100th Post - Hakame Jar For Christmas

This is my 100th post. It seems quite befitting that it falls on Christmas eve, because last Christmas eve was a pathetic and sad evening, 3 girls sat in their respective homes and linked up on the IM and bitched about the horrendous pool of men out there. We subsequently wondered why hadn't we just gone out and met up in real life and bitched over coffee or something instead of being miserable alone at home, and then again, collectively miserable online together. It was weird.

This year, I will once again spend Christmas eve alone. And perhaps, I might meet some friends online tonight, if they are also not out in the real world partying. But this year is slightly different. I am alone, not really out of choice, but because I am far away from my friends and loved ones. Things should have been slightly different if circumstances hadn't gotten in the way, but as they were, I am spending Christmas eve once again, alone and probably engrossed in the virtual world. But I don't feel as lonely as I did last year. I think it's because last year, I was in a place where I could have been with friends and loved ones, but I wasn't. This year, I can't and so it's not so much like I am choosing to make myself lonely and miserable. A little convoluted in the reasoning?

Anyway the gallery was pretty quiet today, last minute Christmas shopping is obviously done at the malls and not at art galleries, so we closed up early. J gave me a Maureen Williams-Levy Hakame lidded jar for Christmas. All right, so it was the one he got as a gift from Maureen after her exhibition ended, and which he had declared to us (in Maureen's absence) wasn't something he personally would have chosen. But nevertheless it was a Hakame piece made by Maureen Williams-Levy, an Australian potter whose exhibition at the gallery last month was vastly successful.

Anyway for a piece that I really like and would have chosen myself, I'm leaning towards thinking that I should fork out A$240 for the salt-glaze tenmoku tea bowl by Robert Barron that I really like from his current exhibition. And since it is priced quite expensively relative to the other similar pieces (which are not tea bowls hence are priced lower reason being that tea bowls occupy a sacred position in Japanese culture - think tea ceremony), we doubt that it would be sold, so I have till the end of January to think about THAT...