The Two Potters
A retelling.
Once, there were two potters.
One lived in the desert and threw jars and cups with the colors of the forest because she’s never seen it with her own eyes. These jars and cups were made to hold and pour water, the most precious substance in the desert.
The other lived in the mountains and fashioned water fountains for bees in the hues of the desert. A bee fountain, mind you, looks like a plate but has a shallow depression for an ounce of water, so the bee can quench its thirst and not drown.
These two artisans met once, by chance, at a crossroads inn. They knew of each other’s work and thought they might be in love with the person behind that work. She had purchased many a bee fountain. He owned too many cups.
But when they met, they discovered the most human of emotions:
Jealousy.
She wished she could craft such simple, elegant pottery as he did.
He wished he could capture the forest and mountains the way her cups did. And he lived there!
They looked at each other over cups of steaming coffee, the marbled clay in their mugs rough like the moon. These two artists spoke of their work, but not their jealousy yet. Speaking of such things required delicacy and sensitivity. They ate and drank and talked in circles until they understood the language of their jealousy.
Instead of resentment, this most human feeling flowered into competition.
“Let us see who is the better craftsman,” said the man.
“Craftsperson,” corrected the woman, dryly.
He rolled his eyes and said, “I will make something in your style, in your shop. I will make the perfect cup.”
“Fine. I will take your place in the mountains. I will craft a fountain for the bees that even a queen would leave her hive for.”
“Let’s give it a month.”
She nodded. “We’ll return here and let the people judge.”
They shook hands, exchanged keys. The man turned to go his way.
“Oh, one more thing, why bee fountains?”
He grinned and asked, “Why cups?”
The woman found the journey to the mountains arduous. The climbing, the increasing difficulty of breathing emptied her of herself. And when she came to rest in the studio that did not belong to her, she felt vacant.
She was empty and ready to be filled.
That’s when the mountains awed her with their majesty, their timelessness. What she had only heard about from her place in the desert was greater in sight than she could have imagined. She began to think about her task. She first had to learn how to shape these fountains for bees, how to make them thin and strong and balanced. This craft was different from cups and jars, which could rely on structure and poise to communicate presence. The fountains relied on bees to do the same.
She went out among the forest glades and wildflowers, to learn what it was to be a bee flitting from hive to flower and living as only they do. Her soul soon hummed in tune with those buzzing insects. She learned that when they wanted for water, they drank. When they needed pollen for their hive, they gathered it without being picky for this or that flower. They did not care what other bees thought about their flying techniques. There were no barriers between their choices and their wants.
The bees taught her how to be herself. The bees showed her how she might win this competition.
She soon learned that making one fountain over the month’s time would not be enough to get it right. Her hands grew raw from making one after another, making dozens in a day, hundreds in a week.
This is something else the bees taught her: that nothing gets done until you get yourself out of bed and into the world. Nothing can be shaped when you do nothing. Everything changes when you spread your wings, and go out for a little buzz.
The man found himself in the desert. The discomfort of sand getting everywhere, the dry heat that made him swoon, the sheer discomfort of it all filled him with vitality. The emptiness of the land was so diametrically opposed to his usual environment that it brewed in him a spirit of gratefulness. Finally, the world matched his desire for simplicity. It made him want to add color to everything, so that if he set a piece of his pottery, full of color and light, atop a dune it would draw the eye from simple to complex, from homogenous to diversified.
He thought about the cup he had to make and began to plan. He drew sketches. He lay on the woman’s cot, visualizing this perfect mug he would make. It was deep green, brown, and had blue in it, like mountain berries.
No.
It was light green, like the grasses and pine needles, and had spots of yellow like wildflowers.
No.
Every idea had a counter idea. Every iteration of this cup produced another to supersede it. He kept it all in his head. This was how he made his fountains, too, when he was up in the mountains. He thought. He considered. He rationalized. He made a few fountains every few weeks. They were beautiful and limited in number.
In the woman’s hut were thousands of cups. Thousands of jars. Many were horrid. Most of them were flawed. Yet the items she set out in front of her shop were sublime. He ran her shop for her while there, as part of the agreement, and it stunned him how far people traveled to purchase just one of her cups. This was a woman of practice and endless ideas. The man only wanted to get it right the first time.
With one week left, he began to make his cup. He didn’t sleep for seven days and seven nights. He agonized over every detail, working so slowly his hands shook and his eyes cracked. He only had time for one perfect cup. He looked gray and washed out by the time it came out of the kiln, without a single flaw.
He finished it with barely enough time to make it back to the crossroads.
They arrived within a few hours of each other. The woman had a cart with her, filled with clinking pottery.
The man waited at the table, nervously, with his one cup wrapped in cloth sitting on a cushion inside a palm wood box.
The woman walked in smiling. Joyful. Refreshed.
The man was in distress. He grew even more so when she beckoned him outside. A crowd had already gathered around the woman’s cart. Two tables were waiting to display their pottery.
Unable to help himself anymore, he unboxed his cup, wrapped in a cloth the color of a dune, and set it on the wooden table. He unfurled the cloth and set the cup in the center before stepping away with his head bowed.
The plain, canvas-colored cloth drew the eye to the cup. It was colorful, beautiful, a kaleidoscope that reflected light in incredible ways. But, it was also unsettling. The shape was too sharp and raw. It was like looking at a stormy sea or an exploding star. It was unrefined by practice. The initial shock waned quickly. The man cursed himself.
The woman threw the cover off her cart and sighed. “Which one should I choose?”
She rummaged through the many fountains, some large, some small, some broken by the journey. She emerged with one the size of a dinner plate, completely flat except for the depression that held water for bees. Around the fountain was a line stained with a dark green slip. This line marked the edges of the forest around a glade. The depression that held water was color bright yellow, like a flower.
She filled the bowl and as if on cue, a large bumblebee buzzed through the crowd and came to drink.
They were hushed, in awe.
In looking at her bee fountain, the viewers were softly instructed on how to be themselves.
Meanwhile, the man’s cup reminded them of the chaos of life.
They sat in the tavern afterward, staring at each other over coffee yet again. She spoke of her journey. She spoke of the labor. She talked of nature and beauty.
He said nothing, his tongue empty as the desert sky.
A merchant walked up to the table and cleared her throat.
“I would like to buy your pieces. Both of them.”
The woman agreed. “They were for a contest,” she explained. “You can have mine for free, for I learned so much.”
“And you can take mine and do with it what you want, for it holds no value to me.”
The traveler raised a brow. “Your cup is beautiful. But it looks like a cup made by a dreamer. The bee fountain, however, was made by someone who failed more than she succeeded. Our ideas are not like clay. They cannot be kept in the mind to be reworked. They must be practiced, allowed to evolve or die. You kept your dream in a cage.”
The traveler collected her cup and fountain and went on her way.
The man slunk outside to look at the ocean.
The woman joined him.
She said, “I thought your cup was stunning. You know, we could learn much from one another.”
The man, his ego deflated, stared at the ocean. The sea was in peaceful motion beneath a ravenous sunset. The last of his anger seeped out of him, made his heart open.
He said, “Teach me, please, that I might draw bees to my fountains. That I might capture forest glades in clay.”
Fin.
Or…