I miss making beads. The ability to go out into the garage and lose myself in the flame. Its colors and it sounds. The quiet passion, the small moves. The constant tug between using gravity and having it control you...

Yes, I've found the ceramics studio here, but it is not the same. It is so cold.
It is fantastically incredible, there is no doubt in my mind. That feeling of having your hands so deep in earthen creation. To really be affecting something, just by breathing, shaking, seeing the repercussions of your every action. Having to learn how far is too far, how many touches is too many, and watching your work break in your hands and fly splattering across the room. Needing that centeredness before anything else may build from it. To feel genuinely human, alive, of the earth, to be messy and have your hands so covered in your shaping of creation... But still so cold.



And maybe that time in my life was simpler. Or maybe everything always seems simpler looking back. And maybe I really am more of a pyro than I ever thought possible.
But there is something amazing about shaping glass. It's so powerful, something beyond you, and yet so small. It becomes a microcosm of the world, something you can affect, but not physically touch. You can't become one with it because it will burn you, and yet you still lose yourself in it so quickly. It is so mesmerizing, just the sound of the flame and your own regular breathing, the glow of glass hot like honey and its constant need for you...


The effect we have on others without realizing it. That need we have, and the power we have in fulfilling our needs. Our own selfish actions that we do out of our desire to have something. My need for that physical contact, that comfort, my own desire to have arms around me holding me safe in the dark.
And yet, I was not the only one affected. In my need and desire for human connection, the humans I connect with are also affected. Their need for human contact, for physical comfort, for the warmth of another body, is also touched.
I am not independent. It's a new realization.
And it scary.

Again I realize again that I cannot be a Jedi, as they are defined by the old Republic.

For the first time in so long I'm finally realizing how much I do need this human connection, how much relationships and other physical beings keep me alive as I do the same for them. I'm not solely metaphysical. I need this here, the world, the people around me. I can't be independent. I don't think I could be who I am, become the person I'm becoming, without the community around me. I would be so lost, so confused, without words to define this existence I find myself in, without the people around me who too live as I do...
The word 'affection.' It's love, and yet, all it really means is the act of being affected...

We are not independent. We need each other, we need that community, we need, on some deeper human level, beyond romantic, those around us who not only sympathize but who ask the same questions and truly live the same way. Just being together, not having to worry one bit about what we are called by the world, not having to put up fronts of what is expected, just being...

And it scares me that I am needed as much as I need.
I am a child. And I am becoming a child again, going through the growing up and puberty and coming-of-age stuff all again as I become this new individual. So my own needs are something I'm acutely aware of, and those around me do so well to provide me with a safe environment for that growth, that I forget they too are growing and becoming these new people and need so much as well... And then I remember. In moments like these which shake my foundations of who I think I am. Being comfortable enough together, needing that physical closeness as a comfort, as a defense against the world and for the warmth of a human being, a love, wrapping you up and letting you fall into a state of peace just the knowledge that those arms aren't leaving, and you're loved just the way you are, whoever the hell that might be...



It's warm. It needs me as much as I need it. It's so fragile. And it's still a liquid. Glass continues to evolve, continues to change even after my hands have left it. It does not remain solid and defined.
It just needs that warmth, mine and its own, to begin...
And I need it.

May the Force be with you all. Amen.