“Cold as clay” immediately reminds you of the briefness and triviality of human life by referencing our beginning and our end in three short words.

Christian mythology says we originated with and were made of clay (and I daresay it was probably rather cool!), and while I’m not a believer in the Adam and Eve creation bit, that hardly matters because the central gist is that we were sculpted and created, which is true regardless of your religious beliefs. Something made us, whether that something was DNA mutations over millions of years or some form of consciousness, and so the physical substance of clay is actually irrelevant, as it relates to creation and also this phrase.

We’re reminded of death because what’s as cold as clay? Why, buried corpses of course! The kind of death this phrase invokes is not a happy and welcomed one, either, in the same way as the phrase “beneath the grass” implies that the deceased is involuntarily finished with the happy world above, since grass is generally the scene for picnics and barbeques and thriving flowers.

I actually think this phrase has nothing to do with clay at all. It just uses our pre-formed knowledge and experiences with clay (ceramics class, anyone? That shit’s cold!) to paint an uncomfortable and uncertain emotion, which is perhaps the worst kind. Two thumbs up for its effectiveness and a hearty boo for giving clay a bad rap! As any summer excursion to Pyramid Lake should prove, when you’re hot and in the desert and even the lake water is luke warm, you can always rely on sinking your feet into some nice, cool clay.