On the Hand of the Maker, a Passage -- by Alex Ranieri

Nothing is more to be prized than the evidence of a human hand. Thus are we pleased by those small imperfections in, say, a hand-painted teacup, which point to the unsteadiness of a nature much like our own. We feel in the moment of this realization, a sense that the maker is still alive—is, rather, ever-alive, and that we, by holding the object close to us, are being held up to the awareness of an immortal being. This being the greatest comfort: that we, in our own acts of creation, our own godlike moments of morphing from the base metal nothing, the gold of an enduring delight, are inheritors of the same capacity for stepping over death, into a state which need not tremble at the passage of time.