I didn't have the space to set it up. When we tore down the collapsing garage on the property, we didn't have the means to build a new one like I had hoped. So there was no where to set this up. Instead it stood alone for the better part of a decade in that corner, as a reminder of making brash choices out of fear.
I tried to resell it, but it was difficult. I would get a lot of responses to the ad, but since I honestly could not say it worked, having never run it myself, no one bought it even at half the price I bought it for, even when I knocked the price down further than that. I even once gave it to a friend for free, but he never came to get it as his life situation changed.
So I gave it away again last week, to a Ceramics major in central Connecticut. She has a garage to set it up in, and professional help to assist her with any of the wiring repair it needs. For an hour before and an hour after, I trembled. I'm not sure what it was exactly I was trembling about. Except that it was the most definitive marker in the choices I've made in my personal development in the arts. Not only to let go of ceramic craft in favor of image-making and narrative, but also as evidence of the change in me, the art of myself, the character arc that is a broad motion from fear-reactive to instead being ready to run in the rain of what's happening now. The personal development that sees limitations as the definition of possibilities and can dream new dreams without decrying the old ones, but rather weaving the threads from everything that is still the history of me. From anxiety to examination to delight.
Thank you, kiln I never used. You were worth every penny. I can't wait to see what you do in your next life.
