Into the Season

Thanksgiving has passed us by. It's Sunday night as I'm sitting here at the desktop. Mary and I just finished four days of eating turkey. The last chapter in the dinner saga is turkey and rice soup. Enough. But the holiday went well. We hosted my brother Don's family, and I did the traditional dinner, right down to doing gravy from scratch. We said grace, and feasted well. Despite this ugly age and time there still  much to be grateful for. 

I made some decent progress on the stone this week,  even though I lost a lot of time getting the house together for Thanksgiving. Drilling was the big project. I had to open up the top of the figure, the head, I guess you could call it. The jig I made for drilling across the base was useless for this task. I used the old Craftsman power drill, and the 3/8" masonry bit to send in two holes, each four inches deep, ninety degrees apart, and at different heights. One hole had to tag the other right at the end point:

Bullseye!

 Here's me patting myself on the back. But there is still a lot of excavation that needs done, all of it in close tight spaces, and none of it easy. Sometimes I get frustrated trying to figure out how I'm going to get in to do some of this stuff, and then I remember whose plan I'm following. When you're self-taught, you learn from an instructor who doesn't know what he's doing. You can't complain about the boss being an asshole, and giving you stupid hard projects when you're the boss. So here's the progress as we roll into the Christmas season. 

 

There's a part of me that wants to do something inspiring, a piece all full of optimistic spirit, reaching for the light, aspiring to  ethereal grace. But the form emerging from the rock is sullen, gnarled, and grotesque. It's the product of a dialogue between creative energy, low spirits, a dark, and angry mind set, and a jagged chunk of jewel-like stone. A beautiful monster, I guess you could say. But it's Monday. The sun is out, and the morning is clear and warm. Got work to do, and that's a blessing.