From stillness, the idea comes forth. From nothing, the one arises. The thought. “Five-fold pubs”. Then the process of conflict emerges. The second opposing thought arises from the void of the mind. Beginning the dance of opposites. The struggle. The apparent struggle. The tug, the pull, the push. The release the relief the letting. Ease emerges. The path softens. The structure, the fluid. The opposites become one and give birth to the third. The child. The mind of understanding, the two meet eye to eye and see the e-quality in each other. The one in another. And so one is born. 1+1=3?
One sheet of paper lies flat on the table. The artisan picks up the paper and folds it in half. Using his bone folder, he presses a crease across the fold. One has become two, but also one. The artisan picks up the piece of paper and props it up to form a triangle. One became two and now three. The artisan sits back in his chair and closes his eyes. He watches his breath as it is from the inside. He inhales, and his belly expands. He exhales, and his belly deflates. His body continues, and something else watches the natural change from one to the other.
In the middle of a valley, the lake remains still. No wind. No clouds. It reflects a perfect image of the sky. Clouds pass, and it still reflects a perfect image. Someone passes the lake and throws a pebble into the water. From that single point that it hits the water ripples shoot outwards in succession until they reach the outer edge. They overlap and cross paths. To the person walking past the still lake, the image of the sky has been distorted. Perfection is lost. The awareness watching the lake begins to drown, thinking it’s being caught in tidal waves.
The artisan opens his eyes and looks at the piece of paper. He picks it up and begins the process of folding all the other pieces of paper. He starts to slot them into each other. Five sheets in each stack. He makes five stacks of five and puts them all on top of each other. He picks up the stack and knocks it against the table, lining up all the pages. Using his ruler and awl, he begins poking evenly spaced holes down the inside spine of each five-fold.
The ripples have ceased in the lake, and the image of the sky begins to return. A perfect mirror. Birds fly over, and you can see all the details in their feathers. The pine trees blow in the wind and send slight ripples across the lake, but the image remains.
The artisan thumbs around in his thread and needle drawer looking for the right one. He picks up whatever chooses his hand and presses the end of the thread against the beeswax. He pinches the end of the thread between his fingernails so it flattens. He pulls the thread and needle eye close to his and precariously fumbles four of five times to get it in. It finally threads through and he folds over a small tail. He picks up the first stack of five fold and threads the needle through the first hole from the inside and back into the second from the outside.
From the sky you begin to see another lake lies beyond the valley of your own. It has slightly different contours and paths. Slightly different animals and trees. But from the sky it looks just the same. Clouds pass over it at different times to your lake. Rain sometimes fall from the same one but often not. One night lightning strikes and hits a tree in the valley next to you. It falls from the top of the mountain and lands in the lake. All the water is emptied from the lake and absorbs into the soil and trees. The lake you started in begins trying to push its own water up the valley, over the hills and into the next to fill it back up. After years of effort your own lake begins to run near dry and your trees start dying.
The artisan finishes binding the first stack of five fold together through the five holes. It picks up the next stack and threads from the fifth hole of the first stack and into the fitfth hole of the second stack. It pulls the thread snug parallel along the spine of the pages and begins the process of threading the next stack. He reaches the first hole of the second stack and picks up the third five fold threading from the first hole into the first of the third. He starts threading through the five holes in the third stack until...he repeats all this until he has bound five five folds together all pulled snug. He looks down the spine of the stack and runs his fingers across it. He looks at the loops in the second third and fouth holes that thread around the stack before and follow the thread coming back into its own stack.
The lake after a decade of pushing its water into the next lake begins to lose colour in its soil. The earth goes dry. No birds fly over it. No image of the sky is reflected. The sky looks down at the landscape. It sees the lakes. It sees the trees. It sees the birds. It sees the cracks. It sees the stones. It sees the air. It sees the water. The sky watches the neighbouring lake to the first lake and sees that its own soil too has begun to dry. Its trees are dying and the birds have no berries to pick or lay eggs. The sky watches. A third lake appears in view. It has older trees with deeper roots thar create a natural barrier between the neighbouring lakes and soil. It is incased within its own sustance this lake. It feeds the trees. And the olive trees produce oil. This oil drips onto the land. All that time ago when the lighting struck the neighbouring lake. It also struck the third lake. Its trees, having seen this many times before, sensed it and connected deeper beneath the soil. From the lightning strike it brought heat and fire. Fire that ignited the oil dripping from the olive trees.
The artisan weaved the final hanging bit of thread coming from the fifth stack back through the head hole of each stack until it reach the end of the thread that started this all. He tied them together and again to form a knot. Using the vial on his waistband he dipped the knot into the oil and pulled it back out. The artisan reached from the tobacco pouch in his top draw, the papers and more. He rolled himself a perfect cigarette and placed it between his lips. He pulled the lighter from his pocket, lit the cigarette and then the oil-soaked knot. He placed the stack in his book cradle, sat back in his chair (exhaled) and watched the two threads within the knot burn and singe into one.
Some of the trees in the third lake were all consumed by the fire. From their ashes grew new life, richer life, highly nourished life. The fires burning long and bright due to the trees width attracted the artisans. The third lake became more spacious. Older larger slower moving trees created space for new saplings to sprout and grow. And from the ashes of the old trees new fruit and breeds of trees emerged. Lightning trees. Trees the older trees hadn’t seen before. As more and more artisans began to arrive they would create props of wood for the older trees branches to stay up. The older olive trees still created shade for the new saplings as they came through. The sky watched. It watched as the artisans, instead of trying to push water up a hill, dug community of channels beneath the earth. Small focused channels that would allow the water from the lake to follow its natural course downwards. As a team they continued digging the tunnels until they reached just below the lake bed of the first lake. They ran back through the tunnels laughing and jumping over the shallow floods of water that began pouring through. The sky watched. Nothing changed. The third lake continued to thrive. Artisans came and went not wanting to overcrowd. They’d pick from the trees as fruit emerged. They’d kill an animal to feed their small team and then wait watching the landscape around them. The sky watched. Once the new lightning tree saplings began to grow old enough to sustain the heat of the sun and the downpour of rain. The older, much too old trees welcomed the next lightning strike. Bark turns to ash. Ash turns to soil. Soil turns to water. Water turns to trees. The fire had stopped. The lightning stopped striking so the artisans moved on in search of more light. The sky watched. Over decades of the first and lake being all dried up the earth around it began to put pressure on the soil. It compressed and compressed into the centre of the lake until it had become a smaller almost solid form. The sky watched. From the tunnel and hole the artisans dug at the very centre tip of the lake, the earth had a centre point to compress around. The pressure from the neighbouring lakes refined and purified the earth into a completely solid substance, except for the central hole. The tunnel of water from the third lake kept the centre of the earth in the first gooey and muddy. Over time as more water filled up into the hole a natural well had emerged.
The artisan inhaled his last puff of his ciggie and then snubbed it out in the ashtray. He picked up the bound stack of five five-folds. He dipped his fingers in the ash tray and smeared the soot onto all his fingers. He printed on the back of the stack at the bottom of the page a five finger print. The artisan spat in the ashtray and crumbled a tiny bit of beaswax into it. He put it onto the stove and let it slightly bubbled. It came to settle and cool down. He smeared his fingers with it and picked up the book stack with his other hand. He rubbed the paste up and down the spine of the five-fold book. The artisan made sure to get his fingers into every crease and fold of the spine. Inside the knots. Over and under the threads. All up and down. Using his clean hand, he pulled the thread from the inside of the final hole in the final stack to bring the knot nub onto the inside of the book. With his pastey fingers he then rubbed over the last bit left and filled in the hole.
Over time, the soil surrounding the first lake began to return to its natural colour. It began to absorb the heat from the sun again. A very small perfect picture of the sky reflected in the small well of water. Birds started flying over it again. As they’d shit over the first lake from the sky, the small seeds from the berries in their bellies sprouted tiny saplings. They spread like wild fire with their new old water source and soon the whole lake bed had became a paddy for new life. Over time the saplings became trees and the trees grew deeper and deeper roots breaking apart the soil. The water from the well began to seep its way through the cracks in the soil and nourish it. The soil soften and softened and continued to nourish more trees wider and wider until it reach the edges of the first valley. The second lake had almost reached the same state the first had a long long time ago. Before the last tree on its land could die. Before the last drop of water returned to the sky, the water from the first lake trickled into the cracks of the second lakes earthly bed and borders. Its hardened form slowly softened. And over time from below the ground another lake began to sprout new old life. It still had the essence of how it used to look before the lightning strike but it had a different feel. The sky watched this all. It all appeared the same. The first lake now had a forrest of bamboo surrounding the well in the middle. The second lake had a singular willow in the middle that was shorter than before but it its new sprouts were plenty. The third lake with its borders and all from the wisdom of its old trees continued to grow its olive trees with its olive oil. Now having been struck by lightning once the oil in these trees was able to withstand it. Instead it now created sparks and electricity which started to form all kinds of weird and wonderful things.
The artisan opened up his folder of cover papers and thumbed through his selection. He’d pull out each one and feel over its texture with his thumb and index. He’d look back and forth at the thread, stack and cover paper. The sun shone through the window for the first time. It hit one of the pages and slightly glimmered. It reflected off the bauxite minerals embedded in the bamboo paper. The artisan pulled it out of its sleeve and it started to slightly warm in his hands from the sunlight. He felt the electricity passing from the palm and his hands back and forth to the paper. Quickly he sat up in his chair. Propped the stack of five-folds up in the book cradle and pulled it close to the edge of the cutting matt nearest to him. His spine erected and the sun played with his silver jewelery as he pulled himself closer to the stack. He wiped the paste from his fingers on his jeans and made sure they were dry. He swivled slightly to the side of the cutting matt with the cover paper. He measured the width of the spine with his square and placed it to the end of the cover paper. He folded the other end over and butted it up against the end of the ruler. He made a crease with his bone folder on the page. Unfolded it. Swivelled it 180 degrees and did the same. The artisan picked up the cover paper and opened it slightly and closed it, inspecting the width of the spine on the cover paper. He swivled his chair back to the stack on the cradle and held the cover paper up to the window to heat it up slightly. A gust of wind passed and he watched the willow in the garden slightly sway. The artisan pulled the paper away from the window touched it with the back of his hand and lined it up over the stack. He held it there for a moment checking under and around to see if it was perfectly aligned. He inhaled and exhaled, trying not to cough.
The three lakes now with their new old trees started growing deeper and deeper roots. Above the surface of the soil they all remained within their lakes and valleys. Beneath the earth their roots and fungal membranes had all become interweaved and intertwined. Passing information back and forth. The sky watched. The sky became the night sky. The sky amongst the stars watched the earth. Lakes dried up and filled up. Volcanoes erupted and ended. Rivers washed down from the top of mountain springs and into the mouth of oceans. Lakes continued to dry up and fill up else where. Some never returned, some did. Old trees fell. New trees emerged. From the inner planets the sky now watched the earth as these small pockets of electricity began to light up the earth. All forming from small bodies of lakes, small bodies of caves, small bodies of wind tunnels, small bodies of volcanoes. They all emerged in threes. Decaying, dying, growing anew in an irregular pattern. From the outer planets the sky watched this all emerging. It had a beautiful rhythm to it from up there. Passing saturn the sky watched unbound. The sky became the sky and a new sky emerged to watch the earth.
The artisan pressed the cover paper hard against the spine of the stack and began pressing the bone folder firmly against it. Rubbing it up and down the spine. He dropped the bone folder and rubbed his thumb frantically up and down the spine. He slowed down as it began to heat up from the friction. Using his nails the artisan made sure to get the paste and paper into the cracks of each five-fold. He picked up the bone folder again as well as the stack. He rubbed it against the far edges of the spine making sure the cover paper wrapped aorund a slight lip on the first and last pages. As the spine cooled down, one final time he pressed and rubbed up and down the spine whilst holding the cover paper in place. He picked up one of his golden book clips and attached it to the unbound side of the book. The artisan placed it on the window sill to dry in the sun amongst the others he had made earlier. The artisan rubs the weird cat head he got from a car boot on the window sill and winks at its motionless eyes. He lights another ciggie and watches the flame reflect in its eye. He pulls it away from his mouth. Exhales. Coughs. Takes the olive oil pouch of his waist and places it on the desk. The artisan sits there breathing in and out. He watches the willow move with the wind. He watches the birds flying over dropping their little shits. He listens to the little git stomping his feet in the flat above him. He listens to the keys in the door. He watches Jean walk past his room. The artisan picks up all the books on the sil as the sun sets. He stacks them together and places them in the top drawer under his desk. He listens to the keys in the door again. His flatmate comes into the hall. “How was your day” “chill” “how was yours” “yeah not bad” “what you eating tonight” “not sure” “wanna get some beers?” “yeah sure”. The artisan snubs out the ciggie and gets up from his workbench and picks up his van keys.
The sky watches the artisan from the edges of space. The sky watches as Saturn conjuncts Neptune. The sky opens a portal shooting directly from the edges of space through the conjuction into the Artisan.
The Artisan sits around the table with his mates. He cracks open a beer and watches them cooking. An idea comes into the artisan’s head. He tastes the breath on his lips and blows out a small exhale.
Passing the lake, she stops for a moment. She watches it all and says nothing. Before she walks off she sees a pebble on the side of the road and picks it up. She thumbs over the five-point symbol inscribed on it and smiles. She puts it in her pocket for later and walks off. The sky watches her and she looks up at the sky.
