Friday is my longest day, it is my hardest day, it is Ceramics Day. I love ceramics, and I hate it. It's a feeling that I have with most of my art. It is so mentally frustrating, it can be physically straining, and it can make you want to run away. And then you step away, breathe, and look at it, and even if it's not perfect, it's beautiful. I get to experience this feeling for five and a half hours straight every Friday.
I love the people in the class. They are simply brilliant. They are a perfect match for me on the friend scale. They make me glad I took the class. Except one girl. Every time she speaks to me, I bite my tongue and slip into the "Just Don't Listen" state. She likes to tell me that everything I am doing is wrong. The first time she critiqued me, I was working on my coil pot. She told me that I needed to stop after the next coil. One, no shit Sherlock. Two, do you, a person who has just as much experience as I do, had the right to tell me what I need to do? I don't. Today, she did it again. This time I was throwing and I was trying to get my clay centered so I could start working on my cylinder. When I throw, I throw left handed. For those of you who aren't sure what that means, instead of using my right hand to primarily form the clay that way I want, I use my left, which is different since I am technically right handed. My wheel had barely spun around a few times when she comes over and told me that I needed to do it with my right hand and I would have better results. This time my complaints with her were even more. She showed up to class two hours late and acted like nothing happened. The teacher specifically told me that I should try throwing left handed and maybe it would be easier for me. And, she is just as new as I am and has no right to tell me what to do. That's really one of my pet peeves. I hate it enough when a teacher tells me I'm doing something wrong because I hate being wrong. But when a peer who isn't more experienced than I am in any way tells me that I'm doing it wrong, I flip shit. I told her that I threw left handed and that I didn't care that she thought I was doing it wrong.
Even before she left, I got back in the zone. I tuned into my music and my hands forming around the clay. This really is a calming experience, nothing can touch me. I love feeling the clay slide around my hands and through my fingers. I love feeling the water pour over my hands and giving the water a slick texture. The hum of the wheel as it spends blocks out the world around me. Feeling the clay become more and more centered the longer it spends, pulling it up into a tall cone and pushing it down back to a small cone. I could sit there and do it all day, although eventually my clay would become to saturated and therefore useless. But while there, it is the best feeling I ever could have. All of my stress just goes away and I'm left with a pure feeling in my body.
I continue this feeling after class too. This is something that has always just brought me peace, but after almost six hours of being dirty, and a long week, this feels just perfect. I take a nice, hot, long shower. It's a really peaceful time. First, I wash off all of the dried on clay, then the words of the girl who always finds a way to annoy me, and then, the week. It's so relaxing to just escape. And when I'm done, my week is over and my weekend has begun. I have a fresh mindset and nothing can bring me down.
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