The Morning I Moved the Jar

This morning I learned that my pots have a name.

Martaban jars.

Martaban is a port town in Burma. Chinese traders shipped these jars through it so relentlessly — to India, to the Philippines, to Indonesia — that the jars stopped being called Chinese and started being called Martaban. Named not by where they came from. By where they passed through.

Mine were made in the Shiwan kilns of Guangzhou, somewhere between the 17th and 19th century. Brown glaze, loop handles, dragon motifs — a celestial dragon chasing the flaming pearl of wisdom.

I'm working from a photograph on a museum website and three jars that need cleaning. The resemblance is strong. The certainty is not.

And yet I got up and moved one inside before I'd finished reading.

Aristotle had a word for this. Anagnorisis. The moment of recognition. Not the event — the realising of the event. The moment a thing you were always looking at becomes a thing you finally see.

The jar hadn't changed. I had.

Resemblance was enough. It usually is.