Clay

- Don't rush! But don't slow down as well. Patience, patience, and patience one more time! Let your hands get used to the temperature, the texture and the elasticity. Let it get used to your own hands!
 - I've never thought that clay crafting can be so difficult! I thought it's the same as plasticine! However, in childhood I used to do it well, and now, when I'm doing the same thing with clay, I'm creating some kind of mess...
- Plasticine is not that. It isn't natural. Clay is more like a human. Feel, reveal the divine in yourself and create!
- What do you mean by "clay is a human"?
- We are all created in the image of God, you know that. Initially, we are a lump, a mess, as you said, consisting of pure potential, and also of biomaterials, chemical compounds, well, and so on down the list. While we are very tiny, formless, our parents take up the matter: they mold from children, from this piece, the basic form, something that we are now. Be careful, less pressure with your fingers - you can cause bruises on the clay too. So: parents give the childish, formless self certain boundaries and outlines. And again - in the image and likeness, no matter how hard they try to avoid it. Time passes, and now, after a few years, the child becomes a small copy of his ancestors. But the process is just beginning! Look, your clay already has the shape of a jug. Only outlines, in essence it's still something vague.
- I'm getting something weird out of my hands. It's like something or someone is bothering me.
- The main thing is you should not bother it. Remember that clay does create itself. You and your hands are just guides, tools that help her to be realized.
- So, no matter what I want, the clay will still become what it wants itself?
- It's not a matter of desire. The point is cooperation. Listen to it. Hear it. Help it to become what it's destined to become, and it will do the rest itself.

Fingers deftly glided over the red-brown mass, stretching it, rounding. The neck behaved completely ugly: it was so thin that it began to tilt from side to side, then it almost completely merged with the body of the future pitcher, trying to go into oblivion. Clay lived its life, spinning on a huge potter's wheel at a crazy speed, as if it was trying to slip out of the hands of the Student, timidly holding it and wiping sweat from his forehead every minute.

- Can I relax a bit? My fingers hurt already.
- If you want to relax and interrupt the process, it's possible. But then you have to start all over again. Clay dries quickly.
- No, I don’t want to do it again.
- Can I get rid of it?
- Of course you can! Everything is possible! Only if it's really unnecessary. Have you ever seen Japanese decanters of the Nara period? They started using several textures in one product - and fine-grained white clay, and red coarse, and then they were wrapping a soft jug with twine to apply a drawing. It looks unusual and delightful! In those days, it was something completely new.
- So, isn't every external intervention harmful?
- Exactly! Sometimes it is even more useful for clay, because it gives it what makes it related to people - individuality.
- What happens after that? Drying and firing?
- Oh no, it’s still far from firing! Although in life sometimes it happens that the youngest of us are burned and sent to eternity.

The Teacher's gaze was cast on the wooden shelves at the other end of the room, heavily laden with a wide variety of clay products. There were ancient amphoras of the Old Testament times, and elaborately painted thin-walled tea sets from China from the beginning of the fifth century, and brand new Athenian jugs for wine with a narrow spout. And there was not a single product that would not differ in anything special: either it was a shiny glaze, or a special composition that gave one or another cup a pleasant terracotta hue, or an unusual pattern of cracks and lines, or an excellently executed painting applied with a brush.

The Teacher continued:
- All of our life is a continuous process of sculpting ourselves. Every time you are lazy, every time you give up and stop watering clay with water and attention - the clay begins to harden. But you need to know the measure. For clay is not only inattention can be dangerous, but also too close attention; too much water can turn it into something, from which it will then be impossible to sculpt.
With age, taking shape, we begin to slow down. Acquisition of the form ceases, painstaking and endless work on the details begins. But this isn't the most important thing. Tell me, what is more important than that?
- I don't know. Coating after firing?
- The purpose. What are you sculpting and why? Do you see what you want to be when the process is completed? Every movement, every tiny change should make sense. Otherwise, nothing definite will be done.
And again: the main thing is never stop. Never.
With age, we begin to get stiff. We are becoming tough and shaped. And then it is too late to change your shape fundamentally - with any attempt, cracks begin to appear. While you're young - you can still mask, but you're getting older - the cracks go deeper, the consequences will be irreversible. In the end, we get to the point where any attempt to change anything can cause the fracture. It's very difficult to put the chipped particle back in place - neither glue nor water will save it. You'll need a new piece of clay. And sometimes there is nowhere to take it from, and even if you find it, it may not be suitable, and there will remain a scar.
Therefore, it is so important not to stop. If you interrupt the process, you will spend more time remaking the body, and then you won't notice how completely stiffened you are and all attempts to return to the original state bring only new cracks. Well, that's only the body thing! This is hard but fixable. But the rest is even more difficult to sculpt, because while you are sculpting, you don’t see the result, and it seems like you are working in vain. Only after many years you understand where you did the right thing and leveled off, smoothed out, and where you blinked, laxed yourself, allowed yourself some kind of frivolity - here you have a crack. And you always notice it later, when you think that the work is done and you can relax. Why did you stop? Is there really a limit of excellence? It has no limits and boundaries. But you just imagined yourself ready, made and completed, ideal, but you forgot or didn't want to remember in time that you had your whole life at odds and colors without any purpose and meaning. It's much more convenient to think of yourself as someone than to truly be someone, but this doesn't lead to anything sensible. The path to excellence is never easy. This path is long, painstaking, sometimes painful and unlit.
- But how not to get lost? How not to turn this mess into an even more terrible mess, if it isn't clear where you did the right thing and where not?
- Remember about the purpose. Remember why you started everything, and what you want to get. Keep it in your mind constantly, and go no matter what.
- And what if I suddenly change my mind and decide to change the goal? Well, if I can't make a jug after a lot of tries, can I remake it in a bowl?
- You can. Everything is possible in this world. And there is always a second chance, and there is always another way. Just be ready to have to be even more patient.
The potter’s wheel made the last turn and stopped.
- It's done! How beautiful it turned out! Thank you, Teacher! Now what?
- Now, since you are confident in your work and you like it, and it responds to your heart, it's time for firing. And your creation will remain in eternity.

The jug was put in the oven. The work has been completed.

***
There were a lot of people in the room. Someone cried, someone  silently looked out the window with frozen eyes. The head of the corporation, a deep old man, lying on a bed surrounded by relatives and friends, let out his last breath. His face, so lively a minute ago, suddenly became stone, his eyelids fell, and only a light, barely perceptible smile remained on his lips.