I am re-reading About Alice, Calvin Trillin’s love letter to his wife. It was published in 2006, five years after Alice’s untimely death, and I read it a bit over a decade ago when I was expecting my first baby. Is it Stephen King that said, life is too short to re-read a book? I think some books are meant to be re-visited, seen through fresh eyes. I think about the books I read as a teenager, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Hardy, Bronte and Golding, and how my experience of them was limited, by well, my lack of experience. I remember moving to Florence at 19 and devouring Somerset Maugham and Paul Auster by candlelight. What a different experience it would be to read such books as The Moon and Sixpence or Moon Palace today. I wrote essay upon essay on Camus’ L’etranger, and looking back, I didn’t absorb a word of it. Existentialism? I was 16. My place in the world was my boyfriend’s couch and the greasy spoon around the corner from our school. There are so many brilliant books in the world, and as we navigate these weird waters, there is some comfort in the nostalgia of ones we’ve already read. We know how the books end. Our experience of how we get there though, that feels different.

I’ve been working on a set of ten plates for weeks, and I can’t get them all to stack flat. It’s not just the warping. It’s the cracks, the smudges and the uneven glazes, too. It’s one of life’s great ironies, that we embrace (seek out, even) such imperfections in other people’s work, and yet see them as defects in our own. The lens through which we judge ourselves is so often distorted by pre-conceived ideas, self doubt and unrealistic standards. So when I came across this wonky stack of plates by the talented, Ella Bendrups, I was reminded of what it is that I love about handmade pottery. The smudges, the fingerprints, the wonky rims. And more importantly, the maker’s celebration of such imperfections. Adjusting the lens, that’s what I need to keep working on. Just as much as my plate making skills.

My Dad loves to paint. He uses thick, impasto brushstrokes like Van Gogh did. He mostly paints seascapes and there’s always a little church and a fishing boat in his paintings. The smell of oil and turps reminds me of him. I came across these whimsical paintings by Alena Shymchonak, and immediately, I thought about my Dad’s crude strokes. There’s something so tactile about this way applying paint. Shymchonak’s breaking waves look like they’re made of whipped cream. You almost want to eat them. I find her beach scenes so cheerful. I’d love to see her palette at the end of the day.

I find Kathrin Linkersdorff‘s wrinkled, crinkled, shriveled flowers so beautiful. Her wabi sabi series took my breath away; this poppy with its petals splayed wide open looks like sheets blowing on a washing line. And this closed poppy looks like too much blush on wrinkled skin. There’s such pathos in a dying flower, like an ageing beauty letting out her final sighs.