One time, I had an art class. Now, if you know me, you know that art is the one thing I cannot physically excel at. My fingers refuse to dance the way artists do, and my creations come out looking like trampled bouquets and stick figure emotion. But this art class, I was required to take. And so I made the best of it. I tried to create things.
We had a unit, based on clay and sculpting. I saw the artists in the room twirl clay around their fingers and quietly tap the clay into shape while I sat in some corner trying to smack some sense into my flat pita bread clay.
The last day rolled around with impending doom, because I still had not created anything significant out of my slab of clay, and unless I was to turn in a slab of clay and call it art, I needed to get it completed within thirty minutes.
And so I created a basket, a rather ugly one if you asked anybody around me. And I stuck a clay heart that I made in a quick minute right in that basket. It was definitely not quality artwork. The beautifully crafted clay sculptures were in the hands of the true artists in the room, and my god, they were stunning. And then there was me, with a heart filled basket.
The teacher asked for me to explain the creation after class, as everyone had to. And so I did. I told her that my basket represented my way of life. That of all things I’d choose to protect, I’d always protect that little heart, representative of all the things I’d ever loved. Because my life would simply be empty without it. Just an empty basket. Now, she looked at me strange and asked me a few more questions. So I discussed it, took it further. It was spontaneous, and it came to me in an instant, but somehow, I got an A on this ugly little basket. And no, this teacher wasn’t the one to hand out A’s like candy. I was in awe, nothing I’d ever done in that class earned me an A. But this scrappy clay basket did.
And being the poet I am, I decided to take this to a metaphor for life. Though things may seem ugly and broken down on the outside, when looking deep enough, you can salvage meaning and value to the strangest little things. Looking at things does not mean that you understand them. When you are able to understand the complexity behind an object or a human, that’s when you’ll know them. And that’s when they’ll really mean something.
Getting an A in art class with no art skills. |(Morsus Engel)| (via actuates)
