Source A: The centre of the wheel

The first thing I learnt about the pottery wheel was that it could make a fool of a plan. I had watched the instructor press a thumb into the clay and draw up a smooth, even wall. It looked less like work than a decision being carried out. I sat down, pushed the pedal and put both hands around my lump of clay.

I pressed harder. The clay leaned away from me, then shuddered into a low, lopsided ridge. I stopped the wheel. My fingers had followed the shape I wanted, or so I thought; the clay had followed the pressure I had actually given it. The instructor said nothing. She placed a small bowl of water beside me and went to help someone at the other end of the room.

For the next ten minutes I tried to correct each wobble as it appeared. A fingertip here, a firmer palm there. Every adjustment arrived late. The wheel kept turning, and my hands seemed to be chasing the mistake around it. I could describe what a successful pot should look like. I could not make my wrists agree.

Eventually I lifted my hands away. The clay continued to turn, blurred at the edges but steady. I dipped my fingers in the bowl. This time I brought them back slowly, barely touching the surface. The shape did not rise. It held its squat, crooked outline. Yet the small movement of clay beneath my fingertips was suddenly easier to read. I waited for the next turn instead of trying to force it into the last one.

The instructor returned and rested one finger against the outside of the clay. I copied her, keeping my elbows close and letting the wheel do the moving. The wall began to climb, not in a clean sweep but in small, uneven stages. I felt each one before I could see it. My hands were still clumsy; the pot still leaned. But I no longer treated the clay as a problem my mind had to solve in advance. For a while, attention meant listening through my fingertips.

When the wheel stopped, the pot folded slightly under its own weight. I wanted to call it a failure. Then I noticed the pale grooves my fingers had left, circling the clay like a record of the time it had taken to make it. I had arrived expecting my hands to obey an idea. I left with a less tidy thought: perhaps they had been learning something my idea could not yet say.