at work in the pottery studio

It is good, I remind myself each Thursday morning, to set oneself upon an unnatural challenge.

Or it is good not to be sitting at my desk, typing.

Or it is good to pretend to be an artist, since I sometimes write about them.

Or it is good to enter into a community where you are unknown, and can remain unknown, stealth.

My Christmas present was a ten-week pottery course, taken in conjunction with my husband. He is, in fact, an artist, at home with multiple media, dedicated to his craft, familiar with the act of sculpting space, the go-to guy in an otherwise all-female environment. I am an artist in no media. I am ridiculously inept. I have an intimate relationship with frustration, some might say impatience.

But I try. I try to push back the panic that comes from being away from the pressures of a job that, minute by minute, spills more into the in-box. I try to roll the clay, slab the clay, texture the clay, slip and score so that pieces will remain coherent wholes. I try to fist the air away so that nothing explodes in the kiln. I try to imagine these odd shapes of mine all pimped out in color.

Last week we brought textures from the natural world to our tables. My arrangement of haphazard things infinitely prettier than the pots they are meant to adorn.

Happy Valentine's Day, my friends.