A log splits on its own. Nobody decides it. It dries, it opens, and by the time it reaches me the opening is already old.

On top of that time I cut flat planes, stepped like a stair, and filled them with lacquer until they went black. The black is the part I made. The rest was made without me.

Between the two there is a thin grey line. That line is what I am actually working on.

I keep it as fine as I can — fine enough that it looks about to give way. If it were comfortably wide you could rest a hand there and the matter would be settled. Kept thin, the hand comes and then stops. What gets made is not a meeting but the moment just before one.

So the piece holds time running in two directions. The splitting has already happened. The edge has not broken yet. Standing in front of it you are looking at something on its way somewhere, not something finished.

Where the crack runs across the line, the line goes missing for a stretch. I have not decided whether to leave those places or repair them. An edge that is whole all the way round reads as skill. An edge already lost in one spot reads as an event. They are not the same thing, and I am still choosing.