trials by fire
Originally, the pottery could not have been discovered without the probably fortuitous contact with fire. The exact way in which our species came to unveil this primitive process of suggestive alchemy will always remain a mystery. However, we can play to imagine what it was like one of the many times it happened.
Perhaps the clay doll that entertained a creature tens of thousands of years ago ended up being thrown into the bonfire by some adult. It is possible that with a material within his humble and childish reach, such as clay, he shaped the same figures that his most powerful and sophisticated elders already carved in the ivory of the giant and dangerous mammoths or in the hard rocks and woods. more precious, with a strength and tools that she did not have. The sadness and longing of that imaginative creature when seeing her friend burn, would invite her to look for her remains the next day, after such an unjust condemnation to the flames. But what would be her surprise and joy when contemplating that, far from having finished with her —as the lights usually do with what she feeds them—, she had resisted and now she looked stronger than ever. This kind of witchcraft would amaze the girl, who would keep the secret of the baked earth —terracotta— to protect her beloved playmate. And perhaps when she grew up, it was she who would be in charge of making other dolls for the smallest of the tribe, with which to entertain them and make them aware of the world around them: populated by bears, foxes, owls and other animals, including humans themselves. , in its female sex.
That first time that the clay passed its particular test by fire, personified in what is now called Venus by our divinizing mania, would only be the beginning of an indeterminate succession of all kinds of objects. A sequence that will only stop counting if this creature that makes them does not overcome its particular ordeal: finding its own sustainability.