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The sacred; the everyday [art, life]
Feb. 12th, 2022 05:54 pmLast week while watching the latest escapades of the guy rebuilding the Tally Ho, which have to do with pouring a lead keel, S got to wondering about bronze keels. That led me to an interesting website by another boat project-person who had indeed made a bronze keel! It turns out the gentleman who did the work is rather famous for having gone on very long solo sailing expeditions in very tiny boats, that are closer to what I've seen for ocean rowing vessels (self-righting capsules) than most sailboats.
He also has a video channel, through which I wound up encountering an interview of him by other internet video/sailboat people (his own videos seem very focused on the minutiae involved in his boatbuilding projects). In the interview, the other sailboat people asked him what he ate on his long solo voyages. "Sardines, and muesli," he said, and then talked about the stages he went through in his relationship to these foods: first, they were fine, then he became really sick of them, but then, they became fine again and he came to really like them. He said that eating the same foods every day made him more fully aware of how spoiled he and people in some cultures are, in terms of the variety of foods they expect to be able to eat from day to day.
I am trying to hold onto a sense of the sacred, amid the everyday; this is along the lines of being aware and appreciative of what I am eating, in addition to shifting other aspects of my awareness.
On this front, yesterday I became grateful for something completely unexpected: a Washington-area bicycling person I don't know personally found me not too long ago on a social media platform, and friended me, and just happened to post a photo of a cooling tower, which triggered memories of this favorite artwork, Echo at Satsop, which I've posted about before, on more than one occasion. I rode past the Satstop towers when I bike toured around the Olympic Peninsula during the summer of 2013, the year my dad went over his handlebars and broke three ribs.
I needed that reminder. It caused me to think again about which kinds of spaces bring me a sense of deep peace, and where those spaces are located. Out in this part of the country, I think the closest I've ever gotten may be the space under the freeway where the boathouse is located, when I am there all by myself. In a lot of ways it's an utterly tragic space, and it doesn't exactly bring me a sense of deep peace. My general association with the eastern US is feeling hemmed-in. It is very hard for me to hold onto that sense of the sacred here.
I have really been hoping to reclaim some of that for myself through ceramics, but so far for this year that desire has been postponed indefinitely due to financial and logistical constraints (studio is somewhat far by bicycle, especially in the winter, and their limited hours are difficult to get lined up with). It might be that I should just get rid of the accumulated materials for other projects so I don't wind up conflicted between the materials more immediately at hand (fabric, yarn, paper, wood) and the materials I really want to work with (clay). I don't know yet.
The solo sailor provides a lived example of a life that is simultaneously complex and simple; he desires to sail in as small a boat as possible, carrying nearly only what's strictly necessary, but to get there he does have to develop the necessary technology and decide what's most important to bring along, which does include solar panels, and a tablet computer loaded with thousands of books.
He also has a video channel, through which I wound up encountering an interview of him by other internet video/sailboat people (his own videos seem very focused on the minutiae involved in his boatbuilding projects). In the interview, the other sailboat people asked him what he ate on his long solo voyages. "Sardines, and muesli," he said, and then talked about the stages he went through in his relationship to these foods: first, they were fine, then he became really sick of them, but then, they became fine again and he came to really like them. He said that eating the same foods every day made him more fully aware of how spoiled he and people in some cultures are, in terms of the variety of foods they expect to be able to eat from day to day.
I am trying to hold onto a sense of the sacred, amid the everyday; this is along the lines of being aware and appreciative of what I am eating, in addition to shifting other aspects of my awareness.
On this front, yesterday I became grateful for something completely unexpected: a Washington-area bicycling person I don't know personally found me not too long ago on a social media platform, and friended me, and just happened to post a photo of a cooling tower, which triggered memories of this favorite artwork, Echo at Satsop, which I've posted about before, on more than one occasion. I rode past the Satstop towers when I bike toured around the Olympic Peninsula during the summer of 2013, the year my dad went over his handlebars and broke three ribs.
I needed that reminder. It caused me to think again about which kinds of spaces bring me a sense of deep peace, and where those spaces are located. Out in this part of the country, I think the closest I've ever gotten may be the space under the freeway where the boathouse is located, when I am there all by myself. In a lot of ways it's an utterly tragic space, and it doesn't exactly bring me a sense of deep peace. My general association with the eastern US is feeling hemmed-in. It is very hard for me to hold onto that sense of the sacred here.
I have really been hoping to reclaim some of that for myself through ceramics, but so far for this year that desire has been postponed indefinitely due to financial and logistical constraints (studio is somewhat far by bicycle, especially in the winter, and their limited hours are difficult to get lined up with). It might be that I should just get rid of the accumulated materials for other projects so I don't wind up conflicted between the materials more immediately at hand (fabric, yarn, paper, wood) and the materials I really want to work with (clay). I don't know yet.
The solo sailor provides a lived example of a life that is simultaneously complex and simple; he desires to sail in as small a boat as possible, carrying nearly only what's strictly necessary, but to get there he does have to develop the necessary technology and decide what's most important to bring along, which does include solar panels, and a tablet computer loaded with thousands of books.
