She was with a group of starlings and presently, they were more a chatter than a murmur. Their movements and calls were sharp and agitated. She’d been following them for four months. Enkatah watched through her binoculars as the birds alighted on a mountaintop — a mesa, flat and rocky — a little way ahead. An island crept into view, backlit by the sunset as it emerged from behind the hill. She waited, to see what the birds would do.

The island was enormous, a mountain in itself, hanging like a moon in the lower atmosphere. A clod of dirt clawed from the earth and held aloft. Its base was brown and grey, a mottled collection of soil and magnetic rock. Her eyes were on the birds as another form came into view. Tufts of high grass, long blades and wildflowers a lush haze in the background. She turned a dial, zoomed out, and the city sprouted from the ground there. Buildings, a muted assembly of round beige stones, all the different colors of a mourning dove. Closer to the center the buildings were taller, mirroring the way the underside tapered lazily inward. Veins of light, barely visible through the rock, just a soft yellow striation. A stationary spinning top, floating through the sky.

There were still several of these — floating cities — though the exact number was inconclusive. People on the ground had little knowledge of them; there was simply no way to verify. But there was conjecture, several bits of it: The islands were resource dense. Any infrastructure that existed did so to serve them in some way. The people there were comfortable; they did not need new neighbors. The insides were the same mix of dirt and stone that was visible from the ground. The insides were made of liquified gold. The cities were abandoned.

More was unknown. How thick were the crusts, how big were the cores, and how long have they existed. All of the mechanics. There were precious few facts. Each seemed to be leashed to a body of fresh water, and travelled along or around it. Each island had its own magnetic field, similar to the planet’s. A smaller stronger field of electricity protected each city, an invisible orb that surrounded the surface, the buildings, and most of the underneath. No one there needed anything from anyone on the ground.

Empty seed pods rattled in the quickening breeze, alongside the inescapable drone of the cicadas. That smell, of flowers growing fragrant under barometric pressure, the scent condensed under the weight of the storm. Monsoon, she could taste it. A rumbling came from the flock as they sensed it as well. The sky darkened behind her, the air thinning, and she heard the storm growl lowly, approaching steadily from the horizon. She heard the clouds bellowing. These torrential moments were a highlight of the season for her. They provided water, power, and a break from the monotony; a reprieve from the raw heat. Wind whistled past her ear, particles of rock and sand stung her skin as they whipped through the air. Up her nose. The flock took off, as one blurry, gesticulating creature. Readying for flight, she thought. But they stayed, hovering above the mesa. They were outside of the storm. Enkatah reconfigured her binoculars. Flipped switches, pressed buttons, enabled the ‘metoric functions that allowed her to travel along the device’s line of sight. Like traversing a zip-line, but she had to use her feet. She set one eyepiece on her destination and used the other to gauge the distance between her and the birds. She refocused, more deliberate, to identify the patch of ground where she’d be landing. Satisfied, she adjusted a dial, increased the tension, and collapsed the necessary wave. 

A few minutes later she was with her starlings. It seemed, from her position on the mesa, that the sky had been restraining itself. Holding back, back, back, and now it couldn’t for a second longer. The sky cracked. Sound-waves and water condensing, lightning and rain striking at the ground. The swiftness of the downpour and the intensity of the haze confirmed what she’d assumed in the moment. If she’d stayed there and tried to harvest energy from the lightning strike, she would probably be dead.

By the time she reached the bottom of the mountain it was night. Her sweat prickled as it evaporated from her skin. A buzz. A different pitch than the cicadas, and lower to the ground. Artificial. The insipid drone of sodium lights, the grumble of a generator. There was a village here, perhaps a whole settlement. She followed the noise. 

A while ago I was at lunch with a friend, discussing what we love about cooking (we’re both professional cooks). She enjoys taking care of people, nourishing them. She likes plating family style and making sure the ingredients are visibly recognizable in the final dish. She likes creating community. 

I told her I like challenging myself. That I like making things that are difficult and exacting; making sure everything is just so. I’m not too concerned with other people’s thoughts if I’ve completed the thing to my own satisfaction. 

She said, ‘You like to cook to satisfy your own curiosity’. And I’d never thought of that before but she was right. In my making the question is often one of possibility. What would this taste like, what is this material capable of, what can I do with this tool. What am I capable of? What if? 

 But the more I consider it the more I think the answer is that I just enjoy the process.

Often, I think of my relationship with a made object as a line graph. The x-axis is time: from conception of idea and planning, through to making, using, consumption, its memory. The y-axis is my own pleasure, my own delight. 

I think the immediate assumption would be that the greatest pleasure comes when the item is finished. When the meal is served, the sweater worn, the pot in question used. But I find that often if not usually, the pleasure peaks earlier on. There’s a part in the making process before the final firing where the pot just seems the most itself. The clay is burnished to a shine and all the markings are made. The way brioche feels once all the butter is in. The cross-section of a canele: they haven’t been tasted, or even seen by anyone but me. These are my heights of making.

So why finish? If the glee has peaked, why spend more time on it, more energy? I’d say because that pleasurable moment only really exists in context, in relation to the rest of the object’s life. And also because, although my maker’s pleasure leads me to create the thing, its job is not to simply be enjoyed by me. There’s still that question of what if, there’s still that curiosity to be satisfied. 

This is an outlook I’ve adopted as someone who makes things, a lot of different things, by hand. As a pastry chef, potter, knitter I’ve learned that there are always things outside my control, and that everything has its season. In a professional kitchen you get used to the idea that what you make is inherently ephemeral. It will be eaten or it will be thrown away, regardless of cost or effort. It’s the attitude of someone who uses the things she makes and so regularly reencounters them, re-experiences and considers them. 

There is a vase in my apartment that I made, and it is beautiful. There are no flowers in it. But the curvature, the way the glaze breaks, the asymmetry in the lip from being a little bit off center. That I know it’s one of the first things I glazed well, and that I learned so much from making it. All these things make me smile when I notice it. 

And there are pots that I learned from, or squandered learning from, that don’t represent me well enough for me to want to put them out into the world, that I feel are taking up space. So I let them accumulate in a little pile to be smashed, and that makes me smile too. It always makes me so happy. There’s something about not feeling like you have to harbor things that are not serving you. Being able to joyously and raucously let go, and create space for the next thing.

Too narrow a focus on the end result erases so much of the thing itself. I can sell you a pot or a pastry, but not the burnished feeling of a freshly trimmed foot, or the smell of choux when it’s ready for the mixer. All of that is an invisible but an invaluable part of the process.

When making anything there is the question, who is this thing for? The people consuming it, the maker herself; there is no wrong answer. I would argue that there’s a point in the making where the thing simply deserves to exist. You’ve asked the question and started to see results. The end product is almost irrelevant when there is so much value in its creation.

Reencountering a thing you’ve made is reencountering something of yourself. It’s an opportunity to evaluate, to curate, to grow. Even if it’s temporary, even if it’s bad. It offers you the chance to learn something about yourself, about your craft, that you didn’t know before.