Pottery

So, I'm taking pottery.

Every Wednesday night, from 7 - 9, I put on some sloppy clothes and go to down the road of our very artsy neighborhood to Plum Pottery to learn whatever my teacher Annie has in store.

I always think it is going to be this enormously relaxing, cathartic, freeform experience. Instead, pottery is really shockingly involved. Sometimes I just want to squish the clay between my fingers and squeeze the pot up and then mash it down, never intending to make anything. But then I look around and cave into peer pressure.

Tonight, I didn't get to squish any clay, because tonight Annie taught me how to trim a pot. I took lots of art classes as a child, including pottery, but somehow I never heard that pots had to be trimmed at all. Apparently they do.

Dave, the other beginner, learned how to trim at the last class. I missed the last class because I was sick, but my pots were waiting for me all the same - the near-collapsed pot that I turned into something of an anemone, the two lop-sided cylinders that were feats of verticality, the semi-attractive V-shaped dish that made me proud, and the weird spherical squatty pot with the strange bottom ledge that I made as a semiconscious expression of individuality.

Whenever Annie does anything, it looks about as hard as breathing. When I try to do it, I'm amazed that any single pot was ever created to begin the art of pottery at all. She is a very good teacher:

first you brace your arm, then you hold the trimming tool like a pencil, then
you anchor your left hand in the center, your index finger on the side of
the tool, and down, and down and .......

Then I do it, and the 10 steps become blurred into one general pseudo-step, taking me from a very orderly set of movements directly to chaos, where I give in to the just-let-me-squish-the-clay desire (which, in trimming terms, turns into a general pot-shaving).

I shaved a bunch of pots tonight, and though it took a lot more mental commitment than I was bargaining for, it was fun. I felt better. When I got to the class, I was all sad and disappointed because one of my mice had fallen seriously ill, and I had missed an opportunity to see one of my friends because I had wanted to stay and care for the mouse. By the end of the class, though, I had dedicated so much mental energy toward pottery and away from those cares that I was smiling again. Somehow, pottery was therapeutic, rules and all. Maybe there is more to it than just squishing clay.