The Potter
Written as a tribute to Bernard Spitz, beloved long-time member of the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood, who died last winter.
He had a potter’s hands, smooth as the lip of a pot spun so long that the grit is worn away, clay turning to glass. His thumbs long and elegant but the pads flat from all those hours spent holding the pot in place as it spun round. His hands tinged grey from the clay that had seeped into his skin like a glaze left to dry.
He was almost ninety when he died, and he had slipped in and out of many roles. He had been a signalman on a ship far out in the Pacific during World War II. But it hadn’t been real, he confided, none of it had been real. Boys playing at being soldiers, returning home in body bags stacked up below decks in refrigerators.
He had been other things, too: student, ad-man, father, grandfather, Zen Master. But it was as a potter that I knew him.
I thought of that first, when I learned that he was gone. I thought of his pots – not just the hundreds of mugs, plates and strawberry strainers that he had sold or given away — but the ones left drying on the racks in his studio. The teapots without covers, the cups without handles.
I thought of his potter’s hands, of how they had grasped mine, holding them fast as he talked. Because he was a potter always, even when he wasn’t at his wheel; even when he wasn’t mixing a glaze or firing up his kiln.
A potter lives in the moment. He has to: the wheel is already spinning when he throws the pot. He may hurl the clay onto the wheel extravagantly, following it with a splash of water, but then, the work must be quick. The potter must trust, feeling his way with all of his fingers, with the palms of his hands.
The first thing seems simple — centering the clay on the wheel. But everything that follows depends on this. It is by feel that the potter knows he has succeeded – when the clay dome stops wobbling and is steady. Then, the opening – a dome low and wide becomes a plate; tall and narrow a pitcher. All the while the clay dome is becoming, the potter must hold fast to the wheel, hugging it with his legs, elbows tucked in close.
I think of him then, using his hands to guide the dome into becoming, cradling it, gently as a newborn. And I think of him crouching over that wheel — as the pot took shape, as he pinched and prodded it, giving it life, guiding it.
Not like God in Michelangelo’s Creation, man springing forth, fully formed, with one touch. A potter’s creation takes time, a steady hand, as it becomes what it is meant to be. The touch comes later, much later, when the pot has become. Then the potter can use an index finger and thumb, a thumb and ring finger, eventually, just a pinky.
I imagine the potter playing around with the idea of an indentation here or there, but his pots needed, first and foremost, to be useful. Nothing fancy: they were modest pots, unselfconscious about design and ornamentation.
Some pots didn’t hold together. Some collapsed on themselves, despite his best efforts. The potter was matter-of-fact about this, too. No remorse, no regret, just fold the clay back into a ball and store it for the next time.
When it held together, he’d take it from the wheel, dry it out, and think about which glaze to use. The something useful accomplished, the potter would mull over the color. For him, that’s where the embellishment came from. Elaborate glazes, in greens and blues: sometimes a little dark, other times, quite bright. Sometimes he’d work on the glaze for days. He had long struggled with a celadon glaze — a few pieces looked pretty good, he said, but the rest, not so much.
Once the glaze was brushed on, he’d place the pot in the kiln and wait to see how it all turned out. That’s where the zen came in, of course, because the final product was beside the point. It was all about the making of the pots.
The potter didn’t aspire to perfection. He loved people, though he understood that they could be imperfect, just like pots. And people were drawn to him – not just the other elders, but the young people, too. Teenagers, just starting out, looking for the easy acceptance that he offered; middle-aged people, trying to decide, finally, which path to choose, afraid to make the wrong turn so late in the game.
Even in death, he remains a potter. Though he leaves us here, many of us unfinished, without a spout or handle, or our glaze slightly off, he reminds of this essential thing. Most of the work was done long ago – the essential shape, the dome of who we each are, molded early in life. But there can still be alterations or embellishments, even after the wheel has made many revolutions.
“It wasn’t the greatest,” the potter told me at the last meeting, describing a piece that had been broken. “It wasn’t a work of art. But it was a good piece,” he continued. “Do you understand? It was a good piece.”
Yes, I think I understand. Because the pots will eventually break – they are, after all, only dirt and water. They will go back to the earth from which they came. But the making of the pot remains – the willingness to stay at the wheel, though our hands may cramp and our legs stiffen, and though the pot sometimes doesn’t center, or collapses on itself. It is this willingness to stay through it all that defines who we are, and who we will be.
Published in Cyclamens and Swords (August 2015)
http://cyclamensandswords.com/suzanne_samuels_aug_2015.php
I miss him. Thank you for evoking his being.