Mark, Coming and Going: Day 28: Tinker, maker, am I a faker?

So I'm struggling with what I want to be when I grow up. I want so much to be so many things: an academic, a teacher, an artist, a warrior, a peacenik, a husband, a dad, a toy maker, a filmmaker, a dancer, a musician, and others that are my own secrets, which may come out at a later date.

But what I'm not struggling with is making a palm frond shed. We are officially finished with the palm fronds, and thank god because I don't know if I can get pricked one more time. But it looks great, and it is a clean, shaded place for the family to work, whether that be processing food or cleaning crates or whatever.

And then you'll never guess what I did after we finished the fronds. No, silly; I went back to the rocks. There are two major projects now that we've finished the shed: one is Shelby Dam, for which I'm gathering the rocks; and the other is clearing of stones the field that was just plowed and is near the vegetable garden. I'm guessing I'll be dancing back and forth between those two and whatever else comes up over the next three weeks--that's right, only three weeks left. WTF happened to my time here?

That was rhetorical. I must say I've been doing some soul searching and come to some scary conclusions. For example, I may not go back to school for film studies degree. It would be so much fun and keep me engaged, but that is one more thing that costs money and time--too much time. I think that I want to go back to making art, and specifically kinetic art. Maybe gears and mechanical parts out of clay so that I can learn better to work with the materials that I'm teaching. I can see something like "The Pier" or these other toys in clay.

I have a great workshop, the tools, and the experience. I can even see myself "doing" craft fairs to sell my wares, which I've always loathed to even think about. Maybe I'm there as an artist, you know, acknowledging that I will be a regional art making guy who teaches; I love both of these, so why look for the other experiences like film studies?
This piece is for sale! It was just shown at a veterans show, and people really enjoyed it. But really, who wouldn't?

One thing that Val has taught me as an artist is that things need to be decorated. Even if a piece, like "The Pier" is imbued with soul-ridden and ghost-filled materials people will not necessary see that. They may feel it as they crank the handle or know it as the clanking-clunking gears move the pieces here and there and to and fro, but people like pretty--even Wabi Sabi pretty, which I call bumpkin-bourgeois.

This afternoon we got to use the new space to make the orders that Avi will deliver tomorrow to Tel Aviv. The family is going to stay up there to go to a theme park type thing. And Laurette is going down to Eilat to go on the beach. So I'll have the farm to myself for about half a day.