blogging is the new ceramics

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came out and suddenly it was okay to talk about the Nut House, and the nature of things that go on there. The landscape has changed, of course, and now most crazy people wander the streets of New York and Los Angeles, but there was a time, a very very long time, when losing your mind in America meant some well-meaning friend, relative, or state official would sign you into a facility for some shock treatment and strait jacket action. That doesn’t sound so nice, but the good part is that once they’d calmed your crazy, they’d set you loose on the rec room where you could sit around in a sweet sweet daze engaging in the craft of your choice. I can’t say why without doing some actual research, but the craft of choice for most certified people was ceramics. People worked themselves into a tranquil frenzy making those handy little mosaic plates to set hot pots on without burning the counter. They made ashtrays and vases -- things whimsical and utilitarian and having seen the handiwork of a few nutty folks myself I am qualified to say this, quite pretty too. And so it is no wonder that when I think of the Funny Farm, I eschew the dark vision of post brain-fucked Jack Nicholson in favor of the extra sitting in the background whipping up a nice lopsided candy dish.

This is the Age of Zoloft and I say it’s a damn shame. It’s a cold thing to be handed a slip of paper with a prescription scribbled in Latin and not also be given the warm comfort of time to sit in the sun and make stuff. Or, in my case, to make stuff and talk about it, which is why I come here and why, when I’m done, I go around other people’s blogs to see what they’re making out of yarn, and out of life.

I have yet to go down the pill road because I’m crazy enough to think I can handle my crazy on my own (if you knew half the things I’m up to these days, you’d know how crazy that is). Maybe the end will prove me wrong, but for now coming here and sharing the truth of my life feels like a better place to start. It ain’t ceramics, but it’s close.

So picture me sitting in the corner of a sunny room, wearing a bath robe and fuzzy slippers in the middle of the day, tinkering with tiny glass tiles as I offer this: The husband formerly known as The Bubba and I now find ourselves on new soil, I believe it’s called shaky ground. I am searching, searching, searching, for a different way of being in the world and I have already found myself going in circles, running up dead end streets, stumbling out into traffic. But whether I like it or not, and believe me when I say I don’t, this is what my life is, this is where I am, and I am grateful to have a space to hold it up to the light and not hide from it.