I Raku glazed you at The Goodlife Festival Experience 2016: you, the ugly bowl, with the rusty copper glow. You awkward-looking, disappointing bowl.
How I hate you!
I desired you to have flashes of turquoise and green weaving intricately amongst the crackled white glaze: a bowl to be proud of where people gasped in wonder at my natural talents. Instead you were the runt of the litter with splashes of gaudy copper; an ostentatious, lumpy exaggeration of a copper colour. How dare you disappoint me with your flamboyance? I knew you would let me down.
I hide you away to forget about you: so that I may reflect and cast a judgemental eye upon myself!
But wait…I ponder…I realise…STOP… I wake up to the truth of what you actually represent in this moment:
- You represent ease as I laugh and chat with the course participants;
- You acknowledge how far I have come to truly feel comfortable in my own soulskin: out at a festival, relaxed with people and trying new things;
- You represent stepping out of the inner turmoil of social anxiety and into a new sense of inner calm;
- You acknowledge that I am riding the waves of grief.
You are a beautiful bowl! I see your cheeky flashes of turquoise and green winking through the copper. I see you perfectly imperfect and okay as you are. I see you are unique and mysterious with a sense of humour. I see you mature and evolve with each passing day.
Thank you ugly-beautiful bowl for this lesson in (self) acceptance, kindness and compassion. Thank you for showing me how beautiful you really are: Wabi sabi.
Do you find yourself harshly judging what you have created?
Stop and ponder a moment: re-frame your wonderful addition to your world. What hidden messages does it have for you to learn from? Is there a golden(copper) thread in those reflections? I would love to know.
Congratulations on stretching your boundaries, and on finding such wonderful insights in the process. I quite like your “ugly-beautiful” bowl. It looks perfect to me.
Aw thank you love 😉 I am growing to love it more every day (though I did arrange the bowl to get its best angle!).
You had me at – “I wake up to the truth of what you actually represent in this moment”. Wow.
I had a similar experience yesterday. I was looking over things I created over a decade ago. My mind immediately went to judgement but I was already pretty tuned into my heart in that moment, therefore it didn’t last. Feelings of wonder and appreciation for the woman I had once been soon rushed in instead. It’s good to be gentle with one’s self. Thank you for such a lovely post.
Yes it is a learned gift to be able to stop a moment of stick-beating and turn it into a carrot of kindness 😉 Thank you for your experience on this.
It is something I definitely need to practice regularly 😉
well, I think it’s beautiful!
Thank you lovely 😉 I see its beauty now and yet I was horrid about it for a good few hours until I shifted my perspective and saw it through the eyes of love rather than judgement 😉
Such a gorgeous and insightful post. I tend to be very hard on myself and my creative projects too – I love how you turned your thinking around to appreciate what is really such a beautiful and unique bowl <3
Thank you Judy 😉 I sometimes judge something I have made with narrowed criteria that I have unknowingly fixed upon myself…when I notice that and open up, often interesting beauty and expansive thinking comes …. I think we all get like that in many things that we do, don’t you think? xxxx
I love the phrase “perfectly imperfect!” I like to think it apply to me as a human being. 🙂
Me too Angie 😉 Thank you for commenting xxx
Personally I love it also know how hard it can be to love our own work, seeing so many flaws being so close. It’s lovely when we can step away a little, hear our voice or see our work as others might see it, less invested. Love how you captured that in this piece Lisa xx
Thank you Terri…On this occasion, I felt it was a gift to be able to capture the negative internal discourse and re-frame it…I feel there are many times this sort of stuff is influencing us subconsciously and not really helping us to fly…xxx
Ah, raku – the ultimate you-never-know-what-you’re-gonna-get craft! My mum has done some raku ceramics in the past, and I’ve always marvelled at the unpredictability and imperfections. It’s the perfect exercise of letting go and seeing what happens. And even with other crafts, which you have more control over, things happen and so called mistakes are made – and still, the present moment with all its thoughts and emotions is woven into every wonky stitch and paint smudge.
Speaking of my mum’s ceramics, she once made a couple of tiny bowls to test a new glazing, and accidentally pressed a thumbprint on one of them. She then asked if I’d like to have them, otherwise she would have thrown them away. I now have a pair of little bowls with my mother’s fingerprint on them, and I use and treasure them every single day. 🙂
Your post is full of beauty, as is your bowl!
Lotta xx
Thank you for telling me the story about your mum and the pottery bowls… and for deepening my understanding of Raku and Wabi Sabi ;)xxx