I cradle the hand between mine; my fingers search for any imperfections, any bumps, any dips in its smooth surface. I stare down upon my creation and smile. The hand lies limp in my own, the red clay, soaked in iron, stains my fingers, but I listen only for the faint heartbeat that pulses throughout each molecule of clay. The heartbeat, almost imperceptible, vibrates throughout my body, and my hands sculpt on their own to its steady tempo. My hands, dwarfed in comparison to the calloused hand I hold, move confidently around. The muscles of each finger have long since memorized every crevasse, every curve, every contour. I close my eyes and sculpt blindly, forgetting each preconceived thought. I mold the clay in my mind and open myself up to the world of possibilities. I hear the clock ticking insistently in the background, trying to gain my attention, but the noise is lost in my serenity.
My creation feeds me confidence as I realize my power; with clay I am God. I shape and mold my world with every one of my caprices, and the clay folds over; it does not have any drive of its own and follows my every direction faithfully. My eyes twinkle with pride as I look upon my sculpture; but a cold sadness, moist and damp like foggy winter mornings, seeps into me. I didn’t feel any satisfaction as God of my world. Questions bombarded my mind. Sharp and bitter they tore through every layer of self-confidence. Was my world in fact happy? Had I created peace? Or was there war and strife and pain like in my own world? Had I filled the hearts of people with despair? Had my creation lost faith in me?
These questions continued to fill my mind, slowly drowning me in a sea of maybes. I should never have likened myself to a God. I had no faith in Gods; they created worlds filled with imperfections and left uneducated beings crawling senselessly in tortuous circles, like fish with ripped fins that can swim only in spirals towards their inevitable death. Gods abandoned their creations, heads still filed with naïve thoughts, to a cruel world. Gods were lazy, and hadn’t used their time, effort or love to create their worlds. They selfishly finished them in haste to start again with new vigor; like four-year-olds, they scribbled irrationally for a couple seconds before demanding a new piece of paper. If they had loved their worlds and cared for their inhabitants, they would have fixed every imperfection, corrected every mistake. I had no faith in Gods, for even if they ignored a blemish once, it was their duty to fix it as soon as it became a problem. Why would they abandon their faithful followers in their times of strife? How could they ignore their pleas of distress as they died for their faith? How could they turn their attention away?
I had no faith in my sculptures because I had forgotten that I was only sculptor, not God. As a God, the strain and stress for perfection wracked my nerves, for I wanted a perfect world where every little girl could believe in God. As a sculptor, I created a world without responsibility. I will never liken myself to a God again; I will never lose the respect for or the faith in myself. My drive was to create emotion, to speak without words, and for people to hear without ears. I wanted them to look upon my sculptures and feel, simply feel, as I had when I imprinted my heart and soul into every inch of ridged clay.