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I think everybody's in a cage in some way. Sometimes it's more obvious, but everybody has something that prevents them from running wild in fields when they should be at work, or from wearing fresh flowers in their hair everyday. We usually lose our childhood taste for life--our love for mud and frogs and wildflowers and sunshine. People might think we outgrow it but I think it's because we let too many things have power over our lives. We're too busy chasing after money and jobs and potential mates to stop and make a snow angel. We're too busy reading in the latest fashion magazine that glossy lips are in style right now to try to make our dogs wear a scarf and some sunglasses.

I took a ceramics class in college. I met a lot of people who had been doing ceramics or art of some sort for their entire lives and they amazed me. Women I would have put in their mid-twenties were actually in their forties. I saw it over and over again--these youthful, calm, peacefully happy faces. I compared them to co-workers--allergy-ridden from years of working in sick buildings, stress lines around their eyes, frazzled hair. We give so much of our power away in our quest for what we consider "normal life."