Spring? Yes? Spring? Spring? Yes? No?

It's spring and then it's not spring, but this tree, the plum tree in the driveway, thinks it's spring still.

This little tree has been going nuts for a couple of weeks now. The first day it was in full bloom, I walked out to take a look at the flowers and the whole tree was abuzz with pollen-drunk bees.  They paid me no mind.

At the studio, I've been working on getting the last of the bisqued cells glazed. The inclusions are getting bigger and bigger. Some of them are the size and shape of plums and some are the size and shape of those little gem donuts you can buy in convenience stores in packs of six. (No, I wasn't especially hungry when I made them.)

I have another cell completed and drying right now, the biggest yet. Can't wait to go bigger even.

In cat-related news: Gray Kitty has been under the weather since the dental work but Saba has bounced back, despite her getting the worst of it. Poor thing is always trying to sneak outside (she's not allowed until she's back on solid food, two weeks from now), but she wants to go out and eat grass. She's had a few chaperoned walks but there's no grass to speak of yet. Today as a treat for her, I went to the hippie-dippy co-op where we do our shopping and I bought her a $7 square of wheat grass, meant to be juiced by hippies.

Yesterday I ran around a bit with my mother before heading to the studio to do more glazing. I worked for about three hours then got to the point where I just stopped being able to make decisions about where to go next, so I packed it in and came home.

When I first arrived at the studio though, I came in on the tail end of one of the classes and so I stopped and chatted for a few minutes with the teacher and one of the students. I remarked on how quiet it was, people working away, and the teacher said that was a sign of people engrossed in making art. Which I guess I agree with generally, but someone needs to tell The Brain that because it insists on chatting away even when I'm being quiet and working. Sometimes I need to stop and write things down so that The Brain will stop chewing on them.

And then last night there was a dream about clay and---what? In the first part of the dream, I was riding a motorcycle through a city at night. It was raining and there was a lot of traffic moving swiftly. The roads were crisscrossed with trolley tracks and I had to dodge several trolleys, all lit up inside and carrying passengers. I arrived at a small apartment building and parked on the sidewalk and spoke to someone outside the building about the ride. I went in, checked my mailbox, and then that part of the dream ended. (There may have been some part of the dream in which I was in the apartment, but I don't remember any details.)

In the next part of the dream I was taking down a booth at a show, trying to pack up my things so another potter could set up her wares in the same booth. I had several pieces in my booth from another potter at the studio, a woman whose work I like, but mostly because I like her quite a lot. As I was packing up my things, one of the show's organizers came over and asked me about all the work I had and I said that some of it wasn't mine but that I hadn't paid for it. I explained that the other potter, this woman I like, had given it to me and I was trying to sell it. The organizer said that the other potter was problematic, an oblique reference to the potter's mental illness (a real-life fact) and I woke up thinking about that and whether my liking her--and by extension liking her work--had something to do with the fact that she has this mental illness.

I'm not drawn to people with mental illnesses in general, nor am I repelled by them, clearly.  I suppose I have some empathy and some sympathy, though that depends largely on their levels of neediness. (Growing up with an addict parent has made me hyper-sensitive to people who are putting out their feelers for co-dependent enablers and I am able to hack those feelers off with a hatchet.) But this woman, this other potter, is not in the least bit needy, so I like her.  I think if it ever comes down to it in that way, I would want to be her.

(Oh, I forgot to say that in the first part of the dream I was male and in the second part of the dream I was female. That happens from time to time in my dreams--and from time to time in real life.)