Person with Helpers (1982-1984)

This clay sculpture was formed sometime between 1982 and 1984 in Santa Cruz, California, at the home of a friend who is a potter and who will remain anonymous. My friend handed me a lump of clay and encouraged me to work with it. I had just spent some time walking and talking with the man from "Middle of the Journey" (see post from yesterday) and was thinking of him as I molded the clay. "Person with Helpers" was the result. 

My friend sent the piece to me a few months later. Although I tried to make adjustments to the photo image to show the true color of the fired clay, my adjustments were unsuccessful. As I look at the image today, I can see it in Jungian terms as an animus image from an earlier time in my life. I no longer have this small sculpture, but I can still see the warm brownish-orange color of the fired clay in my mind. 

As part of a difficult letting-go process in 1999, I placed the sculpture in an inconspicuous location in a city park. Although I had been able to let go of the piece, I felt compelled to return to visit it numerous times until it disappeared. Sometime between 1966 and 1967, I had sculpted a much smaller image of the same man from memory. In 1999, I left that older piece, along with other mementos, at The Moving Wall when it came to a nearby small town.

Caught Between Impossible Questions and the Wild Blue Sky of Day (1982)

Looking back at these drawings from 1982, what a shock it is to add up the years and acknowledge that nearly twenty-five years have passed. Seeing this chalk pastel drawing after so many years, at first I couldn't remember the title I had given it. What is coming out of this process of retrospection is that I am remembering how much I have forgotten. As I looked at today's image, I thought I would have to give it a new name, but then the words "wild blue sky of day," from a poem I had written in the early 1980s, came back to me. I couldn't remember the title of the poem but knew where to look for it and found that it was titled "A Nation of Sleepless Woman with Moon and Birds." The last two lines were the title I had given to this drawing. 

A NATION OF SLEEPLESS WOMEN WITH MOON AND BIRDS  

Awake and alert

As full and fragmented as the moon 

Rising and reflecting 

In a western sea 

We hear night birds 

Singing in the shadows 

Mocking darkness 

Mocking darkness 

The moon asks an impossible question: 

Do I control you 

Or do you control me 

In my circular journey 

We ask the moon an impossible question: 

Do we control you 

Or do you control us 

In our cyclical journey

We hear night words

We sing in the shadows

Mocking darkness 

Mocking darkness 

Imagine us at dawn 

A nation of sleepless women with moon and birds

Just above the hills of childhood 

Caught between impossible questions 

And the wild blue sky of day. 

Sometime in February I will be coming to a drawing/painting I did which I called, "Woman Trying to Remember What She is Trying to Forget." 

How could I forget that I am a poet, too?