The Potter's Notebook by Frank Giovinazzi, a historical novel set in 17th century Japan, is available on the Amazon Kindle platform and in paperback.

Six

    Hideaki moved in the direction of the fresh breeze and the children's delighted screams. The light streaming into the area was brighter for the trees were sparse. The screams came from a trio of children chasing a flurry of butterflies around the bowl-shaped area, in and out of the trees among the three paths leading to the three peaks. All to the dismay of their mother who was trying to keep them in the main area without losing one of

them down a ravine.

    Mother is chasing three butterflies of her own. A slight wind rustled the saddle, driving the butterflies into a series of interlocking spirals that made no apparent sense but communicated something all the same.

    Hideaki had forgotten how many species of butterflies populated this area. A small yellow creature lit on a direction signpost. The oldest boy chased an orange and black Monarch, and the two younger girls, twins, chased a turquoise specimen up the steep right hand trail. Threading their way between the sparsely pruned cedars, a handful of white and brown mottled flying worms, as they used to call them, flittered about, and a trio of heavy, black ugly ones, big enough to be small birds, worked the outside fringe of the clearing.

    Facing the light streaming down the right hand trail, Hideaki guessed there were thirty to forty specimens in this small area. Why would that be? He followed the twins up the steep path where he remembered a lookout point. His eyes were still adjusting to the enormous light pouring down. The sun had been wrapped in a shroud of leaves, cloud and memory on his climb. He walked to the ledge of the lookout and met the brightly shining sun which had risen over the clouds misting the region. He thought perhaps he could catch a glimpse of the old man's hut, but forgot about that when he saw what was driving the butterflies into the saddle area.

    A few small rainclouds were trapped in the valley, held down by the pressure of the hot air the sun foisted from above. Dense, and hemmed in by the series of angled, jagged walls, they were causing a storm. Hideaki looked down through them to the small valley town, watching it being rained on as he was warmed by the sun and the fragrance of the steaming forest.

    The turquoise butterfly flew over the edge and back around Hideaki's head as he watched the storm below. The clouds were dirty filters loaded with impurities now being wrung out of them. Their effluent dripped on the stone and steel roofs of the town, staining them with their grim legacy. He heard the twins squealing behind him, and the mother's futile imprecations down the trail. The turquoise creature made another pass around his head, alighted on a vermilion blossom, fluttering wings to stabilize itself as it sucked a bit of refreshment, then off again, on a three-dimensional zigzag that seemed to have no design or purpose. Hideaki focused on the butterfly the way the old man taught him.

    He released conscious control of his head and eye muscles to follow the lambent creature. At first he felt dizzy from the erratic, nonsensical pattern the pale blue wings made on the steamy air. When you watched as most people did, he could hear the old man say, it appears to make no sense at all. But release your mind to the butterfly and you see the world differently. Hideaki lapsed into the butterfly's staccato rhythm, joining it on its travel over the lookout point. No merely longer watching, but now flying with it, life took on a delightful pattern, from conscious, heavy thoughts to a never-ending choreography lightness, feeding, flying, expressing itself totally, so freely that you weren't even expressing yourself at all.

    To the old man, who rarely laughed at an idea, the concept of expressing yourself freely was a contradiction. If you strive and work at expressing yourself, you're never going to create anything of value. Because, he said, you are never expressing, you're thinking about expressing.

    The whole point of the exercise of looking at the butterfly was to stop looking. In order to truly see it, you had to be with it, join it on its flight makes no sense. It makes no sense to us, the old man used to say, because we are looking at something that doesn't look at itself. Once you join the butterfly, and lope and lift, for a bit of pollen here, and fly and flow on a wisp of air there, only then can you understand expression. And if you do it right, it is even beyond understanding.

    A smile filtered onto Hideaki's lips as he remembered the paradox he had strained to understand as a boy. When you experience directly, it bypasses understanding. Only after you come down off the butterflies wings and live the truth of the journey you shared, only then do you understand. As the old man said, understanding comes after experience, not the other way around. Most people live life backwards, trying to understand first, then seek experience. A few trips on the butterfly's wing teaches you the folly of the majority way. Then, with the memory of the flight in your being, you can recreate the ride whenever you need to get unstuck from concepts that are holding you back.

    Vertigo canceled his flight and Hideaki grabbed hold of the information sign. He watched the insect, no longer flying with it, as it traveled down the trail with the twins deliriously back in tow. The brief sojourn was a respite that rejuvenated him, and he decided to continue along the path the butterfly had led him.

* * *

    Hideaki didn't hear the old man chopping wood on the third day. He walked past the wood pile, toward the ledge trail that led to the old man's living area. He was proud he had made that pile of wood at the old man's side. While he was chopping, it felt like he was doing something important! He never felt that way when he did chores at home. What was the difference?

    Hideaki couldn't see him, but could feel his presence. The fire was giving off light wisps of smoke as usual. There was never a flame, only coals covered with a light, white hot dust of ash and enough heat to warm food or water for tea.

    He stood at the hut's entrance and heard the old man moving around inside. He stepped into view with a pair of pickaxes and a large bamboo basket shaped like a water jar, held across his back by means of a woven strap. The strands of the basket were wide and loose, so the basket held its shape and stayed flexible. He didn't see many of this type of basket anymore, but knew it was for carrying large loads.

    "Come. Enough wood. We dig." He handed the boy the pickaxes, made in the same crude fashion as the hatchet. The old man walked past him, and Hideaki did not repress the smile at the sight of the floppy basket bouncing behind the old man as he walked. It was bigger than he was, but tilted at an angle so that it barely missed scraping the ground as he trod away. "Laugh all you want. You carry it back."

    Hideaki gripped the tools and took off after the old man. They took a different route today, going over one of the peaks. Walking through the woods with the old man was always different. He was starting to understand why. The old man was part of these mountains, like the stalwart cedars, the singing birds and whispering streams. The whole mountain was distilled into this little man of one hundred forty centimeters. Just as every day the mountain appeared the same, it also presented a slightly different version of itself. As did the old man – always the same, always subtly refreshed.

    As they neared the covered peak, the sun grew stronger through the thick tree and fern cover. There was no path over this part of the mountain, but Hideaki saw the old man was following the trail of light that speckled the bed of brown and green bed of leaves.

    Looking up through the canopy, Hideaki saw the connection between the sun, the spaces in the treetops, the outline the lunging light made on the groundcover and the footsteps of the old man. Everything was in sync as Hideaki followed, matching his own steps to the luminescent path.

    They came down on the quarry side of the mountain. Workers rested at the mouth of the mine, their white and green plastic helmets on the ground, their tools resting against the stone wall. They were smoking and laughing. Hideaki expected them to start yelling for them to get out of there.

    The old man put the flexible basket down in a slump and started scratching the rockface with one of the picks. Hideaki was sure they were going to be chased away before the old man got anything done. "Don't worry about them. When you work correctly, you disappear into the fabric of the world. Work, don't attract attention."

    The old man was still scratching the rock with the pick, here and there, holding the tool at the neck, scratching and poking, pausing once or twice to go back over a spot. It looked like he was smelling the rock, using the tip of the pick as an extension of his nose. All the while using his curious, abbreviated motion that didn't look like movement. "If your mind moved as little as I do, you wouldn't have as many problems to worry about." He kept sniffing with the iron tip. "Indeed, smartest man doesn't worry at all. Just work, simple effort, no worry. Worry get nothing done. Even worse, it increase work."

    If the man was after porcelain stone, Hideaki was sure all the mineral had been taken off the surface a hundred years ago. That's why the miners go underground. The old people used to say the mountain was bigger when they were kids; so much had been taken away it was starting to sag in on itself. The old man kept sniffing with the pick, and for the first time since he had been with him, Hideaki grew uneasy.

    "Not everything always exciting. Patient. You work soon." The old man was outlining an area about the size of a large door, reaching the pick over his shoulders. Hideaki hoped it was a doorway to a hundred years ago, because there was no more porcelain stone above ground. The outline complete, the old man swung the pickax at several points that stuck out like appendages. Clang! The tip assaulted the rock, breaking a piece off. Clang! The pick removed another piece of the weathered surface, white flesh and exhuming a whiff of chalky, translucent dust. Clang! The iron struck again, dropping more dead skin to the quarry floor, exposing more alabaster-colored stone to the hot sun.

    The old man stepped back to look through the doorway that now stood ajar to a room full of white kaolin porcelain stone. He rested the pick's blade of his pick on the dirt. "When you remove stone from the mountain, treat it like fruit on a tree. Look at the rock, find a natural outline like a ripe tangerine and pick it just like you would a fruit. Don't bang and bang, that takes too much stone you don't use. We take what we need. You don't cut down a tree for a basket of tangerines."

    The old man stepped forward again with the pick again, sniffing the contents of the open room. He outlined a piece of rock. Hideaki could see that it was both part of the mountain and also a separate piece of stone nestled among the rest of the material. Clang! The old man swung. Clang! Another half stroke, Clang! Thump. A beautiful parallelogram of white came tumbling out of the room, big and solid. in a single piece.

    Hideaki put the stone in the basket. He watched the old man outline another piece. He was certain the old man was only doing it for his sake. He could have taken the pieces out of the mountain without an outline, maybe even without a pick. He could live and work on the mountain without ever leaving a trace. Maybe he has been all along, and has just decided to let me see him, to work with him.

    "Perhaps. But it is good to practice the rituals of the beginner. Experts forget they were born naked, with no knowledge except how to cry."

    Clang! Clang! Clang! Thump. Another beautiful specimen came from the mountain like a carton from a cupboard. Hideaki placed it in the basket and noticed the room from which the old man was removing their prices didn't look diminished but fuller for the space he was creating. The more he took out the more there was to see. Hideaki thought it was a trick caused by the sun and the reflection of the white dusty rock.

    "Does not a forest look fuller when certain tees are cut down?" The old man was ready to harvest another piece of flesh from the quarry. He marked the spot, a squat cube protruding three-quarters out of the room and stepped back. "Like a sushi chef, see the maguro on the cutting board, even as the fish still breaths. Cut decisively, so that you don't disturb the veins of the beast or any of the other pieces."

    Hideaki took the pick from the old man, keeping his eye on the cube of flesh. He could see it! He saw the spot to hit, and to the his surprise, it wasn't the point closest to the rock, but a little outward that would result in clean separation. He hefted the tool, hand over hand like his favorite baseball player, never letting his eyes off the spot he knew was the right one, feeling the rock and iron collide, almost losing his balance with the effort so that he spun around in a lopsided half circle. When he was done twirling, the compact cube was lying on the ground. There was nearly as little gravel and dust as when the old man did it. Hideaki beamed brighter than the sun reflecting from the cube and put it in the basket like a prize catch.

    The old man was unlocking another doorway into the mountain. He had already traced an outline; before he swung the pick, he said, "well done."

    Hideaki's body was tingling from the excitement of having done that so right, so perfectly, it was like not doing anything at all. And now he had been recognized for it as well. He could barely stand still.

    "Take a deep breath. The best way to remember how you did something is to get right back to it." The old man took up his pick again. "Go ahead, there's several more pieces to be taken out of that space.”

    The sun was beating down on them, the flat vestibule of gravel leading up to the rock face, and the wall itself. He was hot, and the white innards of the exposed room magnified the heat and light. He persisted. Past the steam and the glare, and the perspiration leaching into his eyes, Hideaki saw the outlines two other pieces waiting to be plucked from the cupboard. He grasped the pickax in the baseball player's style that was now his style too. He swung. Clang! Thump.

    This time he did not spin, having planted his feet on a direct axis between his shoulders and the center of his target. This time the old man was not looking or commenting. Hideaki enjoyed his victory in silence. Placing the prize with the others, he eyed another, seeing it on the ground before raising the tool.

    With the addition of that piece, and the two the old man added, the basket was heavy and full. The old man carried the tools and they headed back up over the peak, leaving the miners still laughing outside the opening of the mine, picking up their helmets for another shift in the bowels of the porcelain womb. They had never seen the old man and the boy.

    They hiked toward the peak together, the old man leading the way. Hideaki hauled the basket that was now taut and straining with the weight of the rocks. The strap compressed his chest, cutting his breath short as the load heaved against his shoulders. As they climbed, each step for Hideaki was a focused, intense effort. The load was too heavy but he didn't complain. Sweat broke out on his forehead and his eyes bulged; the old man trod lightly on the groundcover, his bamboo sandals making little impression.

    Hideaki halted at the peak. The old man tuned around, bemused, as if he didn't know why he was resting. Hideaki's heart was racing, his vision blurry from sweat and the strain of exertion.

    "Look at the path burned by the sun now."

    Wiping the sweat from his his forehead and eyes, he saw the sun had traveled farther along its own trail, infiltrating the treetops at a different angle, weaker than before. The light reaching the groundcover was no longer pure white but a pale ocher that reflected the browns and oranges of the fallen leaves.

    "Sometimes the path to the goal appears to have changed. Don't be fooled by conditions, remember the destination."

    Hideaki hoarded the respite's benefit. The sun's aged path ran along a lower portion of the slope. To where? Where are they headed with this heavy load that had been so much fun to carve, but was now just a basket of rocks testing the limits of his endurance?

    "The path will lead us to where we are going."

    Hideaki took the signal, using the rock he was leaning against as a brace to lift the basket off the ground. They started following the pale line to their destination.

    The rest hadn't been long enough to redress the strain on his back. He thought he heard the sounds of rocks cracking and the bamboo straps snapping. A glance over his shoulder told him everything was okay. The basket was still swinging back and forth like the trunk of an elephant. In giddy near-delirium he wondered if the trunk of an elephant was heavy to the elephant.

    The laugh in his tightened chest made the burden lighter for a second. It also brought him back to the creaking-cracking sound he thought he didn't hear just a few seconds ago.

    "Just because you can't find something where you think it is supposed to be, doesn't mean it isn't somewhere else."

    The old man laid his comment in the space between the creak-crack sound, making it more obvious something was going on. Through the crunch of dried leaves and his own groaning, Hideaki soon heard the splash of water rise up and join the melody of rough-hewn sounds in the forest.

    The old man picked up the pace and Hideaki tried to race ahead of his load that kept swaying side to side and pulling him backwards against his forward impulse. When he went too fast, the bottom of the basket swung up higher, knocking at his heels and almost tripping him. Hideaki slowed down and let the old man take the lead.

    The old man disappeared over a rise. The sounds got louder. Splish, splish, splash. Creak-thud-crack. Hideaki was trying to keep his mind off his burden and realized he missed the thud sound in the middle before. Curiosity lightened the load.

    The sun was declining over the peaks. The accumulated heat that had been trapped inside the folds of the mountain side was dissipating. If it weren't for the sounds coming the hill, Hideaki thought he'd be able to hear the hissing sound of heat escaping from the clusters of rocks and trees.

    But the other sounds persisted, getting louder, more established and purposeful as he neared. The basket strained at his shoulders so severely he thought the band was going to leave a permanent scar as a reminder of this task.

    He concentrated on his feet, putting one in front of the other, trying anything to keep his mind off the impossible strain. A few more steps, one in front of the other, and he topped a hillock that overlooking a mini-valley. Over the drumbeat of his thumping heart, the small enclave resonated with the authority of industry.

    Splash, splish, splish, splash, went the noises of the stream as it turned over the water wheel, which in turn fed a wide bamboo gutter. Hideaki's eyes widened with joy as he watched the water in the bamboo gutter continue its course, feeding the rest of the apparatus. He trotted down the hill toward the fascinating water and wood installation, with the basket of kaolin stones swinging wildly, banging at his heels repeatedly.

    When he reached the embankment where the contraption was situated, the old man was there, sipping water from a woodsman's ladle. Hideaki watched the apparatus go through its simple machinations – splish, creak, thud, crack – sounds sounds separate and distinct, a rural composition of nature laboring under the directing will of man.

    The water in the bamboo gutter ran into the hollowed-out ends of three thick arms arranged on picots, like see-saws. When a cupped end filled with enough water, the log dipped under the weight, spilling out the water, suspending the other end of the see-saw high into the air, then came down with a sharp and violent thud. The falling end of the see-saw was fixed with a flat iron stamping foot that came down with the full weight of the giant beam behind it, crushing the white porcelain stone laying in a small depression into fine powder. The three arms moved in asynchronous fashion, one spilling, one stamping, the third filling with water before going through its simple operation.

    Hideaki was so mesmerized the basket still hung from his body. He tried to jump up to inspect the goings-on, as one of the arms filled with water, dumping its share into the stream, the long end suspended in air, then coming down with a thud-crack on the small rocks beneath its stamping foot.

    The old man stopped him, lifting the strap off his chest. "Burdens become light when we're excited about something new." Hideaki didn't hear a word of it, but paused to help the old man take the basket fro

m him. Atop the embankment, Hideaki crawled under and through the three arms of the old-fashioned karausu, as it harnessed the hydro-mechanical power of the local stream to perform the manual labor of crushing the kaolin rock into fine powder.

    The water wheel was old; constant immersion in water had swollen the once thin wood panels into a circular array of bulbous sponges. He watched the wheel's cups offload water into the bamboo pipe, and onto the conduits that fed the giant hollowed-out bowls of the arms. As one log filled with water and started to dip, Hideaki listened to the drawn out cre-ee-eaking again on the downstroke, coming down onto the ground with an angry thud of ironclad wood pummeling rock into dust.

    He was enthralled with the system's simple elegance. It was so real, so immediate, right here on the mountainside. Like so much of his experience with the old man, it was like nothing else he had known in his life before meeting him.

    For a moment Hideaki grew sad there was nothing like this in today's world. Everything was so phony and prepackaged. Nothing seemed worth doing – it all seemed destined for a pointless end, just buying useless items he would soon grow bored with.

    The old man came around the embankment with a rock they had harvested from the quarry. "There is always something in the world that will interest you as much as this." He handed Hideaki a fist-sized piece of stone. "Put this under the next stamper that lifts. Remember, the world is always interesting. It is the mind that is dull."

Read Chapter 7 of The Potter's Notebook.

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