What the Wheel Knows

March thirtieth. The instructor made it look like breathing, hands steady, clay rising, and then she lifted her hands and the thing was a bowl. An actual bowl. Then she said, your turn, and the room got very quiet in the way rooms get when everyone is doing the math on how long it is going to take them to admit they cannot do this.

Simone and I registered for this beginner wheel-throwing session back in March, which felt like a reasonable decision at the time. Six Wednesday evenings. Community center pottery studio. We had been talking about the spring brochure since February, and somewhere between looking at it and filling out the form, pottery had become the thing we were doing. I want to be clear that neither of us had any reason to think we would be good at it. I just don't think we'd fully appreciated how specifically, technically, and immediately we would be not good at it.

the moment before the clay won

The clay does not care how much you want it to center. I know this now in a way I did not know it at three o'clock this afternoon. The wheel spins and you press in and the clay does something that is not what you pressed for, and then you correct, and the clay ignores the correction, and then Simone leans over your shoulder and makes a small sound that could be a helpful observation or could be barely suppressed laughter, and honestly you are not sure which and maybe she isn't either. By the end of the session we each had an object. Mine was roughly cylindrical on one side. Simone's had good intentions. We looked at them on the table for a while without speaking, and then she tilted her head and said, it's a start, which is one of those true things that doesn't help and helps enormously at the same time.

we did not make bowls. we made ambitions.

I walked home with clay on my forearm and the particular feeling of having done something that did not go well and being genuinely glad I did it anyway. Five more Wednesdays. The wheel will probably keep being right about this, and I will probably keep showing up anyway, which I think is actually the point.