Some Enjoyable Things I Did This Weekend

I Did Some Enjoyable Things This Weekend:

1. English Tutor Duty

My niece, The Newbie's mama, is writing her very first college essay and asked me to help. Yay! So on Saturday, I went to a cafe with her and The Newbie and Dave so that we could have some coffee and study and write, just like real college students do.

My niece and I spoke about her assignment a few days before we met. She told me that she had to write an instructive essay about something she could do that probably not everyone in her class could do. I suggested that she write about her experiences with The Newbie, or about having sung backup on a rap CD about a year ago. She thought about it for a couple of days and decided all on her own to write about the baby. She decided to call her essay "How to Give A Baby A Bath." She outlined the traditional five-paragraph essay before we met, then while Dave and I distracted the baby with toys and songs and orange juice, she wrote her essay.

Here's the thing about me: I’m comfortable anymore expressing myself via the written word, but I do remember those early, shaky days of learning how to structure essays. My niece is, essay writing-wise, probably now at the level I was in the ninth grade, and that's fine. It's fine. (I've always had an affinity for writing and words and reading which has meant that writing came a little easier for me than for most.) Now, it’s actually fun for me to sit with my niece while she goes through those same steps. In the end, I mostly provided moral support and encouragement as she only had a few questions about writing. (One of the more interesting ones was whether she could use “utensil” to mean “supplies” or “tools.” I told her that we usually used utensils for cooking and eating or for writing. She had a couple more questions about how to use transitions in her essay and I gave her a few tricks I've learned along the way.)

Anyway, I think the essay turned out really well. We’ll see what her instructor thinks.

2. It's All About The Green. Green Chile, That Is.

On Friday night, I had my first freshly roasted green chile of the season.

The co-op where Dave and I shop is really outrageous sometimes. Recently, they had a small package of roasted green chile for $4 and I was, like, what? You can buy a twenty-pound sack of chile for $20! Outrageous. I won’t pay it. But then a few nights ago, Kelly Workout told me about a fabulous green chile and turkey sandwich she made using that very same outrageously priced green chile and she was so blissed out over the whole thing that I was, like, okay, I give.

I bought the $4 chile--the hot, not the medium--and some beautiful tomatoes and some French sheep’s milk feta. That night, Dave and I had green chile and sheep’s milk feta on toasted baguette with tomato, microgreens, and grainy mustard. (It sounds freaky, I know, but it was really good.) The next morning we had an Amy’s olive and mushroom pizza with added green chile and feta. (Yes, still freaky and still delicious.) Tonight we had green chile and feta omelets.

Salty feta and green chile are really, really perfect together. You need to try it before you scoff.

3. Writing to Some Folks

On Sunday, I fired off several emails to the various elected officials who are involved in one way or another in the proposed Treasury bailout of the financial giants on Wall Street. Oh, I’m sure you’ve heard about this one. George W. and his pals are taking the American taxpayers for one last ride and all it’s gonna cost us is 700 billion dollars.

(And, Jesus H. Christ on a fucking pogo stick, don’t you dare try to blame this on two years of a Democratic congress in order to keep from smearing a goddamn shit-covered Republican president. Because not only would that put you in the same vomit-spewing league as Rush Limbaugh, it would also mark you as being so ignorant that you don’t even realize that the Democrats hold the lead in Congress by only two seats and have been blocked every step of the way by Republicans--and don't even think that a financial crisis of this magnitude can come about in two years. Don’t even try. And don’t try, as that senile idiot John McCain has, to pin this on Obama. No, really. He really tried to say that this is all Obama’s fault. You remember John McCain, don’t you? He’s the one who assured us that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” right before the whole thing came crashing down? Yeah, him. It was his economic advisor who called Americans a bunch of “whiners” who were experiencing a “mental recession.” Yeah, him. John McCain. The one showing signs of dementia.)

Anyway, the proposed bail out is as flawed as everything else that’s arisen from the Bush White House, which means that it’s a complete nightmare for everyone except the goddamn banks and their fearless CEOs who ran them into the ground. They get their billion of taxpayer dollars under the current proposal, and we get to bend over and grab our ankles and thank them when they’re done screwing us.

So I went online and looked up the emails for my local representatives as well as the emails for the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader and a bunch of other people who I think need to hear what I have to say. And then I sent off a bunch of strongly worded emails and felt a little better. Oh, I know they’ll be delete-delete-deleted right into the trash file, so it was probably wasted effort given how little anyone in the Bush administration listens to the American people, but what the hell? I figure that, for my share of the bail-out (approximately $2,000), I can cuss out a few elected officials.

4. Stop! Gym Time!

Yes, I’m listing this under the enjoyable things I did this weekend. On Friday, I went with Kelly Workout and Dave to lift. On Saturday morning, I went with Kelly First and Kevin for some cardio. On Sunday, I actually talked Dave into going back with me. (He’s pledged once a week and no more, but recently he’s been trying to go twice a week.)

Oh! Oh! And the best part is: My Gym Boyfriend had disappeared for several weeks, but suddenly he reappeared, like, mid-last week. And he got a haircut and it's really cute. So, yes, that was a bonus.

5. Clay Time

For the last few weeks, I've been going to the studio and working for a couple of hours on Saturday night. At first, I was just working on a batch of bowls for a charity event called Empty Bowls. The work was pretty low stress in part because several potters were contributing to the effort. (I was only glazing some of the bowls that other potters had thrown. Other people loaded and unloaded the kilns. Still others packed and transported the bowls.) Recently though, I've been working on my own stuff, mainly handbuilt bowls. I can throw on a wheel of course, but I prefer handbuilding. I like the meditative quality of handbuilding. Throwing moves too quickly for The Brain to remain in a calm state. A competent potter can throw a bowl every couple of minutes, but even the most competent handbuilder will often spending hours and hours on a single bowl.

Here's a dose of (what will sound to you like) crazy: The time I spend handbuilding is really what I'm building through. Clay has nothing--and everything--to do with it.

To me, returning to the studio has meant re-establishing my relationship with the medium. The clay really is everything. Clay is a real thing and, in the form I use it and over the bulk of the time that we interact, is teeming with life. It has memory that transcends time in increments longer than a human lifespan. Much longer. Proficiency with clay consists largely of letting clay impose its will on you. That's not an easy thing to accept. Accepting it takes a long time and a certain mindfulness. The hours I spend with clay are real and they are intimate. You can't force intimacy, it has to be built over time. But the important thing is that what I'm really building over time is my own capacity for patience. In the end, the clay is nothing, only the means by which I can slow time and by so doing, train my mind. In the end, even time means nothing. That's what I'm trying to say: Nothing matters but the manipulation of time as a means to train my mind. Clay and time are nothing and everything.

Did you think it was going to get that weird?