Dangerous Minds

 

I am so glad I had art and music classes as part of my public education.  I would have been happy to take all arts and humanities, but the stated goal of my teachers wasn’t to get me to pass a test.  It was to create a well rounded person who could think for herself.  Who had the tools to continue to educate herself and become an informed citizen with the resources to help others reach this same goal.

So I had to take algebra and science just like the math and science wizards had to come swim on my side of the pool.  It turned out that I liked biology and geology more than I expected.

The other day I was wandering the school supplies aisle of my local Target telling myself I had no business stalking the colored pencils and markers.  I get new notebooks at work around this time of year, shouldn’t that be enough?

And then I saw this tub of clay.  For $3.99.  Wow, really?

Four bucks for the opportunity to make something that would not exist in the world if I didn’t sit down and play with it?

I’m in.

I made these things.

What are they? Just a representation of what I was thinking about for a couple of hours.  Responses to the way the clay felt between my fingers.  Whispers of what it wanted to tell me it could do.

They aren’t worth money, but creating them had value.  The four bucks I spent on the clay and additional few on the paint I’ll use on them are such an entertainment bargain.  Hours of engagement.  (I only used maybe 25% of the clay in the bucket.)

It’s so important to me that kids and adults have the opportunity to create things that are not perfect.  Not extruded plastic.  Not a computer or video game that lines up our neurons in ways that please us but which, like junk food, are not terribly healthy for us.  Not handed to us by anyone else, but coming from the intersection of our spirits with the universe around us.

That’s one of the reasons I am proud that some of my tax dollars go to The National Endowment for the Arts. My taxes fund a lot of stuff I agree with and a lot of stuff I don’t.

At loose ends?  Go pick up $5 worth of color and make a happy little mess with it.