Friday's attempt

A quote from one of the founders of modern psychology:

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You don't blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the President. You realize that you control your own destiny."
-- Albert Ellis

I don't totally agree with Ellis, but he's on the right track.

OK, I'll tell you a little something about art, loss, and pain.

Did I mention last spring that I was sculpting a hand and arm in art class? I don't recall if I mentioned it and am too lazy to check. The point is that I was making this hand/arm out of clay in the sculpture class, and it was very good. The professor didn't fire it in the kiln before the end of the semester, but said that there would probably be a kiln firing about three weeks into the summer term when the grad program was in session. So I left it there. And when I came back this fall the piece is missing. I've asked around. No one knows where it is or what happened to it. All they can tell me is that a lot of things were tossed, and it is probably gone. I've been processing that information.This is a scan of the only photograph I have of the hand. I don't remember who took the picture or who gave me the photo. It pains me to look at it because I remember how good the sculpture was. There was a lot of detail and it looked quite realistic. I had to do surgery on the hand when I first got the shape completed because the palm was too square. I took a wedge out of the pinkie edge of the hand so the palm sloped down from the base of the index finger to the base of the pinkie. As you can see I had the creases in the palm and the curves of the base of the thumb and the forearm. It looked really good. And it is gone now.

It's a waste of energy to be upset. What's done is done. No amount of fussing on my part is going to make the thing reappear. I am mourning, though.

And here's the thing: the chunk of clay is gone, but the soul and the spirit and the talent that created the art is still here within me. No one can see it unless I create something else that displays that talent, but I know that I can do it. I was frankly surprised at how well I was able to depict the human hand and arm. I was not able to do that in the early 1980s when I took a sculpture class, and I haven't worked with clay since then. But something happened, I don't know what, and now I can do it.

So what now? We wait patiently, we make the most of the opportunities that pass our way, and we continue to try to make a positive difference in the world. And we cry just a little bit.