let lemons be angry

This photograph of a photograph barely comes close to the real thing.

From the Affordable Art Fair k and I were at some time ago. The only piece we fell heart-in-mouth-in-love over.

In theory you can like a certain kind of photograph, or want to make astonishing art. But it never comes close to actually doing it. Which is why I want to take this year to stop talking, and go do something for real.

Last year met my needs, and I learned a lot. I sat at a desk, clicked on websites, did easy things, and got a stable income. But after work, I would come alive with meetings to hurry to and drawings to be done. True work began after 5 pm and on leave. Not that I didn't do anything during working hours, but it was after work that I felt I was doing something of true use.

I met two men recently.

The first is an artist-in-residence in Nanyang Primary School, and he is a potter. He helped to set up the pottery studio in the school, and spends his days teaching kids and adults, as well as working on his own pottery exhibition. As he spoke he would not stop beaming with a lazy, contented drawl that I was about to burst with envy over. He couldn't stop talking about how many students passed through his studio every year, and how this was his ministry for God. He handed out business cards with pride and supple potters' fingers. I knew that look--he had found the place his skills fit perfectly in.

The second is a pastor and counselor at a seminary, but more than that, he is a cook. He was dying of leukemia at the age of 28, but survived and graduated with honors in his MDiv two years later. He has done many academic things, but cooking is his real passion. He started out inviting people home to cook for them, and then was invited to cook for sunday school camps. Now at almost 60 years old, he is invited by governments to teach cooking to entire villages in Cambodia and Ghana, at the same time equipping widows and villagers with livelihood and refuge. Again, that beam, that contented drawl, that unstoppable talk about his work. "Cooking is in my DNA," he said, thumping his chest.

I have one goal this year: to get that satisfied beam when I talk about my daily job. I don't know what step to take first, but this will be one great journeying year.
There is something in my DNA, something in my own chubby but trained fingers, that does not fit at this computer desk. And so here I go.