Selah // Something Witty

Mercury is parked outside.

Date: 01.11.17 -- Day Two
Music of the Day: "Mercury" / Kathleen Edwards

Second entries are always the hardest. Maybe not the hardest, but definitely something pretty high up on the list of difficult things to write. The sequel usually doesn't match the success of the original even if the material of one outpaces the other. There so much emotional attachment and ambiguity in the first go-around that we fill in any missing gaps ourselves, unwittingly making it our own until the second item comes along and clarifies, which in a weird way destroys what we've built for ourselves. Or maybe that's just me. All of this is a drawn out way of saying I have so much to say and still have no idea what to write about.

When I was trying to craft this in my head yesterday, I had this idea about splitting apart the theme of a bitter harvest. For instance, yesterday was my first time back on campus after winter break, and let me tell you that it was a doozy. The winds here in the Pacific Northwest have been howling for days, kicking around leaves and people alike. My face was frozen nearly half the day. I mentioned this to someone in passing and they suggested a face mask, which nearly made me laugh out loud. Politically speaking, there's no way in my semi-little college town that I could wear a face mask or shield and not get stopped by the police for I am far too brown for that sort of thing to not end on a poor note. Hence my massive collection of thick scarves that cover me up to my chin. But besides the winds causing a massive fuss, it's been an unusually cold winter in my neck of the woods, something I don't think anyone was truly prepared for. Plus, I'm from California; most of us Californians don't do this, and when we have to, do not do this well. Even though I've been in Washington for nearly six years years, there are moments like yesterday when my sun and drought disposition exposed itself -- bouncing on the tips of my toes, rubbing my hands together constantly as I tried to focus on the seeing things in front of me instead of worrying about my eyes potentially freezing in my skull.

So the biting winds and mocking winter sun that gives no warmth covers the bitter. What covers the harvest? Weirdly enough, that would be my beginning throwing class. At least twice a week I will be attempting to make things out of clay and wheel, which, I gotta say, is a bunch harder than I remember it being a few years ago. My arms and hands are sore as all hell. Maybe it's my condition as it is a literal widespread pain everyday. But beyond my out-of-shape ceramic skills, I made a little dinky pot. While I can't seem to center clay worth a damn, my hands are wonky at best when it comes to shaping, and I have a lead foot when it comes to wheel speed, I somehow fumbled my way through making a little pot that might possibly turn into a weird little thing that holds my loose change one day. That's something. Clumsy creation perhaps, but it's something.

In combing through these ideas, possibly gathering something from a horrible situation or receiving something that is less than pleasant from begotten seeds, there's always that period of processing. Processing is such an odd experience, especially when it is not the intended outcome. Granted, I do not process well these days, my brain constantly shrouded in a thousand explosions under dense fog. Yet so many things were lost along the way when trying to figure out how translate this all, much to the detriment of this entry. There were so many places I wanted to go with this, especially in these current climate. Is this not a time of bitter harvest? And my new way of life with my illnesses, constantly adapting and rearranging to suit the changes of my body, my brain. For every thing I do, there is a physical cost, often painful, turning ordinary things into laborious tasks. However, I just keep wandering off topic to the next project that needs to be tackled or the fact that I must hurry off into the bracing cold to complete errands. Ultimately, I am left with more questions than answers, more tattered beginnings than finished threads.

Can one harvest without processing the outcomes? Can one process without harvesting that particular crop of ideas or philosophies or conclusions? Are we in a season of bitter harvest or potentially a generation? Can we turn it into something more, something not so foul-tasting and hard-hitting? Can we aim for bittersweet?