The Clay Room

She looked up at me with those deep, beautiful blue eyes and said, "So do you want this to be a serious thing?"
"To be honest, I hadn't really put much thought into it," I replied. "Do you want it to be a serious thing?"
"I don't want it to be a joke and I don't want it to be just for fun," she said.
"Well, I never joke around and I never have fun!" I laughed, but I knew exactly what she meant.

----

I have lived my whole life in a room made entirely of clay. For months and weeks and hours I would work the clay into fantastic shapes, with no motivation other than the sheer joy of what I was doing. There are a handful of objects which, upon their completion, I told myself would be permanent. Others I would stretch and shape while thinking to myself "Wouldn't it be nice to have a piece of clay that looked like this?", only to forget within a few weeks that it was there at all.

From time to time people would walk by my room and stare at the mess that I had made. They would find little bits and pieces of clay that I had tinkered with and exclaim "Ah, very interesting!", but they never stayed for very long. One by one did they enter, one by one did they leave. I thought "Maybe if I work hard enough, someone will stay." And so I worked. The fruits of my labors were plenty and ripe, but still all they earned were passing smiles, a wave hello, a wave goodbye.

"I don't care what they think as long as I'm happy," I said, frustrated, to no one in particular. But I looked around at the bits and pieces of unrelated, unorganized, unremarkable art and realized that it wasn't good enough for me. What I really wanted was a room with an identity, not just a collection of trinkets. So I shut the door, sealing myself inside. I slaved away for months and weeks and hours, molding and folding and rolling and pushing and pulling and scratching and scoring and marching towards that image, that clear vision of the room that I wanted. I would yank old toys from their perches and press them into the walls, confidently bellowing "I don't need this anymore!" I would spend hours refining the most subtle details, knowing that no one would ever see them, no one would ever notice, no one would ever care, but knowing all the same that they would never be finished until they echoed perfectly the idea I had in my head.

Some of the raw, childlike joy dried up, leaving the clay hard beneath my fingers, but in its place came a much stronger sense of pride and satisfaction with what I created.

There came a day when I set about carving a new window to the world in a yet-untouched expanse of wall. Through it I saw a group of women dancing. I found myself watching just one of them. She was not the most sultry or the most flexible or the most energetic, and yet with a single elegant flick of her wrist, she conveyed a depth of passion and creativity that was unmatched by any of her wriggling, jiggling sisters.

I called out to her and invited her into my room. Slowly and methodically I lead her around the cavern, stopping briefly at each artifact that I had deemed essential to the understanding of the whole. After some time, she turned to me and said "I understand what you're doing here. Can I stay?"

----

After a few moments of contemplation, I met her gaze again.
"Yes."

----

Week 29 total: 16.5 hours
Grand total: 675.5 hours
Required pace: 557.5 hours (+118)