Deeper and deeper
Pottery and poetry
Ahmad Piraiee
January 4, 2005
iranian.com
I am not so handsome nor so ugly, not so tall nor
so short, not so fat nor so slim, not so intelligent nor so dull,
not so brave
nor a coward, like nobody and like everybody, a person left from
a forgotten generation.
I am a potter. I live in a small, cozy, old-fashioned house with
two little cubic rooms inside and a small, cozy, basement made
of adobe. It
has 7 steps, a little kitchen, mediocre hall, and a tiny bathroom.
The furniture is not so precious but sorted
decoratively.
An ordinary house at the center
of a big city full of good-hearted people. A house with a
beautiful little yard with yellowish-brown tiles and a small,
dark-brown, wooden door,
some tulips and lilies at the corner of it's diamond-shaped
little garden.
My workshop is in my basement, but this
is not an ordinary basement. It has something that made it unique.
My basement floor is clay. I dig some and put it on my pottery
desk and start to work on it.
When I'm working on the clay I just think
I have created the best I
could with the best quality, in order to sell it at the best
price. But I'm not just doing pottery for fun, I live my
life for it, to create something with my hands, to create something
that no one ever created before, my magical ceramics; they are
all the meaning of my life, they are all I have, they are my life.
The ceramics I made are not ordinary, they are magical. Whenever
I finish one, I put it in the oven and when I take it out suddenly
a row of alphabets start to glitter and a poet appears
on it. The poet is the meaning of ceramic
and ceramic is the symbol of the poet.
I love my ceramics but not just for myself. I like them best
when others like them, when they value them, revere them, and
purchase
them. But whenever I have gone out full of energy
and enthusiasm to try to sell them at the best price, no
one even looks at them. They rarely admire them.
Let's be fair. I remember once or twice that some people came
who were so gentle. Judging by their expressions I thought they
must be aristocrats. They came close and said how much
is that? I told them the price. They said, Oh it's really expensive;
they're not worth more than
two pennies...
They couldn't understand that they were not trying to reduce
the price of my art but were in fact killing my spirit.
Who cares...
From time to time I give away my art to people for free,
to those I like. Some of them just say thanks or smile, and some
just shake
their
head.. In any case, it's better than bringing
them back home.
"I
am a potter's complete lack of surprise."
"I am a potter's wasted life."
"I am a potter's inflamed sense of rejection."
"I am a potter's broken heart."
Like a frustrated nuclear weapon, I went back to my basement.
I wanted to change the world, to blow it up. But I
was the one about to explode. I was so
angry, exhausted and depressed. The only word in my mind
was that they are worth more than that, I am worth more than that...
I closed my eyes, held my head with my hands, pushed it, harder
and harder, like I wanted something to come out of it; there were
only tears, for hours...
Then for a second something sparkled in my mind. I had found
it! No more sorrows! I realized there is someone who knows the
real value and true
worth of my work, someone who can distinguish between my work and
others very well, someone who is ready to purchase them, by all
means...
That person was no one other than me, yes
No one feels me like myself; no one nourished me more that myself
So
I started walking around the basement. I
had a strange feeling. Then I started to dig the ground to make
a ceramic. I was in deep hypnosis, somehow ...
I dig and dig and the basement becomes deeper and deeper, until
I can't get out any more. But
I
was not sad because I had nothing to do outside, no love, no interest,
nothing to arouse curiosity, no passion.
Sometimes I missed the blue sky or the touch of the
wind on my face or hearing canaries sing in my
little yard. I even
missed the one or two people who came and asked the price
of my art. But still I preferred to stay in the basement because
I had to make ceramics for
the right person.
So I started to dig the ground to have
more
and more
clay to make more and more ceramics. I dig and dig
and finally the basement became so deep that I disappear in
there forever. Just some people sometimes talk about
a potter who made ceramics
with little poets on them...
*
*
|