What else can change?

I started up winter pottery classes again.  It is a lovely creative outlet I cherish in these dark days of winter.  It is a "wheel" class and I mostly make a lot of mugs and bowls.  I also make mug-like and bowl-ish creations.

Nothing I make is going to be showing in a gallery or raking in any bucks for me but it is fun and the things that emerge are very characteristic.  It is also nice to have people in mind when playing with the mud and try to shape that mud into something that I think they might like.  Kids are the best audience because as long as you put their names on it they will LOVE it.

The classes go for 8 weeks and I have been doing one or two winter sessions most winters for the last few years.  I think I'm on class five or six and I learn a lot with each class but there are some fundamentals of a Wayward P creation that tend to persist.  For example, during the initial "throwing" I tend to slog away at a single pot being oh-so-ever-fastidious-and-careful not to mess it up.  It means that I often take ~30 minutes just to throw something when it takes the instructor about two minutes and my classmates about five.  I also end up with very solid pots.  VERY SOLID at times.  On the flip side I almost never have a "flopped pot" - a pot that has gotten uneven or thin or overstretched or too wet or structurally unsound in some way such that it "flops."

Flopped pot

Until tonight.  Tonight I came outta the gate with back-to-back-to-back flopped pots falling apart in mere minutes.  The instructor, classmates and my Christopher all gave me reassurances that it happens sometimes, it was the clay, I'll get it back.

I'm not actually upset about it though.  The clay and wheel seemed very... different tonight.  I'm pretty sure they were exactly the same though.  Which makes me think it is me that was different and that is an interesting reminder. If my perception and experience of this simple bit of reality could be so very different what else can change?

So much about my physical experience that seemed unquestionably permanent has actually changed for me in the last year or two.  I didn't think I could be a runner, I thought migraines, allergies, asthma were just something I had to deal with, I had incurable insomnia.

This bucket of flopped pots tonight reminded me that things are always evolving.  And maybe my neck/back thing, impatience/perfectionism, eczema or winter blues are things that can also change when I least expect it.