Watched as a man sharpened a knife, his hands grasping the knife just enough to keep it steady against the wheel without pressure showing in his fingertips. He could feel the knife moving, being thrown from the force of the grinding wheel, towards him, into his hands, into him if he slipped with an error in pressure to hold it against the abrasion. He did this multiple times a day.
He stayed steady in the task later telling me he didn’t fear the dangers of sharpening knives. Just the opposite. It was a moment of Zen beginning when the customer first hands him the blade.
He studies it. Weight. Size. Shape. Density. Heft.
He senses the blade’s story. What had it done to become dull, dull enough that it needed his services? He doesn’t know the story, but he’s sharpened a lot of blades, and he knows they all have stories. Sometimes the owners offer explanations. Brief stories about the family blade.
The inability to keep it as sharp as his father did before he died.
It’s every knife from the kitchen drawer just to put everything on the same plain.
Mom’s sewing scissors soon to be given to her granddaughter after she gave birth to the next generation.
The Boy Scout knife that sat in the tool drawer for too many years.
The utility knife to be carried on the five-day mountain hike with close friends.
He feels these stories as he blends the knife’s edge into the wheel. He understands the metal and how it was forged into the shape that became the blade. How it made its way into the hands of the owner. How it was dulled. How it will become dull again.
He can’t see the edge of the blade slowly eroding against the wheel. He feels it. Smells it. Listens to the changing sounds. Watches the sparks. He knows when it’s ready. When everything necessary has been ground away.
There’s no measuring stick. No scale. No micrometer. Just the sense that it is right.
When he passes it back to the owner’s hands, he has a stronger connection to that family, their extended family, the neighbors, the friends on the hike, and anyone who will get to experience the utility of a sharp blade. Through the generations. Through time.
I think a lot about the knife sharpener and his continuing moments of Zen, the connections he makes with people and their lives, and the participation in a never-ending story that he is now a part of.
I think a lot about the knife sharpener when I’m making photographs.
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This is an Amazon link where I make a few pennies to help pay for my life. Today’s book is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values. Or How to keep your Volkswagen Alive: A manual of step-by-step procedures for the compleat idiot.
Almost everything I shoot goes through Luminar Neo. Even after I’ve made the first edit of my raw file in Adobe Camera Raw. I’ve built my own set of Luminar presets for the places and things I normally shoot and for different lighting conditions at those places. Then it’s easy to adjust the results for fine-tuning each photo. This is an affiliate link so I might make a little something from sale. Download it for the trial period.