One of Us Made a Bowl

September seventeenth.

I want to be accurate about what happened. Simone suggested the pottery drop-in at the community center, the same one that does the Wednesday yoga I've been going to since January, and I said yes immediately, which is either a sign of personal growth or a sign that I have no real sense of my own spatial reasoning. We showed up on a Saturday afternoon. The instructor demonstrated centering the clay in about forty-five seconds and made it look like the most natural thing a human body could do. Then she walked away and left us to it.

Simone centered hers. I watched this happen from my own wheel and I would describe my feelings as complicated. Her hands went down, the clay went up, she made one adjustment, and then she just, started making a bowl. Meanwhile I was over here applying what I can only describe as enthusiastic and completely misdirected pressure to my own lump, which was doing something the instructor later called 'traveling.' Traveling means it was moving across the wheel in a direction clay is not supposed to move.

She made a bowl. I made a decision.

By the end of the two hours Simone had a low bowl, thick walls but a real shape, and the expression of someone who is being gracious about something. I had what the instructor diplomatically called 'a first attempt with a lot of character.' I'm keeping it. It's going on the windowsill next to Gerald and the collapsed bowl from the pottery class I took two winters ago, which means I now have two pieces of ceramics that did not turn out the way I planned, and I have decided this is a collection.

The weird thing is I want to go back. The clay is cold and heavy and the wheel hums under your hands and you are so completely absorbed in not ruining the thing that you forget to think about anything else for two hours. That is worth a lot. Simone has already texted me about the next drop-in date, which I am choosing to read as solidarity rather than competitive interest. I'm choosing to read a lot of things generously lately. It's working out okay.