Thoughts 42″ inches long

The final planing of a Split Cane Bamboo rod requires a lot of concentration. Your mind and your eyes, must make a unique thing between them, the arm, the hand, the plane and the bamboo. Total control is required, inch by inch. You know that at the end of the work you’re going to deal with tollerences of 0.002 inches.

So with these kind of error tolerances the problems you can get if your planing is not made in total control are a bunch. But now this is not the point. The point is more immaterial, the point is something of abstract, the point is the concept and the attitude on doing something in total control.

Let’s clean the mind….as we know (or at least we should know) trying to have the total control on our lives is something of unreachable, but trying to having total control on doing a manual activity is something, that heals the mind.

To get into a meditation status, can requires a little. If you are used with some meditation acitivity you know what i mean. It’s the time that pass between the beginning of the meditation excercises and the moment when you feel the mind into the meditation status.

Getting into the totall control status while you’re planing your strips it takes the same time. That space of time is influenced by the experience, the mood and by a lot of others unpredictable variables.

Once you get on it the total embrace is completed and the mind starts to travel lightly. Along that 42” (which is the classic lenght you plane normally for making a 7’ rod)  several things happens. There is not future or past in the mind, there is just that widened space of time to live.

These feelings helps me all the time to understand better how my approach to the time of my life changed after the bamboo rodmaking got fully into it.

There is a before and there is an after.

During the before i was living in a schizophrenic time; a kind of different time made by the time of the work, the time of the rest, the time of vacations…and so on. During a working week I was waiting the week end. When I started to enjoy the week end mmy mind got to the Monday morning, which it meant working time. So it was a kind of frustratind sliding into these fake times.

Me, myself and my soul where not enbraced into a whole thing.

Then, the time of rodamking c ame and suddenly lots of things changed. As a magic the time became one. It became just my time. The old schizophrenic time splitting disappeared and terms like free time, working time, vacations time loosed their sense. My soul is now in total harmony with me, myself, my life.

I finally discovered the big lie that my life hosted unti that day. The one that spoken about a categorization of the time. It was only a kind of ugly cage…there should be only one time, the one that runs trhought the passion.

When I started to make bamboo rod I thought my approach should be inspired by the sculpture, the only art that procced for the way or removing. Cleaning the superflous until only the essence of beauty will remain.

I think this approach got totally into my life in which i try to clean day by day the superflous; the cleaning process proceed throught a neverending exchange between me, myself, my soul and the bamboo rod I build.