How Ceramics Teaches You (and me) To Let Go
Hello to anyone who is out there and stumbles across this lonesome, obscure blog.
Worm Ceramics here and I just wanted to write a bit about letting go and how that pertains to the ceramics process.
I've been frustrated the past couple days.
Mostly due to ceramics and the mistakes I've made.
Mistakes I probably could have prevented but was either being sloppy or didn't know I was detrimentally affecting the outcome of the piece.
In short, I've been coning wrong. Or sometimes I don't fuse two pieces of clay securely enough.
I've had a handful of cracks, ruptures, glazes that bubble. I've forgotten to sand down sharp edges, paint three layers of underglaze, touch up a bottom or sand down kiln wash that gets stuck to my pieces.
It kind of feels like I've been making mistake after mistake after mistake. Even though I know this is part of the learning process, it still hurts to think about my unintentional carelessness.
Anyways, I've been thinking a lot about letting go, especially since another S-crack surfaced on the bottom of my third teapot.
It ruined much of my day, and the day was so beautiful it shouldn't have been ruined, but I couldn't let it go.
I couldn't stop thinking about the crack, how if I had only coned properly it might not have appeared. Or why wasn't this awful feeling of dwelling over a problem I couldn't solve still nagging at my insides?
Slowly, ceramics is teaching me just to acknowledge the problem (the S-crack) and then let it slip through my fingers, like a fish being released back into the water.
The crack is there, it won't go away, the damage is done, it is time to move on.
That's what I have to tell myself. Let go of the little things in life, don't let it emotionally ruin my mood or how I am feeling. There's still hope to remedy the problem, now that I am aware of my errors.
And I feel like this logic applies to a lot of other things in life, little worries, nuisances, things that anger us and get blown out of proportion in our minds when really nothing bad has happened at all.
I'm learning to let go through ceramics, it is teaching me this.
Maybe this will help other people who also get riled up over things, not to let them tamper with your mood. To accept the fact that this thing has happened, but now it's time to move on.
Love,
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