May 2020
Each day after school, and on many off days, I walked to my father's shop and took a fresh loaf of light-brown clay from the back-room. My father uses clay to record accounting information but he always had enough to spare for my needs. After dinner, while the clay was still warm and moist and malleable, I cut a slice about the thickness of my wrist and then kneaded it with a marble roller until I fashioned it into a roughly rectangular tablet the thickness of half my pinky finger and the width and length of a man's face. Sweat rolled down my brow for it was hard work but it was a work of love. I then worked quickly with the stylus to etch my thoughts on the tablet before it hardens.
A thin tablet of clay loses its moisture and malleability much quicker than a thick loaf. That is why I only fashioned another thin tablet after I had finished etching my thoughts on the previous one. Most evenings three tablets sufficed but during rare times I could not find inspiration and I stared with futility at the clay loaf and all I could see was its monolithic lifelessness and inertness.
On other rare evenings I became a geyser erupting with inspiration and I could no longer see an inert loaf of clay in front of me but instead, I could only see it as infinite forms superimposed one on the other and forming its body, and I then cut a slice from its effervescent body and I inhaled deeply from its pungency and consummated our relationship.
I adore the pungent aroma of fresh clay. I have come to associate it with a work of passion in progress. But I also adore, with equal measure, the subtle aroma of clay tablets after they've been sun-baked into a permanent hardness. Each day, before I departed for school, I laid the previous night's tablets on a table in my room and let the sun's searing light, through my west-facing window bare and bright, bake my tablets and give my thoughts permanence. It was during that fateful night, when I let in the moon's milky-white through that same window, that the whispers emanated from within the recesses of the soul. But it is the sun's strong light that baked these eternal whispers onto my clay tablets.
A thin tablet of clay loses its moisture and malleability much quicker than a thick loaf. That is why I only fashioned another thin tablet after I had finished etching my thoughts on the previous one. Most evenings three tablets sufficed but during rare times I could not find inspiration and I stared with futility at the clay loaf and all I could see was its monolithic lifelessness and inertness.
On other rare evenings I became a geyser erupting with inspiration and I could no longer see an inert loaf of clay in front of me but instead, I could only see it as infinite forms superimposed one on the other and forming its body, and I then cut a slice from its effervescent body and I inhaled deeply from its pungency and consummated our relationship.
I adore the pungent aroma of fresh clay. I have come to associate it with a work of passion in progress. But I also adore, with equal measure, the subtle aroma of clay tablets after they've been sun-baked into a permanent hardness. Each day, before I departed for school, I laid the previous night's tablets on a table in my room and let the sun's searing light, through my west-facing window bare and bright, bake my tablets and give my thoughts permanence. It was during that fateful night, when I let in the moon's milky-white through that same window, that the whispers emanated from within the recesses of the soul. But it is the sun's strong light that baked these eternal whispers onto my clay tablets.
This is an excerpt from my novel Shards Of Divinities. Please visit https://nissim-levy.com/shards-of-divinities
