Today is 9/10/11, which makes tomorrow 9/11/11. Dave is flying tomorrow, going out on a business trip. He is not superstitious, I guess. Ten years ago, just seventeen days after 9/11, I flew into and out of Phoenix to attend a conference. The airline employees were gracious and helpful, an incredible change from how they are today.
On 9/11 proper, I was at university. Dave and I didn't own a TV and I never listened to the radio or read the newspapers, so I had no idea what had happened until I got to campus. There was one strange thing that morning though, an exchange I had with the cashier at the co-op where I stopped to buy hummus and chips to take as a snack to a research ethics class I was taking at the time. As I checked out, the cashier said, "Have a nice day! Well, no, I guess it's not a nice day today, is it?" And I thought, what a strange thing to say, but I didn't really question it. When I got to campus, I went up to the lab where I was working and everyone was pretty freaked out. I think the P.I. came in and told us what had happened, but I don't really remember. All of my coworkers in the lab were Chinese, here on student visas mainly, and they were worried about what would happen to them if war broke out.
I had a test in my immunology class the next day, and I was so intensely focused on that that I pushed everything else aside and went to the science and engineering library to study. In the library, television sets had been put in the study areas and people were watching the news. After a couple of hours, the university made the announcement that all classes were cancelled for the day.
I went to a coffeehouse across the street to study, still convinced that the immunology test was not going to be postponed. I sat with a friend, Amanda, and her brother (whose name I don't remember). He was in the Army reserves and borrowed my cell phone to call his friends to ask if they thought they'd be called up. Amanda chided him for using too many minutes on my cell phone.
What happened after that? I don't remember. I suppose I came home. I remember I was vaguely worried, but the antidepressant I was taking at the time thickened and evened out everything, not just my moods, but also the majority of my feelings. Numbness was characteristic of those days.
Years later, I remember talking about 9/11 with an Australian I was working with in Tokyo. We had a similar attitude: Look at that terrible thing that happened to a bunch of people I didn't know.
What's Going On...
...at the Studio?
Today was one of my teaching days. We had five students today, three women (one from Florida, one from Georgia), a father and son. Teaching is exhausting and my back hurts like crazy after, but it was still a good day. After the class was over, I cleaned up, threw for a bit, chatted a bit, helped Dave with the class he teaches in the afternoon. We also had a little studio sit-down dinner, ordering in from the Ayuvedic restaurant nearby. Dave, Chris, Lu Ann, Kai, along with a small group of students (Justin, Tim, and Sara) all sat around one of the big handbuilding tables and had a companionable dinner.
I'm finished, as of this week, with working Sundays and loading kilns. I'm so glad that this is my last Sunday doing it, as I'm tired of being obligated to work Sundays with no time off and very little in exchange for it. (That's such a long, boring story, how I managed to work myself into that position, that it's not even worth telling. Just know that your time is a precious commodity and trade it away cautiously.)
Some work from last week:
The work was still damn hot when I took it out of the kiln, so I carried it in wearing leather work gloves and I set it on the table to cool. While it was cooling I took a few pictures. The red heart shaped bowls have been sitting around in my cube waiting to be glazed for months, probably since April or so. The other work is more recent, things I threw to practice throwing with the wheel going counterclockwise (I normally throw with the wheel going clockwise.) The exceptions are the green and black pieces in the bottom picture. Those are some of the first larger pieces I ever threw, maybe from June (?).
It's funny, but when I teach, I avoid telling people I've only been throwing for fourteen months, mostly so that I can maintain some semblance of authority. Yes, I have been working with clay for eleven or twelve years, hand-building all that time, but throwing? Just over a year. And now I'm teaching it. Ridiculous.
The woman I teach with when I'm not teaching with Dave, the one I like a lot, turns out has been kind of slagging me off behind my back. She's been telling other people that I do several things the "wrong way," which would be fine if there were such a thing as the wrong way when it comes to clay. Turns out that if it works, it's the right way. That whole attitude of "there's only one way to do things" makes me insane. (It's also complete nonsense. A lot of the techniques I've picked up come from potters who make their living as potters or who come from a lineage of potters going back several generations. They'll often tell you that of course there's more than one way to do things, and though some techniques work better than others, it's up to you to find what works best for you. So I've gleaned a lot of my way of working from advice like that.) Unfortunately for the woman I work with, her criticism is not backed up by fantastic work. Turns out my thrown stuff is a lot nicer after a year of throwing than hers is after ten-plus years of throwing. Go figure. Maybe if you cling to shitty technique out of some misguided sense of tradition, your work suffers. Who knew? The crazy thing is, I still like her, still like working with her. I just see this bit of slagging off as her quirky inability to bend her mind around something she doesn't understand, a habit I associate with people who are not particularly intelligent.
And that's how you slag someone off, boys and girls.
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