another project in the works

 I am once again consumed by some idea that sprung into my brain. Its strange sometimes to be taken over so completely by ideas, thought trains and creation.  I can have 3 or 4 going on at once in my head and then trying to also work my 40-50 hr week no wonder I struggle with perpetual burnout.  I am moving toward some improvement in my health, no miracles but slightly better breathing and trying to root out my actual allergies. Amidst this I am writing and working and avoiding the heat. 

I want to travel more, I want to create and write and be invested in that part of my life more, I want to work less.  But I have really enjoyed not living a constant struggle. I am not rich by any means but I do live comfortably here I can afford utilities and food. I can have little luxuries like buying some fabric to sew a new skirt and it doesn't break me. I can buy medicine and see doctors, having good medical coverage is so nice.  So I want to work less for others wealth and focus more on what makes me healthy and fulfilled and i want to continue to live this nice lower middle class existence. I feel like as humans we should all be given that option. We should be doing that which pleases us and not grinding as slaves for others.  I will go to my pyre with the dream of a utopia where mankind is kind and humans are humane.

that is all for now updates will arrive when I have finished the first stage of the new project.

Life carries on

 This past week for work we took some of our students to a museum. I love museums, always have. So this trip was enjoyable to me. there was an exhibition about pottery. There are frequently pottery exhibitions. Korea is a ceramicists dream, I am not a ceramicist. 

 

But I am a lover of all things art and art history and human history.  Some of the exhibits have translations of the information, the tour was given in Korean to our students. As I listened to the guide speak and picked out a word here and there or a tiny phrase I realized I didn't need to know Korean to understand what she was speaking about.  

I have read much about the pottery and the evolution of pottery with each wave of conquest. their kilns are incredible. It strikes me that the history of pottery in Korea is a history of human adaptation and cultural survival against the constant pressure of colonization by other people, war and infighting.  

This particular pottery was from the three kingdoms era 50bce-700ce roughly, and most was from the Baekje region.  I have seen this pottery many times in museum visits all over Korea, but the real moment for me was standing in a museum looking at pieced together shards of pottery with the same markings and features as the shards of pottery I walk over when when walking park forest trails. 

Where I walk barefoot is known to have had settlements its a historical landmark and the rains wash stuff up out of the ground. So its not uncommon to walk and see ancient pottery shards alongside stones and sticks and pine cones.  You do not pick things up here. We leave things alone. I take pictures for my records of my life. They left behind pottery. I leave behind words and photos and art. 

And life marches on 

 I walk among the dead and the living I realize just how connected we all are