Not all of the mugs survived trimming. I went too deep with one and cut through it. So I reconstituted the trim scraps and remade a fourth mug, a sort of big brother to the others.
I had enough reconstituted scrap to pull four handles, and one by one I affixed them to the mug bodies via the Slip&Score method.
This went well with the three smaller mugs, and I still had session time, so I carefully trimmed the still-soft larger mug and put the last, largest handle on it, completing the quartet.
The NCAA’s annual basketball tournament is colloquially known as March Madness. For one who strives to be One With Clay, March Mudness is a better fit. 🙂
Today I saw the surgeon/Who’d sliced into my hands/To help my hand health burgeon/And sculpt as clay demands.
The good doctor says that the healing meets expectations and will likely continue for the rest of the year. After a year, he says, I can’t expect any more improvement. As of now, the only two symptoms of significance are a slight stiffness in my right middle finger and continued tingling of the fingers of my left hand.
I set the wheel to spinning/And formed a mug or two/With confidence a-ginning/And symbiosis true.
The clay body, Ironstone by name, was wonderfully supple and cooperative, and results felt more collaborative than solo-showish.
The serviceable Wareboard/Took on the two with glee/Then Thusséd and then Therefored/”Three fourths of Four is Three.”
The sound of the wheel’s motor augmented with the earcup-like acoustics of the splash tray can sometimes seem like the hum of the Cosmos itself. It is a lovely Alpha Wave maker when the wheel-throwing is smooth sailing.
Alas, the Fourth went sideways/A clay wall bent, then tore./The Clay Gods’ sometimes snide ways/So humble Potter’s core.
Here is when Failure and Success prove they are brother and sister. Big Bro says “Ah well, three out of four beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.” But Little Sis whispers, “Let’s take the scrap clay, which is plenty enough for another mug, to the wedging table and reconstitute it better than new. It’s a good exercise, and it’s also good exercise.”
The scrap clay resurrected/Was centered, shaped, and trimmed/And Gloom was redirected/With Wareboard’s glee undimmed.
“Try, Try Again” is ancient wisdom well suited to artisans. Every effort, be it success, failure, or “learning experience” mix, is another rung on the “ladder to the stars” that Bob Dylan sang of in the song “Forever Young.”
Now wrap them, keeping moistness/For handle-adds tomorrow./You’re happy, and your poisedness/Is free from theft and borrow.
The clunky last lines reflect giddiness and satisfaction. Time well spent is truly priceless.
Driving to work/A piano piece by Johannes Sebastian Bach plays/On K-Bach Radio/89.5 on the FM dial/The cultivated- and accented-voiced Charlotte Wilson presiding
I know little more than crap about music/But that doesn’t stop me from thinking about this composition
I do know about prolificty/And I know that to keep the rocket-burner fires burning/The creators must surprise themselves, entertain themselves, delight themselves first
And in this piece Bach seems to lull and then startle his audience/Building his tone structures with logic/Then opening up a trapdoor of slight dissonant strangeness/Then adjusting the off-putting with new structural logic/To put things right again
He keeps making and breaking these patterns/And in the end he breaks the pattern-breaking too/And ends his tinkling journey with a perfect landing
Joe, I tell his vagabond spirit, that was a party and a half. Thanks.
a squadlet facing fate. alas, all will not survive. worse, it is the bird
with the eggs, the one on whom the highest hopes were pinned, that will suffer
decapitation.
irreparable.
.
the sculptor is philosophical. if i make another version of this one, it will be better.
then a sigh. it will not be as alive.
then a shrug. plenty of fish in the sea and on the plate. plenty of birds in the wind and in the clay.
there is a moment of silence. so long old pal.
****
Afterword: Grateful acknowledgment to Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, for the last four words of the poem above.
a potter a sponge an x-acto knife a potter’s wheel a wire tool a needle tool a bucket of water a trimming tool and five pounds of white sandless clay
made a globular vase form let it firm up cut it free from the wheel head turned the vase upside down carefully centered and buttressed with a thick clay roll
trimmed away excess clay righted the vase centered and buttressed it again
and then the needle tool made guidelines the x-acto knife sliced the form into segments and the clay segments were baked in a kiln
and the potter took the fired-clay segments and tried several arrangements and arrived at one that felt super-right but needed something
and the search for that something amid already-fired oddments yielded a tiny egg shape and a corpuscular micronest for it to perch on
Lately I make a living as a prep cook for SSP America, a restaurant-management firm. Since May of 2023 I have cut onions, portioned sauces and refried beans and turkey slices and many other foodstuffs, used a paddle to mix 200 pounds’ worth of diced potatoes and oil and salt/pepper mix, assembled spring rolls and enchiladas and burritos and yogurt parfaits, fished chicken wings out of congealed grease, and performed many other production tasks. But since late last year, my main job has been to use a hand slicer to subdivide tomatoes, discard the slices unfit to eat, arrange the edited tomatoes into aluminum steam pans, and seal them for delivery with 24″ plastic film, with a label that includes creation date and use-by date.
Over the months I have gotten better at the subtasks of tomato slicing. Chef Adam Rosewicz himself once complimented me on how “pretty” my finished trays were. And my boss Don Williams has called me “Tomatoman.” I take pride in my workmanship and my dependability. The all-day-long repetition suits my temperament as a former marathoner and semipro potter for whom a three-hour session almost always ends too soon.
And as someone who has worked earnestly on all forms of poetry for more than 17 years, a job that involves mostly muscle memory is a Godsend. My mind is free to play with ideas for poems, with unique phrasing, with the little nagging business of a poem that had been written and posted but wasn’t quite right. The hours pass quickly when I have a good tomato-slicing rhythm going and I keep getting good word-notions. Realizing that Lenticular and Perpendicular rhyme can make my day.
The answer to the question “Tomato-slicing poet, or poetic tomato slicer?” is, of course, both. I am proud to turn the work of my hands into a good income. I am only slightly prouder of being a poet who keeps pushing at, and changing, his limitations.
Here is my latest sculpted bird. I make them because they tell me to. They also tell me that they’ll start getting really good if I stick with it a few hundred more or so.
Jimmie the Dog and Jessica the Woman were the best of companions. Alas, Jimmie crossed the Rainbow Bridge, as they say, leaving Jessica bereft. A short time later Jessica, a stellar poet and my friend for more than twelve years, asked me if I did commissioned artwork, and provided me with some photos of her and Jimmie. I told her it would be an honor to try.
Then about a year and a half went by. I kept making attempts and falling on my face. Every so often I’d let Jessica know I hadn’t forgotten and was still trying.
Today I was able to send her the image of my final draft. She stuck a Love emoji on my image and is graciously allowing me to share it with my One with Clay readers/viewers.
Here are the words:
Jimmie & Jessie
Jaunty as a Rock & Roll DJ Innocent & cuddly as can be Melting hearts & icecream cones some days Making bliss & breezes in the trees In the noise & haste & stale ennui Every Dog & Woman ought be FREE
What sometimes happens when I take on a project like this is I care about it so much that I choke. I overwork the drawing, I overjudge the work in progress, and then I get overwhelmed, tear up my effort, and start over. My advice to anyone who goes through that themselves is Relax, walk around the block, slow down and stop worrying about a result you haven’t got yet. Today I put my worries aside and knew that my heart was in the effort, and trusted the result would reveal the heart. At minimum anyone who sees this page will know that two of Earth’s creatures loved each other deeply.
One with Clay, Image and Text 