A friend asks me to join a pottery class. Here, using stoneware
clay, I could learn to pinch, coil, roll and even turn a wheel to make
bowls, cups and sushi plates. I could even sculpt some ceramic
figures. She shows me some examples that her students made in the form
of misshapen objects passing themselves off as crockery and lopsided
mugs so heavy that drinking from one would easily count as arm exercise.
The
workshop is a happy mess of poorly made attempts to create pots, dishes
and decorative tiles. Odd-shaped plates hang on walls with pictures of
nudes, fishes and flowers on them, all crudely executed and unevenly
glazed. The question why anyone would want to make plates, bowls and
pots when it’s easier, cheaper and prettier to buy from the shops,
crosses my mind momentarily. So much effort for so little result.
Nevertheless,
I’m excited. It’s been a while since I’ve made really practical use of
my hands. That’s the bane of always relying on other people to do your
job for you, I suppose. One ends up losing even the most basic of
skills. And I’m not just talking about doing household chores, but even
holding a pencil to write in neat cursive, growing a plant in a pot or
sketching on a drawing pad, are becoming alien tasks.
Of
course, these days, fingers are more used to the swiping motion on
tablets than writing and doodling, while the thumbs (formerly passive
actors of the hand department) have become adept at punching the tiny
keypads of our mobile phones. And when it comes to actually doing
tangible things with the hands, I have to say, I’m evolving backwards. I
don’t get better. I get worse, through lack of practice.
The
blessings derived from having household help and the freedom from daily
cleaning, dusting and washing up, not to mention doing the ironing and
cooking, should in theory allow my idle hands plenty of opportunity to
express themselves in more creative pursuits other than play Angry Birds
and Temple Run on my iPad. After all, once upon a time, I was
artistically inclined and possessed an enviable dexterity with the
drawing pencil.
So, what is stopping me other than my general laziness?
Am I so used to gadgets and technology that I’m loath to soil my hands
digging dirt to plant flowers in the garden, get messy baking in the
kitchen or hold a crayon between my fingers to sketch a drawing? Or is
it that I’ve forgotten, neglected rather, the skill that most of us have
innately. That is, creating and producing things with our hands, and
the immediate joy it brings us? And all without the intervention of
technology?
Suddenly I remember how it was when I was
younger, when there was no distracting gadget constantly clutched in my
hands. How my fingers were never still, whether kneading dough to bake
an apple pie or make bread and butter pudding; filling my sketch books
with drawings of everything I could see around me, fruits, people,
objects, landscapes; cutting and pasting stuff to put in my scrapbook or
the school magazine; making figurines out of modelling clay and
painting them.
Somewhere in between, I still managed to get
my chores done: scrubbing the bathtub, cleaning the sink and toilet,
dusting, doing laundry and ironing and putting away the clothes. Chores
that in those days I did quite happily, because I didn’t have a choice
in the matter.
Hardly a day went by, whether at school or at
home that I was not making or creating something with my hands: a
drawing, a painting, even a skirt or a blouse in the home economics
class. Including, a very long time ago, a wobbly vase in the pottery
class at school.
I look at a poorly glazed bowl with a
thick, uneven surface and a shape that is neither round nor oval. It
has been fired in a kiln. There is nothing pretty about it and yet it
must give the maker a lot of pride. Once, it was just amorphous clay.
And then, by the magic of creativity, it becomes an object, a thing with
a name and a purpose. And the satisfaction that goes with its birth.
I
look at my hands and fingers. They have been idle far too long. I
decide to sign up for the pottery class before the devil finds work for
them.
(Desi Anwar: First published in The Jakarta Globe)
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