glaze

what a great word glaze is.  when you say it out loud- go ahead- you can feel it's smoothness, the dull shine, the slipping, dripping of it.

so many ways to use glaze- so many ways a glaze can be.  like the glaze on pottery which looks like chalky pepto-bismol when you put it on greenware.  then fire hotter than we will ever feel and live to tell about it, transforms all those milky minerals to a gloss, swirls of colors, a hardened shell.

some donuts have glaze.  sugar coated.  fine covering of syrup that is dried a bit.  it melts in your mouth.  it coats your tongue.  some avoid it.  others hunt it down in every city along with hot, strong coffee.

when you deglaze a hot pan by throwing liquid in it creates a rich sauce, potent with all the flavors stuck on the bottom of your cast iron.  spoon it over your steak and potatoes.  dip some bread into it.

and then there's the state of mind: glaze.  it may come upon you unannounced, uninvited or perhaps you seek it out through various means.  but you know when you are there.

your shoulders slump and your eyes narrow.  nothing can penetrate your glaze enough to cause any strong emotion.  it's not oblivion, but they live on the same street.  that place where we all go sometimes because it is possible to care too much, too often, too deeply.

and probably, it's a hard place to be for long.  for some of us, it takes just as much- if not more- effort to not to care.  to let things be. to glaze.  then it does to try to help.  to create.  to at least contribute our own opinions from the sidelines or the couch or the co-pilot seat.

when i am glazing i struggle against it.  that coating that holds me down- a place where all the flavors are too intense- i resist them all.  i want to Do Something To Makes Things Better.  and by better, i mean different.  i just want a shift, a change.  except when it's not the shift or change that i, specifically, was going for.

perhaps this glaze place can be a small refuge to just accept life, accept me, accept donuts, and salty food, and pieces of pottery that you work on for hours,days only to pull them out of a kiln completely destroyed.

except that they have a gorgeous glaze that catches the sun and spills back brilliance into your eyes.