KILNED

So, on the night before Thanksgiving, I’m stuck at school (job school) babysitting a kiln, stuck in a small hot room since the alarms are on with a computer that I thought had come through a fall/drop okay, which I just found out won’t play a DVD… and it will be off to the Apple Store… on Black Friday… ON BLACK FRIDAY! Kiln? Kilned. Sort of like killed. Dead. Man.

School. The other. I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Buried. Everything is coming due. So today, when I had planned on studying, I instead spent the day loading and firing, and mixing clay. I feel something more than cheated. Maybe violated is the word. I was beginning to feel that I had things under control. A pretty little illusion. I’m looking at the icons for a couple of Powerpoints for Piaget and Vygotsky. Schema Theory and a rhino. And it is a surrealistic moment. All for me.

What am I thinking of in class? One, for all the bad press a SME gets in class, it would sure be nice to be one on clinical trials or have easier access to one. Sometimes, when you are working on some item, it would be nice to just be able to answer the question or at least know if the answer was easily available or if the problem being faced were easy or complex. In other words, to have more knowledge. Two, unfortunately, often I find my own lessons lacking in a way that I never would have guessed. But, it makes me more willing to change it right on the spot, in spite of the plan. Three, watching someone else’s plan in action reveals a little more about thinking through the process. It makes design, good or bad, seem more transparent. And last, carving out a little time of my own is really essential to my sense of any self-worth.

Cone 9 is starting to move. I might be out of here by 11:15 p.m.

Gloves and dark glasses

Searching in brilliant white heat

Minute spire bending.

See him flip her off

She’s squeezing through bending heads,

Who pays her for this?