extrahistoric

today i began my pottery lessons for real. i am kept quite busy during the day with them. i really enjoy it. there is something so calming about making something with my hands... it's not spiritual exactly. no... and it's not hypnotic either. what's the word?! it keeps your thoughts going and yet gives them direction and slows them. it's meditative. that's teh word.

so much of what i do every day leaves me feeling scattered and pulled in many directions. while teaching is happening, it's like i stop having coherent thoughts. it's like i am mentally chasing my own tail. but that meditative mood is different. calm but not inactive. like a big river. you don't really see it moving, but there is a powerful motion under the surface. i think it's part of why i love reading so much. that is meditative for me, too. it takes me out of my own story for a while and lets me mull over my thoughts from a distance. walking my dogs outside sometimes does it for me, too. and running. and swimming. chopping wood. driving. that state of mind needs some kind of half-conscious thought-motion to be happening in order for it to exist.

i was thinking today (and yesterday, and most days of my life) how I lack direction and how I need direction and how one thing that no one else in the world can give me is direction. i'm heading in some direction, to be sure. sort of wandering kind of over that way a little bit. so maybe it's intention that i lack. haha... according to my likely destination, i should be walking on paving stones of good ones.