Tag Archives: No-Comfort Zone

Day 17 Small stone and my No-Comfort Zone challenge

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3 Kokopellis dance,
each casts three shadows,
a distortion of design
and light. If I could
hear their flutes,
how many notes would play?

Carol A. Stephen

For my challenge this week, I have stepped outside my comfort zone and asked someone for help with something. My smoke alarms have been going off for no reason, except perhaps old age. I wrote a stone about it a couple of days ago. My brother isn’t here to help with it, so I reached out to a friend for help. For most of my life, I couldn’t do that, because of a great fear of rejection, even in such a simple thing.

Yesterday, he helped me choose new alarms, and today he will come back to put them up for me. That makes twice in a week that I have asked someone for help, actually.  The other day I also asked a neighbour to help me this winter with the snow in our shared driveway. I supply the equipment, he supplies the strength. That one was not quite so challenging though, since there was a benefit both ways. Today’s “ask” only benefits me, so that is a successful step outside the zone.  C

Stone #11: Claywork

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Day 11

Yesterday, I wrote about going to a pottery workshop as something outside my comfort zone, and that’s this week’s No-Comfort-Zone “self-assignment”.  AND I thought that might be something neat to write about for my 11th stone.  The piece is not fired yet, the instructor will do that, but she did let me make a second one (a funky-looking cat with a ball on plate) and I took home more clay to attempt a third piece.  I have never been much good at working with my hands (other than cooking, which is not the same!) so I am very pleased that this was a lot of fun.  Here is my stone:

Claywork

finicky fingers hate
to be sticky.
cautious, they hesitate
to work the clay.

but the brick is cool
and moist, waiting
to be poked and prodded,
pounded and flattened.

hands, suddenly eager, begin
to mold pieces into a plate
to hold penguins as they cuddle
and cluster in one corner

do they fear the kiln’s fire
or are they just a little
too far from home?

Carol A. Stephen
January 11, 2012

Working at Discomfort

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Carol A. Stephen

 

I started this challenge on the 4th of January. During this first week, I worked on and submitted two poems (ok, it was to a contest, but a new one, not the safe usual ones!)

I’ve also kept up with the challenge to complete the river of small stones, ten done so far, and this is Day 10.

I’ve been finding the last few days that the winter blahs are trying to move in, so I am pushing back in new directions to send them packing again.  Tomorrow I am going to a group pottery lesson, which is something else totally new. This will help to break up my usual intense-focus-on-one-thing-to-the-exclusion-of-all-others, which tends to add a lot of guilt to my days.  I guess my overall goal for this week is going to be to lighten up!

—Carol