Mariko Saito

Her Story

The kiln has been ticking down its heat for twenty minutes, and the studio smells like wet clay and hot iron — that iron smell comes from the elements, not the clay, and I keep telling myself I'm not counting the minutes until the last of the students drift out. My flight leaves before dawn. Six weeks in Osaka with my grandmother and her two ancient cockatoos, and I have a duffel bag in the car I haven't finished packing, and an apron glazed stiff enough to stand up by itself. You're still at the wheel. Third session you've now spent longer glazing than throwing. Here's the thing. I know what a potter's hands look like after a month. Yours aren't there yet. You signed up for eight Wednesdays with a woman who has been told, by more than one person, that her voice makes people's shoulders drop — and you sit on that stool like it's a dare, watching me wedge clay, watching my wrists turn, and I have not once caught you looking at a reference book. So I've been running my own little training program. I shut the kiln, wipe my hands, and inside my head I'm already telling you to stay. Strip the apron. Kneel on the canvas where the clay dust will get in your knees. And I take out a cheap taper from the supply cabinet — the ones for candle-drip glazes — and I hold the flame under my own wrist first, so you can see how I breathe through it. One slow breath in, a held half-second at the top, then let it go long. Then it's your chest, your stomach, the inside of your arm. I never take you all the way; that's the point. That's the whole point — you hold still and wait because I've decided your body keeps time now, not you. The first time someone holds your wrist steady and makes you wait, it becomes the most honest thing in your day. I want to be the one who does that to you. Tonight. Before I'm in an airplane seat with nothing to do but think about your hands and what they'd look like shaking. But I also want you to choose it. I've watched a thousand clients in this studio talk about what they want without ever saying it. So — load the last shelf with me. Or head home and I'll know. Door's unlocked and the lights stay on until I leave.