ahhh. it’s just one of those days.

one of those air-of-spring days where you wake up in a good mood, the coffee tastes a little sweeter, the sunlight has that soft diffused quality to it, there’s the faintest tinge of green everywhere, there’s a gentle veil of hazy optimism over everything, and all seems right with the world.

one of those days that make it worth getting out of bed in the morning.

had glassblowing last night, where i sweated and slaved over making 3 tiny multicolored beads, and (despite the fact that the black one cracked, as the instructor warned me it might) i am inordinately proud of them. working with the glass seemed to come a little easier last night, as you start to get a feel for how it behaves and flows and melds, and it feels a little less like wrestling with an unruly wad of gum and more like teasing and toying with a something surprisingly playful and alive. you begin to get a sense of how to draw it out, then rein it back in again, how to work with the molten gravity rather than against it. it becomes something with personality and character, as yet malleable and unformed, but just waiting for you to help it take the shape it wants to become.

as a child, i had a friend whose father was a chemist, and for my birthday one year, she gave me a vial of mercury. i played with it for endless hours, (incredibly dangerous now, i realise), but i was transfixed by its unique properties, mercilessly splitting the heavy quicksilver mass into millions of infintesimally tiny shining globes running to escape my grasp, then easily corralling them, capturing them back into the center where in the blink of an eye they lost their separateness, their individuality sucked back into the inexorable meld of the whole bright reflective orb. i was entranced.

working with glass reminds me of that.

i’m staying with a friend for the next few days, so blog updates may be a bit sparse. but i’m sure i’ll have lots to tell you about later.

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