Last night at the community center, I was trying to throw a coffee mug, surrounded by old women of various vintages, planted in front of spinning wheels, quietly, purposefully coaxing their clay, pulling it up into graceful towers, bending it to their will, creating art, as opposed to what I was doing to my clay, which had first turned into a volcano, then into the tower at Pisa, and finally and ultimately, as was always the case, it resolved into an unhappy bowl. My third bowl of the day.
I took my foot off the pedal and the wheel slowed. I retrieved the piano-wire garrote that potters favor, and started to pull through the failed coffee mug-now-bowl, but paused, momentarily concerned that the bowl was again transforming, this time into some unknown, un-named oploglop, some shape that would not justify the effort of firing, and would horrify the quiet, burly man with burnt-sausage fingers, who runs the kiln, making him laugh inwardly and shake his black-smeared, block-shaped head in disbelief at how incompetent people increasingly became in the community center, as time hurtled by, from hot and smart times to dumber, colder ones.
And suddenly -I could not help it- I started to laugh. But not a healthy, outward laugh -one that is contagious and makes others laugh- but rather it was some variety of insane hackling that began chugging up from my guts, like vomit, and I did my best to gulp it back down, hoping to put it back in its creepy place, to restrain it, never to be heard from again, but I couldn’t, and I felt like a child in Lutheran church, remembering that one time with my friend when the preacher kept saying, over-and-over, “the cock . . . crowed three times” until we could predict the word “cock” coming, and we couldn’t stop from chortling, and the more we tried the worse it got, and his mother was so angry, and that made it worse, that is, funnier, and then the preacher noticed, and that made it worse, that is, funnier still, and then my friend’s mother grabbed my ear, and at that exact moment I pissed myself in the second row of church, but just a little, with little squirts coming out with each gut-wrenching convulsion of laughter, which somehow made it even funner, and the situation devolved into something completely uncontrollable, and it was almost as if I had floated up to the top of the church and had joined God up in the rafters, and was watching down on the whole affair, aghast that such a thing could even happen, and secretly very happy that it wasn’t happening to me.
In that exact same way, I was becoming unhinged in the meditative church called the community center, with most its twelve wheels spinning fast, the high ceiling fans spinning slowly, the rhythmic delicate sound of the wet forms in the hands of the potters, sounds as ancient as people and clay, the continuity of life, and then, out of nowhere, disrupting the peace, a middle-aged guy with a beard starts choking on his own laughter, tears forming on his cheeks, trying to secretly bite the inside of his mouth, to cause pain, to stop the laughter, his shoulders bouncing up and down so that even he can’t remember whether he is laughing or sobbing. Maybe he is doing both. Nobody looks up.
I could not be more self-conscious at this moment. I was at the crossroads. Could I maintain? Retain my sense of quiet dignity?
I could not. The hackle won. I gave up. I stopped trying to suffocate myself, and, raising my head, I opened my mouth and laughed, out-loud, like a lunatic. I think I would have howled at the moon if the moon were there to howl at.
It was the bowl. I couldn’t help it. I looked down at that thing, half-dislodged from the plate, and wondered, what the hell kind of person could even create such a malformity? A bowl that would cause even M.C. Escher to scratch his head, confounded; a bowl that might leave its user struggling to know where to even put her oatmeal, perhaps leaving it in a mushy pile on the counter instead and walking away hungry and unprepared to meet the challenges of her day; a bowl that somehow convincingly proved to me the existence of God, just for a moment; all of these things I found hysterically funny in my own mind, but, for the life of me, also found myself unable to share with the old women around me, and I know this because I tried, and I realized
that, even though I had raised my head up and was alone laughing into the silence of the center, none of the old women had even paused from pulling on their pots to look up at me. And so, apparently deprived of fuel, the laughter quickly passed, leaving me normal again, except with a residual embarrassment. Still nobody paused or looked up at me.
Exasperated to explain myself, I turned my attention to the woman directly in front of me, facing me with her wheel in front of her, her wheel stopped like mine, and finally she noticed my gaze and looked back at me, a little concern showing in her wrinkly eyes. I said, “I . . . ~
~You don’t have to explain anything to us, honey,” she interrupted, kindly, but without skipping a beat, and clearly speaking for the group as a whole.
And just like that her wheel started moving again and she was gone with the rest of them, leaving me alone with my bowl, waiting to see what happened next at the spinning wheel.