Handling it

If you’ve ever made a vessel with a handle, like a tea cup or a mug, you know that handles can present a bit of a challenge. There are many, many ways to make them— but the work of attaching them well to the vessel, getting the arch right, creating a good ergonomic position for the hand, and making them look like a fluid extension of the mug itself make this a sometimes dreaded aspect of the process. Now that I’ve stepped up my production a bit, I’m finding ways to embrace the challenge, and find little tweaks that work for me. But here’s what I’ve learned:

SOMETIMES WE WORK AND WORK AND WORK on something, but we NEVER EVER EVER feel like it’s quite right! I find that once the handles are attached and the mugs are fired, they get accustomed to each other and mostly come out looking okay. But that process of finding the right spot, the right arch, and the right angle can really tangle me up.

Which got me thinking about the many overlaps here with real life, in the clever ways that pottery often seems to reveal. As a self-identified high-standards, high-efficiency, perfectionist type, I spend probably too much time caught in the mess of details of something- wanting to get it right, make it work the best possible way, maximize my time and energy, and make as much impact as I can so that my time is ‘well-spent’ (I totally get the many problems with this way of thinking and also spend a batty amount of energy and attention working on these tendencies in myself to loosen them up! For the record). But. As with the murky ambiguity of human life— projects, relationships, goals… when attaching handles, we might try and try and try and it might never click into place. But continuing to mess with it just overworks the damn thing— the clay gets soggy, our hands get sore, our relationships get tired, we lose the trail. Sometimes we have to walk away, and call it ‘good enough.’

And maybe this is what it means to Handle It.