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Ursalynn Dancing, 10"t x 5.5"w x 6"d, hand sculpted, clay finished with stains and a bead, 2003, by Tammy Vitale, $300.00

Ursalynn here is what I started out doing when working in clay.  That lasted about 1 or 2 years until I figured out that at that time there was no place to show this type of work, and no market for it here in Southern Maryland.  Now it is old and often shows want recent (within 2 years) work.  So Ursalynn sits in my studio on her shelf.  She is one of my favorites and I do believe I have a show for her.  If I can get myself together and get the application in!

Yesterday’s trip to C’Ville (former Transient) Crafters was glorious!  The day was perfect for traveling in a car with no air conditioning (hey, what do you want:  air-conditioning or a car with 426,000+ miles that’s still going and going and going?!).  I managed to miss almost all the traffic.  There were spots that were being worked on, like Allen’s Fresh (to the right) where it was one lane with a stoplight, but that worked because I got this photo – not the best, but the only one I have of this lovely marshy, peaceful area because usually we are whizzing by and there are no shoulders  to pull off on and take a photo.  This area is awesome when you hit it at sun rise or sun set.  I wish I had been at a higher spot to take a picture of it, but this will have to do.

The next picture (to the left) is from the beginning of the Harry Nice – or as we call it the 301 Bridge going from Maryland into Virginia on 301.  It also  had work going on and was down to one lane, giving me the opportunity to snap this picture quickly as I waited for a very short period of time for my turn to use the open lane.  I love that I live around so much water.  I don’t want to swim in it, I just want to absorb it’s energy – I find it very soothing to my native Aries/fire nature (the opposite of fire and also the matching cusp (and if you click over to this?  it is dead wrong on sports – I hate sports) on which I was born:  Pisces.  Water and Fire.  End and Beginning.  I have lots of excuses for my nature!  Fire and Water make steam.  The only thing I don’t  have is "earth" but that comes in with my Chinese zodiac earth (1948) rat nature – the rat, like Aries, is the beginning of the particular zodiac – always out front! Sometimes too far out front so that I’m the only one that can see over the hill and up ahead, which is disconcerting for everyone else who is behind and looking at other vistas in front of their noses.)

At the beginning of the day I was arguing with myself that my sales aren’t good enough to spend a whole day driving to and from just to put in a short wall of work.  But this is how it worked out:  I listened to 2.5 hours of One Coach sales materials on the way down and 2.5 hours of Feng Shui (the Black Tibetan Buddhist style)(which isn’t just about spacial placements but also about interior spirit) home training on the way back, leaving 1/2 hour or so of time to just have my own thoughts and enjoy  the beautiful fall day.  I traveled on back roads (which are more and more becoming main roads over the last 5 years since I’ve been making this trip) and that was very relaxing.  Ye olde above mentioned car is a trooper.  She acted perfectly – not a lick of trouble.  She likes all that straight driving with no stopping and starting.  Husband filled her up with all her necessary liquids before I left and I found diesel that was about 20 cents cheaper down in Virginia than it is here in Maryland.  The load in and out was easy as pie.  What more could one want for a day?  Just exactly what didn’t I accomplish that I needed to?  updated a shop, had a glorious drive in the mostly country, listened to my business tapes, listened to my "want to learn something new" tapes, relaxed….perfect!  What a great experience to feed that small nagging voice that says "grindstone, grindstone, grindstone" the next time I choose to be out and about.

And next time I’ll be able to schedule a stop in at Fredericksburg (VA) where I have joined the  Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts (about halfway between home and Charlottesville), and who know, perhaps I’ll find yet another place in between and will have a really good excuse for a regular road trip.  I LOVE traveling and I forget how much I like this easy drives by myself (as long as I also forget to fret about my 426K car and the potential for problems.  But hey, isn’t that what AAA is for?!)

I, once again, had magnificent things to share with you, along with several memes.  And I hit something that turned my computer off and cleared my storage space bar completely.  Now I have to reconstruct and time for that will have to come later as other things beckon. 

thought for the day:  I decided on two things:  firstly I was going to do at least one thing every day toward my future life as [an artist].  I calculated that no matter how small a step I took each day, over a year that would come to a grand total of 365 actions toward the life I wanted.  One thing a day adds up to a great deal over time.  one thing a day is a powerful multiplier….I was doing my damnedest to create a kind of gravitational field that would have me drawn increasingly into its center.  I had an intuition that when you really annunciate what you want in the world you will always be greeted, in the first place, with some species of silence.  It may be that the silence is there so that you can hear exactly what you have asked for, and hear it more clearly so that you can get it right.  David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea:  Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity.