Blood Red Sealed in Stone

印鑑

My shodo (Japanese calligraphy) lesson ended this week with a homework commission like I'd never gotten before: to finish the assignment ... in stone!

The teacher had gone over the main point of the lesson once again, and then, turning to something else, he seemed to be done with me. I wasn't quite sure if this was a low key dismissal or something else.

I sat there irresolutely, and half a minute later he turned back to me, with a small bar of polished green-gray stone in his hand, and asked me to write my initials on a piece of paper.

I could see what it was about, so put a little extra flair into my "DJS" and handed him the paper. He took it and with a red marker pen carefully transposed it in mirror writing onto the end of the stone bar. He then took an awl and began carving out a corner of it, at the bottom left of the back to front S.

I watched with interest, as I'd never seen it done before, with some trepidation when he play-acted slipping and driving the awl into his hand, and finally with a touch more alarm - this time tinged with excitement - when he made clear that I was to finish it off.

I did it last night. It took at least an hour. I doubt whether anything (anything non-erotic, that is!) has ever so fully absorbed my attention before in my life. My whole universe shrank to 289mm². A false move is a final move. A false move can quickly become a painful move requiring emergency care. And preventing a false move requires as much effort as making a right move, doubling the effort involved. Twenty four hours later the left edge of my right middle finger tip is still sore from the intense pressure. That tiny square was crystal clear and important, everything beyond was a needless blur.

The eyes of my teacher were on me. The eyes of everyone who will see my seal at the bottom left corner of the best of my work to come were on me. My eyes were on the steely edge of that little flat blade and those red markered lines on the stone. Staying too shy of them threatened those red edges with ugly unevenness, and getting too close - with obliteration.

Twice the blade skated uncontrollably, and I cut very finely through the S at one point and then the corner just below it. I won't know what the seal really looks like until my next lesson when it gets red-inked up and pressed onto the paper. Faults can often be favorably interpreted as one-of-a-kind virtues. Might these slip ups, too, come across as "character"? Stay tuned.