+74

“Be still my broken dream. Shattered like a fallen glass. It’s not ready to be broken just yet — lessons once learned, so hard to forget.” – Sting

I scratch the names of The Muse in clay; until they carve all the way through. The illusion of separateness is broken, and there’s nothing left but scraps and dust.

Where did you go?

I think I would have been a good letterer, in a stonecarving shop. Like, Rag & Bone Buffet era. “Bring out your dead,” all that stuff. At least, until the monotony and rule following broke my brain. [Over/under on that? Ten years? Less? I bet twelve and a half cents.]

The slow craft of it; knowing each day that you’ll S T A R T . A G A I N . E X A C T L Y . W H E R E . Y O U . L E F T . O F

Up to a point, there’d be some comfort in that. Less sharp of a transition, more clear of a place in the world.

Nah — probably not.

Sometimes I get stuck, like on a segment of a line. Staring the polar bear dead in the eyes, when there are plenty of ice floes around to hop on instead, and — perhaps more productively — drift away. Watching the recursion coming: the place where the loop will cross back onto itself and start the slow, spiraling descent: and knowing I shouldn’t let it get to there, but feeling how hard it is to break off that pattern. Loopers gonna loop. Bears gonna bear. Potters gonna… I dunno — Look for any excuse not to pot, once the tragic deadline hits?

That thing I wrote about in October — that astounding bubble of a night-time car conversation, parked in the rain, just you and someone else, the external world almost completely shuttered out? That’s real. So amazing when it clicks; effortless. Or, I should say, the only effort is in not allowing each moment to snap together harder than it should; like magnets.

“You should think about the consequence of your…” No, Taylor — no, you shouldn’t. That’s my job.

Trying to work it through. Work it out. ‘The only way out is through.’ It’s a web that still needs some fixing. (OK, let’s be honest — a lot of fixing. We’re working on it; really.) Probably needs a nap, at some point, too. Think I can get around to unloading bisk #2 this afternoon. Shepard the rest of the new ones closer to #3. Start cleaning up to start plotting and glazing tomorrow? Maybe not a lot more than that. Sickers gonna sick. Workers gonna work — but yesterday was a load and a half. Gave it everything I had; went well; debts to be paid. Wise to recover a little, even if maybe not also Super smart.

Lookout for hope.

“Sink like a stone that’s been thrown in the ocean, my logic has drowned in a sea of emotion. Stop before you start; be still my beating heart.”