Stephanie Joyce Cole

Happy Enough

12/7/2020

Back in 2016, as part of whirlwind world tour, my dear friend Lisa and I visited the Taj Mahal. We’d left Kathmandu the day before, and we’d soon be headed for the Serengeti. In Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, the air was thick, hot and heavily polluted, but for our short exposure it offered no more threat than a scratchy throat.

Now, four years later, I’ve just spent SO many hours on a 1000 piece Taj Mahal puzzle, spread out across one end of our dining room table. It’s almost finished. It’s been a diversion and an exercise in focusing, at this time when the very air we breathe here at home can be dangerous.

No plane rides now, around the world or otherwise. So many changes, big and small: We don't ride the bus now, though it was our go-to mode of getting around the city. No comfortable meals inside restaurants. Seattle restaurants are following the state guidelines and offering only outdoor dining. Consider what this means in a city where this month’s temperatures are predominantly in the low 40’s. Even with the restaurant’s outdoor heaters pumping away, and Chuck and I huddled in our coats, hats and gloves, it’s COLD! We stay at home as much as possible, venturing out for groceries and for long, long walks. Really long walks. I promise I’m not whining: We know we’re incredibly lucky: We have adequate housing, and we have enough food. So far, we've managed to stay healthy. We do have generalized anxiety about the craziness of current politics in our country, and we worry about so many whose jobs and very lives have been put in jeopardy, but personally we are okay. We have nothing important to complain about. Maybe we’re not delighted with the circumstances of our own lives, but we can be…happy enough.

At the beginning of this crisis, I was shell-shocked. Every time we went outside, the sight of everyone in masks was surreal, as if we had been dropped into some dark sci-fi movie. Now, months later, we’ve adapted, as people inevitably do. Now I only notice when I see someone in a crowd without a mask.

Masks are a big deal. I think we must have more than 30 of them, in a variety of styles. Early in the days of the pandemic, I wildly ordered masks through the Internet. It was an expensive exercise. Did we need filters, did we need nose wires, what fabrics worked the best? My current conclusion is that they are all hot and annoying, but of course we wear them. The leaving-the-house checklist has been modified: wallet, glasses, keys, phone and now—mask.

Even the shoes we choose—for the past few months it's been running shoes and slippers, with an occasional foray into rain boots. All the fancy shoes (and all the fancy clothes, for that matter) rest comfortably in the closet. There’s no reason to dress up, no place to go. And though there really isn’t a great need to order anything other than food, online ordering is both an outlet and an addiction. It’s pretty exciting when those boxes get dropped on our doorstep…

Zoom has become an essential part of our lives. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It works well for yoga class, when everyone is moving slowly, but not so well for my attempt at line dancing class—too easy to lose the pattern as you sway away from the computer screen. The Zoom classes offered by the University of Washington have helped to save our sanity. We just finished a six hour course on immunology. (Viruses are wily and fascinating, it turns out.) On-screen visits with friends and family have helped too, but of course they’re a poor substitute for the presence of living, breathing humans offering up hugs.

Even my relationship with my dog is affected. Rusty has always been attached to me, but I’ve been around the house so much lately that I’m pretty sure he’s going to have some separation anxiety once we’re all released from house arrest, and I go out into the world without him.

And then there’s sleep. I sleep a little bit longer every day. Of course the days are getting darker, and we all slow down naturally during the dark months, but it’s more than that. There is no reason to spring out of bed. This day will likely be very much like the last.

So, this would be a perfect time to write, wouldn’t you think? Wouldn’t you think that these long unstructured periods of time at home would spawn vast quantities of new material? It doesn’t seem to work that way for me, and I think for many other writers. The creative process hasn’t been nourished by this interlude, this time of waiting, hoping for the vaccine to come and save us. I spend too much time cradling a coffee cup and staring into space.

I’ll keep trying.

1 Comment

Greeting You from a Safe Social Distance...

4/10/2020

1 Comment

After Mark was diagnosed with cancer and began treatment in 2015, I wrote a blog about adaptability. I began with a quote from Leon C. Megginson:

“Yes, change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affect individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”

In 2015, my blog post recalled our experience of Mark’s entering cancer treatment: At first, it was a parade of horrors and unknowns, terrifying us, but by Week 9 our visits to the chemotherapy ward became routine and unremarkable. We had adapted.

Now, on a grand scale, we all face a changing world with an uncertain future, and we must adapt. Most of us are confident that this nasty virus isn’t going to end this world by any measure, but we also know that after this crisis is over, after the virus has been lassoed or stomped or otherwise put under some degree of control—our world will have gone through some significant changes that will persist. We can speculate, yet we just don’t know what those changes will be.

Right now, our job seems to be to wait it out. I’m not complaining about my personal situation: I am living in a comfortable place where social distancing is relatively easy, I have enough to eat, and I’m not among the millions who have lost their livelihood. And yet…if there is one word that describes how I feel, it’s lethargy. I know I’m not alone. Many of us now have more time on our hands that we’ve had in years, but instead of forging ahead with new projects and pastimes, we suffer from a lack of energy and enthusiasm. When we have to stay away from our friends, dart in and out of grocery stores, and mask ourselves like bank robbers, it takes a toll on us all.

I was out walking yesterday when a man and his small daughter, maybe five years old, rode by me on bicycles, hers with training wheels. He was some distance ahead when she tipped over and landed herself in a splat on the sidewalk. I rushed over to her to help, my arms ready to lift her, when I realized that I couldn’t. I represented danger, not assistance. I stepped away and waited for her father to pedal back. It hurt me.

Perhaps our country, maybe the world, is in the throes of a collective emotional depression, a grieving for all that has been changed and lost. I am reminded of the first line of Rilke’s poem, Pushing Through: “It’s possible I am pushing through solid rock.” That’s how I feel.

We know our job. If we’re not courageously working in medical facilities, grocery stores or other essential businesses, our job is to step aside and wait, for whatever new world is awaiting us. And yes, at the end of this, I am confident we will adapt.

Have you noticed we don’t say “Have a nice day anymore?” We say “stay safe” or “stay healthy.”

Stay well, everyone.
Steph

1 Comment

Moving forward...

7/9/2018

0 Comments

“When he sees her turn toward the window, reaching for her coat, he scrambles behind the dead broken stump barely in time, slamming his shin hard as he stumbles into an icy hole. He growls a curse under his breath. He doesn’t think she’s seen him, but he’s got to be careful. Better to watch when it’s totally dark, when the light from her cabin rolls into the meadow and he can see her so clearly, bent over her potter’s wheel, weaving her spells into lumps of clay…

He wants to stay all through the night, to be near her when she sleeps. It’s so cold that he can’t stay long. His arms and legs are cramped in place and his nose stings from the biting cold air. The skin on his face is crusty and stiff, coated with ice crystals. He raises his head over the stump, inch by inch…”

And so begins A LATE HARD FROST, the sequel to COMPASS NORTH.

A LATE HARD FROST will take you back to Homer, Alaska, and into the intertwined lives of Merry, Cassandra and Nick.

Lately I’ve been asked if there’s a third book brewing in this series. I am in the preliminary stages of work on two new books, but they are not in the COMPASS NORTH world. We’ll just see. It’s hard for me to say goodbye forever to Merry, Cassandra and Nick. We leave them in such an interesting time in their lives…perhaps there is another story for them to tell.

But most recently Raven Applegate won’t leave me alone. She keeps popping into my mind, though she hasn’t revealed her story yet. Raven is fair-skinned and blue-eyed, and named Raven because her mother once saw an albino raven and was enchanted by its uniqueness. But like her namesake, Raven doesn’t really have a place in the world, or at least not one she’s found yet. And as we all know, the world isn’t always kind to those who are different… I’m letting Raven float around in my head for now, wondering where she plans to go and what she plans to do. And that’s the way it works with most writers: You don’t really know where your characters and ideas come from. They lurk in shadows in your brain and haunt you until, one day, they start to spill onto the paper (or, more accurately, into your word processing program.)

Maybe Raven will decide to head to Alaska…

0 Comments

A Late Hard Frost--say what?

3/20/2018

0 Comments

A Late Hard Frost, the sequel to Compass North, was released this last December, and both books are currently available from Amazon.

I’ve had some questions about the title. Being from a northern clime, I thought everyone would know about hard frosts, but I’ve discovered it’s not so. Technically, a hard frost (sometimes called a hard freeze) is a period of at least four consecutive hours of air temperature below 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Many plants can survive a brief frost, but very few can survive a hard freeze. A late hard frost is a killing freeze that comes unexpectedly, after spring seems to have returned, devastating tender new growth.

But my novel isn’t about gardening. The title is a metaphor for what the characters in the book (and many of us in real life too) experience. You know how it goes: Everything is going fine in your life, right on track. You’re sailing along, happy and content, when suddenly an event you never anticipated derails you, and your life path changes in an instant.

But of course that’s not the end of the story. A hard frost can kill, yes, but it can also make room for new growth and create unexpected opportunities. People, like plants who survive the trauma of a hard frost, may develop new resilience. They may discover strengths they never knew they had, and the new paths revealed may lead to wonderful places, previously unimagined.

So I hope you travel through the hard frost times with Merry, Cassandra and Nick, to discover what waits for them ahead…

And the second question I’m often asked: What kind of book is A Late Hard Frost? Well, like Compass North, it’s many things. In the bookstore you might find it under Mystery/Thriller, Romance or Women’s Fiction—and oh yes, Alaskan fiction too. Like Compass North, A Late Hard Frost takes place in Homer, Alaska, a wonderfully quirky fishing and tourist town on Kachemak Bay. It’s a very real place: Some photos and information about Homer are on my website: www.stephaniejoycecole.com

Finally, lately I’m asked if I have another book coming. The answer is yes, but my next book will be quite different. As many of you know, recent years brought radical changes to my life, after my husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and then passed away. During the agonizing time of his illness, the devastation of his death and my efforts to put my life back together, I blogged about my experiences. As I published my blogs, I was contacted by others who were moving through similar experiences. I’ve continued to write about my life journey, and the surprising places it has taken me, and these experiences will form the basis for the next book, tentatively titled Who Will Kill the Spiders?

I hope you enjoy A Late Hard Frost!

0 Comments

A Late Hard Frost, available now

12/18/2017

0 Comments

A LATE HARD FROST, the sequel to COMPASS NORTH, is now available on Amazon.

The link for the ebook is https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07897V7LJ

The link for the paperback is https://www.amazon.com/Late-Hard-Frost-Stephanie-Joyce/dp/1942623771

A LATE HARD FROST returns to the world of COMPASS NORTH, and the entangled lives of Merry, Cassandra and Nick in the quirky small town of Homer, Alaska.

Cassandra's life as a talented but isolated artist hides the emotional wounds that haunt her. Now, unexpectedly, she finally has the love of the one man she's adored for so many years. But that love has come at a terrible price: the destruction of the only true friendship that matters to her. As Cassandra struggles with the massive changes ricocheting through her life, a sinister figure lurks in hiking, watching her, waiting for his chance to claim her as his own.

0 Comments

Compass North book trailer

2/7/2017

0 Comments

I'm planning to be back on the blog very soon, but in the meantime, take a look at the book trailer for Compass North just released by Duncurra (my publisher). Very nice I think! What do you think?

0 Comments

Widowhood 102, A Year of New: Week 10, Brunching with the Drag Queens

8/24/2016

1 Comment

   There was a bit of a stretch of time between week 9 and week 10 blogs, but my “year of new” project is still ongoing—and great! Finding time to write about each week’s new event has been the issue—but more about that later.

   Friends have climbed on my “year of new” bandwagon and have helped with ideas and, on occasion, have been my intrepid partners for adventures. Susan found the Groupon for the drag queen brunch, and suggested we go. It definitely qualified as a new experience for me. We collected some other friends and six of us abandoned the bright Seattle sunshine on a Sunday afternoon to sit at the long plank tables in a packed, small darkened theatre, facing a dimly lit stage. We sipped our mimosas (part of the Groupon) and awaited the show.

   Okay, I’ll be frank here. I had an idea of what a drag queen is, but honestly, I wasn’t sure that I had it right. So I did a little online research:

   The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a drag queen as a homosexual who dresses as a woman especially to entertain people.

   dictionary.com states that a drag queen is a male transvestite, especially a performer, who dresses as a woman to entertain the public.

   Both those definitions were straightforward. But the most intriguing information came from a Huffington Post blog:
   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-bartolomei/10-myths-about-drag-queens_b_2979249.html

   It turns out that in the drag queen world there is nuance. For examples: Most drag queens are gay, but there is a small minority who are straight. “Bear” or “slag” drag queens don’t shave their facial hair. It’s a little more complicated than it first appears.

   Our show began with the introduction of our mistress of ceremonies, a roundly robust and extraordinarily festooned and wigged figure with a voice that could flatten a room. We were exhorted to drink heavily, tip the performers liberally, and applaud at pretty much every juncture. Audience participation (and tipping), we were told, were the keys to a great show.

   Then began the parade of acts. The performers lip-synced to very loud popular songs while dancing around the stage in spike-heeled boots, sequins, feathers and fans, fishnet stockings, giant wigs and headdresses. The two main performers were strikingly attractive, with figures any woman would envy. In spite of their heavy makeup and restricting costuming (imagine Cher all dolled up, but even more so), they were masterful dancers and athletes.

   If there was a defining theme, it was that vast excess was required. One drag queen wore contact lenses that made her eyes glitter and glow like an alien from another planet. The drag queens were accompanied by dancers, men not in drag, but in very puzzling costumes. I couldn’t tell you why one dancer in the finale wore only a silver bikini and what appeared to be a silver submarine on his head, topped with the number 12. (Well, I do know about the number 12, because this is Seattle and 12 is shorthand for support for the Seahawks. But still.)

   For me, it all fell a little flat. I’m fine with bawdy (and there was plenty of bawdy) but somehow the energy in the room didn’t build to a crescendo. The cast worked hard, but the show didn’t quite come together—perhaps because this was brunch, and for most of us, a mimosa is all we manage on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps if this had been a late-night show with late-night energy and more alcohol, the experience would have felt different. It was an interesting experience, but I don’t think I need to go again.

   But one thing I did realize: These are hard-working people. They strutted and danced and jumped and cartwheeled—they didn’t hold back.

   It must be frustrating for them when the right energy doesn’t materialize in the audience during a show. Crowd energy is such an elusive quality, that invisible thrum, almost a pulse, that surfaces at great parties and concerts, sometimes emerging unexpectedly and spontaneously with a swelling updraft of pure fun and even joy. We’ve all experienced it—but it’s finicky. Sometimes it’s just not there, and that’s all there is to it.

   So…why the blogs might be a little further apart in the weeks to come…

   I am still pursuing my “year of new.” It’s infused me with optimism. In fact, it’s helped me regain the focus I need to recommit to finish my next book.
   I don’t know if all authors experience the stages of writing in the same way, but I think most do. In the book writing world, composing the first draft is a dreadful slog. You’re putting together the bones for your book, and although the story may be living in your head, it’s a painful and slow process to pull it out of your brain and get it into written words. It takes a long time and it’s exhausting.
   (Stephen King wrote that first drafts of books should take no longer than three months. If he could show me how to manage that, I would worship at his feet.)
   I began my first draft of the sequel to Compass North before Mark received his devastating cancer diagnosis. As he struggled through treatment, the draft languished. There was no help for that. I’d pick it up periodically and write a scene or fiddle with some language, but I couldn’t give it the attention necessary to move it forward.
   Then, when Mark died, I felt as if I’d dropped deep below the surface of an ocean. I was submerged in grief and loneliness and loss. It’s taken a long time to emerge from that, and though I’ll never be the same person I was before, I’m back in the world.
   I have a wonderful event coming up in late October (more about that in later blogs) and I am determined to finish the first draft of my next book before then. It’s a huge amount of work to do in a short period of time, but I think it’s attainable if I work diligently. So I’m diving back into the world of my story, and already I’m experiencing some of the less desirable side effects. I miss turns when I’m driving because my brain is gnawing on a problem with a scene. Emails go unanswered. Garbage cans don’t get moved to the street on pickup days. I open the refrigerator and find, to my surprise, that there’s nothing for dinner because I haven’t thought to go to the grocery store. It’s all part of the process.
   The completion of the first draft, of course, is only the beginning, but it’s a huge accomplishment. For me, it will mean the worst is over. I love the process of revision, of chewing on words and sentences and paragraphs, of rearranging scenes, revisiting my characters. It’s hard work, too, but it’s so much fun!
   So yes, the “year of new” is continuing, but if there are reporting gaps, it will only mean that I’m once again putting in time at a table at Starbucks, Bose noise-cancelling earphones firmly clamped over my ears, and I’m probably frowning at my computer screen because the right words are sometimes so darn elusive.
   Wish me luck!

1 Comment

Widowhood 102, a Year of New, weeks 7 & 8: Embracing the dancing hippo, and an exercise in gratitude

8/2/2016

0 Comments

  It’s not always the big changes that whack you sideways. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much at all.

   This week, I tried out a new gym class called “Core Essentials.” I expected we’d be doing sit-ups and other nasty abdominal work, the kind of workout that’s standard in the gym world. To my surprise, however, the class was led by a graceful and obviously accomplished male dancer, and the work involved a lot of dance moves and balance. Not my strengths.

   I clunked my way through it, overheated and a little flustered. I wobbled on one leg as we swung our other leg through space while swaying our arms “gracefully” above our heads. We flung ourselves into arabesques and dropped into plies. We rose from deep knee bends to perch on our toes. George, our instructor, was the picture of grace. I felt like the dancing hippo in Fantasia. (Actually, the dancing hippo was a lot better than I was.)

   But now, as I get more new experiences under my belt, I can start to generalize about this world of new.

   Approaching these new situations, even the small ones, makes me anxious. It takes a bit of a mental shove to get me going. I’ve mentioned before that I think we get out of practice at being beginners when we graduate out of childhood and assume our status as competent adults. We don’t want to look stupid. We don’t want to lose face. Taking chances is not what we do. Each week, I have to give myself a little talking-to before I jump into a new situation.

   This week’s experience also reminded me of a snippet from a motivational talk I heard years ago. I couldn’t tell you now the subject of the talk. The sound bite I remember is, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” The speaker’s point was that we make choices in our lives. We aren’t gifted with unlimited time and energy. As we invest in developing our expertise in one area, we forego other options. An extreme example is the Olympic athlete, who spends so many hours every day honing her skills. She makes a choice, and as a result there may not be room in her life for much else.

   Although I do envy instructor George (and some of the other graceful souls in his class), they have probably spent years practicing dance skills and have muscle memories that I can only dream of. I will keep going to this class because I think developing good balance is important, and I’m a little shocked by how poor mine seems to be. I expect I will stumble and wobble and curse under my breath, but that’s okay too. I’ll add this to my list of new experiences and move forward, without having any expectation that professional ballet is in my future.

   So what if I looked like a deranged dancing hippo? No one was paying attention to me anyway. They were all trying to get their own legs pointed in the right direction. I got a fine workout and I was once again reminded that there are many, many things I’m not good at. It’s an important reminder.

   So far, no matter what the outcome, I’ve enjoyed a little thrill of accomplishment after every experience. I feel a bit more alive, as if I’m edging my way back into the world.

***

   Grieving isn’t a linear process. I know I’m moving forward, but there are still days when the reality of my loss slays me. This last week, I could feel the dark abyss looming behind me. I was missing Mark and feeling very sorry for myself. As an experiment I decided to make a deliberate effort to break out of my dark place. I marched myself down to my local coffee shop, bought myself a frothy coffee, and took out a notebook. For an hour, I scribbled, as fast as I could, a list of things for which I’m grateful.

   At the end of the hour, I had 115 far-ranging notations of gratitude, including the cheerfulness of hummingbirds; fresh salmon, tart blueberries, and very dark chocolate; my sister-in-law’s prayers; nice gel pens; Mary Oliver’s poems; and of course, having been fortunate enough to have 30 years with Mark. Little things and important things and silly things.

   Half way through the hour I found myself grinning. So many reasons to be happy. And of course it’s not an exhaustive list. As I walked home (still smiling, I think), I was mentally ticking off new reasons to be grateful: the feel and smell of slick wet clay in the pottery studio, an auto mechanic that I trust, Rusty’s goofy dog grin…

   Meditation practices often incorporate gratitude into their repertoire. However, I am a terrible meditator. Controlling my “monkey mind”—the term yogis use for the continuous mental chatter that fills our heads—is very difficult for me. But somehow, this simple act of listing so many positive aspects of my life led me right into a happy place.

   I don’t give advice to other people about grief and recovery. I’m not qualified to do that. I’m working through my own grief as best I can, with the help and support and love of those who care about me. I think our paths through grief may have common elements, but each journey is unique too. But today I’ll make an exception: I found this exercise, this consciously taking just an hour to reflect and record what makes me happy, to be very powerful. If you’re feeling a little low, it might be worth giving this a try.

       Grif

0 Comments

Widowhood 102, week 6: Taking on the terror of Haute Couture

7/18/2016

0 Comments

In an early scene in the movie Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts’ character enters an exclusive clothing store on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles. She’s a down-on-her-luck hooker. Richard Gere’s character, an extraordinarily rich businessman, has handed her a wad of cash and told her to buy an outfit for the evening, but the store’s two saleswomen refuse to wait on her. They pretty much throw her out of the store, telling her that she doesn’t belong there. It’s painful to watch. (Happily, there’s payback later in the movie.)

Roberts’ character enters the store oblivious to the scorn she’s about to engender. But for some of us, visiting an establishment that markets pricey couture clothing is nothing short of terrifying. I know, I know, you may have no idea what I’m talking about. But class distinctions still shadow some of us. I grew up in an immigrant family, with parents who turned frugality into an art form. My mother had lived through World War II in England, and the deprivations of that time marked her. (She would squirrel away leftover pats of butter in her purse on our rare visits to a restaurant.) We were clothed from thrift store gleanings, long before it was in any way fashionable to forage for the vintage.

The trappings of the well-off were foreign to me, and frightening. I had no training in how to act in situations where wealth and advantage were taken for granted. Nowadays, my life is very different, but my history remains intact. As comfortable as I may be with my life now, I cringe a little at my belief that I’d still be horribly out of place in the halls of the rich and famous, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb.

And so, this week, I put myself to the task of entering a couture studio and having a significant interaction. For years I’ve walked past the Luly Yang couture store in the graceful Fairmont Hotel in downtown Seattle. In the picture windows, formal gowns ranging from the demure to the outrageous face the street. These gowns are amazing. Up to now, I’ve admired them from afar but I’ve never entered the store. One of Luly Yang’s signature creations is in this store: the Monarch Butterfly dress, a couture formal silk corset and petaled skirt that clearly evokes the butterfly. It’s theatrical and magnificent. I decided I would go to the store and ask to try on the dress.

Again, I know, some of you will think that this isn’t much of a new adventure. But like trees, we bear the marks of our years inside us, no matter what our exteriors now show. If you cut a tree in half, you can tell the years that the tree suffered from lack of water or environmental stress from the size and quality of the growth rings for those years. Those rings never go away, even though they may be covered up with new robust growth. Like trees, our past is always inside of us, always with us. For me, walking into that store was just plain scary.

The store is compact and quiet, with pale beige carpet and small glass tables. One of the two saleswomen, both clothed head to toe in black, asked if she could help me. I’m just here to look at your lovely dresses, I said. She smiled and told me to let her know if I needed any help.

I wandered through the store. Half the store is devoted to exquisite wedding dresses. The other half is primarily for evening wear, of the very showy kind: lots of satin. I glanced at a few price tags. Each piece I looked at was priced at thousands of dollars.

The original butterfly dress rests there, the central showpiece of the collection. I chatted with the saleswoman about it. She was friendly and charming, not frightening at all. She told me that the they could customize a new gown like it for me, but that the original could also be rented. In the end, I didn’t ask to try it on. I just didn’t want to, after all.

When I got home, I found I was curious about renting the butterfly gown—a purely theoretical curiosity, since I certainly had nowhere to wear it—so I emailed the store about what it cost to rent. They responded that they had made a mistake and the dress was not in fact now available for rental, but that I could buy it for $25,000.

Well, as you may guess, I’m not buying the butterfly dress.

The whole experience, though, was remarkably empowering. Analytically, I know that there is absolutely no reason why the salespeople would be cold or rude to me. I looked perfectly respectable. But inside I am still carrying that uncertain fearful girl in thrift store duds, devoid of self-confidence, the girl who got picked on because of her funny accent and her bad clothes. She’ll always be in there, a ring in my tree that’s a little shriveled and puckered, but today she has a hint of a smile.

0 Comments

Widowhood 102, week 5: The siren song of glass, and the price of beginning anew

7/11/2016

0 Comments

   The photograph in the marketing material for the class hooked me: a lineup of gleaming tiny glass goblets, each delicate and unique, some with swaying stems.

   Glass. There is something magical about glass. It’s a lovely material. I’ve been working in clay for years now, but clay, after all, is just mud. You can make something wonderful with it, but the big lumpy bags that await you in the studio are just heavy hunks of earth. But glass promises beauty from its very beginning.

   So I made the jump and enrolled in the weekend flameworking introductory workshop, two days of 9-to-5 working with borosilicate glass at a local art school.

   I didn’t know anything about flameworking. I know enough about glassblowing to know that it isn’t for me. I tried glassblowing once, for an afternoon, and it was like spending time in hell. The workspace was horrendously hot, the air scorched by the open fiery furnaces flowing with molten glass, glowing the brilliant orange of a volcanic eruption. The metal pipes that glassblowers use to gather the molten material from the furnaces are heavy and awkward. To collect the glass, you must get very close to the open maw of the furnace, so close that your fingers feel like they’re burning. The process isn’t comfortable or measured; once you begin, you fight against the clock to form your piece before it hardens. I know there are women glassblowers, many more these days, but historically this has been a very male-dominated, macho business, and it feels that way.

   Flameworking (also called lampworking) suggested a gentler approach to glass.

   There were four of us in the class: two young men who looked like high school students, a young woman in her thirties, and me. The other three had previous glass experience, so I was the only newbie. We were issued our tools and directed to set up our stations. We clamped our propane torches onto the metal table and immediately I had misgivings. It wasn’t an open furnace, but it was FIRE—fire that spurted freely from the torch in an impressive tapered blue flame. The list of cautionary “don’t” didn’t help: Never reach through your torch flame, wear your didymium glasses whenever anyone at the table was working with glass to protect your eyes from explosions, always turn on the propane knob on the torch before turning on the oxygen, always pick up your glasswork with pliers because you can’t visually distinguish the hot glass from the cold, spin your glass continuously to make sure the heat is evenly distributed on its surface. So many ways to screw up.

   At this point, honestly, my instinct was to cut and run. I absolutely cringed when I lit my torch, but I stayed.

   Cheryl, our instructor, walked us through our first project: icicles. We heated our glass rods with our propane torches until they were pliable, and then twisted them into coiled shapes, finishing by pulling off one end and fashioning a hook. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t. The glass cools quickly and becomes immobile, so heating a baton-shaped hunk of glass and twisting it evenly is a feat in itself. And the hook…slowly disengage from one end of your icicle, gracefully and slowly pulling the end of your pontil in a slow circle to form a loop, while the glass cools and hardens. My icicle looked like I’d strangled it. Cheryl, in her oh-so-kind instructor voice, told me that some people like that look, because it reminds them of vintage distressed glass. Right.

   On top of the physical scariness of the whole process, a whole new vocabulary was in play: annealing, coefficient of thermal expansion, compatibility of glasses, frit, gathering, maria (not part of a prayer, but rather the blob that’s formed when you push two hot glass rods or tubes together), pontil, punt, strain point, stringers…my brain was in full-on overdrive.

   There was so much to learn. The torch heat had to be modulated depending upon the part of the process you were engaged in; the rods had to be positioned in, out, above or below the flame depending upon the heat of the glass and what you were doing.

   The icicle was only the first project, and all I could focus on was that I was going to set my hair on fire.

   In short order, we attempted other projects. We melted, we pulled, we smashed glass. We pressed molten glass into simple pendants, we applied colors to clear rods and created glass seaweed, and we cut and pulled hot colored glass with needle pliers to form starfish. My starfish was a big red blob. Cheryl, still carefully positive, suggested that I start again. We made marbles, which sounds SO SIMPLE but was painfully tedious. (At least now I know how those patterns inside the marbles are made.) At the end of the first day, I was beyond exhausted.

   We started the second day with coral sculptures. Mine emerged looking like the wooden terrace you’d use to tack up your tomato plants. To add a little more terror to my experience, in addition to the fixed flaming propane torch, I was now issued a small hand held propane torch for the smaller connections. Now I had to contend with two flames. Every time I tried to soften the look of my poor stick-like coral, I managed to melt away its legs. I failed coral.
.
   Now, Cheryl said, we were going to progress to more difficult work. (!) We were issued rubber tubing and hollow glass rods. We were going to blow hollow tree ornaments. She demonstrated the process which involved about 20 delicate and skilled steps. The three other students grabbed their materials and tubing and headed back to their stations with determined enthusiasm.

   It was beyond me and I knew it. When I asked Cheryl if I could practice some of the earlier work, she nodded. Maybe you’d like to make more icicles, she suggested.

   So, after I slinked away at the end of the second day, I reflected on the experience. Despite my abysmal performance, I learned so much about flameworking and the properties of glass. I had been terrified by my propane-fueled flame and yet I hadn’t set myself on fire or burned myself too badly. (I did scorch a few fingers by touching hot glass. It was hard to remember all the rules.) My brain had been fully engaged and challenged for two days and was absolutely fried, but a heavy-duty brain workout isn’t a terrible thing.

   I did realize, however, that I’m not very good at being a beginner.

   Here’s my takeaway: When we were younger, we expected to be clumsy and unschooled when we tried something new. We accepted our role as students, as humble bumblers. We understood that a new skill required time fumbling and making mistakes. But now, I think our experience as competent adults can work against us. Our adult confidence makes us feel like we have to be good at what we do, even if it’s something new. We’re not willing to stumble, to struggle, to look stupid. We don’t want to look foolish. We want to be an expert from the get-go.

   When I was in class, I kept asking myself, why aren’t I better at this? But now that I’ve stepped away and looked back, the answer is simple. It’s hard, and it’s a skill, and I just picked this up for the first time. It’s all new for me, from lighting the propane torch to learning the names of the tools to absorbing the feel of the molten glass, knowing when to heat it and when to pull it and when to stop.

   So if there was a lesson for me this week, it wasn’t about the acquisition of skills of flameworking molten glass. Right now, I suck at that. The lesson for me is that as I go forward, as I try new things, I’m probably going to suck at a lot of things, at first. But it’s the price of going forward.

0 Comments

<<Previous

Happy Enough

Greeting You from a Safe Social Distance...

Moving forward...

A Late Hard Frost--say what?

A Late Hard Frost, available now

Compass North book trailer

Widowhood 102, A Year of New: Week 10, Brunching with the Drag Queens

Widowhood 102, a Year of New, weeks 7 & 8: Embracing the dancing hippo, and an exercise in gratitude

Widowhood 102, week 6: Taking on the terror of Haute Couture

Widowhood 102, week 5: The siren song of glass, and the price of beginning anew

Author

Archives