Glazed and Confused

I appreciate curiosity. Many of my friends suffer from this rare and interesting condition, and I seem to have caught it early on as well. I remember one summer making a pact with a friend that we weren't going to wonder. We were going to find out. At this point I realize that we were ambitious, but unrealistic. But exploring things had always appealed to me.

I loved books about archaeology when I was little. I still do. I was riveted by the section in Garth Nix's Lirael that dealt with the ancient Library of the Clayr. It consists of room after room of books and artifacts, none alike, winding deeper and deeper into the earth where it's sometimes dangerous to go. No one alive has seen the end of it. Magic.

You know those overpasses on 696 that have trees growing on them? We found out that they're parks, (no roads) so that Orthodox Jews can cross the freeway on the Sabbath.

One Fall weekend in Indiana we heard tales of a lakeside villa Al Capone used to own. So we wandered around with our cameras and sketchbooks until we discovered the place. It had been divided up and made into a gated apartment building. We stood wistfully at the gate and looked though at the building curving around the lake. We imagined decadent gangster parties and concrete shoes and flappers and zoot suits. Finally we decided that we ought to try to get in. We looked at the names on the buzzer. Smith, Johnson, several other boring names, (none were Capone) then.. Love. "Heck. We ought to try," Gabe said. "If Ms. Love doesn't let us in, nobody will." So we buzzed her and explained that we were meek and harmless students-- we just wanted to get in to look around. She laughed, and a minute later the gate opened. It turned out to be one of the nicest afternoons that year, a cool sunny day lazing on the docks telling stories, taking photos, drawing, and exploring the old boat houses...

In Jackson, Liz and I often took afternoon drives, looking for interesting things. We often failed. Lord knows mid- Michigan is not exactly fraught with excitement. However, one afternoon we stumbled over a collection of rundown stone buildings in the middle of nowhere that turned out to be an ancient collection of theaters and art studios. A huge circular stone tower in an overgrown field out back used to be a windmill, but had been concerted into--gasp--living space.... which we discovered when we shoved through the vines over the broken door. A large circular kitchen with a bar along one wall, winding stairs with a bathroom halfway up, and a big round great room completely surrounded with windows and waist-high bookshelves. Above it, a ladder led to a glass topped bedroom. All of it wonderful and magical. All of it in disrepair and ruin. It makes me sad that there's no one to love it.

I tend to get restless if I go too long without anything to discover. I hope that's a good thing. The other day I finally stopped a hole-in-the-wall ceramics store that's been beckoning to me for some time now. Just a grubby yellow little building across the street from the junkyard. I walked into a cluttered maze of shelf after shelf of bottles of paint and glaze and ceramics in various states of completion. Oddly, all over the floor was coiled a thin tube of some sort, tangled around corners, and leading toward the back. I followed it. It led around a corner, up the side of a table, and to the nose of a squat, watery eyed old lady. (I was momentarily tempted to ask what the other two Weird Sisters were up to.) The tube hissed out little puffs of oxygen every couple seconds-- that, coupled with the wheezing of her breathing and the crackle of potato chips as she munched, made it a bit difficult to understand when she gave me a semi-toothless grin, rubbed her beard (yes, her beard) and croaked, "Anything I can do for ya?" I explained that I was interested in ceramics but had never worked with them before... and between wheezes, hacks, and stopping to light up a cigarette, she told me about what was on the shelves and how glazes worked etc.

I expected to pay a reasonable $10 or $15 for a decent piece that I could plant a bonsai in, but when I held the raw pot up and asked how much she snorted, "Buck." Then maybe it'll be expensive to fire, I thought. "Firing's half whatever the piece cost." she wheezed. Geeze. No complaints here.

At that point her equally toothless husband shuffled in, tripping over her oxygen tube and causing her to huff and wave her cigarette at him angrily. He gave a "don't shoot!" sort of gesture. "Woops! I unplug ya?" He asked cheerfully. She muttered and turned to me, still pointing her cigarette, which was threatening to drop ash onto her bag-like mu-mu. "Don't listen t' anything he says. He don't know what he's talkin about." The husband smiled and gave me a little wave, as if to acknowledge that it indeed, was true. They both spent time making sure I understood what I needed to do with the piece, and helping me pick out a glaze, and then waved me out the door when I left.

Curious pays. I'm glad I'm not a cat.