Fall Ceramic Dm™ - Winner!
yangnome
First Post
ugh...I typed all but the last bit of my entry last night at work. I sent it home to myself via email, but forgot to save prior to sending it. Now I'm about three pages short. So I could either retype it all from what I have, go back in to work on my only day off in two weeks to get it, or wait until tomorrow night when I go back to work and hope my muse doesn't abandon me...
maxfieldjadenfox
First Post
I would love to do this round if there's room... Am I too late?
Last edited:
Sialia
First Post
Self-Portrait, B&W 1994
Ceramic GM Fall 2005
Sialia
Black rats live in the decrepit brownstones around here, and the high rises, and the alleys between them, and the sewers below them. They are loathed, poisoned, feared, and avoided. But they are free to scrabble through their busy, terrified, hungry, brief lives.
Across the street from this bus shelter, below the hospital where my fiancé works, white rats live in cages of metal and glass, row upon row, stack upon stack. Some of them live futile lives devoid of excitement, opportunity or terror. The rest live lives of inexplicable torment. The difference between them is randomly assigned, and incomprehensible to them. Their lives also--whether treasured or despised--are brief.
At least, unlike me and the dark rat corpse before me, they are warm. The bus shelter is half-buried in snow, the rat corpse moreso, dug up by a plow at some indecent hour this morning. The city is covered in white, spattered with gray, and the wind chews through it.
When I leave my apartment in the morning, I am usually the only white person in the crowded elevator. Today there was also the heavyset pale girl from the 16th floor. Her skin tone is really about the same as mine, but in her case, her “color” isn’t so much about hue as shape. She has a flat nose. Her shy little child is dark, and he buries his face in her bosom, peeking out at me only when he thinks I’m not looking.
By the time I get to Copley Square, there is not one black person in sight. I don’t know where the black people spend their days. I walk up to my building and stare up at the stacks of metal and glass offices. [glassangle.jpg] They look eerily like the racks of cages below the hospital. I am one of the white folks, so this must be where I belong. I wonder idly whether I’m test or control today. At least I’ll be warm.
In my cube, I spend the day hunting for multicultural illustrations for high school textbooks. The photos show people of all different colors and cultures and costumes. Every editor and designer on the floor is white. Except for Alva. Elegant, dark and tall, she’s from Congo. Her first language is French, and her perfect English has a delicate, pretty accent. She has a graduate degree in graphic design from RISD. Her name means “white.”
When I go home at night, the lobby is crowded, the elevator taped shut with yellow. What happened? Man shot his girlfriend on the 16th floor.
I do not see the heavyset pale girl anymore. I never find out what happened to the baby.
At 5 am, my fiancé puts on his white lab coat and leaves for a 36 hour call shift, having drawn the short straw for the holiday weekend. I sleep in late, wrap up in my black wool coat and take the T out to the suburbs to visit my friends. He’s Polish, she’s Italian/Irish and I’m a Jew, but what the hell, these days anywhere but Southie, we'd all pass for white.
We tromp through the snow for the joy of walking. Weekend snow is more fun than workday snow. Whiter. Warmer. Optional, at least. Freedom is being able to choose whether to spend the day indoors or out. We wander down to the toy store, the antique shop, the playground. We make hand prints on the swing seats, before brushing them off, riding high and jumping from the swings to make full body outlines in the snow. We sign the body prints with our names, and then I shiver, thinking of an outline on the 16th floor. We wander into the coffee shop for hot drinks, we stroll through the pet store.
In the pet store, a gray and white parrot cunningly tries to pry the shiny stone out of my engagement ring. We laugh at his antics. I always wear my gloves when I walk in my neighborhood, often because it’s cold, more often so my neighbors won’t see the sparkly. Nothing there, cute or otherwise, has expressed interest in my ring, for which I count myself lucky.
The pet shop has cages of hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, mice, and yes, rats. The shop owner has one riding on his shoulder named Albert Beastie. Albert is black and white. He is eating a piece of popcorn with both little hand-shaped paws, balancing gracefully with his long, bare tail [rat.jpg]. The shopkeeper obviously loves the little scamp. Albert is a little over 1 year old, middle-aged. By next New Year’s Eve, he’ll be ancient, or more likely, deceased. I’ve no doubt watching the two of them sharing their bowl of popcorn today, he’ll be genuinely missed.
But this New Year’s Eve, the world is full of opportunities. We’ve bought our tickets, so we head downtown for First Night. For one low, low price, almost unlimited dancers and singers, storytellers and comedians. The air is breathtakingly cold, and the duck pond in the Public Gardens is frozen through. Up to the Commons we go to see the translucent pale ice sculptures: castles, dragons, dolphins, ships. There is even an eerily transparent chorus of life-sized ice people, singing silently in front of Trinity Church. We buy fried dough, powdered white.
And then I am too cold, too frozen through to go on, and so we bustle in to one of the venues to see a show.
She is resplendent in saffron, red, ivory and gold. She dances Bharat Nãtyam with a speed and rhythm that makes me feel dizzy. And warm. Warmth pours from her through the gymnasium, the gymnasium full of many people neither black nor white.
I blink.
She smiles at me, almost as if she sees me get the joke—or, no—almost as if she sees me realize I’m a fool. [Chennai.jpg] The world is so much more than black and white, or even mingled patterns, or shades of gray. Winter has been so long--I have forgotten.
As my boots drip slush through the bleachers, I unwrap for a few minutes and dream of hot climates and lush colors green and red, saffron and brown, olive, ivory and gold.
And then there is the parade, full of masks and giant puppets yellow and purple and blue and green, and groups of people marching from various organizations—a great many of them finding kinship for various causes and reasons, not all of them related to which boat their ancestors came on, or where it left from.
The lights have come on and the ice sculptures refract rainbows of colored light. We wander from one venue to the next: klezmer and capoeira, Taiko and tango, Celtic, choral, cubist and a capella. Everyone is there, all the people of Boston who are brave enough to wander in the frigid night air.
At midnight, there are fireworks in green and purple and blue and red and gold shimmering over the shining upturned faces that are every color of human flesh.
Where we all came from, I do not know. Save for the friends I came in with, I have never seen any of these people before. We share a box of malted balls with the joyous and friendly multitude.
And I go home to the 17th row of the tallest stack of concrete and glass boxes in Roxbury wishing I were not walking alone.
I am too tired to sleep. The first dawn of the new year is not far off-- the sky is again paling from black to white.
I write.
In my story, Albert Beastie lives in a city full of different peoples. He is the size of a panther and wears a red bridle with golden bells. He and his rider (who looks like the shopkeeper) escort supply caravans over the vast snow-covered prairies. One night, a pale, heavyset ghost-girl leads them through the howling winds and darkness to find her child, protected in the still cooling warmth of her dead body. They bring the dark little child back to the city, where it turns out he is the long-lost grandchild of the High Councillor, who welcomes him with tears of joy, and also tears of grief for his lost daughter who tried so hard to come home.
The townspeople pay tribute to Albert’s courage with a festival of ice castles and dancing, and a monument of handprints frozen in the snow—Albert’s, the child’s and the rider’s. [handprints.jpg]
Albert lives a life of companionship, adventure, purpose, love and joy, and only goes out in the most horrible weather because it pleases him to be brave and noble when he is needed.
I never write down how or whether he dies.
Ceramic GM Fall 2005
Sialia
Black rats live in the decrepit brownstones around here, and the high rises, and the alleys between them, and the sewers below them. They are loathed, poisoned, feared, and avoided. But they are free to scrabble through their busy, terrified, hungry, brief lives.
Across the street from this bus shelter, below the hospital where my fiancé works, white rats live in cages of metal and glass, row upon row, stack upon stack. Some of them live futile lives devoid of excitement, opportunity or terror. The rest live lives of inexplicable torment. The difference between them is randomly assigned, and incomprehensible to them. Their lives also--whether treasured or despised--are brief.
At least, unlike me and the dark rat corpse before me, they are warm. The bus shelter is half-buried in snow, the rat corpse moreso, dug up by a plow at some indecent hour this morning. The city is covered in white, spattered with gray, and the wind chews through it.
When I leave my apartment in the morning, I am usually the only white person in the crowded elevator. Today there was also the heavyset pale girl from the 16th floor. Her skin tone is really about the same as mine, but in her case, her “color” isn’t so much about hue as shape. She has a flat nose. Her shy little child is dark, and he buries his face in her bosom, peeking out at me only when he thinks I’m not looking.
By the time I get to Copley Square, there is not one black person in sight. I don’t know where the black people spend their days. I walk up to my building and stare up at the stacks of metal and glass offices. [glassangle.jpg] They look eerily like the racks of cages below the hospital. I am one of the white folks, so this must be where I belong. I wonder idly whether I’m test or control today. At least I’ll be warm.
In my cube, I spend the day hunting for multicultural illustrations for high school textbooks. The photos show people of all different colors and cultures and costumes. Every editor and designer on the floor is white. Except for Alva. Elegant, dark and tall, she’s from Congo. Her first language is French, and her perfect English has a delicate, pretty accent. She has a graduate degree in graphic design from RISD. Her name means “white.”
When I go home at night, the lobby is crowded, the elevator taped shut with yellow. What happened? Man shot his girlfriend on the 16th floor.
I do not see the heavyset pale girl anymore. I never find out what happened to the baby.
At 5 am, my fiancé puts on his white lab coat and leaves for a 36 hour call shift, having drawn the short straw for the holiday weekend. I sleep in late, wrap up in my black wool coat and take the T out to the suburbs to visit my friends. He’s Polish, she’s Italian/Irish and I’m a Jew, but what the hell, these days anywhere but Southie, we'd all pass for white.
We tromp through the snow for the joy of walking. Weekend snow is more fun than workday snow. Whiter. Warmer. Optional, at least. Freedom is being able to choose whether to spend the day indoors or out. We wander down to the toy store, the antique shop, the playground. We make hand prints on the swing seats, before brushing them off, riding high and jumping from the swings to make full body outlines in the snow. We sign the body prints with our names, and then I shiver, thinking of an outline on the 16th floor. We wander into the coffee shop for hot drinks, we stroll through the pet store.
In the pet store, a gray and white parrot cunningly tries to pry the shiny stone out of my engagement ring. We laugh at his antics. I always wear my gloves when I walk in my neighborhood, often because it’s cold, more often so my neighbors won’t see the sparkly. Nothing there, cute or otherwise, has expressed interest in my ring, for which I count myself lucky.
The pet shop has cages of hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, mice, and yes, rats. The shop owner has one riding on his shoulder named Albert Beastie. Albert is black and white. He is eating a piece of popcorn with both little hand-shaped paws, balancing gracefully with his long, bare tail [rat.jpg]. The shopkeeper obviously loves the little scamp. Albert is a little over 1 year old, middle-aged. By next New Year’s Eve, he’ll be ancient, or more likely, deceased. I’ve no doubt watching the two of them sharing their bowl of popcorn today, he’ll be genuinely missed.
But this New Year’s Eve, the world is full of opportunities. We’ve bought our tickets, so we head downtown for First Night. For one low, low price, almost unlimited dancers and singers, storytellers and comedians. The air is breathtakingly cold, and the duck pond in the Public Gardens is frozen through. Up to the Commons we go to see the translucent pale ice sculptures: castles, dragons, dolphins, ships. There is even an eerily transparent chorus of life-sized ice people, singing silently in front of Trinity Church. We buy fried dough, powdered white.
And then I am too cold, too frozen through to go on, and so we bustle in to one of the venues to see a show.
She is resplendent in saffron, red, ivory and gold. She dances Bharat Nãtyam with a speed and rhythm that makes me feel dizzy. And warm. Warmth pours from her through the gymnasium, the gymnasium full of many people neither black nor white.
I blink.
She smiles at me, almost as if she sees me get the joke—or, no—almost as if she sees me realize I’m a fool. [Chennai.jpg] The world is so much more than black and white, or even mingled patterns, or shades of gray. Winter has been so long--I have forgotten.
As my boots drip slush through the bleachers, I unwrap for a few minutes and dream of hot climates and lush colors green and red, saffron and brown, olive, ivory and gold.
And then there is the parade, full of masks and giant puppets yellow and purple and blue and green, and groups of people marching from various organizations—a great many of them finding kinship for various causes and reasons, not all of them related to which boat their ancestors came on, or where it left from.
The lights have come on and the ice sculptures refract rainbows of colored light. We wander from one venue to the next: klezmer and capoeira, Taiko and tango, Celtic, choral, cubist and a capella. Everyone is there, all the people of Boston who are brave enough to wander in the frigid night air.
At midnight, there are fireworks in green and purple and blue and red and gold shimmering over the shining upturned faces that are every color of human flesh.
Where we all came from, I do not know. Save for the friends I came in with, I have never seen any of these people before. We share a box of malted balls with the joyous and friendly multitude.
And I go home to the 17th row of the tallest stack of concrete and glass boxes in Roxbury wishing I were not walking alone.
I am too tired to sleep. The first dawn of the new year is not far off-- the sky is again paling from black to white.
I write.
In my story, Albert Beastie lives in a city full of different peoples. He is the size of a panther and wears a red bridle with golden bells. He and his rider (who looks like the shopkeeper) escort supply caravans over the vast snow-covered prairies. One night, a pale, heavyset ghost-girl leads them through the howling winds and darkness to find her child, protected in the still cooling warmth of her dead body. They bring the dark little child back to the city, where it turns out he is the long-lost grandchild of the High Councillor, who welcomes him with tears of joy, and also tears of grief for his lost daughter who tried so hard to come home.
The townspeople pay tribute to Albert’s courage with a festival of ice castles and dancing, and a monument of handprints frozen in the snow—Albert’s, the child’s and the rider’s. [handprints.jpg]
Albert lives a life of companionship, adventure, purpose, love and joy, and only goes out in the most horrible weather because it pleases him to be brave and noble when he is needed.
I never write down how or whether he dies.
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