fahye | (no subject)

My favourite mug is a mug that my father bought me in Switzerland. He sometimes brings things back from his trips overseas, when orthopaedic societies fly him over and put him in nice hotels and he teaches spine-surgical techniques by demonstrating on pigs (apparently) and is then served pork for dinner (apparently) and there's always good wine because surgeons like good wine. Apparently. Anyway, the mug's glazed black near the base and then a speckly green and then blue at the top and on the inside, a very pretty blue. You can tell it's hand-thrown because of the shape and the texture on the tongue, rough enough to be real. What makes it my favourite mug is the little pottery man seated quite calmly inside. His head reaches about halfway up the mug itself, but he doesn't take up a whole lot of room. Maybe a teabag's worth. (His ears tend to get caught on teabags.) His hat and coat and boots are a workman's brown. It's kind of weird sipping coffee and suddenly having him appear through the surface, or sipping tea and having his pale caricature of a face constantly looking up at you, tinted sepia. But I'm always most disturbed by the initial tea-pouring itself. He's just sitting there, his hands clasped in his lap. His smile is always a perfect cheerful U. There's always an irrational spark of guilt when I drown him in boiling water.