I love that moment that comes in the evenings now, when the air switches to cool and the land around this house doesn’t look as sun burnt in the slanted sunset light. I take out my ponytail, step out of the Airstream, and walk down the drive with the hum and spatter of the irrigation in the upper horse pasture making my little world oasis-like. These are the August nights.
————————————————————–
I had a good day but a frustrating day out in the studio. My mind is rushing and rambling with so many different ideas right now, it’s hard to draw together a cohesive design and go with it. I’m bouncing all over the place, form to form, texture to texture, notion to notion — worse than I usually do, because let’s face it, my work is very often all over the place. I rarely can stick to one thing, one series, and see it through to the end. For a long time I thought something was wrong with that, but I know now that it’s just how I work. I make my way through wide circles, come back to ideas, again and again, over the expanse of time. Things are never really laid to rest. Not completely. I wonder, from time to time, if I’ll ever be more steady with my personal aesthetic, with my work, if I’ll ever be one of those metalsmiths who makes a smattering of things that all look relatively the same…because I’ve found my thing and stick to it come heck or high water. I like the look of so many different elements…perhaps the trick is to take all those different details and draw them together into single entities, single pieces of work that embody all that I love. Gosh.
I’m feeling rushed. I have a friend coming to visit at the end of the month, in just two short weeks, and know that part of the discombobulation of the studio work today was just me, trying to rush settling into the creative habit again after having house guests last week, trying to reach that point of rightness in my workspace before I have to give it up again. Time feels short. The end of summer draws nigh. Being out of the studio, being out of the ordinary, changes my rhythm into something new and it sometimes takes me weeks to find my stride again with creative work. I try to be patient with myself, but I can get a bit strung out while I wait to settle in to life again. I sense our transition out of the Methow Valley and back home to Idaho coming closer and I already feel disrupted by the shadow of the move. I fight hard to stay in the moment. When friends phone me up and ask me out, I say yes, because I don’t want to miss out on building those relationships, on building those beautiful bridges with people I’m growing to love — I’m not really ready to go. Not now. Not yet. Getting here took so much energy. Hopefully, going back takes less.
———————————————
I miss our friends in Pocatello.
I miss my bed.
I miss my houseplants.
I miss my ocean of sagebrush, my chickens, my little red Toyota Tacoma truck, my wardrobe, my Frye boots, my green tea kettle, my ceramic coffee cup collection, my weird kitchen, my beautiful tranquil living room, Scout Mountain in the sunrise, College Market coffee, Vain & Vintage…but depending on my mood, I don’t miss any of it at all. Isn’t that strange? The geography of my heart is so divided between here, Idaho and Canada that half the time I’m just walking around suspended in the windshine around me and when I stop to think about it, that’s not really such a bad thing.