the way the clay just takes it, all the terrible inside, all the doubt and it doesn't flinch, doesn't judge it just accepts and centers and holds it until the wheel is spinning and the shape is rising and it isn't ugly anymore it's something else, something that contains the ugly, like a vessel and maybe that's why i keep doing this, keep coming back, because it's the only place the terrible doesn't destroy, it transforms, becomes part of the whole, and then i can smash it later if it's still a lie, if it's not honest. i tell them it's about technique, about the glaze and the firing but it's about finding the shape of the terrible, giving it a form, so it doesn't have to live inside you anymore, so it can breathe out in the kiln and become something else entirely, dust motes dancing in that square window of my studio, catching the glaze just right, like that one student, the one i almost gave up on until the clay sighed, right before they did.