You will remember, now that I remind you, of my trip to Japan in 2004 with some potters to visit pottery sites there.
One of my most cherished memories was an evening visit to the home and pottery of Euan Craig. Euan was born in Austraila and moved to Japan as a young adult to study Japanese ceramics--he apprenticed with Shimaoka, a Japanese 'national treasure' who died recently. He later married a Japanese woman, Mika, and they have 3 (or 4?) children. The evening that we visited his studio he was in a rush to get some pots thrown that would be part of a major exhibition in Tokyo. His studio is a small room off the kitchen--part of their home. While he was throwing pots and entertaining us his little children were running in and out of the studio, reaching into the area where he was working to get bits of clay to play with and coming close to destroying some of the freshly thrown pots. I got so nervous watching the children around the wet pots I left the room for a few minutes and walked outside and found his wood burning kiln which he had built.
So that is the background to my appreciation of this piece from his current post. I'd love for you to read it and then to tell me about your thoughts. (His blog is:
http://euancraig.blogspot.com)
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Sora [daughter] sits with me as I fire the kiln, and we talk of many things. I explain to her about the trees using sunlight as energy to split the carbon dioxide in the air into carbon, which becomes the wood, and free oxygen which we need to breath. How, when I burn the wood, the flame releases the carbon and recombines it with oxygen to create energy and heat. How the hot, free carbon flows hungrily through the kiln, dragging oxygen from the materials in the clay, reducing them and changing their structure and colour. How everything in the universe is made of the same atoms, constantly combining, separating and recombining to become all the things around us, and that we are a part of that. That everything that is, always was, and always will be, it is merely changing form throughout eternity.
She is quiet for a while, as the heat of the kiln climbs and flames come blasting from the blow hole at the top of the door, like dragons tongues licking from the depths of the kiln.
"Dad," she says quietly, "What is Death?"
I look at her. "What do you think it is?" I ask.
"I don't know, really, that's why I'm asking you."
"Well," I say, smiling, "I think it's important to think about what life is first. Our bodies and all the atoms in them follow the same rules as the rest of the universe, so when we die, they change and become other things. Our spirit, our self, exists as surely as our bodies, does it not? The you that looks out through your eyes and sees the world and calls it beautiful is as real as the eyes that it looks through, but it cannot be measured. Yet it is, as much and no less as everything else that is, so how can it ever cease to be, if nothing else in the universe does?"
She nods slowly, a look of consideration on her face. The wind picks up and snow begins to fall once more. A flurry of snow flakes swirls into the kiln shed and a single flake sticks briefly to her cheek, before melting and running down to her chin like a tear drop.
I reach out and gently wipe it away. "I believe," I say,"That there is a great and universal spirit that pervades the universe, though we cannot see it nor measure it. It is like water, amorphous and all pervading. But in special circumstances, it crystallises into individual souls, like snow flakes. Every one is different, individual, special, and through all eternity it will never be repeated. For it's brief time it is the most beautiful and perfect crystallisation of the universal spirit, and though it may be surrounded by overwhelming numbers of other flakes, lost in drifts, buffeted by storms, and feels cold and alone sometimes, it partakes of the essence that is life itself and it is never really alone. And when its time is done, it will melt and return to the water from which it came, and flow once again as part of the universal spirit. It may, one day, be part of another snow flake, but the stuff of which it is made has always been and will never not be."
I hug her as the wind begins to buffet the kiln shed. "I believe that death is no more than the melting of a snow flake and it's return to the water from which it came. It is nothing to fear. What is much more important is to revel in the beauty and wonder of that snow flake, for it is unique and the miracle of its existence makes the universe a richer and more beautiful place."
She smiles at me. "Thank you, Dad. I love you."
"I love you, too." I say. "It's getting too cold out here, you'd better go inside."
When I took this, I just wanted you to see what I had returned to. Now I look at the scene and think of little girls with melting tears. I think of souls changing forms. And I realize how very unsoulful I am.
