Tea-bowl Tantra

Mt. Fuji for Natsuko drawn
On this teabowl, dripped upon.
What's got fire, land, and sea?
With soul, not ire, it stands for me.

Watered Shino, tinged and rosy,
To daughter Maya, a gift with poesy.
Why so pleasant drinking tea?
Life's great lesson is simplicity.

Little bats, from iron rich clay,
Nibbled my lip, they crawl'd through glaze.
This Vampire Cup was made from mud,
With vampire bats, for drinking blood!

Win this bowl without a fee,
Drink from a vessel, soul-ed by tea.
A humble bowl's modernity,
Took some soul, from a mystery.
The tiny pin prick on this bowl,
Defeats perfection, that has no soul.

To Lieutenant Edward Lash,
This cup got covered, by wood ash.
I'll give to you at Brandreth Lake,
Where tea we'll drink, and thanks we'll take.

On a lumpy cup our fire played,
Dumped in ash, and melted clay.
This project's soul, is friendship tea,
Not about objects, or pottery.
I've named this bowl for a moon that's full,
It gleams tonight, my full-moon bowl.

Her knee's inflamed, she lies in bed,
Some tears of pain, it's turned bright red,
Where tantra acts the night is clear,
Reflects back, what light is near.

By a river of time, a restless fire,
Ignites in life, what dreams inspire.
Who will take this Shino bowl,
And then for tea, will pour in soul?

What in deed does Murdoch fear?
He's turned eighty, could play King Lear,
In James the son, his ego's host,
He made a run, with his father's ghost.

There's a time to lead and a time to follow,
One's the seed, and the other's the father.
Shiva meditates in his cave,
So brings success, the 'I Ching' says.

I come at last to bowl nineteen,
In which I taste some soul with tea.
On this bowl, Don-oxide danced,
Quixote's soul, walks with lance.

In a tidal marsh, of sunset red,
We saw this egret, before going to bed.
Some red flashing, inside drips,
What's left of brushwork, looks like fish.

I've written couplets about each cup,
Next time I'll write them on it.
And if I get fed up with that,
I'll then start writing sonnets.

A slim tree with leaves of green,
A mountain hidden by what you're seeing.
Mud burned red, by simple iron,
The blood is fed by trembling desire.
A draught of Mars will deaden fears,
Drink from this cup, live a thousand years.

A distant isle swathed in fog,
From ashen fire, a dawn-rising raga.
A volcano's erupted, or else a wig,
A tiny hill, sprouts grassy sprigs.

A weft ikat by fire woven,
A sketch of flames in a witches' coven.
On that sari, or pashmina shawl,
Behind my drawing lies hidden from all.
A Shino bowl, where reds have flashed,
Now is gone, to David's stash.

Hail to a Mott Street friend,
Hale fell at my journey's end.
From this cup we'll drink some tea,
And then old friend, it belongs to thee.

Streaks of lightning, striking down,
Thirty-one is crying, "I'm almost done!"
Strokes by nature's drawing kit,
Mocks attempts, at imitating it.
When tea in this, is finally bowl-ed,
The X you'll see is green and gold.

Fire flutters, and then it rushes,
Iron splatters, rosy blushes.
A mountain seen through snowy haze,
Leaves of tea, in a crackly glaze.
The project’s through, Cup thirty-six,
A haiku of leaves, and winter sticks.

-:-

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Tea-bowl for M Findlay, #36 of 36, "The Haiku Cup"

     "The project's through, Cup thirty-six
      A haiku of leaves, and winter sticks."

The tale of 36 tea-bowls reached an end.

Of the first telling.

Now I must follow through with tea, a show, and delivery to those that have chosen bowls for themselves. The bowls will fade away, in time, in some fashion. Some day in the future I'll sit talking to a friend, and he or she will ask me, "Do you remember this?" and I'll be shown one of these fragments of fired earth.

And I'll remember . . . I'll experience time!

Thank-you all for helping me tell the story. You helped me examine my work. Imperfections. The reasons I make it. The people I make it for.

By reading this you helped tell it. By skimming you helped tell it. By choosing, you told it and by not choosing you helped tell it. Like a kiln fire, no matter what you did you played a role.

Many who wanted cups tried to leave comments but were unable or unwilling to navigate past the text verification box that Google puts up. For this I apologize. Looking back I realize that this was a hurdle . . . life does have hurdles.

This last cup is given to a dear cousin, M. Findlay, an artist, and writer of haiku poetry.

Here is a sample of her work:


        in the background
        a robin talks to me
        as I read my book


We make what we make because we must, or because we choose to. Art may play a role in either what must be done. or what is chosen to be done.

We don't require birdsong, and neither do other birds. Birds sing because they're able. We write poetry because we're able, and if we make pots we do so because we're able.

Having to, or wanting, has nothing to do with the supposed art of it. So the ritual of birdsong has much to teach us,.

If you can sing, sing.

-:-

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Tea-bowl for N. Naumova, #35 of 36, "The Darjeeling Cup"

     "A mountain seen through snowy haze,
       Leaves of tea, in a crackly glaze."

We are at the eve of completion. Other work starts after this one, preparing journeys abroad, and across this country, readying the studio for visitors, organizing the exhibition.

The brushstrokes on this one do resemble a far away Himalayan peak. A view from Darjeeling, through mist.

On the other side, the 'fog' of crackled Shino has overrun the cup. In time the tiny cracks darken. That process may be sped up, by soaking vessels in tea, but why rush it?

Let age come naturally to all things. Trees, prairies, tea-bowls too.

-:-

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Tea-bowl for Katerina, #34 of 36, "Blushing Mountain"

     "Fire flutters, and then it rushes,
      Iron splatters, rosy blushes."
   
If it seems I'm posting these earlier each day, I am. The days are getting shorter.

This cup goes to a dear friend whom I've never met, but whose love of poetry I have found inspiring, and to whom I wrote a small poem, when I discovered a small painting at the Metropolitan Museum that looked like her, even though it was painted nearly two thousand years ago.

Katerina lives in Cyprus now, after a number of years studying poetry in England. There she takes photographs, makes prints, and reads poetry with a free spirit.

August is cooler. Winter prepares her frost and snow. But the blush of summer is still here, behind everything like a hot shadow.

-:-

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Tea-bowl for A Devi, #33 of 36 "The Alchemy Bowl"

     "When tea in this, is finally bowl-ed,

      The X you'll see is green and gold."

Cup 33. Three more to go.

In case you've not been following, the cups are disappearing almost as soon as I post them. I wish the early days of this experiment had been as busy. I fully expect the project to complete with some people feeling excluded. I can't help that. I've put 36 cups up, in good faith, for a month now, dangling them like a school kid's baited hook. Now it's almost time to go home and get busy with life.

I've got work to make. My studio's a mess! A bird is loose, flapping around in the upper story, and there's a leak in the roof. I've got work to glaze, fire, and poetry to finish up. My kiln rebuild needs some more tweaks - I have welding to do.

My next six months will be busy, travelling, and enjoying tea with the different participants in my studio, up north, or around the globe. I have reasons to see places I've never visited.

I have leads to a few galleries interested in exhibiting these 36 works, complete with various gifts of art, poetry, etc.

As pots, they have many flaws. To all you gloating potters out there - I know, I know! What should one do? Only make works that are perfect?

Or give them away? That is what I've done. What I've asked for in return, is structure, a matrix, of memory, solidifying my understanding of this body of work, as a lead into doing more.

All hold tea. So we also have flaws, all of us, but hold soul. Those who have participated, I think understand the synchronous nature of this experiment.

The cup is an anagram for soul. Mine, yes, but more the person that agrees to take it on. Soul flies to it. . . and fills it.

Like tea.

-:-

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Tea-bowl for Sadako, #32 of 36, "A Fire Duet"

     "Strokes by nature's drawing kit,

      Mocks attempts, at imitating it."

Sometimes the fire will do something as if to say, "I can do what you do, but better!".

What we have here on this pot is a sort of duet. Marks made by me, with a brush laden with iron-oxide, and marks made by the fire.

This one's cream colored all round. Crystals formed, leading to full a full scale downpour on the opposite side, yet the color of the ash fluxing and glaze is much the same on all sides.

-:-

The fire draws. I draw.

This leads to a realization. We humans believe we've attained something magnificent, able to write, paint, design buildings, build rockets, etc., yet we fail to see our egos fairly splitting apart with hubris. Arrogance, perhaps one of the most distinctive of human qualities, has cooked a potent brew of disasters waiting to happen.

While we may force our children to live within their means, individually, and through our governments, (those expressions of our greater self) it may be seen just how how foolish and inept we really are. We are governed, literally, by arrogant and selfish men acting in their own self interest, yet the governed are no different than their rulers. Collectively, and individually we break the rules we preach amongst ourselves. Sometimes, man is noble. Collectively, most of the time, he's a beast.

We have not learned to live sustainably on this planet, moreover we've distorted our morality to fit our fierce competition for scarce resources. We thus have chosen individual life over collective life.

Honest souls working for dishonest corporations, are responsible for destructive and dishonest deeds. We are unable to pass laws or enact policies we know would be beneficial and useful for us as a species, the survival of our children's children, and the life of our planet.

Yes, we are deeply flawed. So we gloat again, "That is human!"

We could say, "We were tempted". Our logical brains saw a way to reduce the 'work' for some of us via below ground temptations such as petroleum, and spend the income thus generated on other below ground temptations, such as gold, diamonds, and white marble. The earth's riches make an intoxicating case for lives of thievery and abuse. Dirty money is made extracting these riches, while starvation occurs to millions just miles away. In the past year, the deltas of both the Mississippi and the Niger Rivers were devastated by oil spills, which crippled local economies, and wetland ecosystems. Somewhere close by in this small world, live the captains of industry who approved and profited from such destruction. They are waited on amidst marble floors, and move about fearfully in armored gas guzzling vehicles that burn their oily contraband.

Such qualities in a human being, it is oft said, come before a fall, though such truisms have traditionally been wagged at errant individuals, not the entire species on a tottering planet.

Careful humans, a deep fall is coming! Prepare.

Homo sapiens is not as unique as he tells himself! We're not the only intelligent creature on the planet. Our DNA is simply not that unique! Should we perish, we'll be replaced within a split second of planetary time, with another being as or more intelligent, and one that is perhaps less flawed. Is it not true that the second edit of a computer, or a machine of any kind, corrects many of the defects birthed by its first release?

Try to build a dam of sticks as well or as efficiently as a beaver, or construct a hanging nest of grass strong enough for a family of five like a weaver bird. And if you doubt intelligence is being employed by these creatures, try spotting a lie as effectively as an ordinary Labrador retriever! Try predicting the World Cup like Paul the Octopus or surviving upon a budget of foraged food as efficiently as a bird weighing just a few grams in the sub-zero temperatures of the fiercest winter.

Fire and water allocate resources better than the best human economy. A mere fragment of local weather calculates more inputs than any brain.

We're descended from nature. We're a subset. endowed with talents to get a job done.

We're all energy processors, with a purpose. And here, writing of 'purpose' I'm speaking of Man's 'work'. Not his 'play'. Not his poetry, or love, or art.

Birds work hard.They play a vital role spreading seeds, what waste they produce is all beneficial. Many fly extreme distances to winter or nest. Those that stay behind, shiver to survive, high metabolisms pitted against winter extremes. Yet they also 'play'. Research shows they sing, incessantly, often for the fun of it. Water also 'plays', and water works.

Names assign 'roles' to forces of nature, such as calling a piece of water, a 'river'. But water, as a force, an element, with inner laws of behavior, does agree to forever honor the banks of the Mississippi. A river is not a contract with nature! The floods out West, painfully, represent water at 'work'. That 'work' changes, depending upon what we do. We may elect to care for the Mississippi basin, or abuse it. If the latter, water will 'work' differently. Each entity in this universe has an order that it delights in, and another that it works upon. Delight while it is there, but work to keep that place.

Human attempts at self-governance clearly illustrate the huge inefficiencies built into our species. We're an all-purpose ape, comparatively a recently evolved robot, a clunky design unproven in so many ways. The birds watch us gawkily clambering about, digging up the place. They've been soaring aloft for two hundred and fifty million years. Whose survival are you betting on?

I have a theory - a grim one - Man's intelligence allowed him to exploit a surplus of fixed carbon, petroleum and natural gas, coal, as well as limestone, and other forms of sedimentary rock. Our industry releases back into the atmosphere gaseous carbon that is needed to supply the world of plants. The photosynthesis based ecosystem will enjoy the carbon windfall that we're putting out for life to enjoy and prosper upon after we've gone.

Trapped carbon became a problem. Much of recently produced carbon waste, bodies of dead plants and trees, is processed by fungi. But fungi evolved after the great age of plants. And carbon has been trapped steadily for billions of years. Yes global warming, and global polluting as a part of global 'ruining' is a threat to human life . . . but not to the long-term lives of plants.

Yes indeed, we, you and I, represent one of the earth's great convulsions of change. Humans play a giant role in transforming the planet to better utilize energy from the sun. In ways human life represents the planet at work, getting a dirty job done. Yet we 'play' as well.

      Who knows what line of poem or song
      Delights the God who strings us along.
      What lone voice, or lovely tune,
      Postpones our day, of reckoning soon.

Meanwhile our 'work' consumes us. That 'downside' to the photosynthetic equation, solar energy trapped in sugars, cellulose, and sedimentary rock, when re-released into the atmosphere, makes our world less habitable - to us.

In the grand scheme of things we will be written about as being very useful. To the plants, whom we serve, since without them, we cannot live.

In the ocean, shells of plankton and other marine life sit atop a chain of sun-trapping carbon-fixing ecologies. Their carbonaceous bodies pile up as limestone and sedimentary rock on the ocean floors. When continents lift, huge quarries of these rocks are presented - mines excavate carbonate containing minerals by the teraton every year. Exposed to acid precipitation, C02 is released.

Our agriculture, stripping soil poor jungle basins such as the Nile and Niger,  converting these dense carbon traps to agricultural grazing, where cattle fed on grasses add methane and C02 to the atmosphere.

We are the warmers of the earth. By putting marble, slate, even granite on the surfaces of buildings, and making concrete from the same materials, we expose fixed carbon to acid rains, which in turn releases carbon back into the atmosphere. Global warming's very inconvenient to humans. Soil depletion and de-forestation contributes to terrible floods followed by horrendous droughts.

But to plants, we bring manna from heaven. Without C02, they cannot live or multiply. We're increasing global concentrations. Gaseous carbon will allow another billion years of plant evolution. Other creatures will evolve alongside the green ones.

Will we?

That dismal equation, ugly as it is for our near future (global warming, exacerbated weather conditions, deforestation, desertification, acid rain, etc.) returns the earth to a very early state of atmospheric condition, providing a carbon-rich feast for another great age of plants.

Man has not invented, anything as subtle as photosynthesis, for trapping the power of the sun. The only way the earth may remain cool long term, and not bake to death like Venus, or freeze like Mars, is if plants have an assured future on the surface of our lonely rock.

Homo sapiens, has been hard at 'work' for two million years, stirring up the bodies of dead plants. Our term of employment, is nearing completion. Enjoy your 'play' time people!

Enjoy your love, your poetry, and song, Our job at hand won't be here long.

-:-

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