When I was a child, there was a pine grove in the nearby park.

Beneath the fallen leaves, I discovered reddish-brown clay veined with white.

I pressed my fingers into its surface and shaped a pachinko board—

pitfalls, bridges, ramps, and tunnels standing in the way of the goal.

Friends gathered, marbles in hand, to play.

Yet their marbles rarely reached the goal.

There was a secret: a gentle spin to the left,

and the marble would drop in just right.

That pachinko board remains one of my finest clay sculptures.

“With the earth, with the fire, with excitement”— a lighthearted spin.