Reclaim

​Just over a year ago, everything that flowed in my life came to an abrupt stop. As if the faucet had been turned off and there was not even a drip, drip, drip of water. Just dry. No movement, no flow. And everything became very, very tight, and dry, and closed, and stagnant. Quiet and small.
 
I’ve experienced periods of energetic contraction before, but nothing quite like this. If you are a parent, you understand that when your kids aren’t right, you are not right, and it’s hard to see past what is NOT RIGHT. As adults, we know things will change, one way or another, but when it is your child, and the possibility of devastating change is always lurking, it takes an incredible amount of presence to keep the “what ifs” at bay. When you think you can’t possibly get through another hour let alone another day, perhaps it’s your path to visit a potential group home and find flypaper hanging from the ceiling, and somehow, find another reserve of strength to keep going because hell has, in fact, not yet frozen over, and that would be the only circumstance you could imagine settling for such a placement.
 
When clay dries out, it’s hard and unusable. Bags of it, left for too long become heavy obstacles in the studio. It can’t be disposed of in household trash, it’s cumbersome to cart to the waste reclamation center, and reclaiming it is a massive chore. So, in my studio anyway, it accumulates in bins and corners until I either slowly find the stray dumpster to hurl a bag or two in the dead of night or muster the will to break it up, rehydrate it and wedge it to a usable state. Until then, it’s in the way; a visual representation of stagnation, hardness, and immobility. The energy feels trapped and stuck until it is cleared out.
 
This Spring, the faucet began to drip again, and by middle to end of summer, we had the water flowing again. Studio cleanup took place, and LOTS of dried clay got reclaimed or dumped. There is still a pile of it, but it feels less cumbersome. I can imagine the possibility of rehydrating it, and clearing it out. One bit at a time.