Objects that Speak

Drinking from the Beautiful Cup

I willingly spend a small fortune on a beautiful cup. Though not all beautiful cups are necessarily expensive. For there are many ways of beauty.

My first special cup was from Astier de Villatte on Rue Sainte-Honore in Paris. I intuitively knew in the moment I held the cup I would buy it. That it would become a sacred object. That time is now well over a decade ago. At the time giving myself a month in Paris was an indulgence. The first I’d dared for myself. I was determined to focus on the experience not the shopping.

Yet this cup was a lesson too. That I could desire something beautiful and give it to myself. No guilt required. That everyday acts such as drinking tea or coffee could be made beautiful as ritual. That the simplest of ritual opens up a special space. A different mindset. One where the new and the sacred can arrive. That very often access to a wisdom portal is opened as well. Now I carry a beautiful cup with me when I travel. It’s a sort of serious folly. Because I prefer my morning ritual beautiful. It’s a way of reminding myself that my desires and needs are worthy. I am taking myself seriously.

That cup was unwittingly also a perfect metaphor for the journey I was on at the time. I was menopausal. I felt emptied and was seeking some sort of re-enchantment. The city of light had magically beckoned. There I was reawakened. With unburdened time for myself and a feast of sensory experiences. Pleasure became a portal to deeper creativity and aliveness. After returning home every time I drank from my cup I remembered that city. Those delicious feelings. That ease and flow that I could access in my own body. It was Joie de Vivre I carried home within me. As well as the cup.

Over time I learnt something about self loving as well. That the constant pressure to self improve and even to heal were often toxic ideas in the social media environment. Especially for women. We don’t need to be endlessly fixed or improved. Biohacked and anti-aged. We need to throw off the chains of the patriarchal, colonial and capitalist system that has used us for its own ends. We are not the problem.

Self acceptance and self love are the medicine. Even of sadness and anger and other messy bits. When we are filling our cups with pleasure and the small joys we open to life itself. What’s more we can give these things to ourselves. It’s all in our hands. Gratitude. Dancing. Creativity. Poems. Rest. Rituals. Flowers. Humming. Walking. Kissing. Touching. All sorts of delicious things.

No analysis needed. Quite a revelation for someone like me in the field. Who likes to explore the subconscious and unconscious terrains. To understand why. To know.

It is body nourishment that fuels energy and flourishing. I learnt these are the things I should be doing for myself. Not waiting for someone else to give them to me or a magical future time with more time. Things like giving my time and the resources needed to my creative life. Not necessarily to make money or find fame. It’s to live a particular way. For the pure pleasure in it. The hardest thing was stopping all the caretaking of others. Finding ways of loving with boundaries that respected my needs as well as those I cared about. As women we so easily put others first.

Since that time there have been other beautiful cups. Each one quite different. It seems like every time I face a transition or a major issue in my life a cup will whisper my name. I try to remember it’s wise to listen. That there has always been a message that a particular cup brings.

Most mornings here in Australia I wake just before the dawn. I usually write something before leaving my bed. I read. Maybe use cards to ask questions and receive inspiration. The very next thing is to brew a strong long black coffee. It’s a bit ritualistic. I must use my special cup. Stay in the silence. Without the lights on. Tuning in to the utterances of source. In doing this I have learnt to put my own desires first before attending to the responsibilities of the day.

Over the last year my cup is one made by a ceramist I know. A local Newcastle artist. Kara Wood. She is a strong and warmly fierce woman. Passionately speaking though her work. She is not to be afraid to be loud about the things that matter. Like women’s rights. Her hopes for her much loved granddaughters future. She knows how to visible. And angry. I adore all this about her and her work. Still I don’t assume it to be easy for her. All women artists travel a private path to make their particular work and express themselves. Beyond her obvious technical skills it is Kara’s particular energy that infuses and speaks through her ceramics.

It’s a lesson I’m apprenticing myself too. How to be creatively angry and more visible than I was programmed to be. Learning from other women creatives I encounter. Listening for their story. Their ways. Accepting my own personal wounding. That of unintentional neglect as a child. Acknowledging that I was never actually templated for visibility. That this is why it has been difficult. It is actually painful for me. Now I no longer try to fix this aspect of myself. I make space for her instead. Allow her quiet ways and the darkness. In this way I am tendering my whole self. Even as an aging adult woman.

One of my treasures is a plate Kara made. I keep it in the room that is my “room of ones own”. It sits proudly amongst ever-growing book piles and some of the pots Kara helped me create. Surrounded with paintings I make quickly on a regular basis. My personal meditations on a woman’s life. There is large black lettering across the plate. Telling a story of feminine erasure. Her invisibility in our culture. The plate so clearly speaking. Sometimes screaming above the colour and chaos of my room. My beautiful mess.

Women need to know their history. We were erased.

My Kara cup is generous with a dimple at the front where I can rest the fingers of my left hand. The handle is shaped with a thoughtful curve and easily welcomes the fingers of my right hand. There is a sort of brave beauty in its directness. The skilful simplicity. I feel both the anger of our collective history and the quiet resilience of the feminine creative spirit as I hold it.

Each morning holding the cup I inhale the caramel scent of coffee. I take time to transition from the dark to the light. Listening for inner murmurings. Then I drink the coffee slowly. Enjoying watching the day arrive. Savouring a chorus of birds and insects rising and falling in the forest just beyond the bedroom. Mr G has often left to play tennis so I’m alone. I can linger. I once felt guilty that I wasn’t the sort to be active in the mornings. Once the demands of my children passed I worried I should be using my time differently. That I was wasting valuable time.

I don’t anymore. Not since Paris. This is my time. My sacred time. Not to be used but to be savoured.

I remind myself that to rest is radical. To stop doing more than a fair share. To consciously start the day calm. To give myself what is nourishing for my creative spirit. To intentionally listen deeply to myself and the source.

All these things are radical activism when you are woman. Even a white woman.

Eve was Framed. I too have been hurt and betrayed. I got stuck feeling rage at all the injustices. The wrongs around me. Personal and social. Unable to fully articulate my feelings. It is hard to express the grief at what patriarchy has done. Is doing. So over time I have been writing my way back home to myself. I have found my original freedom. And a capacity for self love.

Now is the time for telling new stories. One could be of modern brave women living their purpose creatively. Telling the truth about what this means. Has meant for many of us.

Woman need to know their history. I say this to myself holding the cup. Reading books written by women. I am gladdened by the many midlife and menopausal women currently publishing their books. Reclaiming the power of pleasure and their bodies. Expressing the joy of a voice. Asking for what they want. Challenging shame and deciding to look at themselves with a feminine gaze. Rejecting the culturally entrenched invalidations of a male gaze.

I won’t be erased. Touching the words across the front of the cup. Bright red on the white stoneware. Because it’s an emergency. Still. After all this time. Especially now I’m getting older. So I return to the writing. To my making. To hearing my own voice. Making myself visible. Mainly for myself. Because I’m worth it.

Now the year is ending. A powerful black moon is in the sky. Another beginning is arriving. Maybe this is why I’m thinking of the hand carved chawan.

I saw it in a gallery in Kyoto. I ventured in and asked to hold it. Heavily glazed in a deep maroon red there is a roughly formed raised rose on the front surface. Which I didn’t expect on an otherwise traditional Japanese tea bowl. Why I immediately thought it must mine. Then I worried about the cost. The gallery owner elegantly tolerating my procrastination. Assuring me there were a few available as he took it from my hold. Saying each has a personality. That the wooden box is signed by the hand of the potter. Herself.

I’ve tried very hard to resist. Yet this tea bowl has even been in my dreams. I have even been already drinking from it. It seems to be trying to get my full attention. So now I’m flying toward it. Eager to hold it. To carry it carefully back to Kokoro House.

There too I awaken with the dawn. There is a writing desk looking out across a Kyoto view. Sometimes I’m sure I hear monks chanting in the distance. The neighbour stirring for his daily walk up the nearby Mount Daimonji . More often just a lonely crow calling breaks the silence. It will be wintertime. Mr G will be downstairs getting ready for a daily cycle along the Kamo River. I will wait for him to leave. Then I will go down and make tea. I imagine whisking the frothy matcha. Breathing in the sour green scent as I carry it up steep stairs to the table. Then sitting still before raising the rose tea bowl to my lips. Drinking it all in deeply.

Waiting now. For the beautiful object to speak.

May this New Year be filled with all the small joys and beautiful moments.