A Certain Calling

He was going to be an artist, that much was certain.

More specifically, he was going to be a potter. It was his Calling.

He had it all planned out — there was a class opening at the community center next week which would serve as the jumpstart to his career. He had already spent countless, screen-lit hours sifting through videos of wheel-throwing and reviews of clays and kilns, glazes and tools. He had tapped in the numbers of three overdrawn credit cards, and now the corner of his living room played host to an array of glossy new equipment. 

Before a small stool stood a mustard-colored potter’s wheel, the steel circle in the center gleaming with the promise of creation. Piled in its tray lay a mountain of sponges, wire and sculpting tools, and a small chamois. There was a neat new apron draped over a box full of varied clays, and beside it lay a stack of bats, boards, and molds, all waiting for a maker’s touch.

But the real beauty, the purchase that most swelled Oscar’s chest with the pride of masterpieces not yet formed, was the Skutt KMT-1027. It was a sweet little kiln; electric, with built-in WiFi and touchscreen controller, compatible with a remote control app, and capable of firing all the way up to cone ten. (Oscar had learned, in his meticulous research, that cone ten equated to a whopping 2,350° F, the highest temperature used for ceramic firing.) The KMT-1027 could even predict the electricity cost for any individual firing, and was the top-of-the-line for what the website referred to as “serious potters.”

Oscar couldn’t wait for the class to begin; this was his Calling. He just knew it, in the deepest depths of himself. So, he tied the apron around his waist and twisted open his first-ever bag of clay. He chose a red earthenware clay whose color whispered to him of the once-wild, big-skied plains of the West, of Native hands sculpting earth into pots and necklaces, of a pure art lost to the decay of time and the rot of progress. Oscar was in tune with that great creative spirit, he was certain, and the crimson clay would mold itself diligently under his fingertips. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply as he pulled the clay from its plastic wrappings; he wanted to remember the scent of the moment he became whole.

It smelled musty. 

The clay sat there, dankly. Little rivulets of condensation from the bag trickled down its pressed sides, leaving faint red stains on the pristine white canvas board where Oscar had set it. He frowned. This wasn’t right. Perhaps once he touched it, held it in his hands?

He cleaved his glinting wire tool through the clay, just as he had watched the YouTube masters do a hundred times, and sliced off a sticky hunk. It was cold, clammy even. Not the warm, earthy sensation he had expected. No matter, Oscar told himself, the wheel is where the magic happens.

He kneaded the clay into a tight ball, sat down on the little stool, and smacked it onto the center of the wheel with a thunk, just as the internet told him. He knew the first step was to center the clay — he added a splash of water and leaned hard onto the tacky mound, pressing it toward the middle with the heels of his hands the way the potters always did in the videos. 

But the clay leapt from his grasp and off the whirling wheel, flinging itself madly straight into the immaculate side of the Skutt KMT-1027.

This wasn’t right, not at all, not at all. Oscar’s brow carved two lines in his forehead like a tiny railroad track. He scraped the damp lump from the side of the kiln, careful not to leave any residue. The kiln stood there, waiting for work.

Oscar thumped back onto the stool with a new ball of clay — this time the silk-smooth b-mix porcelain. Porcelain was best for elegant vases with bright and curling paintings on their surfaces, he reminded himself. It ought to know its history, be familiar with the long-ago hands of its Chinese creators and the forms into which they had molded it. It would recognize Oscar as their kindred spirit, he knew, because he shared their Calling.

Again, he splashed the water and leaned into the clay, this time managing to push it into a wobbling mass at the center of the wheel. It wasn’t quite right, he knew.

Still, he told himself, the wobble would mean nothing once the vase began to take shape, because then he would feel that long-sought connection and the clay would obey him, work with him. It would know that this was his Calling.

He slowed the wheel slightly and pressed his finger into the center of the clay, as he had seen others do, then began to draw it towards him, out from the middle of the wheel. 

The soft porcelain, pulled too quickly and too clumsily, tore beneath his touch, its lumpy walls falling and folding under their own spinning weight.

Oscar slammed his palm into the muddy mess. This was not right, not at all. He was going to be an artist, a potter. That much was certain. Why wouldn’t the clay listen?

He tried again and again, smacking the clay into the center of the wheel and pressing it down with all his weight. He tried stonewares and earthenwares, high-fire clays and low-fire clays, but none would take a form worthy of the Skutt. 

The kiln stood sanctimonious watch over the whole charade, and Oscar could feel it taunting him. It knew he was a fraud; the clay knew it, too, as did the wheel. They reveled in his failure — who was he to believe that he could share a Calling with the great creators of the past? Of course they would not listen when he bid them to obey; he did not share in their ancient language of art and earth and beauty.

It was all wrong. The wheel was too fast or too slow and the clay too slippery and the smell was not the smell of Oscar’s Calling but the smell of mold and mildew from the drippy wet bags and most of all it was the smugness of the Skutt. The pretty little electric kiln with its WiFi and its touchscreen was too shiny and too new, and not at all like the sturdy wood-burning kilns that the great creators of humanity used to bake their first pots. It was too pristine, too perfect, too worthy to fire the misshapen vessels Oscar had drying on boards across his living room floor.

He could not go to the class now, obviously. Pottery was not his Calling, what a foolish notion.

So Oscar twisted the clay back into its bags and deconstructed his potter’s wheel and packed up all his tools and boards and his mess of an apron and he pulled them out to the garage. There he nestled them between boxes of paints and brushes that would not listen and a case with a guitar that would not listen and a beautiful antique typewriter that would not listen because they were not his Calling either. 

The Skutt KMT-1027 was too big to move, so he unplugged it from its special outlet adapter and cloaked its gleaming gloating underneath an old quilt. It loomed there in his living room, busy being not right at all.

After some thinking, Oscar realized it was folly to think that pottery could be his Calling; his hands were not meant for the clinging muck of clay. In fact, it seemed to him that he was not meant to create at all, but rather to capture. 

Oscar gripped his computer mouse tight, already scrolling furiously through names and brands and tutorials — Ansel Adams, Canon, telephoto lens, Robert Frank. What luck! There were not one but three(!) photography programs open for enrollment within twenty minutes of Oscar’s house!

He was going to be a photographer, that much was certain.