tasseography

I took my last swig of the bitter brew and the tea leaves slid to the bottom of the cup on a watery film. Leaning back in my chair, the taste of tannins was quickly replaced with the essence of mothballs and herbs that filed the stagnant air. I was chilled and impatient, sitting in a hard plastic chair, trying to make sense of the woman’s schizophrenic ramblings and erratic hand talking. Her visions and reality blurred into a life tale of agoraphobia and mysticism. Finally, she bent and peered into my cup, and pulled back white-faced in wide-eyed horror.

the potter

By any other measure, she would have been labeled insane, but under the guise of art, she was called brilliant. She spent her days in an east side studio hunched over a wheel, spitting into pots and pulling them into malformed, oversized volumes, in the shapes of body parts. Her works were named and labeled for their apparent intended parts too: large egg shaped ones labeled "head", smaller flatted side-opened ones labeled "foot", a slightly triangular one labeled "shoulder". The finished pots were spread around the studios like a disorganized Frankenstein's lab. Her nights she wandered east side neighbourhoods, scavenging.