STUDIO OBJECTS: BELLOWS

The bellows were a gift from Guy, and they mostly live under the legs of the wood stove. They are trashed from being made of poor quality materials and being exposed at times and at close range (nose to nose) with intense heat. In the cold months, I use the bellows about twice a day. Usually, there's a moment when the wood fire has gotten low enough that it needs to be totally rebuilt. It's too low in this moment to throw a log on and have it light. This means that if I don't do something, my butt is going to freeze and my workday will be lost. This is where the bellows come in.


If there are a few small embers in there glowing orange, I can put some smaller kindling or a nice dry log on top and then add oxygen with the bellows. What I find funny and poignant about using them is that it usually takes quite a lot of huffing and puffing, a sustained five minutes there, until things get going.


It's like a fire triage moment, and it always pays off to keep at it until the fire catches. In the interim, ashes are churned up, the nose of the bellows goes right up against the coal, so the bellows get a little burnt and blackened, and the ash quietly infiltrates my face and the room at this time, but eventually that flash point comes, we're back in business and I can keep on with my day.


Writing this makes me think it's time to tape up the business end of the bellows and get the airflow a bit more focused, but generally, this tool is essential for my butt not freezing midway through the day and keeping the creative thread alive all through the winter.

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This is in some ways the quietist week of the year. The week between two major, recognized holidays, when it's usually either tons to do, or quite a solitary time. It can feel like the eye of the storm, or the seed of magic, or existentially eerie. A week of freefall. Like the midnight of the year. The seeds are all in their places, they are not dead. Many things will take form in the coming year for you. If you think back on all of the years before, all of the impossible to predict developments - things shed, things that showed up unannounced - it helps me to remember that the less I brace against it, the more I float along in trust. 

Here are some questions for the newness of this quiet time, should you feel like journalling:

1. Where do I experience the presence of love in my life?

2. What unfolded in 2024 in my personal life?

What was shed? What showed up?

3. What do I love about my life?

4. What isn't quite right in my life? What am I not loving?

5. What might work better, based on those specifics?

6. If I'm being honest with myself, what's true? What does this indicate?

7. Where do I draw my strength from? 

8. Where am I genuinely of service?

9. Where am I a bit BSey?

10. What is my prayer beginning this new year? 

11. Write to yourself in a year. In ten. What do you want that one to know? What can you thank that one for?