She looks at my sculpture and asks me: "It's pretty, but why does it look so sad, and those eyes always closed?"
I know I couldn't answer ... the one who has the answer isn't me, it's the little 4-year-old girl I used to be.
The lady is still looking at me, and as I lower my eyelids, I see a small cluster of silence gradually filling the space between us.
Inside me, there's this little girl who's the inflexible guardian of our secrets.
When she and I are alone... we spend long moments watching the silence settle over them like a light snow and gradually cover them, when everything is pure white... the silence around us trembles, shivers, flies, and disintegrates.
It's the same silence that reigns in the studio when I'm working alone.
I plunge my hands into the clay, and of course, I know, you can't see anything but a little ball of clay warming up in my hand...
But little by little, by dint of digging, retouching, caressing, examining from every angle...a little face finally emerges.
And the real miracle is that during this birth, during these hours of work, reality has completely disappeared...
And our old world becomes transparent, subtle, soft and light as a memory...
Just a moment... To sculpt is to walk in that world,
To walk to the blue hills
To the sand,
To the rains.
There, in my hand, the little face of earth opens its eyelids just for me and for the child keeper of secrets.
Then its eyes close again.
The child smiles... all is said, without a single word..."
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