yuki always said 'stop thinking, just feel the clay' and sometimes i think about how much i fought that for so long, trying to force my will onto the material, trying to make it what i imagined instead of letting it guide my hands, feeling the almost imperceptible tremor when it was about to give, the way the resistance shifts and becomes a collaboration if you just pay attention, the smooth push-back under my palms as the form rises, my wrists sometimes aching but it’s a good ache, a sign of engagement, of presence, the grit of the grog still finding its way under my fingernails even after washing, a constant reminder of the earth i’m working with, of the endless cycle of making and unmaking, and that’s where the acceptance lives, not in the perfect form but in the honest journey of becoming, in the moment the piece tells you it's done, not when your head decides it should be.