What the Clay Decided

I want to be clear about something upfront: I went in thinking I'd be at least decent at this. That is not what happened.

It started because I saw a flyer at the rec center, the same bulletin board where the running club notices go up, advertising a Saturday drop-in pottery session at a studio about ten minutes away. Eight dollars for two hours, all materials included. I'd been meaning to do something genuinely new this summer, the kind of thing that has nothing to do with running splits or fall semester syllabi, and somehow 'throw clay at a wheel' made the shortlist. I showed up alone, which felt like the right call. No one to perform competence for.

The instructor walked us through centering the clay, which sounds meditative and is actually a minor athletic event. You press down and in at the same time with your whole body weight and the clay just... doesn't listen. Mine wobbled, listed to the left, wobbled again, and at one point made a noise I can only describe as a complaint.

The face you make when the clay has opinions

I spent probably forty-five minutes on a shape that wanted to be a bowl and settled for being a philosophical question. The instructor, who was very kind and clearly used to this, told me I had 'good instincts' and I chose to believe her completely.

In the end I have a small misshapen thing drying on a shelf that will be fired and ready to pick up next week.

My magnum opus. She's not much but she's mine.

It's lumpy. One side is thicker than the other. There's a fingerprint pressed into the rim that I put there on purpose once I realized it wasn't coming out. I'm going to pick it up and put it on my desk and not explain it to anyone. Honestly, the whole two hours felt a little like writing, the way you sit down thinking you know what shape the thing will take, and then it just... goes where it goes. You adjust. You call the fingerprint intentional. I'm going to keep that.