Some weeks ago, my sweet friend Shirin came over to purchase a wedding gift for her cousin (Congratulations Tekies!). I brought out a number of my ceramic pieces to the kitchen table (made of white Corian, about 6’ long) and let her choose. When she selected the piece she wanted, I went to the other room to wrap it in protective paper, and placed it back on the table.
Black and white stoneware piece for the Tekies
Shirin was texting someone, not touching the table, and I was writing something down, also not in contact with the table, when we both heard a very loud CRRRACK, then exploding sound, then a huge crash. Apparently, the table, which had upon it several of my very favorite ceramic pieces, decided to SPONTANEOUSLY SPLIT ITSELF IN TWO. The two halves of the table turned downward, crashed to the floor (narrowly avoiding our feet) and everything on it broke—except the recently-purchased and -wrapped wedding gift.
After jumping out of our chairs with the noise and explosion, Shirin and I were paralyzed for a moment. What had happened? Why, with only about 8 lbs of weight on it, and no one touching or putting pressure on the table, had it committed hara-kiri? And why, after we have had the table for years, did it choose to do so with my pieces sitting on it?
There is probably a simple technical explanation – perhaps the span of the Corian table was too wide, and it had a hidden stress fracture that finally decided to resolve its tension and split. I was more interested, however, in spiritual reasons for the breakage, if any, and what it could teach me.
Table now fixed, w/ supportive plywood added underneath
I have heard many times of the practice in Japan, China and elsewhere of requiring beginning potters to throw work—and destroy it all for an entire year or two or three. I have mentioned this here before. Although I am relieved in some sense that I have not been trained in this context, the purpose of this approach is a noble one. Making and destroying your work for a period of time teaches detachment from the pieces you make, from your ego, and from outcomes and reactions thereto. It prizes the process, the pure intention and technical exercise of creating something, and challenges the illusion of control over the very capricious medium of clay.
I found an interesting thought on a Hungarian ceramic artist’s blog, proposing that perhaps ceramics could be defined as clay in all its stages of being—greenware (unfired), bisque fired, glazed and yes—broken into shards. “Nothing,” writes Gabor Terebess, “has a final shape (broken ceramics advertise) … it is the part that makes the whole; it is absence that makes presence what it is.” Hm. Nothing has a final shape. Always transmuting, always changing, never static. Also true for people? Is it ever time to give up on our own (or others’) capacity to change?
Left to pick up the pieces.
So evidently my pots decided to change their shape, without my prior approval. It was, I admit, disappointing to collect the broken pieces of these pots that I spent hours making. I haven’t thrown them away as yet, which may be an indicator of my reluctance to fully embrace the lesson in spiritual detachment that a table tried to teach me. But all is not lost. This tiny realm of destroyed artwork can provide reflections on why more significant things in life often don’t turn out as planned.
And what to do when they don’t? The totally uncalled-for explosion of the table actually is an opportunity to examine what it means to make something out of an unintended result, and have that new effort be better, more confident, more integrated and awake.
No, really, it was a good experience
How have you responded when things contrary to your wishes happen? Both in the symbolic artistic realm, and in the larger arena of life?