The Lopsided Bowl Situation

There is a thing on my counter right now that I made with my own two hands. I am going to call it a bowl. The woman who taught the class called it a "good first attempt," which I appreciated, and which I think we both understood meant the same thing.

I signed up for the drop-in session on Wednesday basically because I walked past the flyer at the rec center and thought, sure, what else am I doing on a Friday morning. I have been filling August with weird small experiments, some intentional, some just because the summer has this particular open quality where saying yes to things feels lower-stakes than it does the rest of the year. Pottery was on no list I've ever made. I don't think I'd touched clay since maybe sixth grade.

The actual experience was humbling in a way I wasn't expecting. I had assumed there was some intuitive element to it, like your hands would just sort of know. They did not know. The clay knew nothing either. For the first twenty minutes it was genuinely a battle between me and a gray lump, and the lump was winning. At some point I stopped trying to make it into something and just tried to keep it on the wheel, which the instructor said was actually the right instinct. I don't know if she was being honest or kind. Maybe both.

presenting: the bowl. she's doing her best.

But here's the thing, I liked it. I liked it in a way that had nothing to do with being good at it. There's something about putting your hands in something and making actual physical contact with the problem that I didn't realize I was missing. Everything I've been doing lately, writing, reading, running, it's all kind of internal. This was just: here is a material, here are your hands, good luck. I brought the bowl home wrapped in newspaper. It needs to dry and then get fired. I'm weirdly invested in how it turns out.

the focus era (it did not work but the focus was real)