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The writing of my journal stopped for a good while whilst I was feeling paralysed by grief. I still worked during this time but not as much as i would have were I feeling balanced. The work with the bones continues but new questions start to come to light: am I working on these bones until I form a full 'skeleton'? In this case I would need to produce some larger pieces and some thin, fine pieces intimating a skull or fragments thereof. Porcelain is a very difficult material- soft and fast drying, but I have enjoyed working with it, despite it's limitations. I have also wondered about extending the process further- firing the pieces twice, as normal, before breaking them intentionally and re-joining them with gold, as in the Japanese technique Kintsugi, 'healing' my bones, 'healing' myself, almost reliquary like in it's honouring of the body and therefor honouring of suffering itself. I thought also about the crystalline textures often present in reliquaries, through glass or rock quartz, and I wondered about giving the pieces a third firing with glass as their joiner, but I suspect that this may not be possible in the kilns that I have available to me. I am aware that I could achieve a similar effect with a kind of epoxy resin, but doing that would bring a modern material with little heart into a piece which I intend to refer back to the old mastery of materials. Pink salt is also interesting to me, with it's reference to marble sculptures, but is a very difficult material to work with and although is a nice idea conceptually, the materials I work with need to feel good, otherwise I will become complacent. Something I am interested in is the idea of maybe using smashed glass, either in small pieces or in an almost dust like consistency. Binding the material is something I would definitely have to figure out and experiment with, I wouldnt want to create something without structural integrity. Maybe there is a kind of wax suited to my needs.