I want to be a potter. I want to make and sell ceramic pots. To do that I need equipment. Expensive equipment. I know the owner said he would pay for my expenses, but expenses like these might be more than he was expecting to pay. So I called his number in the information folder for confirmation.
Elaine Westerfall answered. I told her who I was and that I wanted to make sure that my rather large workshop expense was within the limits envisioned by her and her husband. I then mentioned the amount. It made me gasp, but seemed to have no impact on her.
"After what we've been through with that place, that's chicken feed. You wouldn't believe the amount of money we've spent on that property. You go right ahead. Have you received the credit card?"
"Yes," I assured her. "Would you like to see the invoices for the pottery equipment?"
"Good heavens no. I don't know anything about pottery equipment and neither does Thurston. Just get what you need to be happy out there."
She sounded quite positive about that, but there was something in the tone of her voice that sounded just a little too happy. Was she surprised that I was still here? Was she expecting some other sort of phone call from me? Or was I just making things up? I thanked her again, we wished each other a good day and hung up.
So now I had a wheel and a kiln on the way, with enough clay to make a lot of pots. I would order paint and whatnot after I had a pot or two to paint. It takes a while to get used to a wheel and a kiln.
That month waiting was an anxious month. After the first few days, I got over the fear of someone coming on to the place and threatening me somehow. I saw nobody. I mean nobody. I'm getting exactly what I've always wanted, I thought, a quiet place to work, and time. Time was beginning to turn in to time on my hands.
All I had to do was move sand out of the house and wait for delivery. I waited one full month for delivery. I made sketches. I made plans. I mentally rearranged my workshop several times.
I look at pots on the internet but I always think my pots will be better than what I see. I do wonder about the possible egotism of that, but on the whole I think it’s a healthy attitude to have. In any case I will never copy a design, no matter how many thousands of years it has been in the public domain. I may take ideas from ancient pots occasionally but never copy an entire design.
Finally it all got here. I unpacked it all and set it up in the garage turned workshop. Experiments began. I made things. Things but not pots. I had a hundred pounds of clay to experiment with. I learned that mistakes can be restored, with work, to clay, to be used again. Finally one morning, I had a pot made. I was so proud.
I read the directions for the kiln and fired the pot. I had used a kiln exactly once, in college, with supervision. The pot blew up after one hour in the kiln. Was I disappointed? You bet your sweet life I was. I learned to fire my mistakes instead of finished pots to learn how to use the kiln.
Then one day I had an actual pot made and fired in the kiln next to the turtle I had made some weeks before. The turtle was the first thing that survived the kiln. Things settled into a sort of routine.
I approach the wheel in the morning as though it were some sort of deity. I know it isn't, it's just a tool. So where is the magic? There has to be magic in turning clay, which is dirt, into something beautiful and useful, like a pot. I made it, I know that, but it's still magic somehow. Maybe I can't believe I made it myself. But maybe I didn't. Maybe I had help. That's the spooky part. Or maybe I've been out here by myself too long, spent too much time in the sun.
One morning walking to the workshop I thought, It's working out. I can't believe it, but it's happening. It's been a little more than a month and I have equipment arriving for my pottery shop, the plants have returned to life, most of them anyway, and I am getting into an actual routine. I feel sometimes like I'm running an estate. That's a silly thing to say. I am running an estate. The owner is coming to visit just any day now. He gave me the name of a company which will send two helpers, a man and a woman to get the place in shape for his visit. They are insanely expensive. He doesn't care.
I watered all the plants. The palm tree next to the pool table outside was almost dead. I learned how to water plants from the internet. I was beginning to feel like I belonged here, somehow.
Just to demonstrate that, I howled back at the coyotes one night, waiting on the kiln. It shut them up for a minute, then they started up again just like before. I wondered if I had been accepted or was just being ignored.
Eventually I had a pot I thought I could actually sell. I thought for the first time about how I was going to sell it. Where had I seen pots for sale? I had passed roadside stands offering pots. I had heard of co-ops where you could display your wares with others on consignment and take turns minding the store. The small store in town might take a pot or two on consignment, to see if anyone wanted a genuine handmade ceramic pot styled and made the same way they were made four thousand years ago.
As it turned out, nobody did. I put pictures on the internet and got slightly better response. Occasionally I had an internet sale. Then I would package the pot and ship it somewhere. Months went by. I had what I wanted. I was making pots, every day.
My daily routine is pretty normal, I think. I get up and make my breakfast and eat it on the patio watching the sun rise over the mountains. Then I put the dishes in the sink to wash later and go to my potting shed.
Somewhere around noon I get hungry again and go back to the house for lunch. Then if there are chores or a trip to town I do them. If not, it’s back to the workshop to putter around or sit in a deck chair outside in the shade of the workshop looking at the mountains and drawing designs into a sketchbook for future pots.
This continues until dark and occasionally long afterwards. I enjoy looking with wonder if not knowledge at the heavens. The dark nights lying back on the lounge chair looking at the sky and waiting for the air to cool off and the kiln to warm up enough for me to go to bed are the closest I ever get to reflection, or a spiritual life.
I thoroughly enjoy the outrageous mess involved in making a pot. I guess I’m just one of those strange women who feel really good all muddied up from the wheel and the mixing barrel. It is after all very high quality clay and it washes off very well. At first I washed off in the shower in the house, then for fear that the clay washed every day into the septic system would clog it up somehow, I started rinsing the mud off under the pool shower before going into the house.
That lead to the realization that nothing was really being accomplished by the second inside shower. Now I just wash off under the pool shower and dry off in the sunshine. This saves on water. Not wearing clothes makes the laundry lighter too, for a double advantage. The outdoor shower leaves me with what I think of as an acceptable state of clean, suitable for going to town if necessary and not at all offensive, although there again, who was there to offend? I should get a cat. They are so easily offended. I'd probably feel better all round if I had someone to offend.