Distractions vs the Real path

I've often wondered if I have a collection of odd hobbies and interests or if I am simply distracting myself. Being ruthlessly curious has pros and cons. Knowing that my brain is wired differently is much the same. When I was a kid and would come home from school, it was: Grab a snack, deal with homework, then my time was my own. College messed with the format, but others around me still found time off on the weekends. I always found myself drawn into other projects that consumed my weekends and non-classtime. Eventually, I found clay and the next twenty years vanished in the blink of an eye. 

Clay gave my curiosity a place to play and explore, but it also demanded a level of attention that one of my college girlfriends saw as invasive. She referred to clay as my mistress. From her perspective, I could see it. I would get up in the middle of the night, drive half an hour to the studio, just to monitor a kiln. I frequently showed up to our dinner dates with bits of clay stuck to my elbows or my shoes. To her, that meant I wasn't really there. 

Arguably, ceramics was far more than a hobby or a distraction. For over two decades it unfolded the map of my life. Closing that door in 2009 meant changes that are still being unpacked. Was it a distraction? Was it a hobby? I would argue that in most ways it stopped being a hobby when I signed up for my second class in college. At that point, something else was sacrificed. Some class on cell biology, organic chemistry or poetry of the English countryside. The path changed. 

What is wild to me as I write this, is that I felt this happen. The air changed. I felt more committed... dedicated. It was a direction I could take. Reminds me of hikers who step off trail when they are lost, thinking that they know the best route down from the mountain. They often end up injured, lost or worse. Distraction? So I followed the path always hoping I would find others on the trail who could help point me in the right direction. Sempai. By the time I finished graduate school in Utah, I spent most of my waking hours in the studio. There was always something to do. Clay to be made. Pots to be thrown or trimmed. Kilns to be loaded and fired. Glazes to be mixed up and tested. It wasn't an eight hour work day to come home from and relax. It was all day. Every day. Holidays? Never heard of em. 

I had a few distractions from the studio. One summer, I was exploring a beachhead cliff near Port Townsend, trying to get down the sandy cliff face. I fell while holding the dilapidated rotten rope ladder. The rope burns peeled off the skin on both hands, leaving me with a single uninjured finger and two thumb tips to work with. More pressing was that I was now trapped at the shoreline and needed to hike out to catch a ride back to our car. Tide was coming in, so time was a very real pressure. Not being from the area, I had no idea which direction would get me to a place where I could escape the incoming tide. Distraction? My hands were open wounds, not bleeding much at that point, the pain was blinding. Without a first-aid kit I tried thinking of ways to deal with the pain. For the rest of the hike out, I would dip my hand in incoming waves or tide pools to chill them to the point of numbness. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Distraction! The eagles helped too. 

At one point, while deep in thought/fear about what would happen in a few hours when the tide reached the base of the sandy cliffs... I heard an eagle nearby. I still think of this as eagles laughing. It might not be classified as laughter by animal behaviorists, but it sure felt like they were making fun of me. Not like any other bird call I had heard before. Distraction. The eagle laughter turned out to be two bald eagles, flying overhead. Absolutely stunning to see them circling, perhaps fifty feet over the tops of the trees high above me on the cliffside. All of a sudden, the two eagles clutched talons, and started spiraling towards the ground while calling out these crazy wails! Before they reached the treetops, they separated and silence returned. Both eagles returned to their lazy glide back up into the air only to repeat this event three more times as I continued my walk. Distracted.

I failed to write about this day on the beach in Washington when it happened. Probably because I couldn't use my hands for weeks. I lost my summer job in town. My hands were destroyed. Distracting me from the pain and fear was the larger fear of: what would happen if I couldn't make pots? 

 

 

A decade and many moves across the country later, I found myself rebuilding my life on the east coast.  I had a job working in a library at the university but really wanted to build my own studio so I could continue chasing the dream of being a potter. Transitioning to a desk job, complete with managing staff and students brought a host of stresses that I was unaccustomed to. My body took the hit from all of the stress. First came the weight gain and then back pain. Not long after I herniated a disk in my lower back. After exhausting the usual remedies and the non-traditional solutions, I found myself with paralysis in one leg. I was in continuous unrelenting pain. Sleep was impossible. Walking was excruciating. Sitting was almost impossible. Eventually I was scheduled for surgery and everything stopped. Work stopped. Time stopped. Pain didn't stop though. 

To distract myself while waiting for my surgical date (April Fool's Day, no less) I occupied my brain by trying to teach myself Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. I had put off reading the books and learning how they worked for long enough. With all this time away from work, it seemed like the perfect time. After surgery, I assumed I could just pick up where I left off before going to the hospital. Open the book to page whatever. I had no clue that the pain drugs would make that paperbook into a cement wall. Words became a slip-n-slide. Distraction. I could barely remember to get out of the reclining chair to urinate. At the same time, I was afraid of everything. During this period in my life, newly remarried, the goal was to get a pottery studio underway. Now that was on hold. Distractions were everywhere. Pain was a pervasive reminder that something had to give. 

By the time my surgical site had healed enough for me to bend and move the way one does in the studio, I returned to the clay. A lot of pots on shelves had dried out beyond salvaging. Clay was still piled up beside my wheel waiting for my return. The studio space was cold. The kiln hadn't been fired in months. Distractions. I knew that lifting more than a gallon of milk was prohibited for the next six weeks to give the wound time to heal. As soon as the need for pain meds was gone, walking took up a large part of my morning and afternoon. The more I moved, the less everything hurt. The rest of the time I returned to trying to develop my graphic design computer skills so we could do more to promote the studio. 

Eventually, I returned to work in the library. Almost exactly a year later, it happened again. This time I was walking back from lunch on campus and felt that twinge that let me know my back wasn't happy. By the time I sat down at my desk, something felt very wrong. Distracted myself through the remainder of the workday. There were always a million things that needed doing in the library. 

When I got up to catch the bus back to my car parked at the commuter parking lot, I nearly fell over. My right leg was completely unresponsive. Just limp. Couldn't feel my toes. Nothing below the waist on that side. 

Life is a series of distractions. Sometimes with pain, other times with fear or smiles. Sometimes with chocolate sprinkles. 

When I woke up from the second surgery on the same disk, I asked the surgeon if for the third surgery we should plan on putting in a zipper to save him time on the operating table. I thought I was being funny. 

It was a distraction from my terror. 

What if this happened again? Would I ever be able to make pottery again? Would I be able to stand and hug my family?

 

I'll skip the middle years where life was life. I healed, recovered, and got myself back into the studio. Tons of clay passed through my hands. We built the studio, built a business and built a new life. Divorce and custody proceedings provided an anxiety provoking distraction... periodically turning me inside out, like having a grocery bag bottom tear out right before you get the door open. Distractions.

2008 was crazy. The road past the studio had been closed for major repairs the entire summer (despite the actual construction taking just over a month to complete). This killed the flow of tourists to the studio. We went from seeing 2-3 cars a day, every day, down to maybe 3-4 cars a week. Those visitors often chided us that it would have been much more convenient if we had told them there was construction... and a better way to reach us. Well, yeah. But I was distracted. And how the hell could I have told them?

The following year, in January, on one of the most beautiful mornings imaginable, a Corvette pulled into the driveway. January in upstate NY is cold. Corvette convertible in my driveway distracted my brain. The sky outside was crystal blue. The driveway was free of snow and ice. The studio was warm and inviting. When you've worked retail, you get a feel for the demographics of your customers. Are they BMW drivers or are they Subaru drivers? Are they wearing expensive high heels or thick-soled hiking boots? Are they lost and just want directions to the local state park? 

The couple came in, looked at things while Nancy and I answered questions. I had reached the point where I figured they were just killing time, and was about to return to the back of the shop so I could keep working. We always had music playing in the studio. When customers and visitors came, we would always turn the volume down so as to not offend someone. The couple noticed the music being played and asked about it. Distracted from what I thought was going to happen, we dove into a discussion about music, traveling, and pottery. An hour later, as they were looking like they were going to leave empty-handed, the woman turned around and asked if we could ship. Of course we would be happy to ship. She proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes pulling pots off the shelves, stacking them up on our checkout table. She kept glancing out to her Corvette. I thought at first she was worried about leaving it alone. Her glances at her car outside through our gallery windows was distracting. 

I finally asked her what kept drawing her attention outside to her car. She explained that she was trying to figure out if there was any way to fit it all into her car. This Corvette Stingray had no backseat. Apparently with the convertible top, it took up all that space normally reserved behind the front seats... which in a sports-car like this was minimal to begin with. Distracted by the reality of the question, I explained that she wouldn't want things damaged in transit so we'd take care of shipping everything safely. Her face changed subtly and she revealed that the person she was traveling with wasn't her husband. And she wanted to bring one of our mugs on the rest of her trip so she could remember having such a great time. The rest could be shipped. But ship it slow, so that it would arrive when she got home in two weeks. 

Her purchase set the tone for the beginning of that year. Assumptions were almost always wrong. As soon as things were heading in the right direction, something would force a wild turn. Unexpected is how we collectively think about 2009. For the first time in the studio's history, we had an enormous pile of bisque fired pots waiting to be glazed. Like money in the bank! Galleries could call and place an order, we could glaze to their order, fire the kiln that week and have it shipped the following Monday. It was feeling like a well oiled machine. What the hell do I know about oiling machines? I worked in clay.

The coma happened in the fall of 2009. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Talk about distraction.

I remember a friend and local potter and gallery owner, asking me after I woke from the coma, but was still in the ICU... did I plan to go back to making pottery? 

I couldn't talk yet, because I was intubated. I couldn't write yet because of muscle atrophy. But she wanted to know if I was going back to the studio. 

Getting from there to here seems impossible. That was yesterday, right? Sixteen years and change later, the studio has metamorphosed multiple times, finally becoming Leto's apartment. This week the studio caught up to me in a nightmare flashback. When we built the studio, we also created a gallery space out of 1/3 of the total space. The ceiling of the gallery was jam-packed with track lighting and cans of floodlights and spotlights. At the peak, there were over forty cans of light on the ceiling! The goal was to make it so that no matter where you stood, there were no shadows falling on the pots. Everything was picture perfect and balanced light. 

Leto called me out to their apartment early this week after smelling a burning electrical smell. For a potter, that is the fear that keeps you awake at nights. Eventually we ruled out bad wiring in the wall, we ruled out the microwave as the culprit... even ruled out bad outlets. The following day, Leto discovered a tiny black bleb on one of the light fixture ballasts. I got up there on a ladder to find, yep, that little bugger was melting down. After over twenty years in daily use, the light fixture had given up the ghost. Turned out, these little halogen fixtures had been recalled... because they caused fires. Hmmm. I guess I missed the recall notice while I was distracted.

Which leads me back to asking the question about the path vs the distractions. "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans." -Allen Saunders.