Pottery as history

We're all so old and way behind the times.

That's when we're at our best.

So many of us specialize in playing children all our lives, and become quite good at it, expecting others to take care of us, not knowing that we're meant to take care of ourselves (if we're able, of course) and so never know the joy of making something simply for the self.

However, one can't make pots (or write, for that matter) when one is dead. It's simply not allowed.

Some peripheral awareness may be granted, but never will the things of the world, the things that delighted and dismayed you, hold sway.

However, it's possible that when you're clearly dead, grace may occur as a kind of seeing no one knows other than you.

As far as the making of pots or bowls or cups of clay, patience is all there is to it. Almost.

Skill then appears as the by-product of this patience and one becomes good, then very good at making things from clay and the making becomes a way of mediating between what comes straight out of the earth and what is human, between what's given and what can be made of the given.

History is pottery and pottery is history. Clay pots, wine vessels etc. show up all over the place in antiquity. Poetry comes sometime later, as does cinema and electronic music.

These hand-made clay cups, drying on a porch in San Francisco, are almost as old as time.