Late July, Roughly

July twenty-ninth. There is a specific quality to the last week of July where everything feels slightly overdue, the heat has been here long enough to stop being interesting, the month has gone on past its welcome, and you start making small decisions just to feel like you are moving. I cleaned out the junk drawer on Sunday. I bought the good coffee instead of the usual. Small reckonings.

Simone and I went back to open studio on Thursday. That's twice now, or maybe three times, I've lost count in the way you lose count of things that have stopped requiring a decision. The wheel is harder without a class around it. There's no instructor walking the row, no collective rhythm to borrow from. You just sit down and start, and either the clay cooperates or it doesn't, and mostly it doesn't, and then sometimes it does a little. I made something approximately cylindrical. Simone's collapsed again but she photographed it first, which I think says everything about where she's landed with the whole enterprise.

simone and the clay, still negotiating

The windowsill has been the same for a few weeks now. The two photographs, the collapsed bowl, the letterpress card, Gerald trailing off the left edge. It looks finished in a way I didn't plan for it to look finished, like a sentence that ended in the right place by accident. I keep meaning to photograph it properly, in the late afternoon when the light comes in at the right angle. I haven't yet. Maybe that's fine.

it held. barely, but it held.

August is three days away. I have no particular feelings about this except that the summer is going to get quieter soon and I think I'm ready for that.