Feet of Clay, cont'd; plus stupid question and kitten tales

[oloriel]

What I forgot in my rambling yesterday: Someway through the pottery, I was waxing all nostalgic. When I was younger, my mother once bought a big bag of potter's clay that was kept in our garden shed, and during the garden seasons, I often went and cut off a bit and made pottery. I always regretted that we couldn't bake the results, because some of the bowls or vases I would have liked to use for real, and without baking, the clay, though it hardens, won't be water-proof. Our neighbours (who were big-time into anthroposophy and alternative living) knew someone who had a pottery furnace, and my mom said we'd ask whether she could bake my stuff at some point, but that never happened, and I pretty much forgot about it.

Until I was again messing with clay yesterday. I remembered then, and grew all wistful, especially as I no longer have that much contact to said neighbours (although we're still on friendly terms when we chance to meet, and they did donate a bunch of turkey feathers for our arrow-making project on the Wewelsburg two years ago (they're keeping sheep and turkey and chicken and a bunch of other animals)), and don't know whether that person still has the pottery furnace, and if so, whether they'd let me use it, and so on, and so on.

And then I stopped, and thought, "Wait a second. You're grown-up now. You can be the person with the pottery furnace." I mean, not right now, because I obviously don't have the money. But if at some point in time I had the money to spare, I could totally go and buy one. Heck, I can find some outdoor fireplace and experiment with different kinds of wood and fuel until I know how to bake pottery that way! (Although I rather like the idea of owning a furnace, for embarrassingly obvious reasons.)

That kind of blew my mind. I still haven't arrived at the point at which I take my (legal) grownupishness for granted, nor have I really managed to get all the possibilities into my head. In my head, I'm still far from being grown-up.
Thank Eru.

On a completely different tangent: How well-known, would you (meaning mostly those of you on the Western side of the Atlantic ocean, I guess) say, is Carl Sandburg? Fairly obscure, rings a bell, set reading in school, absolutely famous and I should be dreadfully ashamed not to know him?
(I know this is probably a horribly ignorant question, but remember that I'm a stupid European. The only American poets we touched in school were Frost, Emerson and e.e.cummings, although I vaguely remember the fog on its little cat paws from university, now that I think about it.)
This basically just aims at - would many/most/all Discworld readers immediately have catched up on the "Now you see it, now you don't" thing, or do I actually not have to feel stupid for not knowing that this was an allusion?

In yet other news, 'náro tried to climb out of the kitchen window today. It didn't work, of course, and he got stuck half-way through, resulting in a lot of desperate mewling and some deep scratches on Jörg's hands when he tried to free the poor dear. We were mainly afraid he'd break his ribs, as he was stuck just at the ribcage. But he moves as he always does, and now that he's done moping, he's just as snuggly and playful as ever. So it looks as though he was lucky. Phew!

Comments

[allie-meril.livejournal.com]

I still haven't arrived at the point at which I take my (legal) grownupishness for granted, nor have I really managed to get all the possibilities into my head.

I concur. I think that I'm a couple years younger than you, but I doubt I'll ever get to that "I'm grown up, so I can actually do things without asking someone else for help" point.

re: Carl Sandburg. I can't immediately recall any poetry of his that I read in school, but I know of him, yeah. One of the libraries in my city is named after him. Other than that, I'm as ignorant as you. ;)

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

Oh Mann, seid da bloß vorsichtig, mit den Kätzchen! Einer Mandantin von meinem Mann ist da was echt Schlimmes passiert... die kam heim und konnte nur noch die erwürgte Katze aus dem gekippten Fenster rauspulen...

Es gibt aber Gitter zu kaufen, die man ganz einfach in die gekippten Fenster einsetzen kann, damit so was nicht passieren kann. Z.B. bei "Freßnapf" oder online beim Pussy-Versand (http://www.pussy-versand.de/).

"The grownuppishness" - I know that feeling so well. I'm thirty and I'm still surprised and not quite used to it. It took me the better part of the year to dare to start thinking that it's maybe okay to simply live my life the way I want to live it...

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Oh, danke für den Tip mit den Gittern! Vorläufig gibt's hier halt keine gekippten Fenster mehr...

[barbardin.livejournal.com]

Mein Bruder hat auch ein Kätzchen auf diese Weise verloren, das war ganz schrecklich. Die Kleine hat sich im Klofenster erhängt.. Kippfenster sind leider eine ganz, ganz häufige Todesursache für Katzen.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Wir haben auch bisher die Fenster immer nur dann auf Kippe gelassen, wenn mindestens einer von uns im Haus war - aber das riskieren wir jetzt auch auf gar keinen Fall mehr...

[dame_grise]

*snugs* Another slow day at work...

[vashachu.livejournal.com]

Vaguely recall the name from school, but my first reaction was that he was a baseball player. I think there might have been a Carl Sandburg ball player, unrelated to said poet. But the whole thing is very hazy and has a 3rd grade feel to it.