I said I’d never start a newsletter, and here we are, a whole year later. I was just doing some accounting of what I’ve been talking about for the last year, and… let me just show you. I have now written newsletters about:
- Wildfire smoke
- Terrorism
- Fear
- Essay writing
- Not Getting Paid
- January 6 (aka Terrorism, part 2)
- The End of the World
- Police brutality
- Isolation
- My dead cat
- The housing crisis
- Bad self-esteem
Wow! That is some truly depressing shit. And yet, here you still are. I was going to thank you anyway for subscribing, but damn, when I look at that list of topics I really have to commend you for sticking around, paying for subscriptions, supporting this project. As you know by now, I’ve always been an obsessive freak about writing, even more so since the pandemic began. Knowing that you’re here, supporting me, helping me get better by allowing me to experiment — I’m just really grateful.
When I was teaching at the University of Montana, one of my students asked me why journalism can’t be happier. I thought it was a great question. The easy answer would be that journalism isn’t supposed to do anything but inform. Daily papers should be like a public utility, in theory. And they’re strapped for resources. When there are few reporters, and few pages because of dwindling advertising, happy stories are going to fall to the bottom of the priority pile.
But I’m not a daily journalist. This newsletter isn’t journalism, but an art project by a freelance journalist that has mostly consisted of first-person essays. So, then, why haven’t I written about something happier? (You may be wondering is she actually able to do that? Solid question. I’ll answer it in a sec.)
This week, I felt that old existential dread closing in again: the kind that was thick and heavy on everyone’s shoulders last August, when I started this newsletter. Proud Boys were back in the streets of Portland again. The shootings keep happening — the other day, my neighbor found a bullet hole in their siding. The UN climate report came out, emphasizing what we already know in the West. And then there’s Delta — all the lines on graphs taking sharp lefthand turns upward. I guess nearly 700,000 deaths wasn’t quite enough death for America.
What’s there to be happy about? How does happiness even, like, come into play anymore when the world is melting down? My default emotion is brooding. But we could all brood ourselves to death, melt into our chairs, lose all grip we might have ever had.
Sometime during the first iteration of the pandemic, I made a list of what I wanted my life to be like when we could be free again. I wanted to work less, of course, but I also wanted to learn to kayak. I wanted to go ride one of those stupid scooter things. And I wanted to learn something new.
In May, I sat down at a potter’s wheel for the very first time, and stumbled around my first lump of red clay. It was tough, and a little gritty, but ultimately something a newb like me might be able to handle. My teacher sat down at her wheel, and showed the small class just one time how to make a pot. That was her first and last demo; for the next three months, she’d guide us, critique, give pointers, but mostly, we had to figure it out on our own. Quantity over quality, she said. Make a lot, and maybe we’d get it.
Ceramics provides constant opportunity to fail. You may make something you love on the wheel, only to gouge a hole right through it when you trim the clay that you’ve been waiting to dry to the texture of leather. Say it survives trimming, but then explodes in the kiln because, it turns out, you did not get the tiniest of air bubbles out of the clay before you even started. Maybe it does survive all these steps: then you get to play a maddening game of chance at the glazing stage. Dip it in too long, the glaze will be too thick, and crawl like cellulite over this thing you’ve spent so much time making. My first bowl made it through every step, and I glazed it in a gorgeous cream. But when it came out of the kiln, it was an ugly burnt red. Turns out I just didn’t stir the glaze enough.
It feels like there is some kind of wisdom to be found inside the clay. My fingers are trained for keyboards, but with something real in my hands, they fumbled and shook, nervous and unaware. One day I’d pushed so hard on the spinning wheel, I took skin off the sides of my hands. My teacher told me ceramics didn’t have to be painful unless I wanted it to be. “I can be a little intense,” I told her.
But you can’t really be intense with clay. I’m learning to be certain and decisive, precise, diplomatic. I just finished my first three months of classes, with more to come, and now my house has all these funny little objects: a bowl I filled with rocks, a tiny terrible mug, a little vessel for salt on the stove. I have one bowl I love, and I eat my breakfast out of it in the morning.
When I’m going to sleep, I think about the spinning clay, and I go through the motions I’m learning in my head. Weighing, wedging, coning up, then down. The water on my hands, the way a lump becomes an object with a few small motions. The way you can build something beautiful out of an ugly mound of nothing. And then the way you can lose that thing in a second, and a good dream becomes a bad one. The clay crumples, folds, is gone in a second, back to a lump.
There is no backing this work up. You cannot save a version to the cloud. Sometimes you make a thing and … it’s fine. Sometimes, though, you make something and think this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life and you cherish it, like a baby bird, only to have it explode, or crack.
I’m sure the process gets easier to control with time and experience, but for now, I’m finding this weird happiness in all my failures.
On the final day of class, my teacher told me that someone once asked her what the value of a handmade pot was, and I told her I’d read an entire essay on that topic. For me, as someone who creates a lot of writing that originates in sadness and despair and corruption, I can look at the little things I’ve made and know that they originated from a place of wonder and happiness and curiosity. They came from a quiet, focused mind, not a frantic one. They are tangible evidence that calm can be found in the midst of confusion, and that happiness is a little simpler than we’d all like to believe.
13. Fail
Best money I spent this year (and you forgot the article about porn in your list).
I’m an Oregonian since day one. Existence in NE Portland has felt brutal this past year. Raising a family and earning a living wage is getting harder and harder. The shootings are a real thing - I’ve seen two in real time.
But I love this city. Wherever people decide to ‘do the real work,’ whatever that work is on whatever level, it gets brutal. The ugliness rears it’s head. Power never gives up without a fight (ever). From the outside, it’s easy for my conservative friends and family to judge the hell out of this place. I mean look around. We’re an easy target.
But in this city at this time, we are confronting our history and roots of oppression against Black and Brown bodies, against those who live outside, against the poor and working class. We have a long ways to go. But I couldn’t be prouder.
Your journalism is some of my favorite, and this newsletter feels like it’s written by a close neighbor, who gets it on every level. Keep at it. I’m getting more than my money’s worth.
Ted
This is wonderful, Leah. You are one of my favorite writers. I can't wait, and hopefully it comes sooner than later, to sit somewhere in your company and not say a word to each other for minutes at a time. Wouldn't that be great?