Today I was driving along, drinking in the white dogwood blooms and spring green leaves all around. Somehow I started thinking about balance. When I first started this series of bowls (or "bowl sculptures") I noticed that balance was the theme. I began by taking photographs of anything in the woods that held my attention at all. Didn't need a reason. If I felt a little flash of interest, I photographed it. Pretty soon I could see that I was photographing mostly trees that lean, or branch in oddly balanced ways. The bowl sculpture ideas came from these trees. I'm fascinated by the way the trees balance themselves as they lean, as they deal with the forces in their lives.
As I was driving along today, thinking about this, thinking about the next bowls I want to make, it struck me as odd that a year ago, I completely lost my balance. It was last February that I slipped on the kitchen floor as I rushed into the cabin to get something to take with me. Usually I take off my boots or shoes when I come indoors, but I was in a hurry. My boot soles had some mushy snow on them. A plastic bag had fallen onto the kitchen floor. Wham. I was on the floor in less than a second. Cracked my sacrum, as it turned out, and broke my elbow badly, really badly. It took a while to walk again, to trust my balance. Still can't straighten my right arm completely. Can't touch my right shoulder with my right hand.
I'm doing OK though. It just struck me as odd that I lost my balance so completely, when I was working on bowls about balance. Odd.
Maybe I needed to learn more about it firsthand, not just from observing trees.
11:13:17 PM 
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