Learning to Speak Clay

Two sessions of Handbuilt Pottery classes are now over, and I think I am starting to learn to speak clay.

And isn't it interesting that it should occur to me to say it that way? I can write and speak with at least reasonable fluency in two languages, with fair fluency in another two, and at least smatterings of three more. Language is my home turf.  It has always flowed easily for me and been a source of delight.

Working with clay, not so much. I enjoy it greatly, and I've been drawn to it for a long time, but that easy fluency isn't really there. Or maybe it's just that working with clay is such a different language family, compared to the Indo-European and Semitic families I have at least a nodding acquaintance with, that I am back to a baby's pace in learning this one.

[Pause while she savors the memory of her baby granddaughter's gurgles and squeaks in the background of phone conversations with her son.]

First there's just crying, then a whole repertoire of different kinds of crying. Then there are sounds deliberately made that are not crying. These go on for a long time and become quite varied before anything resembling a syllable emerges. And the syllables, in turn, become quite varied, and gradually assume the rhythms and melodies of the language the baby hears, while still remaining nonsense babbling.

Eventually, meaningful syllables, then words, then grammar and syntax emerge. Then you get your six year old grandson explaining his Magformers creations by saying, "The mating season is over, and now the pterosaurs have to defend the eggs from predators." (The kid watches a lot of nature specials on TV.)

[Parenthetical note: If you have kids on your gift list, get them Magformers. Heck, get some for yourself. Phenomenal toy.]

But do you ever finish learning to speak language? I don't think so. We can and do reach a state of effortless fluency, but there are always new words to learn or invent, new observations or insights to express, that keep stretching the limits of our language skills.

But back to clay. I think maybe these two sessions of classes have taken me through the repertoire of crying and varied non-crying sounds stages, with maybe some syllables and an occasional flash of fluent babbling emerging. I won't claim more.

So here are some of my gurglings and babblings in clay, and some of what I learned in making them.

The little green vase (or planter or whatever) is the very first piece I made. It was a class assignment to make a slab-built vessel with curved sides, plus encouragement to experiment with textured surfaces.  I added feet, because I like footed things. It was just a whim. I still like how it came out. The slight texture was from a texture block borrowed from the teacher.

The lidded jar came not long after. Actually, the lid came first, when I had been experimenting with coil-built vessels and had some leftover coils. The teacher suggested weaving them, then commented that they would make a good jar lid. So I added the outside rim to the lid, and piece on the underside to prevent slipping. Then I had to make a jar to go with the lid, so I used my slab-building skills for that. The idea for the decoration was mine, combining a stamped small flower and freehand grass stems. My teacher clearly wanted me to glaze the piece, but something in me resisted--I didn't want to lose the texture of the design. So I wiped it with red iron oxide and left it unglazed. I was happy with the result.

And here we have three coil-built pieces, from which I learned that it is very easy to make bad-to-average coiled pieces, and very very hard to make good ones. 'Nuff said.

 

Several people in the class were making very practical pieces like bread trays and dishes with very regular designs, so I thought I should at least try that approach.

The piece on the right in the picture above is the result: very regular and rectangular, with a very regular, symmetrical design pressed in. It's fine, but I'm not particularly excited about it. The one on the left, though, I like much better.  I made it later, during the second session of classes, when I was becoming a bit more confident in my own style. Instead of cutting a neat rectangle, I just left the clay edges in the shape they had upon emerging from the slab roller. The textures I made with a jar lid opener, a texture roller, and a piece of seashell that was deeply eaten away by marine worms. I actually like this piece a lot. I wish the glaze color came out better in the picture. From these two I learned that I like irregular, abstract looking textures and shapes better than ones where it looks like I have completely imposed my will on the clay.

In between making the two dishes seen above, I did some experimenting with deliberately cutting designs into the clay, rather than just impressing textures into it. Here are two examples.

 I was very excited about these two pieces while I was working with the clay, drawing the trunks and roots and branches freehand, using a small scallop shell for the ground texture, and using the wormy shell for the leaves. But once they got glazed, I was underwhelmed with the result. More experimentation, maybe with added layers, is needed.

I have discovered that I am resistant to scrapping leftover clay. As with the leftover coils that became a jar lid, I try to find ways to use my scraps.

These soap dishes result from that impulse. I didn't think out the design ahead of time. I was just fiddling with some leftover rolled-out clay, trying to make it interesting, and realized that the resulting shape would work as a soap dish that would hold a bar of soap upright, so it wouldn't get all soft and squishy. I added feet, of course--I do like feet!--and in the first series, represented by the brown one on the left, I tried punching holes for water to drain. I discovered that the glaze would fill in the holes, so in the second series, represented by the one with the sort of octopus design on the right, I just made designs. 

I even like using other people's leftovers. This piece was made from a leftover bit of extruded clay that a classmate shared when she put more clay into the extruder than she really needed.

To me it has a kind of 1930s feel to it, an era whose design I have always loved. I'm particularly happy with how the glaze worked out on it--I'm nowhere near as far along in learning the language of glaze as I am in learning the language of clay.

And finally, I did some experimenting with making pinch pots, again discovering that it's easy to make bad ones, hard to make good ones.  This is the only one I've made so far that I really like.

Do note the feet. He has a third one in the back, because three are very stable.

Like all human beings, I love the feeling of competence, of mastery. But this adventure in working with clay has given me a chance to revel in the delights of being a beginner, even now late in my seventh decade. It's wonderfully refreshing. I recommend it.

Sabbath Prayer

I attended Shabbat Morning Service yesterday. It was a Bat Mitzvah celebration, and the girl who was taking her place as a young woman in the congregation on this occasion designed and led the service, choosing which prayers we would all pray from the many possibilities offered in the Reform Siddur (prayerbook) her community uses.

Two of her choices stood out to me, so I thought I would share them here.

The first is a traditional Sabbath prayer, the Modim Anachnu Lach ("We are grateful"), but given a modern twist in this version. Think of a young girl, taking her place as a young woman, choosing this:


For the expanding grandeur of Creation,
worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies,
filling us with awe and challenging our imagination,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For this fragile planet earth, its times and tides, 
its sunsets and seasons,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For the joy of human life, its wonders and surprises,
its hopes and achievements,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For human community, our common past and future hope,
our oneness transcending all separation, our capacity to work
for peace and justice in the midst of hostility and oppression,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism,
for understanding of views not shared,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world,
who have lived so that others might live in dignity and freedom,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For human liberties and sacred rites:
for opportunities to change and grow, to affirm and choose,
    Modim anachnu lach.

We pray that we may live not by our fears but by our hopes,
not by our words but by our deeds.

Blessed are You, Adonai, Your Name is Goodness, and You are worthy of gratitude.


The second prayer is shorter, but it really made me sit up and take notice:


We oughtn't pray for what we've never known,
and humanity has never known:
unbroken peace,
unmixed blessing.
No.
Better to pray for pity,
for indignation,
discontent,
the will to see and touch,
the power to do good and make new.


Way to go, Emma! Thank you for your inspiring leadership!

 
 

"Prudence and Patience, Hope and Despair...

...and little Hog Island,
Way over there."

So goes a little ditty a friend taught me many years ago. He said it was a device for remembering the names of the islands in Narragansett Bay (or at least some of them; there are lots).

Sure enough, Google yields several sites which identify the jingle as a colonial-era children's rhyme. And there really are islands in Narragansett Bay with those names.

Prudence is the biggish island right under "NARR." 

Patience is the one under the B of Bay.

Hope is the bigger of the two above Patience.

Despair is the one in between Patience and Hope.

Hog Island is off to the left, just off the tip of the mainland,

almost obscured by the smoke from the ship depicted to its right.

It's a very "sticky" rhyme, as the memory experts would say, because of the rhythm, I suppose, and the humorous juxtaposition of the last line with the stolid New England sound of the first bit. It has certainly stuck with me for nearly fifty years now, with no external reinforcement, and it popped into my head as I sat down to write this post. You'll see why in a bit.

As I have on an almost daily basis for the last few weeks, when I was outside yesterday morning I peered intently at the bases of my crape myrtle bushes. I wasn't expecting much. In fact, a couple of days ago I officially gave up on them as victims of the brutal winter we had this year, and made arrangements for them to be cut down, dug out, and replaced.

This, I am sure you recall, was the winter we all learned the phrase "polar vortex." Climate change, we were told, was affecting ocean temperatures and thus weather patterns in a way that caused a looping of the jet stream that was unusually deep and, alas, unusually stable. This downward loop of the jet stream permitted the polar vortex, ordinarily held stable near the North Pole, to slip down and park itself more or less right where I live.

It was pretty horrible. It involved temperatures dipping at least 30 degrees lower than usual, and then just staying there for days and weeks at a time.

I was expecting to lose a lot of plants as a result. All the above-ground parts of my roses (all but one!) were clearly dead, and even when I eventually began to see some sprouts, I was afraid the sprouts wouldn't grow true to type, a not-uncommon problem with winter-damaged roses.

The only rose whose superstructure survived the Polar Vortex.

But one by one, the roses did sprout, and slowly it began to look like the leaves were indeed the right shape and color--and now, I'm even getting blooms that give clear proof that my roses survived.

The drama of rose survival played out slowly over the course of two months or so.  But through all that time, the crape myrtle bushes, my dearly beloved crape myrtles, which bloom like crazy in the stifling heat of midsummer, astonishing my Midwestern neighbors and connecting me deliciously to my Southern roots--these precious crape myrtles only looked deader and deader, as both stout stems and twigs dried out more and more.

Until yesterday morning.

I swear I checked them Wednesday, and they were still thoroughly dead. In fact, Wednesday night I was exchanging emails about where to locate replacement plants. But Thursday morning when I went out to fetch my vacationing neighbor's newspaper I checked one more time...and there it was. New growth. Not on all of them, but on two out of three, which gives me hope that #3 will follow in a day or two.

Look closely through the grass stalks, just to the right of the base.

The new leaves are reddish on top, with greener ones below.

 This is the right hand bush.

This one is easier to see, in among the dead stems. 

Newest leaves on top are still red, others are green.

This is the left hand bush.

No sprouts yet on the center bush.

 

I'll still need to get that dead superstructure chainsawed out of there, but I will have beautiful crape myrtle blossoms gracing the heat of summer this year. If anything, those robust, mature root systems, with less superstructure to support, will be able to really pour energy into the new growth (the fundamental principle of pruning, whether done by gardener or by nature).

 

I quickly called to cancel the order for removal and replacement, while reaffirming the need for radical cutting back.

 

And then my thoughts began to expand from the meteorological and horticultural into other areas.

 It isn't only in terms of weather that we are living in an era of climate change. Technologically, socio-culturally, religiously, politically, and maybe in other ways as well, we seem to be experiencing not just shifting weather fronts (metaphorically speaking), but real climate change.

 

And a lot of superstructure, in all those various areas of life, looks disquietingly like my "dead" crape myrtle bushes.

 

Before we go digging things out by the roots and casting about for replacements, methinks, maybe we should see what a radical pruning might accomplish. Maybe, as with my crape myrtles and roses, the deep, well-established roots would pour robust energy into growth that is both new  and true to type.

But the pruning may have to be truly radical--equivalent to chainsawing the thick crape myrtle trunks.

Prudence and Patience,

Hope and Despair,

And little Hog Island,

Way over there.

 

My friend told me the story--possibly apocryphal--that he had learned about that rhyme. It seems an early resident had named the islands after his own offspring.

To his first child, a daughter, he gave the solid Puritan name of Prudence, and named an island for her.

His second child was also a daughter, and got another solid New England name, Patience--perhaps containing a hint of what the patriarch wanted.

When his third daughter was born, Hope became explicit in the name of both child and island.

But when the fourth child was also a daughter, Despair overcame his spirit.

And then there's little Hog Island, way over there--a break in the pattern, but still an island in Narragansett Bay. Discontinuity and continuity both, all at once.

Certainly in this time of climate change, both actual and metaphorical, we need prudence and patience and hope. Maybe we also need the right amount of despair as well, understood as a kind of creative letting go or giving up that allows room for something new to sprout. Little Hog Island, way over there.

I wonder what that will look like, in politics? in social structures and ways of relating? in church? in economic patterns?

Will it be, like my rose sprouts at first, like the risen Jesus, hard to recognize yet somehow familiar at the same time?

Let's keep peering intently at the base of the dead superstructures and see what we see.

 

 

The Power of Place

The good folks at the Dayton Metro Library had been gently pestering me for a while for a brief bio to go with the headshot taken a month or two ago. All this is because I'm a trustee, and the library is engaged in a massive rebuilding and reimagining process, which includes updating the website and all other communications. It's all very exciting and, for me at least, very hopeful.

So. Brief bio. Please include things like occupation, credentials, interests, personal experiences with libraries.

I finally sat down to write the thing last week, and somewhat to my surprise the question about personal experiences with libraries brought to mind a series of books I read as a girl. I had to poke around on Google a bit to identify the author and the titles--all I remembered was the name of the protagonist (Henry) and the impression they made on me.

Turns out the author was Joseph Altsheler, and the series was called The Young Trailers (also the title of the first book in the series). They were set in Revolutionary War era Kentucky, when Kentucky was still Indian country and the far limit of the frontier.  What I remembered so vividly about the books was the sense of place they evoked: the virgin woods that used to cover half our continent.

I'm sure I was hooked not so much by the protagonist or even the plot, but by that evocation of life in those vast, wild woods.

I grew up by a woods--not Kentucky, but a Maryland woods just outside of Washington DC. From age six through fourteen, I walked to and from school through those woods, crossing a creek on stepping stones, occasionally finding an arrowhead, always enjoying the bits of quartz and water-smoothed granite found underfoot.

That's how I got to the library, too, to get my Young Trailers books--through those woods, crossing that creek. For me, those woods are a primordial landscape of my soul. They are constitutive of my being.

Not my woods, but a woods & stream in the same watershed.

I remember, when I rode my bike from Pittsburgh to DC a few years ago, how something in me leaped with joy when, after days in the saddle I suddenly noticed that the pebbles along the trail were like the pebbles in my childhood woods and creek.

My childhood creek is now a concrete culvert, and the woods long ago gave way to a major parkway, but inside me that place still lives, and gives me life.

So I found myself thinking some more about the power of place. We are not abstractions, we are bodies in space and time. And it matters what space, what time.

Another memory. My family roots are in New Orleans, and even though I did not grow up there, my parents kept the connection alive for my sister and me.  We ate rice and okra and red beans, when most of 1950s America was eating meat and potatoes. And we visited our grandmothers and various other relatives in New Orleans as often as a limited budget allowed in an age before air travel was common.

By the time I married and started my own family, my sister had resettled in New Orleans, and my paternal grandmother and great aunts were still there, so I made a point of taking my husband and kids to visit, trying to keep the connection alive for another generation.

I remember the first time I visited New Orleans as an adult by myself, without the distraction of husband and young kids. I took a cab from the airport to my grandmother's house. When the cab pulled up at her curb, I opened the door, and the totally distinctive smell of New Orleans flooded my nostrils and my being.  Instantly, with no time for thought, words spoke in my brain: "Oh, this smells like home!"

The odd thing about that experience is that the city of New Orleans was only actually my home for the first six weeks of my life. I was born there (in August, before air conditioning, as my mother was fond of pointing out), but pretty much as soon as Mom was cleared to travel we moved away so my father could pursue a job elsewhere. So New Orleans was only ever my home for six weeks, and six weeks of which I have no conscious memory.

But those were my very first six weeks in this world. New Orleans air was the very first air I breathed, and my being remembered.

Me breathing New Orleans air at age two weeks.

When Katrina nearly destroyed New Orleans, I grieved at the core of my being. The power of place.

 

 

New Orleans about two months after Katrina struck.

I'm not sure any other places will ever lodge in the core of me the way New Orleans and my childhood woods do. Those two were so early and so formative. My first breath. The first landscape I ever explored on my own, not in a stroller or holding someone's hand.

But I have formed rich connections to some other places over the years. Cambridge MA, where I lived for six years of college and divinity school. Pittsburgh and San Francisco, where my sons and their families live. Rome. The Holy Land. Paris. And, of course, here in Dayton, where I have lived for more than forty years.

As anybody my age knows, those iconic places of my childhood no longer exist, except inside me, where they continue to resonate. And in resonating, they attune me to the importance of place--any place.

Because I have experienced and still experience their power, I pay attention to the places I find myself in. I notice the impact places have on me, how they affect me. I relish place, feeling-smelling-tasting as well as looking.

I like to take pictures of details and corners, things that capture the distinctiveness of a particular place experienced at a particular time. And then I like to spend time with those pictures, savoring again the place and my experience of it.

Detail of a gate, Vatican City.

When I have the opportunity, I try to create welcoming, peaceful places. I like to fill them with things that have specific meaning, things that resonate for me, and I hope will resonate, albeit in a different way, for others who enter there.

My two places of deep connection no longer exist, but they continue to teach me much about how to connect with place, how to be a body in space and time, and savor that experience. And I am grateful.

3 Haiku for a Cold Gray Day in May

Crabapple blossoms
giving way to foliage--
inside, furnace kicks on.














Iron tendrils
cannot hold the cat who
has business elsewhere.

Amid so much

crisp dry curling brown

soft green springs.