“You need to understand that you will fail in this class. You will be frustrated. And fail.”
Okay, I thought.
My other two course-mates are less accepting.
One of them says she is averse to failing.
The other says she really likes to succeed at what she does.
I say that I’m not only okay with failing but that I have two college certificates confirming my ability to fail.
After all, I hold certificates in therapeutic clowning and educational clowning from the College of Education, Technology and the Arts in Tel Aviv. It is a clown’s job to use failure to play again.
My course-mates begin inquiring how much they must fail.
At first, we are meant to fail for at least a month.
Create. Scrap. Re-create. Scrap. Re-re-create. And so on.
My course-mates don’t want to throw out their creations for a month.
We’re learning wheel throwing in ceramics.
A compromise is reached: we can keep our lopsided creations from Week 2.
On my fourth attempt today, I play with the clay and somehow form a symmetric bowl.
Everyone is surprised. Including myself.
I think about breaking the rule of the day and keeping it. It really is pretty.
But for some reason I decide to dab a sponge along the rim to smooth things out.
It wobbles. Then gravity wins.
An accidental fail.
First lesson complete.
