That's My Bix!

I got back into the pottery studio today. I know these slippery hot days of summer are zooming by faster than I want them to, but it feels positively decadent to be back at the wheel, reluctant hump of porcelain that refuses to center, the strain on the lower back muscles, the goopy white slip building up.

As I hunch over it, trying to rediscover the right posture for pushing the clay into perfect equilibrium, beads of sweat drip off my face onto the mound. My husband tells me that I sweat more than anyone he has ever seen and it’s probably not entirely true, but also, not entirely wrong. When I was in high school, I used to roll Ban anti-perspirant over my forehead so that my morning walk to school wouldn’t destroy those carefully constructed Robert Smith long bangs. When I got married, I had my long hair styled in a mostly up manner to try to mitigate the sweat head.

“How much experience do you have with ceramics?” The pottery instructor asks. “I have some, but I am very humble about how much I have undoubtedly forgotten.” I respond. She assures me that centering the clay is like riding a bicycle — you just need to go a bit and you’ll find your way. That’s the problem, I reply, I NEVER can center the thing. Everything I throw ends up being kind of off center. Every cup, every plate, every bowl, they all have a weird swirl to them. I have to fight them into being and usually I only stop throwing because I can tell that the vessel is about thirteen seconds away from completely turning into a weird hump of nothing, hopelessly out of balance and control.

She watches me struggle with the hump and the cone for a bit and says “Have you always centered using only one hand?” I’m stumped. I never realized it but yes, this entire time, I’ve been throwing with only my left hand. “There’s nothing wrong with it, if it works for you,” she says diplomatically. “I’ve not seen many potters do it that way. Like, I follow a one-armed potter on Instagram. He throws with one hand, obviously, and he’s great at it. It just seems, well, really hard.”

Me and the one-armed professional potter. Two handed centering feels weird enough that I know I’ve always been only using my left hand this entire time. I ask her to repeat the centering lesson, showing me exactly how she holds her hands. Butterfly, thumbs touching, moving as one unit. Bump bump bumpppppp centered. And there it is… the feel that I remembered. The feeling of spinning in perfect balance, of a pure sleek mound of potential and all the time in the world to see it through.

Maybe there’s something you’ve been making hard on yourself for no real reason. Maybe you have put limitations on something you love, like maybe you can’t go to the pool until you weigh this much, or maybe you can’t sing at karaoke because you’re not this way or maybe you can only have people over to your house if it’s entirely clean and pristine. It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that if it works for you.

Unless it doesn’t.

Unless it’s the very thing preventing you from finding your center.