Bits and Pieces

Crash. Bang. Thud.

If the day came with a soundtrack, it could have easily been tracks from a construction site mixed with shrieks laid down in a haunted house. All day long I behaved, as my mother so often said as I was growing up, like a bull in a china shop.

At mosaic camp, I used scissors inappropriately and sliced my finger open.



I barreled into an abandoned ironing board and caused the iron to tumble onto the tile floor during a particularly grim segment of the afternoon during which I was convinced that months of work was destined for naught for want of a blue pen. Yes, blue.



In the heat of the hunt, I brusquely tossed a full tote bag from a chair an onto the same tile surface. Much later, I would discover that the bag contained a full jar of printing ink. A veritable sea of black ink, unleashed in a quest for the merest amount of blue.



The Think Green button swimming in a sea of black gunk is a nice touch, don’t you think? A sort of ironic commentary of sad times on a larger scale.

But the most notable thing about these images is that they never really should have existed. See, the very first think I dropped Thursday morning was my camera. I’d just finished watching my son lead worship during chapel at his high school, and was stunned by what I’d witnessed. He had the presence of a man—a thing I have never before seen, and it left me a bit off kilter. So much that I completely forgot that I had tossed my camera in the open bag on my lap. As I stood to make a stealthy exit and head on to mosaic camp, my camera bounced on ahead of me, straight across the gym floor.

It spent the next four hours in a state of inertia, unresponsive to my efforts to make it function. Even though it would mysteriously begin working again as soon as I returned home, the tone for the day had been set. My camera is like a vital organ, and its sudden, albeit temporary amputation left me weak and pallid. I continued to bumble along through my day long after the man at the camera shop gave my Third Eye a clean bill of health (it could, of course, go at any moment, but then, couldn’t we all?) I was still shaky.

Which was why my husband wasn’t too confident about my handling of my gallery portfolio, which was due that afternoon.

“Get those pieces out of your hands as quickly as possible,” he advised. “And better yet, get your daughter to drive.”

So I snapped a photo of this little grouping of pieces, which will join the seahorse to complete my introductory gallery portfolio….and held the work, along with my breath during the half hour drive.



Those three pieces? They were pretty much the only things I touched that day that are still intact. I figure it's because in reality, I already broken them. That, my friends, is the beauty of being a mosaic artist. I may be a bull in a china shop, but I've learned what to do with all the broken bits.


In Other News:
So I barely got this post in while in was still Today. Which means I will post tomorrow, but a little later in the day.

Astute readers may wonder how I got the photos of my bloodied finger, when I clearly stated that my camera didn’t work until I was back home. This shot was only possible due to the extreme depth of the cut, which caused it to burst open numerous times though out the afternoon. Yeah. It was just that kind of day.

Mosaic camp is now complete, but not before scandal broke out in our little community of artists. Seems the philosopher's daughter had never considered before last week that maybe Santa's not real. The Philosopher himself distributed emails about it and everything. Basically, the family with no beliefs believes in Santa. But not God. If THAT isn’t something to ponder…