The Nature of Impermanence

Lines of beauty: the broken belly cup, originally uploaded by mmhschwab.

I just found this on my mom's flickr account: one of her beloved Belly Cups, purchased from a gallery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, two years ago from a cup show I was also in. So sad!

This is perhaps the hardest part of working with ceramics: the very real possibility that at any time, it can shatter. Ceramics are so vulnerable through every step in the process: wet clay on the wheel (I've spun the wheel too fast and had pieces go flying...), trimming through the bottom of a piece while adding a foot, the dread of firing and not knowing if the cup would glaze itself to a shelf or fall over entirely... and then if it does survive all those steps, I used to fear that I would bump the table before a critique and totally wreck the work. So dramatic!

A friend from years ago pointed out that I might try to accept the Nature of Impermanence... I am reminded of him often, and smiled just now when I found this from Thich Nhat Hanh:

"We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible."