Hi friends,
All my writings now live on Substack, alongside information of upcoming exhibitions and catalogue details.
Substack makes for a more user friendly reading experience (think blogging circa 2000s). I’ve been enjoying myself a lot on there and I hope you will too.
Join me at: Notes From A Potter
In Melbourne these days, the rain reigns for days at a time before the sun intervenes. On these rare occasions, life is a display of pleasure.
The soft wind waves a gentle welcome and the air is fragrant, wet and damp and sweet. The sidewalk vibrates with eager enthusiasm, the flowers bloom and the trees stood tall. Tiny pearls of waters dance on the lush green leaves, reflecting wavering light into the air.
On the same sidewalk, a lifeless bird laid to rest on the ground near the lettuce patch.
Sometimes, death still occurs, even when there’s seemingly no reason to stop living.
Image of vessel “On a sunny day”
Lately I’ve been catching the bus to get home.
This particular stop is a popular one for the time I’m usually there, often, there’s a crowd.
Most days, I can hear the discordant mixture of sound way before I can see the stop sign. People talking, shuffling, laughing, the mechanic and hydraulic sounds of doors open and closing.
Today, there’s a line of travellers circling the stop, nevertheless, the usual cacophony is absent.
I sit, unnoticed. Once in awhile, someone glances upwards, passively monitoring for an arrival. It’s quiet.
I think about my aunt, and how she stayed quiet all through her prognosis, and remained there right through to the moment she left all of us. We did not know, not til the end.
Sometimes when things get too quiet, I feel stifled, and every breath suddenly feels like a struggle.
Image of vessel “It’s quiet at the bus stop”
My grandma has a brother. We call him grandad Nhã.
Granddad is a Facebook enthusiast. He has 209 friends and a wall full of posts. Granddad is also a poet.
One of my favourite is a series he titled “Thứ Bảy. Đến hẹn lại lên” (“It’s Saturday, be seeing you again”). He posts them every Saturday. Sometimes they’re travel anecdotes, sometimes they’re narration of the people and things that he encountered.
On Saturday when I mindlessly scroll through my Facebook feed, I would unfailingly run into his poems.
Sometimes I earnestly consider every words, sometimes I passively glimpse through the paragraph, nevertheless, I take great pleasure in the simple act of seeing them.
Last Saturday, I searched for his Facebook profile. His poems are absent.
Last Saturday, I counted, it’s been 123 Saturday’s since he’s passed.
Image of vessel “A jar for Saturday”
I made a little ladle holder. It’s smaller than the vessels I tend to build. It’s vaguely modest, like my presence in this vast city I call home from time to time.
In this city, everything managed to be more felt. The tender pleasure of life exists in constant alignment with the debris of living. In this city, sometimes I’m an eager participant, sometimes I’m on the outskirt, gazing in.
Yesterday, my dad came home, announcing : “Uncle has gotten fat”. A common remark in our culture, sometimes hinting the person mentioned has been unexpectedly prosperous, sometimes alluding they’re looking worse for wear. One can never tell which is which at the start of his story. He wondered if I remember.
The man in this story is not my actual uncle, though in our community we are always someone’s nieces or nephews by association, though, sometimes, the association cease at the story.
Uncle is looking for a new school for his son. He has never been a full time parent. The boy wants to learn the guitar. He’s going blind. His mother started beating him since he was two. The boy and his father just reunited, one extensive custody battle later.
Image of vessel “A little ladle holder”
It took 3 years and 7 months to feel like I’m somewhat at home here.
Life is happening around me, but life is also happening in another language, in another part of the world, where my loved ones are.
When you’ve lived most of your life out of 3 suitcases, you can feel a continuous sense of absence to your reality. Sometimes, I still feel like I’m only a visitor here, but where I’ve come from is not home anymore.
It is slowly shifting though. My centre of gravity is inching closer to this place. Now, I can make an overweight stone, and not immediately panic about how I can possibly fit it in a suitcase.
Project “waterstone”, built from materials at SoCa. Made for the garden I don’t have, on land that’s still largely foreign to me.
