There’s a brief moment when the clay is almost bone dry and awaiting its first firing, when glazes haven’t been brushed on, or any markings rendered, when the kiln hasn’t had its way yet. There’s no colour or surface decoration to distract us from shape and form. This is my moment. This is what brings me back time and time and again. There’s something so honest and vulnerable about this stage of the process. All I see is possibility, and the hope of what might be. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking all at once because I know that the clay can’t stay this way forever, and that whatever will emerge will never be as satisfying as this raw and hopeful state. And yet, it’s the hope that keeps bringing me back. I’ve made dozens of these spoons in the last two weeks. I love the idea of taking a basic, utilitarian object and making it special. That’s what pottery is. An everyday, functional object that someone made with hand and heart.

Saturday was one of those Autumn days with a brilliant periwinkle sky and a sun so warm that we had no choice but to peel off our layers and bask in its rays like worshipers of Ra. I sat on a large rock in a small Annex playground with my three children flapping all about me like birds flying towards the sun and relished in the light and the warmth and the feeling that my children are still young enough to want to swoosh down a slide and cuddle up beside me, and old enough to leave me alone to breathe in the sun. Even my teenage daughter, tired from a party the night before, was content to swing on a swing, to sit on a rock. There was a time (yesterday, and a century ago) that all three of them were attached to me like barnacles and the local playground was an extension of our home. Every mother thinks (read: hopes/dreads) that life might stay that way forever, that one day a plaque will go up next to the swings that reads, “she was a good Mum and she swung really high.” Lucky for all of us, it doesn’t. Lucky for all of us, the children find independence, as do we. They latch on from time to time to remind us of that life, and that forever is a flash.

I’ve been listening to some Don Williams lately thanks to an Uber driver who played his songs all the way home from my daughter’s riding class last week. Ruby Tuesday, You’re My Best Friend; I know the songs, I’ve just never connected them to a person. I learned that Williams was especially popular in Africa, where he had enthusiastic fans in South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast. “He was my Dad’s favourite singer,” he said. “Africa loves country music.” It makes sense that it’s a genre that resonates with people all over the world, with anyone struggling to make ends meet, feed a family, put kids through school. Anyone who feels let down by their government. “He loved Dolly Parton, too.” Kamel told us how his dad was strict, how he held him back from playing professional football. “I listen to the way you talk to your daughter, my Dad never talked to me like that.” I told him how I used to ride in the backseat of my Dad’s car every Sunday night listening to Neil Diamond, how Diamond is my Williams. It’s funny how music weaves its way into a soul, how twenty, fourty years later, we listen to the music from our childhoods and remember.

Andrew Baseman is an interior designer, author and set decorator with a passion for repaired ceramics. His blog, Past Imperfect explores the world of “make-do” repairs, spotlighting broken objects, such as an antique cream jug with makeshift metal handle, that someone chose to bring back to life. We live in a throw-away world, and it’s humbling and inspiring to see such care and creativity brought to objects that most people today would discard. It’s the battle scars that give the pieces their personality, that make them unique. Much like, Kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold leaf, these beautiful repairs reflect a resourcefulness, resolve and imagination in the maker that is wholly beautiful.

People often ask me if wet, dreary days like these make me feel at home. “Just like England, eh?” It’s true, the rain, like cheddar and tea, makes people think of England. Funnily enough, I don’t remember it raining much at all when I was a kid. I’m sure it did all the time, but children don’t notice or care about the weather the way adults do. Kids aren’t making contingency plans or worrying about catching a chill if they get caught in a downpour. They don’t care about consequence or being cold and wet as long as they’re having fun. “My childhood winters were so much colder than they are today,” said a studio mate this morning as we lamented the lack of natural light. “But I don’t think I payed attention to the cold. Children don’t.” It wasn’t until I moved to Norfolk in the late 90s that I realized how I much it rains in England. The combination of incessant drizzle and Brutalist architecture made for a rather gray time. Thank heavens for brilliant house mates. The line between childhood and adulthood is blurry. For me the shift was at around 19. I lived on my own. I was out in the world. I started noticing the weather.

I learned the word, Weltschmerz this week, which in German literally translates as, “world pain.” It’s a feeling triggered by the inexplicable pains and evils of the world, when our ideals of how the world should be collide with the darkest of realities. I learned the word from a dear friend of mine, who like many people this week, had to support her child through many questions and anxieties around the war in the Middle East. It’s a devastating thought, that our collective heart is as heavy as it is right now. With the very essence of our shared humanity being so brutally challenged, how could it not be. These words from Toni Morrison bring solace. “No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.”

As a ceramicist, I’m often thinking about what my vessels might hold. Is this long enough for asparagus? Deep enough for soup? Beautiful enough to hold nothing at all? When life is really busy and intense, as it is right now, I return to the tiniest of vessels. The focus they demand is so strong that everything else turns to black. I can’t think too much about what these tiny vessels will hold –– salt, sand, air –– or pragmatism will take over and I won’t make anything at all. And so I stand here, pinching tiny bowls on tiny pedestals with tiny handles, knowing that their end function matters so much less than the focus they are bringing me in the here and now. The beauties below are by Japanese artist, Yuta Segawa. I own five of them, and they’re filled with nothing but dust and joy.

The grilled cheese sandwich I ate for lunch today made my day. So did the rocks I found down on the lake. But the best part of my day was discovering the work of British collage artist, Jo Waterhouse. I’m not sure that I’ll ever have the good fortune of owning one as they sell out fast but I’m happy to know they exist. It’s her wonderful women –– all a bit grandma-witchy –– that I adore. And just as good, are their brilliant titles; “a sturdy woman on a mission to do something important involving some branches,” or “a sensual woman in the sheerest of dresses invoking the power of the piscean.” Please watch her short introductory videos. I bet they’ll make your day, too.

Today was one of those days that make you wish it was September all year around. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of it on a patio. If not for the intermittent breeze, I might have forgotten I was even outside. Not too hot, not too cold. This thinking always brings me to the same place: if there were no sweltering Augusts and frigid Februaries would I appreciate September as much as I do? Would I become complacent to the joys of warm and breezy if I felt it all the time? Are periods of “grace” that much sweeter when we know what it is to struggle? “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” Sing it, Dolly. One of my favourite summer pastimes is to sit on the bench on our front porch until it goes dark. Every year around this time I start to lament the loss of this simple pleasure. The days are shorter, the evenings are chilly. I retreat inside to baked potatoes. To Netflix. I try to get cozy. Prepare for Winter. And whatever it has in store.

Between a nasty infection in my chest, a vicious wasp sting on my son’s ring finger, and a skin infection that left a constellation of flaming red sores across the right side of my teenage daughter’s face, I’ve spent a fair bit of September in a doctor’s office. The upside of sickness was a chance to read books and watch films, two things I don’t do nearly enough of. Kerry Clare’s latest book, Asking For A Friend hit home in so many ways. Just as relatable, was Julia Louis Dreyfus’, You Hurt My Feelings. What I was drawn to in both, and what I’m mostly drawn to, is material that’s familiar and accessible and that helps us better understand and connect with the human experience. I related viscerally to Clare’s portrayal of post-natal anxiety and the unspooling that her protagonists undergo in early motherhood. And watching Louis Dreyfus cry on camera after her character overhears her husband, her greatest champion, admit that he hates the book she’s written, is shattering. The characters’ beautiful, relatable and unavoidable flaws make the stories so true to life that we can’t help but reflect on our own life experiences. “The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets,” writes Arundhati Roy. “The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in.”