Back on the Grind

Tue, 8/30

Monday morning brought a return to normal here at the Suburban Hermitage. We returned the rental car, Mary went to Tai Chi, and I got back to work on the stone. It's still all saw and chisel work, and progress is slow. I'm taking out large chunks with rough cuts. Those cuts will be followed with finer cuts, edging more closely to the layout lines, until the basic shape of the figure is right.

 

It's the last week of Summer. Labor Day is this weekend. September is getting ready to blast us with hundred degree days, but by mid month the nights will be cool again. I got to a stopping point in the work  yesterday, put up the tools, hosed down the dust,  grabbed a tweet, and an iced coffee, and parked it in the gazebo. 

 

Both cats were dozing in the shade. The breeze came up, and stirred the wind chimes.

That's when I felt autumn. I know it's officially three weeks away, but this was the first early taste of it. There is no one thing that has changed, but I could feel the motion of shifting seasons. The angled sunlight  leaning into gold. There's an old smell in the morning air, something in the feel of the afternoon breeze on my skin. Back to school season. I can hear the kids playing on the field over at Jordan school. Mary and I both spent most of our working years employed by the school systems. Our years always begin in September, and pause for the summer in June.

 But this September I don't have to go back. Not to learn, not to teach, and not to clean up the campus in the quiet after-hours. I've been retired for  four years, now. Sometimes it still occurs to me like something new: I have the day off! yea! Hooray!

Thu 9/1/2022

 

I had to make a run to Harbor Freight for bow saw, and  hacksaw blades. I have a love/hate relationship with Harbor Freight. On the one hand, I hate working with crummy tools, and I utterly despise cheaply made Chinese junk. Most Harbor Freight crap seems designed to last about halfway through the first job it's used on.

On the other hand, for seven bucks I can get a killer sharp 15" hand saw that will tear right through the alabaster, and if it lasts for only one or two projects then it's money well-spent. And then there was the "Hacksaw combo-pack". You know the deal: a great big, awkward plastic blister package with half a dozen different blades and handles. It looks like something from the kids' toy aisle. I know in advance that it's all cheap junk that no self-respecting laborer would buy. But it has a deep hacksaw frame, and  handles for saber saw, and hacksaw blades, and it's only $13. for the whole thang...

I bought it.

Fri, 9/2

I have that show coming up in October, and there is still a lot of work to do to get ready. I have a lot of photography to do, and I have to come up with an artist's statement. That's a pain.  These things are almost always an exercise in airy-fairy nonsense buried under piles of overlong sentences full of abstract nouns, and intransitive verbs.  But I gotta' write the thing, so it's been on my mind. What do I want to say?

It is September. It is hot. This project is much more difficult than I had anticipated and, as I've mentioned frequently, progress is very slow. I was truing up the sides of the base, sawing through the rock for the zillionth time. 

Sweat is running in my eyes. My arm is sore from cranking the saw.  I manage to bark my knuckles against a sharp edge on the stone. I'm head to toe dust, working through piles of grit, and there is still a long ways to go on this cut. Then I have to do it again on the other side. And after that...

 

I put the tools down. This is hard work. Nothin' airy-fairy about it. Did I mention it's hot?

Why

 am I doing this?

Here's where we get all philosophical, and stuff.

 

Sun 9/4

I just turned seventy. I am very acutely aware of how little time I have remaining to me. I'm not here to eat food, get high, and accumulate toys. Being isn't enough. You have to do.

"The world's in a bad way... and bound to be worse before it mends

And what can I do in the face of it? Spend hours reading on the internet? Stuff my head with information? Rage about the rage in comment sections? Maybe fire off a screed that'll get me a dozen "likes"? Grab a picket sign and run out onto the highway: "STOP THIS SHIT!!!"

 

Lead us not into temptation.

 

I can't stop any of what is out there. 

But I can finish this stone. I can turn this chunk of alabaster into something beautiful. Someday, someone will acquire it, and it will bring him joy to do so. Someday this will sit on the shelf of someone I've never met. Visitors will remark on it, and the owner will take some small pleasure in that. This little chunk of desert is going to be a one channel  crystal set tuned in for joy.

(seriously?)

Holy cow, JWM, that was like the corniest line you ever wrote. yeah, maybe it was.

But then again, David Warren writes: (Click the link. I tried to quote just one line, but you can't leave any of this out. (Go ahead- click):

Beauty is not an inductive idea; it is an imperative.” 

 

Thank you for stopping by.