exchange is where you see if you have love...or something like it.

I'm an intuitive learner. Which means, I pick things up and can get fairly proficient in them...but there may be times when I can't explain to you how in the bloody hell I got there. 

More times than I would like to recall, I've received positive feedback on a result followed by a brief pause and quizzical expression that suggests, "you did it, but I have no clue HOW you did it."

This gets to be a problem in the art of debate. 

I've come to the swift conclusion that as much as I like to defend my stance, my inability to share a concrete learning path becomes a frustrating stumbling block in my communication with others. There's only so many times you can say, "because I just KNOW," before people begin to discredit your very credible opinion. So, my practice has become just knowing what I know without feeling especially pressed to justify it. You're either going to trust me and look at the end result...or, you're going to judge me because I might not have done it the way the textbook (or you) have deemed is accepted. 

My father is an artist. He is left-handed. In many, many ways - he is my inspiration and my blueprint for how I am wired. We speak to each other in images, and as a result, we virtually never confuse each other. Growing up, I watched my father process information, re-adjust it and then recreate it to suit his needs. He did it with design. He did it with work that required linear thinking. And whatever was excess, he tossed aside as the other fodder that maybe worked for others, but didn't do much to reasonably inspire him. I am very much my father's child. 

When working on a project, artistic or otherwise...I work better with hands-on application. With clay? I was and have been very much the same. I can listen to instruction and I can watch. But only to a point before I either slip off into the ethers of my own imagination or just dig my hands into my own clay and work it out for myself. My first instructor quickly grew a bit baffled with me. I'm left-handed. But I throw right-handed, with my wheel turning clockwise and I adjust my hand positions until form and practice feel natural to me. Watching her throw was lesson enough, but I didn't get anywhere until I translated what she did into a logic my hands could understand. 

I'm not sure my father knows how much of a jump start he gave me just by watching him study, create and teach. He gave me something schools, instructors and analytical thinkers never could. He gave me confidence in my ability to learn on my terms, in my own way. So when I'm in class and I'm watching a technique or process that simply does not "compute," I close my eyes, put my hands on the situation and I work it out on my terms. Sometimes in reverse. Sometimes in ways that is part mystery. But without fail. 

That's what I know. 

Thanks, Dad. 

The wisest (wo)men follow their own direction. - Euripides (enhanced by me)

As children we begin life drunk with possibility. Fresh and new, guardians shape our first expectations of what is feasible. We learn we cannot fly, when grandmother pulls us hastily from the chain link fence we were insistent on climbing. We learn humility the first time our vanity is rejected. We accept our mortality the first time we lose a loved one.

I can understand now why Peter Pan never wanted to grow up. It seems for all the wisdom we gain, we're also expected to lose our sense of what is possible. We are taught that with wisdom comes discretion, caution and my all time personal favorite, compromise.

Compromise works in relationships when resolving conflict. It's what ends wars and bolsters deeper understanding. But some things were never meant to be compromised. When it comes to pursuing your dreams, I believe there can be no bartering. There is only what you believe and what you decide no longer feels true for you.

I am sometimes saddened by how often I see people "making do." There is a smile on their lips, but eyes always give away the faint whisper of what might have been. Tucked away behind the irises, there are speckles of what was once true. The wishes and wants we once dared to dream, imprisoned in our own practicality.

I'm a fairly stubborn woman. I was a fairly stubborn child, too. I don't rail wildly against the powers that be, because I've never been one for drawing too much attention to myself. I'm more like a stream of water against a jagged rock. I quietly wear away what opposes me. It's not about being right or getting what I want. On the contrary, there is very little I want. And it also happens to be what I believe in. With every drop of blood running through my veins.

Sometimes I think Peter Pan had it right. Part of the magic of youth is the excitement of our spiritual and emotional passions. And in that regard, no great passion has ever been born of practical compromise.