Susan Kruse, a wonderful artist, decided to give away her works, in a splendid gesture of joy and freedom. She chose something for me, something she thought I would love above all, something so simple and yet essential in my floating world. The tea bowl. She wanted me to have her tea bowl, the beauty and the silence reflected on the bridge between me and the other. Preparing and serving tea is the calm embrace of love.
She also sent me this shell. On the shell, it's written: the tide withdraws leaving cowries and our minds filled to overflowing. Untranslatable into words, the richness and yet lightness of the spirals, the frailty of the human touch bestowing sense upon life and world. Gentle, who took these pictures for me, saw the shell floating on bird wings towards light. She also saw the broken shell, the wound each one of us carries inside forever. Also the wound helping us to be. Our overflowing being, until we disappear in the immense, more and more free, as the poet sings for all of us, the silent, the searching ones.
She also sent me this shell. On the shell, it's written: the tide withdraws leaving cowries and our minds filled to overflowing. Untranslatable into words, the richness and yet lightness of the spirals, the frailty of the human touch bestowing sense upon life and world. Gentle, who took these pictures for me, saw the shell floating on bird wings towards light. She also saw the broken shell, the wound each one of us carries inside forever. Also the wound helping us to be. Our overflowing being, until we disappear in the immense, more and more free, as the poet sings for all of us, the silent, the searching ones.
I'm sad the shell broke. The poem is by Liam Wilkinson who runs the online Three Lights Tanka and Haiku gallery.
ReplyDeleteThe bowl is one of the handmade clay ones that I was intending to light fires in at Midsummer. This particular bowl has had a fire inside it and is partially blacked by the process. It is mostly raw clay though, so will not take water. In fact it is interesting to put the bowl in water as the clay rapidly sucks up the moisture and returns to being a lump of dirt without form. Quite lovely, actually.
oh don't be said, actually I thought you chose one broken on purpose. But if not, then we have to welcome once again the wonderful - and meaningful - work of chance, so important for your art as well as for my pictures. I think it is such a beautiful reminder of our frailty...
ReplyDeleteYes, I thought so about the bowl when my friend told me it had such a strong smoke smell. I can't tell you how happy I am you thought of giving it to me! And I can see how lovely it would be to watch it dissolve, but I just can't bring myself to it, I know it already :-)