Forgetting our rectangle ways
I started taking wheel throwing classes back in May. About 45 seconds into laying my hands on my first piece of clay, I realized that it was going to frustrate the hell out of me, but also that it would be a metaphor for life, one which I could plant into the soil of my ever-searching mind and watch grow. Abundantly.
Let me say this first, I knew the wheel would be challenging. I had been told it is difficult to learn and can take years. Still, my hubris figured that I would be able to sort it out relatively quickly. Hubris is funny that way.
Now that I am in my second round of classes, I can safely say the wheel has gotten maybe 5 percent easier—and that’s on a good day. More like two-and-a-half percent easier on average. Last week, the teacher, who is a punk-rock-loving, shoot-you-straight, art-and-community-building lover, not so gently told me, “You are still trying to go way too fast with the clay.” I let out an irritated sigh because I legitimately felt like I had heard his advice to slow down the last 200 times and was slowing down. He sat across the wheel and stared at me patiently, but was unwavering in his repetitive feedback. I fought back the well of feelings that was rising and nodded, and then I tried again.
There is no catharsis in this tale, sadly. I tried again and failed again. The bowl I meant to make looks more like a stemless goblet and it annoys me deeply that I am trying something that I cannot seem to bend to my will.
Later, I chatted with my teacher and he praised my sad looking goblet. He asked me if I found the step that I was on with the clay any easier when I went slower. His question was even more aggravating because it was actually easier. I had integrated his lesson—I did slow down and it made a massive difference in that particular step.
The trouble with the wheel is that there are approximately six crucial steps, each with their own difficulties, and none are similar. I had improved one step (not perfected, because I have been throwing for 2 minutes in relative throwing time). His praise of my minor improvement was diminished, if not extinguished, with my relentless Virgo-esque perfection. I left class that day and realized that I was participating in the same narrative that my clients do. The one where progress is marked not by small steps towards a bigger wholeness and integration, but instead by lofty leaps towards excellence.
The metaphoric lessons of my humanity haunt me as much as they enliven me. Alas, the paradox of living.
On my drive home I remembered something another teacher said to me last spring. He was explaining that clay has memory. When the clay is taken out of the boxes it comes in, it is stubborn and difficult because it has been compressed into a rectangle and that is what it knows. Its particles like the familiarity of whatever shape they have been in. When you break off a piece and put it on the wheel, the clay, though not alive, is fighting you with its composition because the particles prefer the familiarity of their rectangle. To coax them into a new form is no small task, and it certainly isn’t accomplished by wrenching clay rapidly into new positions, as evidenced by my plethora of strange looking finished pottery pieces.
So how do we help the clay become something new? On the wheel, we center our bodies and ground ourselves into our legs and core. The wheel moves fast—like life—and you have to come to it steady, anchored, aligned, and gentle if you want to see it evolve. When it inevitability takes longer than we think to transform, or when we get off balance and the clay follows suit, we have to come back to center.
I am beginning to believe that it is hope that brings us back to the wheel, to life. A colleague of mine recently told me about Mariame Kaba’s quote, “Hope is a discipline.” We hope for change and then we find the action within ourselves to return to a process, which will eventually shift the clay from a rectangle to the wild unknown that lives within it—or us. Sometimes it comes easy, and sometimes it is an act of love to hope with discipline. Yet, when faced with the choice of giving into my perfectionism that can never be satisfied or the simple act of coming back to Self with patience, alignment, and gentleness—well, I imagine we all know which choice is better in the end.
In my experience, metaphors hidden in art and life are truly the most indelible mentors. For this, I raise a glass to the clay, which has taught me what it is to forget my rectangle ways in order to become new.
Per aspera, ad astra,
Julie