I was drawn to the large painting like a hummingbird to a bee balm flower, strolling past the shelves of mugs and bowls and other pottery on the front porch where the artists were selling their works. I found myself standing on a hill, overlooking a rolling field and expanse of forests. The painting in front of me mimicked its surroundings. I noticed there were some boys on the back porch lighting up something to smoke, but my own exhilaration was fabricated entirely from the painting I saw. I remembered C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, lost the people I came there with, stepping for a moment in through the frame of this painting. It looked like Vincent Van Gogh returned for a day in the body of some Appalachian and painted what I know as home: Appalachian hills, a field, and hay bales, and a sky thick with oily swirls of blue and white. For a long time, I just stood there in the world of the painting, grieving reality, breaking a damp feverishness that won me over in a contest of creative brilliance. I don’t remember what Jeff Enge said to me, except that it was alluring only through being hesitant and unassuming. Something simple like asking if I liked his painting and a soft agreement when I said I liked it very much and was it a Van Gogh? And oh, it couldn’t be “just 300 dollars?” I wanted to tell him about my artist sister, but he walked away as if he didn’t want me to buy the painting at all. Like, he would have sold it to anyone but me. I drifted around the art show, but nothing else spoke to me at all. It was by no means a necessity that I purchased something. I certainly wouldn’t have bought the painting at all and I definitely wasn’t pressured, but I couldn’t find a way not to leave without it.

Like human beings,
clay is a resilient substance.
It can be recycled back into art time and again,
wetting it down and spinning it up
or the simple act of photographing
the pieces on the ground,
lining it up on a table or a window sill.
Even shattered art is still art,
vibrant, purposeful, and with a story of its own.

Inside, there was a selection of free food, which usually is more alluring to me than just about anything. But when I went in, my goal in mind was to run my debit card and buy the painting. I didn’t even try the hot cider. I have been in love, and this feeling I had of not being hungry, was a similar kind of giddiness. Though I must emphasize it was not for the artist but the art itself, like reading some literature that brings me to places I never could have elsewhere gone. The artist gave me a beautiful large pot that fit my character. He said something unreal about it, like that it was his first ever piece of pottery. He also said this was the first painting he ever had sold. I don’t even remember if I thanked him. I was in such a place of wonder. So a cast of artists, my friends, and guys passing around a pipe, loaded the painting in the back seat of Kaleigh’s Honda. The painting rode down the gravel road, leaving Jeff and the other painting he did something like it behind.

The bodies of women
and men are not the only thing cut and ruined by sickness,
mutilation, and suicide.
I have said many times with pride
that I have never been suicidal
but at the same time,
I have quit so many things so many times,
emotionally, giving up on myself,
hating who I am, who I am becoming.
If I had not have dropped out,
I never would be right here,
plugging along.

Henry was contorted in the back seat. As we rode down the crooked road, I thought of Henry’s back, hoping he wouldn’t develop some late onset form of scoliosis. On the way to the art show, Henry had pointed out a turnip field to Kaleigh who was driving. He said the owners were some friends of his and they wouldn’t mind it if we harvested some turnips. I had had so many turnips in my life, up until that point, that I thought I knew the vegetable. But lo and behold and leave it to Henry to pull out his pocket knife as we loaded back into the car. He whittled the root of the turnip, carving off the outer peeling. When he handed it to me, one big chunk of turnip skewered on the blade, probably because I had never before had raw turnip, I took the round hunk of roughage and took a bite. Raw turnip in late fall is a delicious nutty sweet and crunchy food. As we drove on, I began to emote, my puritan guilt emitting from my pours like turnip pheromone. Did I really just spend 300 dollars on a painting? Sure I had 300 dollars. Yes it was a beautiful painting and sure I got a lovely “Winnie the Pooh” pot to go with it. But I never have spent that kind of money all at once on something so unpractical. Except for the kayak… Henry piped up then. He said I needed to shut my mouth and be grateful and stop beating myself up and enjoy the day. What a mantra!

Art makes art like my beautiful 68 year old mother,
and the beautiful wrinkles on her face.
Art is the wrinkles.
Art is in favor of the exorbitant painting.
My mother has a baggy, beautiful face.
She has wrinkles from crying when my grandmother was dying,
and when my grandfather died,
and more for me when I was a blue baby.
I can only dream of enduring my struggle so gracefully.

After, Kaleigh dropped off Henry, I asked her to drop me off at my car, to go with me back to where I lived, and finally to help me unload the painting and carry it down to the basement where I dwelled. I put the Winnie the Pooh pot in the back seat of my Honda, turned on my engine, turned around my car because of the dead end road, and followed Kaleigh to the house where I lived. I wasn’t certain if I should open the garage door to get in the painting more easily and I certainly wasn’t thinking about the potter’s prized first pot when I opened my back door to unload, and it rolled out and shattered on the pavement. I stopped for a couple minutes just to breathe in the day and to take in what was happening. I did this. More guilt. The sun was going down with much beauty. Kaleigh, being the good friend she is, asked if the pot was broken. I felt around the dimly lit pavement, in my attempt of salvaging every bit of this artwork. I knew Kaleigh wanted to bring the painting in and get home. But my floating mood broke with the pot, and I was determined to get some grounding before I carried expensive artwork down a steep set of stairs. What grief. My hands shook. For a few more moments I felt much like a popped balloon, and then I swallowed it down with some joke. And with the joke, I began to forget.

The Joneses
Once I lived
with very
old trees.

I have a memory of one of my first conversations with Libby Jones. “The other incoming students are so strong. I am 27 and already crying because I miss my Mom.” I distinctly remember what Libby responded. “I thought you were the more strong.” Did she mean I was stronger because I was weeping my heart out? Because I was allowing my vulnerability to do what it does? Is it a sign of strength when people wail uncontrollably more than being able to hide our tears?

What I see in these four pieces of broken
pottery is a caste of women.
We work for 75 cents on the dollar.
Our bodies might have aged quickly.
But light rises off our skin
like evaporating moisture,
like auras, like fields of energy,
or white blobs on a photograph
because of the shaky hands of the photographer.
Blame it on her clitoris.

When Roger Jones saw the shattered pottery on the Redwood bench, just outside the basement door, he went towards it thinking he would clean it up. But there was a note on a piece of paper that I had written. “Please leave this here. I will get it soon!” After a busy week, Roger asked me if it would help if he tried to glue it back together. Roger saw a point of sadness, shattered pottery, art, a girl sniffling out in the cold, moving around pieces of broken pottery, snapping these images with her camera, the last drops of rain slipping through the cracks in the upstairs porch. People all see everything through their personal distorted lenses. The next morning, I woke up with the stars. December 19th, 2011. Bundled up in wool and flannel, I grabbed my red camera and a bottle of water. It was five AM when I settled down at the bench to wait on the sun to float over the horizon. Impatiently I clicked my camera.

What is the purpose of art?
I look at these photographs
of carefully positioned
fractured pottery.
I had played with them on the
Redwood picnic table.
Though they were broken,
I still saw the beauty in them.

Maggie Hess