Everything I Made Is Technically a Bowl

The brochure at the rec center said 'beginner-friendly' and I want everyone to know that is a very generous use of the word friendly.

I signed up mostly on a whim, it was pinned to the community board next to the running club schedule, which I've been staring at every Tuesday for almost a year now, and last week I finally looked at the other things on that board instead of just the one I already knew. Six weeks of wheel-throwing, Saturdays, materials included. I wrote the number down in my notes app and then called it on Monday because I was afraid I'd talk myself out of it by Wednesday.

Here's what they don't tell you: the clay is in charge. You think you're in charge. You have both hands on this spinning lump and you are thinking very hard about what a bowl is, geometrically, and then the clay just, doesn't. It wobbles. It collapses. It becomes something that is not a bowl in a very confident way. My instructor, who has clearly watched a hundred people make this exact face, told me the first session is just about getting a feel for the wheel, and that nobody makes anything good the first day. She said it in the nicest possible way and I still felt it.

Another moment

I stayed until the very end of the two hours. I made four attempts. One of them has what I'd describe as structural integrity if you hold it from a certain angle and don't look directly at it. I scrubbed the clay off my arms at the little sink by the door and stood there for a second thinking about nothing in particular, which honestly hasn't happened a lot lately. No inbox math, no ledger math, no packing list in the back of my head. Just clay under my fingernails and the specific satisfaction of having tried something I was definitely bad at.

Another moment

I'm going back next Saturday. Partly because I paid for six weeks. Mostly because I think I'm actually going to get it eventually, and I want to be there when I do.