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?
leili, this post left me (nearly) speechless. frankly, had this happened to me, i would have been a crying mess for, oh, a good three weeks. at least.
I wonder how to handle situations like this, situations that appear to be some ridiculously impossible to comprehend, that no kind of sense or logic is able to explain it! You appear to have made some kind of peace with it, which i admire you endlessly for.
But surely, we must believe there is a reason for it. There must be.But finding out what that reason is… well that seems nearly impossible to me.
Ha ha! Dearest montague, I think of it this way: I would much rather endure an insignificant pot-crash than a car-crash. It’s good and necessary to be able to think about the reasons why things writ large don’t always work out the way we want or expect. How much more so when we can use the artistic process as a tool in our research.
But yes, may your many artistic and creative endeavors be protected from violent tests….
my first ceramics teacher used to tell us ‘clay will keep you humble’.
oh Leili joon– what a oddly timed and strange occurance! as a fellow ceramic artist, i can appreciate this on so many levels and also relate to the feelings about breakage and “losing” things either at some point during their creation or after their “completion”…. for me, things breaking often seems to happen when i do really need to step back a little and be reminded that nothing that i make is that precious…. dust to dust…. and it brings me again to the spirit of the creating itself and that, though i strive to make beautiful things… so much more of it is about the method, motive and spirit in which i work. i find that i often break things that are my favorites… causing me to reflect again and again about what my attachment is to these objects and how to cultivate a healthier relationship with the beautiful things around me. when the breaks happen, it does sting for a moment (or two) but i invariably feel better actually…. as if the broken piece is a sort of offering for my own detachment and purification. silly maybe, but it actually feels kind of good. not to mention… i have been able to make some pretty great mosaics from the shards…. (silver lining).
so i just broke two mugs in honor of you and your undying quest to find the truth in all things. i love you for this and part of me is like, “what the hell??? why on EARTH did this happen???” so then i kicked the broken mug pieces all around the ground in anger.
so i believe you to have come out far ahead of me. ha ha. i love you.
leili–love your response and reflections. you are amazing (can’t say it often enough!). thank you for sharing. moving across the world makes me feel like unknowingly threw my pottery on the floor like a child who doesn’t fully understand laws of physics…challenging but i’m waiting (with optimism) to see what the resulting terrazzo will look like.
last summer Jan and I were entertaining friends in a beach house on West Island, south of Fairhaven, MA. We were standing around the living room when all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, a ceramic pot broke in two. It was sitting on a table. No one was near the table. We were not moving around or singing or doing anything that could account for the breakage. We just stood there very puzzled. Could there have been some vibration we could not detect? Why that pot and nothing else? There didn’t seem to be any way to explain it. So we shrugged. Later we replaced it as a gift to the owners of the place. They were just as surprised by this occurrence as we were.
Those shards are beautiful. I want them! I’ll take them just as they are.
My gosh, I admire your serenity and detachment in the face of such craziness! But the way you approach it reminds me of Tibetan Buddhists and their sand paintings–intricate sand mandalas that take days to create, which they then sweep away at the end of it all. The idea of creating art for the process and the spiritual experience and remaining detached from the end product. I wish I could achieve that level of detachment in other areas of life.
Love the concept of nothing having a final shape!! Love that your lack of resistance to the “changes and chances” of life allows you to see opportunities to continue to create beauty indiscriminately…
i have to admit, this post breaks my heart a little bit. i do not like the idea of your beautiful creations having an untimely end. which is why i am in awe of how you look past the surface situation to uncover a beautiful life lesson. x
oh Leili…
a part of me is happy for you……………… (?!)
a few years ago, in art school (interactive media design), I had an unrecoverable hard-drive crash, and lost _everything_ i’d created up until then. I was shell-shocked for a few hours but then found myself (much to my surprise) simply accepting it, and a feeling of calm came over me. I still miss all those interactive pieces / digital paintings / photographs dearly, but — whereas my memory of my past is foggy — I remember them all very clearly… Detachment sharpens the senses, like the fast…
PS: Please keep all those pieces!!! One day, you’ll be able to crush them into the wet cement of your country home, Gaudi-style
It makes me think of how in Jewish wedding ceremonies, there is a glass crushed underfoot (symbolic of the destruction of the temple, I think) but often times the broken glass bits are worked into something new – like a new mezuzah or the framed wedding prayer that is kept in the new couple’s home. I like the idea that after being broken into shards, there may yet be a recycling/ reusing/ resurrecting to come.
I never knew that shards of the glass from weddings were used in mezzuzahs or ketubahs! So interesting! Love your insights, as ever, Negin.
I thank you so much for sharing this post. Such a lesson for every artist and every heart.
I have loved this post since I read it first. For me it’s a story of grace found in unexpected places as a result of an event more easily parsed as disappointment. I am not all surprised that it is you that took me on this journey. Thank you for sharing your mapmaking; it has and will continue chart my course.
Such an inspiring and uplifting post.
Thank you so much to Cheryl, Pritha and Katharine!
@Cheryl: Yes. People involved in making and creating things do seem to come across experiences like this, don’t they!?
@Pritha: Mapmaking is such a cool term. I feel that’s what you do, too. I learn so much from you. Thank you and lots of love.
@Katharine: I love and miss you! Naw Rúz love to you!