Sunday, January 8, 2012

Pottery


  
“Both the turning of the season and the ticking of the clock say the planet’s one year older, so are you.” (Al Grierson, Till the Circle Is Complete)
The year has turned over – from 2011 to 2012. Its January in Texas, and we’re glad of the change from a dry blistering summer to cool, cloudy weather, which makes me want to cook something spectacular. I think I’ll bake bread. Not truly spectacular, but satisfying.  As for the ticking of the clock, well, my eldest grandson turned 23 in November -- an occasion guaranteed to remind me of the swift passage of time.  The great wheel of life spins faster and faster.
 I once watched a potter at a crafts shop making a vessel. His hands were sure and his foot had perfect control of the wheel as it turned – now fast, so that the clay changed shape swiftly, then slower as he performed some delicate process to create a lip on the rim, or a narrowing of the neck and finally the incised decorations on the surface.
 I know life has been compared to being formed on a potter’s wheel – a process we can observe from the outside. But the older I get the more I focus on the view from the potter’s wheel. Just what does the clay see from the wheel? Well, to me it seems as if the world and everything and everyone I’ve ever known is flashing by in a blurry whirl. And so I have the peculiar sensation that I am slowing down while the world around me is speeding up.
Am I shaping up to be a bowl, a vase, an urn?  I know that with the spinning of the wheel I have acquired a family, friends, skills, knowledge, possessions, extra pounds, some gray hairs. But what do I look like? Not the image in the mirror, but the woman inside? I really don’t know. I shall have to rely on my reflection in the eyes, the minds, the attitudes and the affections of others. They can see the process from the outside. They watch the clay take shape under the Potters’ hand.
 I watch them and they watch me.
 As the potter at the crafts shop finished his piece, the most fascinating thing of all happened. He took a length of slender wire and slid it beneath the soft clay vessel to cut it loose from the wheel. I have that to look forward to: the time when I can be cut loose -- completely and perfectly formed in the eyes of the Potter.

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