Brava

There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.

- Bette Davis

Life throws interesting things in your lap sometimes. Just literally, hands you a piece of joy and excitement on a platter. Like when I received a handwritten thank you note in the mail from Saxby Chambliss for a piece of pottery I didn't even know Berry had given him as his gift for speaking at graduation. Or my sister getting a job and staying in Rome after graduation.

Magnolia thinking my pottery was worthy of doing a feature on in their women's publication was along these same lines. Having an editor think your story is worth being told is such an energy and inspiration booster. I love my art on my own with all my heart. But, having someone look from the outside in and have love for it too gives it all a new dimension and wall to lean upon.

One of my current quarter-life initiatives is learning Spanish. A very important phrase to know is "Que es la significa de _____" equating to "What is the meaning of ____" Or more literally, what is the significance of this utterance? What assertion does it own? What place on earth does this fit into?

So, when I saw they put the article in the "Brava" section of Magnolia, I wanted to know, "Que es la significa de Brava?" So, I plugged it in to Webster and pulled it up.

Main Entry: bra·va

Pronunciation: \ˈbrä-(ˌ)vä, brä-ˈvä\

Function: noun

Etymology: Italian, feminine of bravo

Date: 1741

: bravo —used interjectionally in applauding a woman

What a sweet precious name for a section of a magazine. It made me feel that art and pottery and dreams in general were being celebrated. In this world of budget cuts and struggling to make ends meet, art, pottery and dreams seem to be the first to get pushed aside.

It's easy to have dreams. I have new ones every week. Right now, I'm dreaming of bilingualcy, the redecoration of my house, my 5-year life plan, the lesson plans for my next pottery class and how my batch of pots will come out in a few weeks. I've also had much more fleeting dreams like being a flight attendant, living in London for a year and opening an apartment complex for Berry graduates to continue the dormitory camaraderie. Hundreds of dreams go by the wayside. Maybe because they were not the right ones for me. But honestly, it's just really hard and inconvenient to make dreams reality. It takes courage and ambition and hurt feelings. It takes the willingness to be really really broke. And with this dream of keeping pottery a constant in my life, I've experienced a little bit of all of it. And someone wanting to interjectionally applaud what this woman has made of it so far makes the journey and my current location in it just so so sweet.