Painting Pots Quotes

A person of high, rare mental gifts who is forced into a job which is merely useful is like a valuable vase decorated with the most beautiful painting and then used as a kitchen pot.

Though there had been moments of beauty in it Mariam knew that life for most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and leftover halwa under a starlit sky. She mourned that she would never see Aziza grow up, would not see the beautiful young woman that she would one day become, would not get to paint her hands with henna and toss noqul candy at her wedding. She would never play with Aziza's children. She would have liked that very much , to be old and play with Aziza's children. Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad , Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.

ART IS MADE BY ORDINARY PEOPLE. Creatures having only virtues can hardly be imagined making art. It’s difficult to picture the Virgin Mary painting landscapes. Or Batman throwing pots. The flawless creature wouldn’t need to make art.

He should have recognized that what really fascinated him was the hunt, the adventure of searching out his victims. And, to a degree, possessing them physically, as one would possess a potted plant, a painting or a Porsche. Owning, as it were, this individual.

She’d painted her nails with rainbow stripes and it occurred to him that Vicki was just as beautiful and mysterious as a rainbow. One he’d been chasing for years without ever coming close to reaching the pot of gold at the end.

Tired of dancing on a pot of gold flake paint

Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They’ve got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother – well, it shows they’re excellent sons, but it’s no excuse for bad work. They’re only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse.

The final stretch of drive ended at a small cottage nestled in a grove of ancient live oaks. The weathered structure, with chipping paint and shutters that had begun to blacken at the edges, was fronted by a small stone porch framed by white columns. Over the years, one of the columns had become enshrouded in vines, which climbed toward the roof. A metal chair sat at the edge, and at one corner of the porch, adding color to the world of green, was a small pot of blooming geraniums. But their eyes were drawn inevitably to the wildflowers. Thousands of them, a meadow of fireworks stretching nearly to the steps of the cottage, a sea of red and orange and purple and blue and yellow nearly waist deep, rippling in the gentle breeze. Hundreds of butterflies flitted about the meadow, tides of moving color undulating in the sun.

If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in ANY vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner.

A lifetime's experience urges me to utter a warning cry: do anything else, take someone's golden retriever for a walk, run away with a saxophone player. Perhaps what's wrong with being a writer is that one can't even say 'good luck'--luck plays no part in the writing of a novel. No happy accidents as with the paint pot or chisel. I don't think you can say anything, really. I've always wanted to juggle and ride a unicycle, but I dare say if I ever asked the advice of an acrobat he would say, 'All you do is get on and start pedaling'.

Think about this: plants see you. In fact, plants monitor their visible environment all the time. Plants see if you come near them; they know when you stand over them. They even know if you've painted your house or if you've moved their pots from one side of the room to the other.

Many women are singing together of this: one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine, one is at the aquarium tending a seal, one is dull at the wheel of her Ford, one is at the toll gate collecting, one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona, one is straddling a cello in Russia, one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt, one is painting her bedroom walls moon color, one is dying but remembering a breakfast, one is stretching on her mat in Thailand, one is wiping the ass of her child, one is staring out the window of a train in the middle of Wyoming and one is anywhere and some are everywhere and all seem to be singing, although some can not sing a note.

The final stretch of the drive ended at a small cottage nestled in a grove of ancient live oaks. The weathered structure , with chipping paint and shutters that had begun to blacken at the edges, was fronted by a small stone porch framed by white columns. Over the years, one of the columns had become enshrouded in vines, which climbed toward the roof. A metal chair sat near the edge, and at one corner of the porch, adding color to the world of green, was a small pot of blossoming geraniums. The Best of Me

There was one thing I'd never considered about mixing red and yellow: a drop of yellow into red paint won't do much to change the colour; but one drop of red into yellow and the whole pot is tainted for ever.

In my yellow room, Sunflowers with purple eyes stands out on a yellow background. They bath their stems in a yellow pot, on a yellow table. In a corner of the painting, the signature of the painter: Vincent. And the yellow sun that passes through the yellow curtains of my room floods all this fluorescence with gold. And in the morning upon awakening, from my bed, I imagin that all this smells very good. Oh yes! He loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from holland. Those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul That abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth. When two of us were together in arles, both of us mad and at constant war over the beauty of color, me, i loved the color red, Where to find a perfect vermilion? He traced with his most yellow brush on the wall, Suddenly turned violet. Je suis saint esprit Je suis sain d'espri. Paul gauguin, 1894.

Art is the conscious making of numinous phenomena. Many objects are just objects - inert, merely utilitarian. Many events are inconsequential, too banal to add anything to our experience of life. This is unfortunate, as one cannot grow except by having one’s spirit greatly stirred; and the spirit cannot be greatly stirred by spiritless things. Much of our very life is dead. For primitive man, this was not so. He made his own possessions, and shaped and decorated them with the aim of making them not merely useful, but powerful. He tried to infuse his weapons with the nature of the tiger, his cooking pots with the life of growing things; and he succeeded. Appearance, material, history, context, rarity - perhaps rarity most of all - combine to create, magically, the quality of soul. But we modern demiurges are prolific copyists; we give few things souls of their own. Locomotives, with their close resemblance to beasts, may be the great exception; but in nearly all else with which today’s poor humans are filling the world, I see a quelling of the numinous, an ashening of the fire of life. We are making an inert world; we are building a cemetery. And on the tombs, to remind us of life, we lay wreaths of poetry and bouquets of painting. You expressed this very condition, when you said that art beautifies life. No longer integral, the numinous has become optional, a luxury - one of which you, my dear friend, are fond, however unconsciously. You adorn yourself with the same instincts as the primitive who puts a frightening mask of clay and feathers on his head, and you comport yourself in an uncommonly calculated way - as do I. We thus make numinous phenomena of ourselves. No mean trick - to make oneself a rarity, in this overpopulated age.

Standing on your own feet, naturally, is as tiresome and dangerous as standing your ground; and when the wild dogs begin to circle grinning round you with their dripping tongues hanging out and you know that with mock servility they like to go for your toes first, why, then, you should stand on someone else’s feet, or head if necessary. It is a point of faith for me never to be Hitler; he stood his ground in his own two shoes in his own little hole almost to the end, the fool. But I may disguise myself as any other animate or inanimate object in what follows. I can be eight lame women with falsies, eight cracked chamber pots, or -- let’s get right to the point -- a gladiator who is actually constructed of old clothes, brooms, and a paper plate with a face daubed on in finger-paints, not to mention two vagrants inside each shirt-sleeve and pant-leg, moving Goliath’s limbs at my say-so; but as long as you believe in the gladiator, you are whipped, and the Museum people will set out on your track, and then once they catch you, don’t think I won’t come study your exhibit until I can convince your own sweetheart that I am you come back from the dead. For I am Big George, the eternal winner.

Do you think I am a foo, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you ever think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you ever wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume? ... Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.

Then Ghana, and the smell of Ghana, a contradiction, a cracked clay pot: the smell of dryness, wetness, both, the damp of earth and dry of dust. The airport. Bodies pushing, pulling, shouting, begging, touching, breathing. He'd forgotten the bodies. The proximity of bodies. In America the bodies were distant. The warmth of it ...... Why had he hated this view? Of this beach, of the backs of these fishermen, glistening brown, of the long wooden boats, evangelical names in bright tricolor paint on their splintering sides, Black Star Jesus, Jah Reign, Christ the Fisher of Men, in the red, yellow, green of the national flag and the national spirit of open-source ethos, this mixing of Anglican, Rastafarian, Ghanaian? What was there to hate in this? There was only openness. As far as he could see. A cheerful openness. An innocence. An innocent beach on the road to Kokrobite at seven A.M. November 1975, little country lurching, cheerful, unaware, to revolution. Little taxi lurching, blasting revolution, to grief.

The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati turn their trusting faces to the sun say to me care for us nurture us in my dreams I shudder and I run. I am six in a playground of white children Darkie, sing us an Indian song! Eight in a roomful of elders all mock my broken Gujarati English girl! Twelve, I tunnel into books forge an armor of English words. Eighteen, shaved head combat boots - shamed by masis in white saris neon judgments singe my western head. Mother tongue. Matrubhasha tongue of the mother I murder in myself. Through the years I watch Gujarati swell the swaggering egos of men mirror them over and over at twice their natural size. Through the years I watch Gujarati dissolve bones and teeth of women, break them on anvils of duty and service, burn them to skeletal ash. Words that don't exist in Gujarati : Self-expression. Individual. Lesbian. English rises in my throat rapier flashed at yuppie boys who claim their people “civilized” mine. Thunderbolt hurled at cab drivers yelling Dirty black bastard! Force-field against teenage hoods hissing F****ing Paki bitch! Their tongue - or mine? Have I become the enemy? Listen: my father speaks Urdu language of dancing peacocks rosewater fountains even its curses are beautiful. He speaks Hindi suave and melodic earthy Punjabi salty rich as saag paneer coastal Kiswahili laced with Arabic, he speaks Gujarati solid ancestral pride. Five languages five different worlds yet English shrinks him down before white men who think their flat cold spiky words make the only reality. Words that don't exist in English: Najjar Garba Arati. If we cannot name it does it exist? When we lose language does culture die? What happens to a tongue of milk-heavy cows, earthen pots jingling anklets, temple bells, when its children grow up in Silicon Valley to become programmers? Then there's American: Kin'uh get some service? Dontcha have ice? Not: May I have please? Ben, mane madhath karso? Tafadhali nipe rafiki Donnez-moi, s'il vous plait Puedo tener….. Hello, I said can I get some service?! Like, where's the line for Ay-mericans in this goddamn airport? Words that atomized two hundred thousand Iraqis: Didja see how we kicked some major ass in the Gulf? Lit up Bagdad like the fourth a' July! Whupped those sand-niggers into a parking lot! The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati bright as butter succulent cherries sounds I can paint on the air with my breath dance through like a Sufi mystic words I can weep and howl and devour words I can kiss and taste and dream this tongue I take back.

I get the sense that many in the contemporary biblical womanhood movement feel that the tasks associated with homemaking have been so marginalized in our culture that it’s up to them to restore the sacredness of keeping the home. This is a noble goal indeed, and one around which all people of faith can rally. But in our efforts to celebrate and affirm God’s presence in the home, we should be wary of elevating the vocation of homemaking above all others by insinuating that for women, God’s presence is somehow restricted to that sphere. If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in any vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner.

A small brazier glowed near the monk's left hand. On a lecturn before him lay pots of paints, brushes, a quill, a pen, a knife, a sizeable handbell, the tooth of some animal--and a piece of parchment. It was the parchment that commanded the room. Until he saw it Len didn't realize how starved he had been of colour. Villagers dressed in various shades of brown and beige, like their furniture and fields and now, here, was an irruption of the rainbow, as if a charm of goldfinches had landed on the manuscript and been transfixed.

So paint the walls, plant tomatoes in pots on the fire escape, but don't cling.

Would the world really be so deprived, losing a few cosmetics pots and pairs of dice and bad paintings of naked goddesses? But the books, I couldn’t help thinking, and a twist of helpless anger curdled my stomach.

...a profound opportunity to embrace impermanence. How those of us who are renters are perhaps in a better position to recognize that our time here on earth is a borrowed gift. That it's not ours to own, though it is ours to relish. That it's still worth beautifying, even though it's temporary. So paint the walls, plant tomatoes in pots on the fire escape, but don't cling. Because eventually we will all be asked to move on.

Look in it,' he said, smiling slightly, as you do when you have given someone a present which you know will please him and he is unwrapping it before your eyes. I opened it. In the folder I found four 8×10 glossy photos, obviously professionally done; they looked like the kind of stills that the publicity departments of movie studios put out. The photos showed a Greek vase, on it a painting of a male figure who we recognized as Hermes. Twined around the vase the double helix confronted us, done in red glaze against a black background. The DNA molecule. There could be no mistake. 'Twenty-three or -four hundred years ago,' Fat said. 'Not the picture but the krater, the pottery.' 'A pot,' I said. 'I saw it in a museum in Athens. It's authentic. Thats not a matter of my own opinion; I'm not qualified to judge such matters; it's authenticity has been established by the museum authorities. I talked with one of them. He hadn't realized what the design shows; he was very interested when I discussed it with him. This form of vase, the krater, was the shape later used as the baptismal font. That was one of the Greek words that came into my head in March 1974, the word “krater”. I heard it connected with another Greek word: “poros”. The words “poros krater” essentially mean “limestone font”. ' There could be no doubt; the design, predating Christianity, was Crick and Watson's double helix model at which they had arrived after so many wrong guesses, so much trial-and-error work. Here it was, faithfully reproduced. 'Well?' I said. 'The so-called intertwined snakes of the caduceus. Originally the caduceus, which is still the symbol of medicine was the staff of- not Hermes-but-' Fat paused, his eyes bright. 'Of Asklepios. It has a very specific meaning, besides that of wisdom, which the snakes allude to; it shows that the bearer is a sacred person and not to be molested...which is why Hermes the messenger of the gods, carried it.' None of us said anything for a time. Kevin started to utter something sarcastic, something in his dry, witty way, but he did not; he only sat without speaking. Examining the 8×10 glossies, Ginger said, 'How lovely!' 'The greatest physician in all human history,' Fat said to her. 'Asklepios, the founder of Greek medicine. The Roman Emperor Julian-known to us as Julian the Apostate because he renounced Christianity-conside​red Asklepios as God or a god; Julian worshipped him. If that worship had continued, the entire history of the Western world would have basically changed

And there, in small warm pools of lamplight, you could see what Leo Auffmann wanted you to see. There sat Saul and Marshall, playing chess at the coffee table. In the dining room Rebecca was laying out the silver. Naomi was cutting paper-doll dresses. Ruth was painting water colors. Joseph was running his electric train. Through the kitchen door, Lena Auffman was sliding a pot roast from the steaming oven. Every hand, every head, every mouth made a big or little motion. You could hear their faraway voices under glass. You could hear someone singing in a high sweet voice. You could smell bread baking, too, and you knew it was real bread that would soon be covered with real butter. Everything was there and it was working. . . . "Sure," he murmured. "There it is." And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of this house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again. "The Happiness Machine," he said. "The Happiness Machine.

He opened the desk drawer, finding nothing but small pots of paint (used for brightening up antiques) and a paintbrush. He wondered if he would be able to throw paint in the man’s face, and blind him for long enough to escape. He opened the top of a pot of paint and dipped in his finger.

William Morris championed the movement for Arts and Crafts. He believed that when we build a house with our hands, make furniture in our workshops, make pots and paintings in our studios, plant fruits and flowers in our gardens, we transform ourselves into alchemists, turning ordinary into extraordinary.

Hesitantly, Grandfather, Douglas, and Tom peered through the large windowpane. And there, in the small warm pools of lamplight, you could see what Leo Auffmann wanted you to see. There sat Saul and Marshall, playing chess at the coffee table. In the dining room Rebecca was laying out the silver. Naomi was cutting paper-doll dresses. Ruth was painting water colors. Joseph was running his electric train. Through the kitchen door, Lena Auffmann was sliding a pot roast from the steaming oven. Every hand, every head, every mouth made a big or little motion. You could hear their faraway voices under the glass. You could hear someone singing in a high sweet voice. You could smell bread baking too, and you knew it was real bread that would soon be covered in real butter. Everything was there and it was working. Grandfather, Douglas, and Tom turned to look at Leo Auffmann, who gazed serenely through the window, the pink light on his cheeks. "Sure," he murmured," There it is." And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of this house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again. "The Happiness Machine," he said. "The Happiness Machine.

Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They've got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother--well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how she looked and what she said and the things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn't it? (381)

One gleeful headline drives me to the floor, kneeling, and all paint turns to gazette paper and all memory collides into photographs we could not say happened, that is us, that’s what we did. When you lose you become ancient but this time no one will rake over these bodies gently collecting their valuables, their pots, their hearts and intestines, their papers and what they could bury. This civilisation will be dug up to burn all its manifestos. No tender archaeologist will mend our furious writings concluding, “They wanted sweat to taste sweet, that is all, some of them played music for nothing, some of them wrote poems to tractors, rough hands, and rough roads, some sang for no reason at all to judge by their condition.

But she was sure old Henry'd showed up with the other granola-heads, lit incense and rang finger cymbals and blew some pot, no doubt, in John's memory. Om rama rama. Did John Lennon really want all that? Was that what he was about? From what she'd heard, the guy'd had some wit and brains - did he really want to be the dead guy of the hour, like a melting centerpiece?

Instead, as the crystal splinters entered Hornwrack's brain, he experienced two curious dreams of the Low City, coming so quickly one after the other that they seemed simultaneous. In the first, long shadows moved across the ceiling frescoes of the Bistro Californium, beneath which Lord Mooncarrot's clique awaited his return to make a fourth at dice. Footsteps sounded on the threshold. The women hooded their eyes and smiled, or else stifled a yawn, raising dove-grey gloves to their blue, phthisic lips. Viriconium, with all her narcissistic intimacies and equivocal invitations welcomed him again. He had hated that city, yet now it was his past and it was he had to regret...The second of these visions was of the Rue Sepile. It was dawn, in summer. Horse-chestnut flowers bobbed like white wax candles above the deserted pavements. An oblique light struck into the street - so that its long and normally profitless perspective seemed to lead straight into the heart of a younger, more ingenuous city - and fell across the fronts of the houses where he had once lived, warming up the rotten brick and imparting to it a not unpleasant pinkish colour. Up at the second-floor casement window a boy was busy with the bright red geraniums arranged along the outer still in lumpen terra-cotta pots. He looked down at Hornwrack and smiled. Before Hornwrack could speak he drew down the lower casement and turned away. The glass which no separated them reflected the morning sunlight in a silent explosion; and Hornwrack, dazzled mistaking the light for the smile, suddenly imagined an incandescence which would melt all those old streets! Rue Sepile; the Avenue of Children; Margery Fry Court: all melted down! All the shabby dependencies of the Plaza of Unrealized Time! All slumped, sank into themselves, eroded away until nothing was left in his field of vision but an unbearable white sky above and the bright clustered points of the chestnut leaves below - and then only a depthless opacity, behind which he could detect the beat of his own blood, the vitreous humour of the eye. He imagined the old encrusted brick flowing, the glass cracking and melting from its frames even as they shrivelled awake, the sheds of paints flaring green and gold, the geraniums toppling in flames to nothing, not even white ash, under this weight of light! All had winked away like reflections in a jar of water glass, and only the medium remained, bright, viscid, vacant. He had a sense of the intolerable briefness of matter, its desperate signalling and touching, its fall; and simultaneously one of its unendurable durability He thought, Something lies behind all the realities of the universe and is replacing them here, something less solid and more permanent. Then the world stopped haunting him forever.

Because radium can be mixed with other elements to make them glow in the dark, clock makers used it to create fluorescent numbers on watch faces and hired young women to perform the delicate task of painting them. In the watch factories of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois, the Radium Girls were trained to lick the tips of their brushes into a fine point before dipping them into pots of radium paint. When the jaws and skeletons of the first girls began to rot and disintegrate, their employers suggested they were suffering from syphilis. A successful lawsuit revealed that their managers had understood the risks of working with radium and get done everything they could to conceal the truth from their employees. It was the first time the public learned the hazards of ingesting radioactive material. The

Frank Marshall Davis, the former Communist who was Obama’s mentor in Hawaii, was so radical that he opposed President Truman’s Marshall Plan as a “device” for maintaining “white imperialism.” Truman and Marshall, he wrote, were using “billions of U.S. dollars to bolster the tottering empires of England, France, Belgium, Holland and the other western exploiters of teeming millions.” Indeed the objective of America after World War II was “to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the world.” While Davis spurned America he praised “Red Russia” as “my friend.”3 Young Obama—sitting in Davis’s hut in Hawaii week after week for several years—took it all in. This portrait of devoted young Obama imbibing the ravings of a pot-smoking former Communist is the progressive version of a Norman Rockwell painting.

In St. Patrick Town, we find the stubborn, sprightly residents all awake--the leprechaun I spoke to days before still in search of his lost pot of gold in the glen, rain clouds heavy in the distance, and rainbows gleaming above the treetops. In Valentine's Town, Queen Ruby is bustling through the streets, making sure the chocolatiers are busy crafting their confections of black velvet truffles and cherry macaroons, trying to make up for lost time, while her cupids still flock through town, wild and restless. The rabbits have resumed painting their pastel eggs in Easter Town. The townsfolk in Fourth of July Town are testing new rainbow sparklers and fireworks that explode in the formation of a queen's crown, in honor of the Pumpkin Queen who saved them all from a life of dreamless sleep. In Thanksgiving Town, everyone is preparing for the feast in the coming season, and the elves in Christmas Town have resumed assembling presents and baking powdered-sugar gingerbread cookies. And in Halloween Town, we have just enough time to finish preparations for the holiday: cobwebs woven together, pumpkins carved, and black tar-wax candles lit.

I looked up at the moon and stars through the glass roof above and gasped at the stunning sight, like a mural painted by a great artist. No wonder Lady Anna had loved this place. I walked to the orchids and plucked a weed from a small terra-cotta pot that held a speckled pink and white flower. "There you are, beautiful," I whispered, releasing a patch of clover roots from the bark near the orchid's stem. "Is that better?" In the quiet of the night, I could almost hear the flower sigh. I walked to the water spigot and filled a green watering can to the brim, then sprinkled the flower and her comrades. I marveled at how the droplets sparkled in the moonlight.

One night, returning to the house, he went into his father’s shed. He stared at the unsold pots and the vases on the shelves, at their shapes and their designs, the illustrations of landscapes. He wondered what would become of them. He reached for one, then hesitated. He thought of them staying here, untouched, through the seasons and the years. He thought of the ones people had purchased, scattered throughout the country. He imagined that somewhere underneath the glaze and the paint there remained his father’s hands. That they contained the heat of a kiln and a home that no longer existed. He wondered whether he would be able to recognize them if he saw them again.

Though there had been moments of beauty in it, Mariam knew that life for the most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clamour of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and left over halwa under a starlit sky. She mourned that she would never see Aziza grow up, would not see the beautiful young woman that she would one day become, would not get to paint her hands with henna and toss noqul candy at her wedding. She would never play with Aziza's children. She would have liked that very much, to be old and play with Aziza's children. Near the goalpost, the man behind her asked her to stop. Mariam did. Through the crisscrossing grid of the burqa, she saw his shadow arms lift his shadow Kalashnikov. Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings. Mariam's final thoughts were a few words from the Koran, which she muttered under her breath. He has created the heavens and the earth with the truth; He makes the night cover the day and makes the day overtake the night, and He has made the sun and the moon subservient; each one runs on to an assigned term; now surely He is the Mighty, the Great Forgiver. "Kneel," the Talib said O my Lord! Forgive and have mercy, for you are the best of the merciful ones. "Kneel here, hamshira and look down." One last time, Mariam did as she was told.

And later that year he would say *to* his father what for years he had been saying *about* him. He would smoke a bushel of pot, watch his knee bend the wrong way during a stupid touch-football game, be inexplicably moved to tears in a foreign city by a painting of a woman and her baby, touch a hibernating brown bear and an endangered pangolin, spend a week waiting for a test result, pray silently for his wife's life as she screamed as new life came out of her body -- many moments when life felt big, precious. But they made up such an utterly small portion of his time on earth. Five minutes a year? What did it sum to? A day? At most? A day of feeling alive in four decades of life?

He liked to compare a horticulturist’s shop to a microcosm in which all the categories of society were represented: the flowers that are poor and coarse, the flowers of the slum, which are not truly at home unless reposing on a garret window sill, their roots jammed into a milk bottle or an old pot, the sunflower for example; the pretentious, conformist, stupid flowers, like the rose, which belong exclusively in porcelain holders painted by young girls; finally the flowers of high lineage such as orchids, delicate and charming and quiveringly sensitive to cold, exotic flowers exiled in Paris to the warmth of glass palaces, princesses of the vegetable kingdom, living a segregated life, having no longer anything in common with the plants of the street or the flora of the middle class.

After driving 30-minutes East of Seattle, I expect to see a great bowling alley. But, as we pull into the parking lot, all I see are pot holes, a horse and Amish buggy, and no cars to speak of- broken down or otherwise. Even the building is in shambles, needs painted and looks a bit haunted. The old road sign reading- Flicker Lanes- is half-burnt out. Seeing the building's interior lights on, I'm reassured that the place is open- but then again, maybe they've been left on by mistake. "There's LOTS of NICE bowling alleys in SEATTLE," I said. "Why did we come ALL THIS WAY to go BOWLING?" "I take it that you've never BEEN here before." "I don't think ANYONE HAS. I don't even KNOW what PLANET we're on." "I don't know what PLANET you're on either... but the rest of us are on your ANUS." I half-smile, marveling at his wittiness.

Whiskey?” Camille cried as she stood on a wharf in Port Adelaide harbor. “You brought us onto a whiskey cargo ship?” Ira spread out his arms. “And rum, love. Don’t forget the rum.” The high tide slowly swallowed the wharf pilings, and the Juggernaut, a whiskey runner, was in the final process of loading. “Listen,” Ira said to both Oscar and Camille, who looked at their escort with doubt. “There couldn’t be a better cargo to ride with than whiskey and rum. You think if there were pots and pans and spoons in there, the captain would take her full chisel to Talladay? People pay a pretty price for liquor, mates, and the ones delivering it make out like bandits.” The Juggernaut wasn’t worth the ten crowns it cost Monty to secure a spot aboard. The schooner didn’t look seaworthy with its chipped paint, barnacle-covered hull, sloppy lines, and patched canvas sail.

It [the charcuterie] was almost on the corner of the Rue Pirouette and was a joy to behold. It was bright and inviting, with touches of brilliant colour standing out amidst white marble. The signboard, on which the name QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt letter encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued background, was protected by a sheet of glass. On the two side panels of the shop front, similarly painted and under glass, were chubby little Cupids playing in the midst of boars' heads, pork chops, and strings of sausages; and these still lifes, adorned with scrolls and rosettes, had been designed in so pretty and tender a style that the raw meat lying there assumed the reddish tint of raspberry jam. Within this delightful frame, the window display was arranged. It was set out on a bed of fine shavings of blue paper; a few cleverly positioned fern leaves transformed some of the plates into bouquets of flowers fringed with foliage. There were vast quantities of rich, succulent things, things that melted in the mouth. Down below, quite close to the window, jars of rillettes were interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these were some boned hams, nicely rounded, golden with breadcrumbs, and adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes. Then came the larger dishes--stuffed Strasbourg tongues, with their red, varnished look, the colour of blood next to the pallor of the sausages and pigs' trotters; strings of black pudding coiled like harmless snakes; andouilles piled up in twos and bursting with health; saucissons in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; pies, hot from the oven, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great cuts of veal and pork, whose jelly was as limpid as crystallized sugar. Towards the back were large tureens in which the meats and minces lay asleep in lakes of solidified fat. Strewn between the various plates and sishes, on the bed of blue shavings, were bottles of relish, sauce, and preserved truffles, pots of foie gras, and tins of sardines and tuna fish. A box of creamy cheeses and one full of snails stuffed with butter and parsley had been dropped in each corner. Finally, at the very top of the display, falling from a bar with sharp prongs, strings of sausages and saveloys hung down symmetrically like the cords and tassels of some opulent tapestry, while behind, threads of caul were stretched out like white lacework. There, on the highest tier of this temple of gluttony, amid the caul and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the alter display was crowned by a small, square fish tank with a little ornamental rockery, in which two goldfish swam in endless circles.

Simple." Braydyn took a deep breath. "Those other lasses are vases and she's a flower pot." "Dude, what the hell are you talking about? Vases and flower pots?" Mitch furrowed his brow in confusion. "Vases are usually beautiful and purely decorative. They're sleek and sometimes expensive. But they are also the place flowers go te die. They can only bring life to the flower for so long before its empty shell eventually kills it. And if they're not used te temporarily hold flowers, then they're empty and meant for nothing more than te look pretty on someone's shelf or mantel." Bradyn leaned back in his chair, placed his hands on the back on his head and smiled, before continuing. "Now, a flower pot can be bonnie, painted, or even a little fancy. They can also be chipped and round and even plain. But they're filled with rich soil and if treated right, they are the places where flowers go te grow. Payton is a flower pot. Those other lasses are vases. I have no need for a vase.

BARRY: Phwoar! This stuff shouldn’t be available on the internet where anybody can see it. GLENDA: Barry, what are you looking at? BARRY: Philosophy. You should see some of the ideas floating around here. GLENDA: As long as it’s only philosophy. BARRY: Only?! They come out with stuff that makes your hair stand on end. Look out there. What do you see? GLENDA: I can see it’s time to paint the fence. BARRY: What fence? GLENDA: Our fence. I don’t expect you to paint next door’s. BARRY: There is no fence out there. We just think there is. GLENDA: And I think it still needs painting. BARRY: It’s all in here. It’s only the way we see things that makes them look as if they’re out there. Actually everything is in our heads. GLENDA: Barry, if you can go out there with a pot of paint and paint it, then it’s out there. BARRY: I hate it when you do that. GLENDA: What? BARRY: Make more sense than philosophy. “The Second Stag Night of Doggy Wilkinson”, Last of the Summer Wine”, season 28 episode 1.

In a dream I sometimes have, I am frantically trying to save as much as I can from my childhood home before I am forced to leave forever because of some disaster. In this dream, from which I awake with my jaw clenched like a fist, I grab whatever I can reach, take whatever I can carry. Always my childhood books and our family photo albums, but sometimes also the silver candlesticks, the things on my father's desk, the paintings on the walls. Maybe it comes from the speed with which my family changed shape one day, maybe it comes from moving, maybe it comes from my grandmother's hinted horror of losing everything in the Holocaust, but I cannot part with a dented pot that I remember my mother putting on the stove each week. Or the sofa my father bought with his first pay cheque, which was never comfortable when I was growing up and is not comfortable now. I cannot part with the lipstick I found softly rolling in an empty drawer months after my mother left. Or a shopping list on an envelope in her handwriting. In a world that changes so quickly, and where everyone eventually leaves, our stuff is the one thing we can trust. It testifies, through the mute medium of Things, that we were part of something greater than ourselves.

Each year before the first rain after the harvest in Spring, I would look at the dry peach tree that I know so well at our backyard and anticipating that in summer it will be covered in an overgrown hedge unless my father who was a committed gardner of note take a weekend off from Jo'burg during the pruning season to prune it. Even now, I still remember with crystal clarity my childhood mood - warm days in Schoonoord with rich nostalgia of green scenery and flowers flowering everywhere.  One evening I was sitting at the veranda of our firehut looking at the orange tree between the plat (flat - roofed) house and the big L - shaped house - the tree served as a shelter from the sun for the drinking water pot next to the plat house - suddenly the weather changed, the wind howled, the tree swayed, the loose corrugated iron sheets on roof of he house clattered and clanged, the open windows shuts with a bang and the sky made night a day, and I was overwhelmed with that feeling of childhood joy at the approaching rain. All of a sudden, the deafening of steady pouring rain. The raging storm beat the orange tree leaves while I sat there remembering that where the orange tree stood used to be our first house, a small triangular   shaped mokhukhu ((tin house) made of red painted corrugated iron sheets salvaged from demolishing site in Witbank, also remembering that my aunt's mokhukhu was also made of the same type and colour of corrugated iron sheets. The ashen ground drunk merily until it was quenched and the floods started rolling down Leolo Mountains, and what one could hear above the deafening steady pouring rain was the bellowing of the nearby Manyane Dale, and if it was daylight one could have seen the noble Sebilwane River rolling in sullen glide. After about fifteen minutes of steady downpour, and rumbling sounds, the storm went away in a series of small, badly lit battle scenes.

THE PARTY And at last the police are at the front door, summoned by a neighbor because of the noise, two large cops asking Peter, who had signed the rental agreement, to end the party. Our peace can’t be disturbed, one of the officers states. But when we receive a complaint we act on it. The police on the front stoop wear as their shoulder patch an artist’s palette, since the town likes to think of itself as an art colony, and indeed, Pacific Coast Highway two blocks inland, which serves as the main north-south street, is lined with commercial galleries featuring paintings of the surf by moonlight —like this night, but without anybody on the sand and with a bigger moon. And now Dennis, as at every party once the police arrive at the door, moves through the dancers, the drinkers, the talkers, to confront the uniforms and guns, to object, he says, to their attempt to stop people harmlessly enjoying themselves, and to argue it isn’t even 1 a.m. Then Stuart, as usual, pushes his way to the discussion happening at the door and in his drunken manner tries to justify to the cops Dennis’ attitude, believing he can explain things better to authority, which of course annoys Dennis, and soon those two are disputing with each other, tonight exasperating Peter, whose sole aim is to get the officers to leave before they are provoked enough to demand to enter to check ID or something, and maybe smell the pot and somebody ends up arrested with word getting back to the landlord and having the lease or whatever Peter had signed cancelled, and all staying here evicted. The Stones, or Janis, are on the stereo now, as the police stand firm like time, like death—You have to shut it down—as the dancing inside continues, the dancers forgetting for a moment a low mark on a quiz, or their draft status, or a paper due Monday, or how to end the war in Asia, or some of their poems rejected by a magazine, or the situation in Watts or of Chavez’s farmworkers, or that they wish they had asked Erin rather than Joan to dance. That dancing, that music, the party, even after the cops leave with their warning Don’t make us come back continues, the dancing has lasted for years, decades, across a new century, through the fear of nuclear obliteration, the great fires, fierce rain, Main Beach and Forest Avenue flooded, war after war, love after love, that dancing goes on, the dancing, the party, the night, the dancing

Jung famously said that about a third of his cases weren’t suffering from some clinically definable illness, but from a sense of meaninglessness and aimlessness. Jung believed he could help them find some meaning. It had been his own quest, and understandably he felt he could help others in theirs. In a way, one could say Jung built his Tower so he would have a safe space for himself and some selected others to go crazy, without having to deal with the incomprehension of outsiders. Most people who visited the Tower certainly felt it had an unusual atmosphere. Jung had some strange relationship with his pots and utensils; he spoke with them, believing they had souls, and required his guests to as well, and he insisted that the stove in his Küsnacht study was human.39 He also felt the same about a bronze box that stored his tobacco, and even named it Habbakuk. 40 It isn’t surprising to read that at the Tower Jung could immerse himself deeply in active imagination, often sitting for long periods in utter stillness, in a room set apart for this, where he painted his fantasies on the wall. He would see images and faces in stone and then slowly carve them; one stone in particular, a huge “perfect cube” Jung received from a quarry by mistake, became a favorite, and over the years Jung worked on it, carving on its surface alchemical, Greek, and Latin sayings.41

When the world one loves is seen to be dying, the viewer dies a little with it. A great American painter, Reginald Marsh, exemplifies this truism. Every day until his death at the age of 56, he sketched and painted the most earthy, sweaty and lusty examples of humanity he could lay his eyes upon. His productive voyeurism led him through the entire spectrum of cheap cafes, carnivals, amusement parks, skid rows, exclusive clubs, opera openings, coming-out parties and everything in-between. His super-realistic canvases were jammed with the kind of people he loved to watch in the environments he loved to haunt. As his closing years approached, Reginald Marsh grew depressed at the changing scene. New styles were emerging and it now became more difficult to immerse himself in the vistas from which he had so long drawn, both in his paintings and life itself. His canvases of lumpy women and pot-bellied men were too unappealing for the “think thin” era of the 1950s, and his floozies violated the then-current Grace Kelly/Ivory Soap look. His disdain for modern masters (“Matisse draws like a three-year-old, “Picasso ... a false front”) became exemplified as he summed up modern art as “high and pure and sterile — no sex, no drink, no muscles.” Marsh’s “out of date” feeling reached its zenith when he was asked to take part in an art symposium. The first speaker, who was a then-popular New York painter, enthusiastically championed current trends. Then followed a professor who advocated new and dynamic experimentation in visual appeal. At last it was Reginald Marsh’s turn to speak. He stood on the platform for a moment, as if trying to collect his thoughts. A sad look of resignation appeared in his eyes as he gazed down at the audience. The talented watcher of his innermost secret lusts and life-giving scintillations declared softly, “I am not a man of this century,” and sat down. He died shortly thereafter.

Peter paused, his gaze drifting to the shelf that held the china teapots. Beside the pots stood dainty cups and saucers with similar painted patterns. Glancing over his shoulder to ensure the woman did not peek in the window, he crossed to the shelf and selected a cup with the same rose design as that on the teapot she had admired. How ridiculous the cup looked when held in his big callused hands. Yet it would suit the woman. He handed the cup to Nick. “Wrap this and put it within her bundle.” “A gift, Peter?” Nick’s eyes sparkled. Peter felt his neck grow hot. “A … payment … for what she endured today with Frau Schmidt.

ay cheese!" If you're like most women I know, you have at least one family and friends photo area in your home. My entire home is practically a photo gallery! Walls, tabletops, and my refrigerator door are all crowded with the faces of people I love. My husband, Bob, my children, grandchildren, new friends, old friends you name 'em and I've displayed 'em. How precious are these gatherings of faces to us. And it's so fitting, isn't it? Because our family and friends' pictures tell the story of their lives.. .and ours! Cherish your family and friends and those priceless moments. Hold them close. Seek out your friends and enjoy their company more often. Treasure their faces, their characteristics, their uniqueness. But also make room for new people.. .and add them to the gallery in your heart. ant to hold a spring garden party? It can be a birthday, a graduation, or just a celebration. For invitations, glue inexpensive packets of seeds to index cards and write in your party information. Pass them out or stick them in envelopes and mail them. Decorate a picnic table with an umbrella and bright floral sheets or vinyl cloths. Why not decorate the awnings and porch posts to make it even more festive? Flowers, flowers, and flowers everywhere create a bright, aromatic space. If you're limber and energetic or you're inviting kids, spread sheets on the ground for an authentic, old-fashioned picnic. A little red wagon or painted tub with a potted plant makes a fun off-to-the-side "centerpiece." Use a clean watering can for your lemonade pitcher. Engage your imagination and have fun entertaining.

Don’t cry over a motherfucker who wants to leave you, when we have lost people who wanted to stay. Don’t let a tear drop when someone shows you their true colors, paint a rainbow with them and find my pot of gold at the end of that motherfucker.

If there’s one thing Lucille hates, it’s how science has to rain on whimsy’s parade: Rainbows not a gift from leprechauns offering pots of gold, but only a trick of refraction. A blue sky not a miles-wide painting done by a heavenly hand, but molecules scattering light. Still, when Lucille sees the stars strewn across the sky on a night like tonight, they’re diamonds, and she thinks they might end up under her bed yet. Maybe

One sees now how prettily the eels and snakes copulate together in a heap. The priests and all the evil clergy are the snakes, as John the Baptist calls them, Matthew 3[:7], and the temporal lords and rulers are the eels, as is symbolized by the fish in Leviticus 11[:10-12]. For the devil's empire has painted its face with clay. Oh, you beloved lords, how well the Lord will smash down the old pots of clay [ecclesiastical authorities] with his rod of iron, Psalm 2[:9]. Therefore, you most true and beloved regents, learn your knowledge directly from the mouth of God and do not let yourselves be seduced by your flattering priests and restrained by false patience and indulgence. For the stone [Christ's spirit] torn from the mountain without human touch has become great. The poor laity and the peasants see it much more clearly than you do. Yes, God be praised, the stone has become so great that, already, if other lords or neighbours wanted to persecute you on account of the gospel, they would be overthrown by their own subjects. This I know to be true. Indeed the stone is great! The foolish world has long feared it. The stone fell upon the world when it was still small. What then should we do now, after it has grown so great and powerful? And after it has struck the great statue so powerfully and irresistibly that it has smashed down the old pots of clay?

Turning to the open window above my head, I saw the full moon, glowing as bright as a pot of molten silver. Moonlight poured through the window, and through the gaps in the thatched roof, painting the interior of the hut with its gleaming brush. For a moment, the moonlight nearly disguised the poverty of the room, covering the earthen floor with a sheath of silver, the rough clay walls with sparkles of light, and the still-sleeping form in the corner with the glow of an angel.

I could find a little seed like this in a broken pot and that could be worth more than any treasure. We could trace its path back through ancient trade routes, decode its DNA, paint a picture of the world as it was all those years ago. Sometimes the rubbish dumps of ancient people are more interesting than their palaces. That’s why the looting hurts us so much. People disturb the objects, take them out of their context. They break the story that’s been waiting for thousands of years to be told.

Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,’ said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added, ‘or a plinth. Both is best, o’course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.’ ‘What about a potted plant?’ ‘That’s okay if it’s in an urn.’ ‘What about if it’s not got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?’ said Nobby. ‘Have you one in mind, Nobby?’ said Colon suspiciously. ‘Yes, The Goddess Anoia* Arising from the Cutlery,’ said Nobby. ‘They’ve got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i’s in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.’ ‘The number of i’s is important, Nobby,’ said Sergeant Colon gravely, ‘but in these situations you have to ask yourself: where’s the cherub? If there’s a little fat pink kid holding a mirror or a fan or similar, then it’s still okay. Even if he’s grinning. Obviously you can’t get urns everywhere.

Think about this: plants see you. In fact, plants monitor their visible environment all the time. Plants see if you come near them; they know when you stand over them. They even know if you've painted your house or if you've moved their pots from one side of the room to the other.

Between the palaces of the knights and those that served them; the convents, the elegant homes belonging to officers of the Church and the town; between the bakehouse and the shops of the craftsmen, the arsenals and magazines, the warehouses, the homes of merchants and courtesans, Italian, Spanish, Greek; past the painted shrines and courtyards scraped from pockets of earth with their bright waxy green carob trees, a fig, a finger of vine, a blue and orange pot of dry, dying flowers and a tethered goat bleating in a swept yard, padded the heirs of this rock, this precious knot in the trade of the world. Umber-skinned, grey-eyed, barefoot and robed as Arabs with the soft, slurring dialect that Dido and Hannibal spoke, they slipped past the painted facades to their Birgu of fishermen's huts and blank, Arab-walled houses or to sleep, curled in the shade, with the curs in a porch.

St. Lawrence River May 1705 Temperature 48 degrees From the river they walked back to the town, and the boy was taken into the fire circle outside the powwow’s longhouse. Here he was placed on the powwow’s sacred albino furs. A dozen men, those who were now his relatives, sat in a circle around him. The powwow lit a sacred pipe and passed it, and for the first time in his life, the boy smoked. Don’t cough, Mercy prayed for him. Don’t choke. Afterward she found out they diluted the tobacco with dried sumac leaves to make sure he wouldn’t cough on his first pull. Although the women had adopted him, it was the men who filed by to bring gifts. The new Indian son received a tomahawk, knives, a fine bow, a pot of vermilion paint, a beautiful black-and-white-striped pouch made from a skunk and several necklaces. “Watch, watch!” whispered Snow Walker, riveted. “This is his father. Look what his father gives him!” The warrior transferred from his own body to his son’s a wampum belt--hundreds of tiny shell circles linked together like white lace. The belt was so large it had to hang from the neck instead of the waist. To give a man a belt was old-fashioned. Wampum had no value to the French and had not been used as money by the Indians for many years. But it still spoke of power and honor and even Mercy caught her breath to see it on a white boy’s body. But of course, he was not white any longer. “My son,” said the powwow, “now you are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.” At last his real name was called aloud, and the name was plain: Annisquam, which just meant “Hilltop.” Perhaps they had caught him at the summit of a mountain. Or considering the honor of the wampum belt, perhaps he kept his eyes on the horizon and was a future leader. Or like Ruth, he might have done some great deed that would be told in story that evening. When the gifts and embraces were over, Annisquam was taken into the powwow’s longhouse to sit alone. He would stay there for many hours and would not be brought out until well into the dancing and feasting in the evening. Not one of Mercy’s questions had been answered. Was he, in his heart, adopted? Had he, in his heart, accepted these new parents? Where, in his heart, had he placed his English parents? How did he excuse himself to his English God and his English dead? The dancing began. Along with ancient percussion instruments that crackled and rattled, rasped and banged, the St. Francis Indians had French bells, whose clear chimes rang, and even a bugle, whose notes trumpeted across the river and over the trees.

How to Plant a Container-Grown Fruit Tree or Shrub 1. Use a shovel or marking paint to mark the area for the hole. The planting hole should be at least twice as wide as the tree’s rootball. 2. Dig the planting hole. This hole should be just as deep as the rootball—no deeper! If you sharpen the spade before digging, this step will go faster. GROWING TIP Have you heard the saying, “plant ’em high”? Well, that refers to trees. Trees will settle a bit after planting. Always make sure that you finish the job with the top of the tree’s rootball about 3 inches above the soil line. If you plant a tree too deep, the place where the tree trunk and the tree roots meet can rot, which will kill the tree. 3. Set the tree in the planting hole to check the depth. If the top of the rootball is lower than the soil line around the edge of the planting hole, add some soil back into the hole, pull the tree out of the pot, and replace the tree in the hole. You never want the crown of the tree (the part where the tree trunk meets the tree roots) to be below the soil line. In clay soils, set the rootball so it is a few inches above the soil line. 4. Fill in around the tree with the same soil that you removed from the planting hole. Do not add fertilizer or new topsoil. Water will move more easily and the tree will root properly if the soil in and around the planting hole is the same. 5. Mulch around the tree, taking care to pull the mulch away from the tree trunk. Do not create a mulch “volcano” around the tree (by piling mulch up high around the trunk)—that just encourages insects and creatures that snack on tree bark to take up residence next to your delicious young tree. 6. Water the tree. Plan to water newly planted trees every three days (every other day if it is hot and dry). New trees don’t need to be staked unless they’re in areas prone to heavy rains and frequent winds. It can take a couple of years for newly planted trees to root into the surrounding soil, so continue to monitor your tree for signs that it needs water.

The Resource List Oak Wood 104, Oak Wood Planks 12, Oak Wood Slabs 58, Birch Wood Planks 28, Birch Wood Stairs 36, Birch Wood Slabs 60, Cobblestone Wall 44, Gravel, Glass 16, Ladders 18, Fence 26, Torch 10, Redstone Torch 4, Redstone Lamp 4, Painting, Crafting Table, Furnace, Trapdoors, Chests, Wooden Door, Flower Pots 3, Jungle Leaves, Jungle Sapling 4, Fern 2, Flowers

The row of villas which lines Western Avenue is like a row of pink graves in a field of grey; an architectural image of middle age. Their uniformity is the discipline of growing old, of dying without violence and living without success. They are houses which have got the better of their occupants, whom they change at will, and do not change themselves. Furniture vans glide respectfully among them like hearses, discreetly removing the dead and introducing the living. Now and then some tenant will raise his hand, expending pots of paint on the woodwork or labour on the garden, but his efforts no more alter the house than flowers a hospital ward, and the grass will grow its own way, like grass on a grave.

I’ll tell you, the screws’ faces painted an even greater picture than my words can describe. We kept emptying our pots in the hall for two weeks before the screws started emptying our piss pots for us, but this didn’t last too long after we started calling them bellhops.

It was an awesome time. I was extremely poor and had little to do. I painted my tiny bedroom Van Gogh Starry Night Purple, and I smoked a lot of pot.

I popped the tape into the VCR and watched a pretty, middle-aged Italian woman in a flowered housedress and frilly apron hold up various fish and shellfish as she spoke to the tape in rapid, enthusiastic Italian, espousing the virtues of the seafood. She was standing at a battered wooden table in what appeared to be her own kitchen. After she finished showing off the fish, she beheaded and eviscerated them, and then washed them in a chipped white enamel bowl full of water that sat on the table. She put the cleaned pieces on a brightly painted platter, chosen, I'm sure, with less deliberation than our Jonathan would have required. She poured olive oil into a large, slightly dented pot that sat on a small two-burner stove and then in a flash chopped a couple of onions and a good amount of garlic and put them in the oil. While the aromatics became, well, aromatic, she cut up a half dozen fresh tomatoes and a healthy amount of herbs and added them to the pot. She stirred everything around, and before long she had all the fish and shellfish in the pot.

I’m coming,’ Henry called. He soon appeared from behind the Dodge, walking a bicycle. The frame was painted red and the wheels, which didn’t quite match in size, had been scrubbed and oiled. The handlebar grips, made out of strips of leather from an old car seat, had been crafted by Henry himself. The basket on the handlebars barely resembled the wicker cray pot it had originally been; an item that had somehow travelled far from the sea to the junkyard. Henry brought the bicycle to a halt in front of Sissy.

I follow him into a high-ceilinged room upholstered in crimson damask and decorated with bronze sculptures and potted palms. A massive crystal-and-gold chandelier sparkles from the ceiling, sending a glittery ray of light over the matching red chairs, ottomans, and---finally!---a couch, although it looks far more formal than comfy. The Red Drawing Room is just as rich in art as the Blue, and Oscar proudly points out portraits of my ancestors painted by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini---names I know from my junior year art history class.

America was built on the myth of the melting pot, but despite efforts of the powers that be, the ingredients never fully blended. At best there is a patchwork quilt of various ethnic groups struggling to live peacefully with one another while something called, "mainstream culture" - it looks like a Norman Rockwell painting, sounds like a George Gershwin musical, and tastes like Chef Boyardee - is offered up as the national exmple.

Nothing!” I said quickly. “I just didn’t think that, uh . . .” “I was human?” “Er, that’s not quite what I . . .” “I like kittens, okay? And throw pillows.” “Is that a teapot?” I asked, stunned. The one I was staring at was porcelain, and it had delicate paintings of flowers on it. “I’m half British,” Erica said curtly. “Liking tea is genetic. Also, the pot is very good for brewing antidotes for poison. In case I’ve ingested too much.” “Too much? Don’t you mean ‘any’?” “No,” Erica said, like I was an idiot.

I had never before been so tortured by the slowness of the Mexico City traffic; the irritability of the drivers; the savagery of the dilapidated trucks that ought to have been banned ages ago; the sadness of the begging mothers carrying children in their shawls and extending their calloused hands; the awfulness of the crippled and the blind asking for alms; the melancholy of the children in clown costumes trying to entertain with their painted faces and the little balls they juggled; the insolence and obscene bungling of the pot-bellied police officers leaning against their motorcycles at strategic highway entrances and exits to collect their bite-size bribes; the insolent pathways cleared for the powerful people in their bulletproof limousines; the desperate, self-absorbed, and absent gaze of old people unsteadily crossing side streets without looking where they were going, those white-haired, but-faced men and women resigned to die the same way as they lived; the giant billboards advertising an imaginary world of bras and underpants covering small swaths of perfect bodies with white skin and blonde hair, high-priced shops selling luxury and enchanted vacations in promised paradises.

Jasmine opened her fridge and pulled out cauliflower, an onion, garlic, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes and molasses. "Are plant people for or against eating the plants?" Nina asked. "I sure hope they're pro, because vegetarian is what's calling to me." Nina watched Jasmine bread and bake the cauliflower, mash tomatoes in a pot with the garlic, spices and onion, then pan-fry a homemade tortilla. She piled the baked cauliflower onto the tortilla shell, then drizzled a healthy amount of the homemade salsa across the top. She passed the plate to Nina and the aroma of the flavors mixing together reminded her of being outside in summer. She wanted to live on that plate. Nina picked up the taco and folded it, admiring the colors of the ingredients as they blended together like new paint on a fresh canvas. She smiled at the food. "Hello, gorgeous." Then she smelled the taco---spice and lime---before taking a bite. Not only was each part of the dish cooked perfectly, but it also practically melted in her mouth.

Driving along Broadway, he sees a young guy exit a bus and then turn to help an old woman who was waiting to board that bus. In his entire life, Bobby’s never seen more people help little old ladies cross streets, avoid puddles or potholes, carry their groceries, or find their car keys in purses overstuffed with rosary beads and damp tissues. Everyone knows everyone here; they stop one another in the streets to ask after spouses, children, cousins twice removed. Come winter, they shovel walks together, join up to push cars out of snowbanks, freely pass around bags of salt or sand for icy sidewalks. Summertime, they congregate on porches and stoops or cluster in lawn chairs along the sidewalks to shoot the shit, trade the daily newspapers, and listen to Ned Martin calling the Sox games on ’HDH. They drink beer like it’s tap water, smoke ciggies as if the pack will self-destruct at midnight, and call to one another—across streets, to and from cars, and up at distant windows—like impatience is a virtue. They love the church but aren’t real fond of mass. They only like the sermons that scare them; they mistrust any that appeal to their empathy. They all have nicknames. No James can just be a James; has to be Jim or Jimmy or Jimbo or JJ or, in one case, Tantrum. There are so many Sullivans that calling someone Sully isn’t enough. In Bobby’s various incursions here over the years, he’s met a Sully One, a Sully Two, an Old Sully, a Young Sully, Sully White, Sully Tan, Two-Time Sully, Sully the Nose, and Little Sully (who’s fucking huge). He’s met guys named Zipperhead, Pool Cue, Pot Roast, and Ball Sac (son of Sully Tan). He’s come across Juggs, Nicklebag, Drano, Pink Eye (who’s blind), Legsy (who limps), and Handsy (who’s got none). Every guy has a thousand-yard stare. Every woman has an attitude. Every face is whiter than the whitest paint you’ve ever seen and then, just under the surface, misted with an everlasting Irish pink that sometimes turns to acne and sometimes doesn’t. They’re the friendliest people he’s ever met. Until they aren’t. At which point they’ll run over their own grandmothers to ram your fucking skull through a brick wall. He has no idea where it all comes from—the loyalty and the rage, the brotherhood and the suspicion, the benevolence and the hate. But he suspects it has something to do with the need for a life to have meaning.

ago so Dad had these workmen come to retile it. They put the ladder up and forgot to take it away again. Lots of green moss has grown back on the roof now, which makes it very soft and comfortable, like a green carpet. I like to sit with my legs swinging down, peering out over next-door’s garden. Not number four next door, where Cecy lives. I mean number eight the other side of us – the sad house. Old Mrs Burton lives there. At least I think she does. No one’s seen her for years and years. She used to be this perfectly ordinary old lady when Mr Burton was still around. They invited Clover and me in for tea several times, after Mum died. We didn’t really like to go, because we didn’t know what to say to them and there was nothing very much to do. Mrs Burton had a collection of little china pots with painted lids and she let us look at each one, but we weren’t allowed to touch because they were precious and we were only little. The tea was very strange too. We had to drink out of cups on saucers, whereas we were used to mugs, so we found it difficult. Then there was a plate of thin bread and butter to eat. Not even any jam. Just a piece of bread and butter. Mrs Burton said if we ate it all up we would be allowed cakes. So we chewed valiantly and then Mr Burton went into the kitchen and came back with a small plate of little iced cakes. He called them fancies. There were two yellow and two pink. I chose yellow and Mrs Burton and Mr Burton took the pink ones. I saw Clover’s face. I knew just how much she wanted a pink one too. She didn’t eat her yellow one properly; she just bit all the icing off the top and licked the little bit of cream inside. Mr and Mrs Burton weren’t cross with her. They shook their heads and patted her curls and said she was a lovely little girlie. ‘A real Goldilocks,’ said Mr Burton. They

It's difficult to picture the Virgin Mary painting landscapes. Or Batman throwing pots. The flawless creature wouldn't need to make art.

Embrace Efficiency, Elevate Flavor: Smart Kitchen Tools for Culinary Adventurers The kitchen, once a realm of necessity, has morphed into a playground of possibility. Gone are the days of clunky appliances and tedious prep work. Enter the age of the smart kitchen tool, a revolution that whispers efficiency and shouts culinary liberation. For the modern gastronome, these tech-infused gadgets are not mere conveniences, but allies in crafting delectable adventures, freeing us to savor the journey as much as the destination. Imagine mornings when your smart coffee maker greets you with the perfect brew, prepped by the whispers of your phone while you dream. Your fridge, stocked like a digital oracle, suggests recipes based on its ever-evolving inventory, and even automatically orders groceries you've run low on. The multi-cooker, your multitasking superhero, whips up a gourmet chili while you conquer emails, and by dinnertime, your smart oven roasts a succulent chicken to golden perfection, its progress monitored remotely as you sip a glass of wine. But efficiency is merely the prologue. Smart kitchen tools unlock a pandora's box of culinary precision. Smart scales, meticulous to the milligram, banish recipe guesswork and ensure perfect balance in every dish. Food processors and blenders, armed with pre-programmed settings and self-cleaning prowess, transform tedious chopping into a mere blip on the culinary radar. And for the aspiring chef, a sous vide machine becomes a magic wand, coaxing impossible tenderness from the toughest cuts of meat. Yet, technology alone is not the recipe for culinary bliss. For those who yearn to paint with flavors, smart kitchen tools are the brushes on their canvas. A connected recipe platform becomes your digital sous chef, guiding you through each step with expert instructions and voice-activated ease. Spice racks, infused with artificial intelligence, suggest unexpected pairings, urging you to venture beyond the familiar. And for the ultimate expression of your inner master chef, a custom knife, forged from heirloom steel and lovingly honed, becomes an extension of your hand, slicing through ingredients with laser focus and lyrical grace. But amidst the symphony of gadgets and apps, let us not forget the heart of the kitchen: the human touch. Smart tools are not meant to replace our intuition but to augment it. They free us from the drudgery, allowing us to focus on the artistry, the love, the joy of creation. Imagine kneading dough, the rhythm of your hands mirroring the gentle whirring of a smart bread machine, then shaping a loaf that holds the warmth of both technology and your own spirit. Or picture yourself plating a dish, using smart portion scales for precision but garnishing with edible flowers chosen simply because they spark joy. This, my friends, is the symphony of the smart kitchen: a harmonious blend of tech and humanity, where efficiency becomes the brushstroke that illuminates the vibrant canvas of culinary passion. Of course, every adventure, even one fueled by smart tools, has its caveats. Interoperability between gadgets can be a tangled web, and data privacy concerns linger like unwanted guests. But these challenges are mere bumps on the culinary road, hurdles to be overcome by informed choices and responsible data management. After all, we wouldn't embark on a mountain trek without checking the weather, would we? So, embrace the smart kitchen, dear foodies! Let technology be your sous chef, your precision tool, your culinary muse. But never forget the magic of your own hands, the wisdom of your palate, and the joy of a meal shared with loved ones. For in the end, it's not about the gadgets, but the memories we create around them, the stories whispered over simmering pots, and the laughter echoing through a kitchen filled with the aroma of possibility.

Rayne observed, his gaze scouring hers. “I cannot believe the duel and this foolhardy race are the extent of his indiscretions.” She thought about it. There was the time he had brought an actress to live at Hamilton House until Mama had nearly boxed his ears and chased Mrs. Wilton from the duchess’s apartments. There had also been the evening he had gotten so inebriated, he had been attempting to hold a conversation with a potted palm at Lord and Lady Oxley’s ball. Later, he claimed he had mistaken the palm for a spinster. He had fallen down the staircase once and tripped into the statuary in the entry hall, shattering a marble bust of the first Duke of Montrose. She still recalled Monty kicking the poor duke’s nose across the polished floor and declaring the bust had been his least favorite anyhow. Catriona frowned. And then, there had been the time he had fallen into the lap of one of Mama’s friends at a dinner party. The time he had engaged in a heated shouting match with their father’s portrait. He had also once decided, in the midst of the night, to paint the second-floor hall. The time she had found him lying prone on the Aubusson in the library in a drying puddle of his own vomit… “Your face is expressive, my lady,” Rayne said grimly. “You need not speak a word, for I already have my answer.

there, she pushes herself to her feet. Hoisting her school bag onto her shoulder, she walks across the stones to the boardwalk, waiting for a mother with a pushchair to pass by before crossing over it and heading for the gate in their wall. As she lets herself onto the patio, closing the gate behind her, she looks up. Through the fronds of the palm, she sees her mum as she has many times before. Standing in her studio, her brush to the painting in front of her. Kitty in a bouncy chair beside her. Megan studies her, wondering what it is that causes her mother to press the front of her forearm to her forehead. What she’s painted on that flat white surface. More sea, she presumes. More boring sky. It’s hard to see clearly, as the sunlight’s shining on the glass, but, as Megan watches, her mum stands back from the canvas, covering her face with the palms of both hands. As though unable to stand the sight of what’s in front of her. Megan turns away, not wanting to see. Apart from that time after Kitty was born, she’d always thought of her mum as strong. Now the vulnerability she’s shown recently scares her… leaves her wondering where that leaves her. What’s clear is she can never tell her mum what she’s done. Not unless she wants to make things worse. Alex will have to remain her secret. Her mum drops her hands, and Megan steps back into the shadows of the oleander, not wanting to be seen. As she waits for her mum to move away from the sliding doors, she sees that the fat buds in the leaves that hide her from view have produced their first flower. It’s something her mum would celebrate, seeing as how, every year in November, she and Sean have to drag it, in its giant pot, into the sunroom so the winter frosts don’t get it. She wonders whether she’s seen it, but, from the look of her mum now, it’s clearly the last thing on her mind.

I understand now why sex is taboo within the confines of sanctity and truth. It is a binding agent. Everything you've said moments before suddenly holds reverence, and it takes a pronounced period of abstinence to unbind from this lewd knot. I arrive home to find my mother seated alone at our dinner table equipped for a gathering of six. She's been waiting for me, I can feel it. She worries herself with a pot of tea and a box of macarons from Ladurée. And I look at her with borrowed eyes - fearing her solitude, her size and her calm. She is relieved that I'm home, but I'm no longer at an age where she can scold me. Instead she offers me a cup of tea. Her best approach is to paint our home into a place I'd rather be.

Pastor Elmore roared out, “ ‘On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened!’ And why was that, my friends? Why did the Lord see fit to destroy his own creation, like a sculptor who smashes his clay with his fist, or a painter who slashes his canvas? Why, because it wasn’t right and good! And does the pot revile its creator for this? And does the painting weep? No!

Time and time again Billy Collins takes a mundane situation and spirals it out into something that is by turns humorous and poignant as in his poem "Imperial Garden", one of my favorites in this new collection: It was at the end of dinner, the two of us in a red booth maintaining our silence, when I decided to compose a message for the fortune cookie you were soon to receive. Avoid mulishness when choosing a position on the great board game of life was my mean-spirited contribution to the treasury of Confucian wisdom. But while we waited for the cookies, the slices of oranges, and the inescapable pot of watery tea, I realized that by mulishness I meant your refusal to let me have my own way every time I wanted it. I watched you looking off to the side— your mass of dark hair, your profile softened by lamplight— and then I made up a fortune for myself. He who acts like a jerk on an island of his own creation will have only the horizon for a friend. I seemed to be getting worse at this, I seemed to be getting worse at this, I thought, as the cookies arrived at the table along with the orange slices and a teapot painted with tigers menacingly peering out from the undergrowth. The restaurant was quiet then. The waiter returned to looking out at the street, a zither whimpered in the background, and we turned to our cookies, cracking the brittle shells, then rolling into little balls the tiny scrolls of our destinies before dropping them, unread, into our cups of tea— a little good-luck thing we’d been doing ever since we met.

pot /po/ I. nm 1. (récipient, contenu) container; (en verre) jar; (en plastique) carton, tub; (en faïence, terre) pot; (pichet) jug • ~ de verre | glass jar • mettre qch en ~ | to put [sth] into jars [confiture, fruits]; to pot [plante] • plante en ~ | potted plant • ~ de marmelade | jar of marmalade • ~ de yaourt (en verre) jar of yoghurt; (en plastique) carton of yoghurt • acheter un ~ de peinture | to buy a tin of paint • garder les ~s de confiture | to save jam jars • réutiliser les ~s de peinture | to re-use the paint tins • il a fallu trois ~s de peinture | it took three tins of paint voir aussi: cuiller 2. (de chambre) pot; (de bébé) potty • aller sur le ~ (ponctuellement) to go on the potty • depuis un mois il va sur le ~ | he's been potty-trained for a month now 3. ○(boisson) drink • prendre un ~ | to have a drink 4. ○(réunion) do (familier) (GB), drinks party • ~ d'accueil/d'adieu | welcoming/farewell party 5. ○(chance) luck • elle n'a pas eu de ~ | she hasn't had much luck • avoir du ~ | to be lucky • avoir un coup de ~ | to have a stroke of luck • (par un) coup de ~, la porte était ouverte | as luck would have it, the door was open 6. (argent commun) kitty • ramasser le ~ | (Jeux) to win the kitty II. Idiomes 1. payer les pots cassés | to pick up the pieces 2. c'est le pot de terre contre le pot de fer | it's an unequal contest 3. ce sera à la fortune du pot | you'll have to take pot luck 4. découvrir le pot aux roses | to stumble on what's been going on 5. être sourd comme un pot○ | to be as deaf as a post 6. tourner autour du pot | to beat about the bush 7. payer plein pot○ | to pay full price 8. partir or démarrer plein pot○ | to be off ou go off like a shot (familier) pot catalytique catalytic converter pot de chambre chamber pot pot de colle (lit) pot of glue; (fig) informal leech pot à eau water jug (GB), pitcher (US) pot d'échappement (silencieux) silencer (GB), muffler (US); (système) exhaust

focusing blame, painting pictures of the better life possible, stirring the pot to the boiling point. Their hope is to turn distress and frustration into anger, to turn anger into action, then to provide the plans and leadership to divert and direct that angry action, with a view to taking ultimate control. We have seen this pattern used effectively and often in recent history. Unfortunately, Wat Tyler was cut down before his demands were made clear, so we may never be able to clearly pinpoint the goals of the Great Society, or its true leadership.

By pressing our faces against the wire we could clearly see, nestling amongst torn bin liners, a red-splashed pot of discarded paint. I immediately directed Jeff to climb the fence to retrieve it. I would have done it myself, but my back had not been good for several days, mostly through shifting unsold copies of Hannibal Rising from the front of the shop to the rear. Also, I have a morbid fear of rats, and mice, and nettles and wasps and jagged cans and rotting food and damp newspapers and the unemployed.

In the last book of the Iliad (24.602ff.), Achilles urges Priam to eat: even Niobe, he says, after all her children had been slaughtered by the gods, took food eventually. Both Priam and Achilles have been bereaved of their dearest, and yet they gather themselves, and eat, and sleep, and go on living. (...) ...there are two early Lucanian vases with mourners by a grave stele with the same inscription "spoken" by the tomb: "On my back I grow mallow and thick-rooted asphodel: / in my bosom I hold Oedipus, son of Laios." Even Oedipus, the great king of Thebes, archetype of tragedy, experienced a catastrophic fall and descended into the deepest pit of horrors; yet ordinary plants grow on his tomb. We are not so different.

According to the scientist, time is interminable and inexhaustible. The artist is more inclined to relate the passage of time as a subject involving the randomness of memory and humankind’s ability to create vivid recollections. Astute artists depict collections of disjointed thought fragments in paintings and literature in order to stir the pot of human consciousness. Art rests upon the correspondence between the impact of external experience and the finiteness of human life. An artist attempts to articulate answers to the mystery of being by rendering a thoughtful interpretation of the world that we occupy and experience through our senses.

It is no wonder that historians trace the birth of Western civilization to these jewels of the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas. The Greek Isles are home to wide-ranging and far-reaching cultural traditions and mythic tales, not to mention the colorful history and unforgettable vistas that still draw thousands of tourists to the region every year. Minoan ruins stand alongside Byzantine churches and Crusader fortresses. Terra-cotta pots spilling over with hibiscus flowers adorn blinding-white stucco houses that reflect the sun’s dazzling light. Fishing villages perched upon craggy cliffs overlook clusters of colorful boats in island harbors. Centuries-old citrus and olive groves dot the hillsides. Lush vegetation and rocky shores meet isolated stretches of sand and an azure sea. Masts bob left and right on sailboats moored in secluded inlets. Each island is a world unto itself. Although outsiders and neighbors have inhabited, visited, and invaded these islands throughout the centuries, the islands’ rugged geography and small size have also ensured a certain isolation. In this environment, traditional ways of life thrive. The arts--pottery, glass blowing, gem carving, sculpture, and painting, among others--flourish here today, as contemporary craft artists keep alive techniques begun in antiquity. In the remote hilltop villages of Kárpathos, for example, artisans practice crafts that date back eons, and inhabitants speak a dialect close to ancient Greek. Today, to walk along the pebbled pathways of a traditional Greek mountain village or the marbled streets of an ancient acropolis is to step back in time. To meander at a leisurely pace through these island chains by boat is to be captivated by the same dramatic landscapes and enchanted islets that make the myths of ancient Greece so compelling. To witness the Mediterranean sun setting on the turquoise sea is to receive one of life’s greatest blessings.

When we denigrate mediocrity, we discourage ourselves and others from trying new things. It would be great to be a great painter, but it's also great just to paint. Or sing or throw pots or knit scarves or play chess.

Frida Kahlo once told her class of painting students that there is not one single teacher in the world capable of teaching art. The truth in these words comes to mind in every art class I teach. I believe you can teach technique and theory, but it is up to the individual to do the art part. For the student, this means giving yourself permission to work your way, whatever way that is. Once you accept that permission, you can incorporate foundation skills. This is no longer the Renaissance, and artists are no longer judged (or compensated) solely for realism and representation. There was a time when painting and drawing, coiling a clay pot, or fashioning a bucket to draw water from a well was part of daily life. Now we peck at keyboards, buy Tupperware, and drink from plastic bottles. By not using our hands, we lose our senses. I see this in my students. Proficient on the computer, they click out sophisticated graphics. But they are baffled by and fumble with a brush, frustrated at the time it takes to manually create what they can Photoshop in a flash. I’ve taught art for a quarter of a century and rely on sound lesson plans and discipline as well as creative freedom. Still, during each drawing, painting, and ceramic class I teach, I remind myself how I felt when I scratched out my first drawings, brushed paint on a surface, or learned to center porcelain on a wheel—how it felt to tame and be liberated by the media. And, how it felt to become discouraged by an instructor’s insistence on controlling a pencil, paintbrush, or lump of clay her or his way. For most of my Kuwaiti students, a class taken with me will be their first and last studio arts class. I work at creating a learning environment both structured and free, one that cultivates an atmosphere where one learns to give herself permission to see.

Frida Kahlo once told her class of painting students that there is not one single teacher in the world capable of teaching art. The truth in these words comes to mind in every art class I teach. I believe you can teach technique and theory, but it is up to the individual to do the art part. For the student, this means giving yourself permission to work your way, whatever way that is. Once you accept that permission, you can incorporate foundation skills. This is no longer the Renaissance, and artists are no longer judged (or compensated) solely for realism and representation. There was a time when painting and drawing, coiling a clay pot, or fashioning a bucket to draw water from a well was part of daily life. Now we peck at keyboards, buy Tupperware, and drink from plastic bottles. By not using our hands, we lose our senses.

One of the chairs in particular is unsettling to them. Made to look like an electric chair, it has leather straps and chains and wires hooked to a car battery. A dead rose wilts on the seat. The artist says the chair isn’t about physical death but about “how lying to each other kills beauty.” One chair is covered in bling, another in barbed wire and sculpted burnt and screaming faces. Two chairs are concealed in boxes. Another has a hole cut into the seat and a potted plant growing up from beneath. One chair is outfitted with fishbowls filled with live fish. Reassembled and painted to look like a black widow spider, one chair hangs from the wall.

And then I understood: only then, sipping nettle soup, tasting the green shoots, the force of life itself that had pushed the young nettles up through paving stones, cobbles, packed mud. Ugolino had flavored his dishes with this. With everything: our food. The steam that drifted, invisible, through the streets. The recipes, written in books or whispered on deathbeds. The pots people stirred every day of their lives: tripe, ribollita, peposo, spezzatino, bollito. Making circles with a spoon, painting suns and moons and stars in broth, in battuta. Writing, even those who don't know their letters, a lifelong song of love. Tessina dipped her spoon, sipped, dipped again. I would never taste what she was tasting: the alchemy of the soil, the ants which had wandered across the leaves as they pushed up towards the sun; salt and pepper, nettles; or just soup: good, ordinary soup. And I don't know what she was tasting now, as the great dome of the cathedral turns a deeper red, as she takes the peach from my hand and steals a bite. Does she taste the same sweetness I do? The vinegar pinpricks of wasps' feet, the amber, oozing in golden beads, fading into warm brown, as brown as Maestro Brunelleshi's tiles? I don't know now; I didn't then. But there was one thing we both tasted in that good, plain soup, though I would never have found it on my tongue, not as long as I lived. It had no flavor, but it was there: given by the slow dance of the spoon and the hand which held it. And it was love.

There he took off his shirt, sat on the edge of the cot, and at three-fifteen in the afternoon took his pistol and shot himself in the iodine circle that his personal physician had painted on his chest. At that moment in Macondo Ursula took the cover off the pot of milk on the stove, wondering why it was taking so long to boil, and found it full of worms.

Walls that had been attentively decorated with whatever was at hand; a home lined with plaster and a molding painted blue and red; little ornaments that hung on the walls, testifying to a loving care whose foundations had now been eradicated; traces of female-wisdom-hath-builded-her-house, paying close attention to myriad details whose time now had passed; an order intelligible to someone and a disorder in which somebody at his convenience had found his way; remnants of pots and pans that had been collected in a haphazard fashion, as need arose, touched by very private joys and woes that a stranger could not understand; tatters that made sense to someone who was used to them—a way of life whose meaning was lost, diligence that had reached its negation, and a great, very deep muteness had settled upon the love, the bustle, the bother, the hopes, and the good and less-good times, so many unburied corpses. But we were already tired of seeing things like this, we had no more interest in such things.

The complete and absolute rightness of his existence flooded into my life like a pot of golden poster paint tipped all over a white floor.

and the title of the picture was ‘The Deserted Garden.’ Alice had often said that it was one of the few pictures that she had ever really liked and I suppose somebody must have repeated the remark to Paul. The result was that Paul, who had painted the picture, gave it to Alice. Nothing is happening in the picture, but much has already happened and in it there is the promise, or the threat, of the future. The plaster peels from the walls, the glass is broken in the Gothic window, the green shutter falls forward. But nothing happens; the final decay of that window and of the garden beyond is not yet. It may be that the house will be restored, that the rank grass will be mown, that the flower-pot which lies on its side will be righted and the plant it contains will flourish.

Activities to Develop the Tactile Sense Rub-a-Dub-Dub—Encourage the child to rub a variety of textures against her skin. Offer different kinds of soap (oatmeal soap, shaving cream, lotion soap) and scrubbers (loofah sponges, thick washcloths, foam pot-scrubbers, plastic brushes). Water Play—Fill the kitchen sink with sudsy water and unbreakable pitchers and bottles, turkey basters, sponges, eggbeaters, and toy water pumps. Or, fill a washtub with water and toys and set it on the grass. Pouring and measuring are educational and therapeutic, as well as high forms of entertainment. Water Painting—Give the child a bucket of water and paintbrush to paint the porch steps, the sidewalk, the fence, or her own body. Or, provide a squirt bottle filled with clean water (because the squirts often go in the child’s mouth). Finger Painting—Let the sensory craver wallow in this literally “sensational” activity. Encourage (but don’t force) the sensory avoider to stick a finger into the goop. For different tactile experiences, mix sand into the paint, or place a blob of shaving cream, peanut butter, or pudding on a plastic tray. Encourage him to draw shapes, letters, and numbers. If he “messes up,” he can erase the error with his hand and begin again. Finger Drawing—With your finger, “draw” a shape, letter, number, or design on the child’s back or hand. Ask the child to guess what it is and then to pass the design on to another person. Sand Play—In a sandbox, add small toys (cars, trucks, people, and dinosaurs), which the child can rearrange, bury, and rediscover. Instead of sand, use dried beans, rice, pasta, cornmeal, popcorn, and mud. Making mud pies and getting messy are therapeutic, too.