Crafts-the Primrose Path

Things have been so slow in the studio. I am not being a wimp. I have spent a couple of years on these several plates-I can't begin to count the hours spent burnishing. So I'm trying to find some life. Learning how to do new stuff is so enticing to me, so the craftsphere out there has been really belting out a siren's call. I've dedicated some time to learning cement sculpture and soldered jewelry-and I've been woodburning on a chair for my son. . . but I feel so guilty. I know I should be working on my etchings-especially when our sitter comes so that I can work. But here is my life long problem. I get mired in what I'm doing at a certain point of whatever I am doing, and just get lost and confused-bound upside down and blindfolded in a gorgion knot.

And having a two year old is a part of it.

But I am so lost at this point-so confused about all the threads of ideas sticking up in various stages of completion, that I swear yesterday I had a fantasy about taking the baby and the dog and setting the whole house on fire.

So why was I in a yarn shop recently looking at books on felting and loom knitting? Not to knock either-cause obviously I think they are cool, but they are nowhere on my life list (as if I had one as such). Maybe because they aren't. And maybe because life just happens to offer so much and you want yours to be a life chock full of the genious of knowing and following your curiosities. When I was young I glowed in the pleasure of discovering what all I could do. But now is the time for deeper mastery. Maybe. But I feel like I'm in deep purgatory. I honestly don't know.

I do have friend, Laurent, who is into everything-music, photography, comics, ceramics, gardening, glass blowing and most recently-lock picking! He told us about this on a recent visit. Showed us YouTube videos of people doing it and everything. They popped locks open like bracelet clasps. They do it for fun and have practice locks and elaborate kits. I love that people do this.

I love that people keep chickens and bees and owls. That they espalier fruit trees and build stone walls and teach dogs to dance like my mother does. I want to do these things, too, but is there time? I know to a degree I am choosing how to spend my alotted time here on earth- and there is less in many ways for what I've already chosen each time I embark on something new. . .And I know the real spiritual challenge is to find that same energy, the energy of grasping the new thing, in your chosen avocation or two. See, I want a magic opening to come in my work-like a recurring dream I have of inexplicably coming upon massive undiscovered wings my house filled with treasures. The feeling in these dreams are a welling up of joy and relief that it was all there all along-but had and held, in this house.