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.

 A Week in the Stall

 

Monday 8/29

Just a cactus pic this morning. These guys are doing great. I'll get back to work on the rock in a little while. I got nothing at all done last week. There's a weird kind of rigidity that sets in post middle age. I told myself that since Mary would be gone for the week I'd spend the time getting domestic stuff done. That meant it was sort of against the rules to spend time on the rock. And suddenly it WAS against the rules, and I followed a rule that I didn't really set.

Mary got home yesterday. I got a decent night's sleep, the first in several days. The Skinamalink didn't come home last night, and he still hasn't shown up. Little poop is determined to drive me nuts. Ahhh. He just got in.

*cats*

 

Thu. 8/25/22 

Mary has been enjoying the week at a time share resort out in Palm Desert, leaving me with the house all to myself. Like I mentioned last week, this always lights up the instinct to run like a dog off its leash, and go a little wild. At seventy years of age I should know better. I do, actually, but well...

 I wrote about last Sunday, the one night last week that I did decide to stay up late, eat a few gummies, and buzz out. The night ended up in a high stress searching frenzy for my missing cat, ending with a 4:00 am bedtime, and then no sleep anyway. Of course this was followed by a long dismal day with no ambition, and less energy. Altogether it was far less fun than I had intended to have.

Accomplishments for the week so far?

I got the kitchen floor scrubbed, even behind the stove. I got the bathtub scrubbed out. Did some dusting, and vacuumed the rug. I got the dead leaves raked out from under the backyard hedge. Tightened the chain on my bike.

I got a fair start on my "Artist's Statement" for the October show, too, but there's still a bunch of work, yet. I still gotta' look up a bunch of hard words, and vague metaphysical notions, then figure out a way to sneak them into a few key sentences about sawing on a rock. I hear "stochastic" is popular with the very smart folks these days. "dialectic" is always good for a nod. So are "hermeneutics", and "heuristic".  (I might even throw in anapestic, and trochaic, even though they came from an English class.)

 And I succeeded in not throwing a hand grenade, or firing an RPG at the ice cream truck stalled outside playing toy piano, "Sailing, Sailing" on endless loop.

At least so far.... 

 

 

 Coming a Round

 

8/22

It's Monday morning and I'm bleary eyed and beat. I was up late last night. It was around 1:00am when I was about to turn in. Then I realized Buddy the Cat was missing. I called. Searched the house. Searched the yard. No cat. He almost never leaves the yard, and he's quick to come if I call. How did he get out? Where could he be? I'm having visions of my cat being taken by a coyote. I walked around the front. Took the bike out at 3:00am, riding around to the other side of the block. No Cat. I was so exhausted the I flopped on the couch a little after 4:00, Couldn't even doze. So I got up just in time to see that darned animal plod across the back patio, and saunter on up to the sliding door.

 *meow*

Huge rush of emotion.

 

So it was 4:30 bed time. And I didn't sleep 

well.

Back to the boulder:

 

I went ahead with shaping the big, roughly octagonal block into a cylinder. I'm shaping the whole thing, even though I'm only going to use a slice of it for the ring. The ring is going sit about 3/4 of the way from the tail to the nose of the teardrop, and it should be about 2 1/2 inches wide. But all the layout work is drawn on the front face of the cylinder I created. That front face will soon be cut away, and then I'll be working freehand to get the figure shaped. It will be a challenge.

 

Wed, 8/17

The layout work is three dimensional drafting on oddly shaped uneven surfaces.  I have to define the figure by drawing lines before cutting stuff away. Just like masons of old I'm drafting it out with a level, square and compass. The lines have to be straight, the circles round, and the angles square. This isn't so hard to do on paper. It's a little trickier to do on a cube. It gets trickier yet as more material gets cut away from the block. Next up is to get the cylinder as close to round as I can. I'll just tease the edges closer and closer to the pencil line, then, re-draft the guide lines for the next cuts.   Too, the sides, and top are unreliable.  The front face on which the layout is drawn is nice and flat, but it leans out 1/4" from plumb. All the saw cuts have to eyeballed for straightness. There's no improvising, or getting all artsy creative with this kind of project. Everything has to be measured and squared against the center line under the base of the stone. I spent all day checking lines, angles, and measurements. Despite my best efforts, everything ends up almost perfect.  Now it's on to the serious cuts.

 

Fri-8/19

So here we are all rounded out with the first cuts taken from the cylinder. This will probably be  it for the week. I have a bike ride with the gang tomorrow. 

 

 

Sunday, Mary is going to go out to Palm Desert for a week at a time share resort. I'll be here with the cats. Funny. Getting the house to myself, a chance to play bachelor for a few days, used to be kind of fun. There's the old, old instinct to call all your buddies over for beer and weed, and pizza. Play the stereo loud, put a monster movie on video, and stay up late.

No.

 I'm looking forward to take-out food, not doing dishes, doing a deep cleaning on the house. Maybe even mess with the yard. Get in touch with my inner custodian, or something. Joys of old age.

 Toughin' it Out

 

Monday, 8/8

I've revised my opinion on this stone. Last week I mentioned that it was good firm material. No. It's hard as hell. It took me all day to get from here:

 

to here:

 

I was going to take another pic of the stone all surrounded by dust and scrap, but I was too dusty to pick up the camera. 

 

Tue. 8/9

These are all dead end cuts. The saw cuts 

easily enough when I can draw the blade all the way across the stone. As it is with these cuts, I have to start (or stop) in the middle of the material. It's slow going. Cut some, chisel some. I put in over five hours on it today, and there's still a long way to go.

 

Wed, 8/10

It's odd. I sit here at the desktop every day, and go through the bookmarks, checking news, and current events. I think about tinkling my two drops of opinion into the sea of pixels, but at most I leave off with a wise-ass comment on facebarf, or American Digest. I consider addressing serious topics here on the blog, whether it's current events, or the deep questions that become so real in the late stages of the game, but I don't. There is nothing I can write, or say that will change any of what is happening. Venting my anger feels like blowing smoke in a windstorm. Nobody really cares, and very few people come by here, right?

Blogs are a creature of the 1990's. The cool kidz don't even have computers. It's all on the phone.

Dumping your heart out into the aether, or telling your life story to the cloud may be therapeutic. Lord knows I've done it. Now I'm reticent.

Tossing out opinions invites conversations I don't care to have. Even worse, in this age and time there really is a Big Brother, and he really does watch.

It just feels creepy, anymore. Like leaving your private journal at a bus stop, or a park bench.

The big questions remain unanswered.  The world has gone insane; the nation has gone to hell. The culture utterly sucks. This free floating sense of dismay has become a permanent fog on my inner landscape.

Mary turned seventy four today. Next Wednesday I turn seventy.  

 

 Friday 8/12

Here is where I left off, and what I'll begin with this week. It's crappy hot, and the work is going slowly.

 

Monday 8/15 

 

The Bike club met Saturday for our monthly ride. Our friend Buddy Lee, from Sins and Sprockets came out with his son to cruise with us, but they were the only guests. We don't draw much attendance anymore. There are still rides going on throughout the Southland, but most of the events are revolving around custom bike shows, and bar hopping. We've got the stretch bikes, but our machines are riders, not showgirls. We've seen enough custom bike shows. We love to get high and cruise, but we're not drinkers, and hanging out in a bar is not our idea of fun. We've been riding as a group for over a decade, now, and we've become a small eccentric family. We keep our niche in the cruising culture, but we'd hang together and ride even if the whole thing faded away.

So that's it for the week. I have two more days before I'm officially seventy years old. I must relinquish any claim to being close to middle age. Post-middle age is a nice way of putting it, but calling a turd a rose doesn't make it smell nice.

 

 Roughing it by Chisel and Saw.

 The layout I drew on the stone last week was close, but only close. I had to scrub it all off, and start over a couple of times.  The piece I'm making is based on this very cool little doo-dad:

 

 

It's a Fender Bomb, a front fender ornament for a 1950's Schwinn/Whizzer motorized bicycle. Last year I stared this project with two different stones, a piece of gray steatite, and a piece of silver anhydrous alabaster. Both stones were too hard to work given the tools I have. This piece of pearly alabaster is going to be just about perfect for this project. The outside faces of the boulder are weathered, and chalky, but the stone beneath the surface is good and hard. 

I want to use the stone to its best advantage, and waste as little as I can. That means fitting the largest possible iteration of the figure into the confines of the stone that holds it. Even so, this figure will need a lot of excavation. There's a whole lot of rock to remove. (Old layout below)

 

This chunk is easy, as stones go. The two flat sides are fairly even, and roughly parallel, but the arching line across the top is very irregular. This is where it would be nice to work from a smooth, pre-cut cube instead of a boulder.  As it is, the two 'flat' sides of the stone aren't flat.The  diameter of the ring has to fit between the lowest depressions on either side of the rock. Finding, and measuring the low spot is tricky work with the steel square, and  the probe on the vernier caliper. Fortunately, this isn't machine shop, but time spent planning is saved in execution.

 

Fri. 8/5 

The task is to shave down the sides of the stone, and cut away scrap. The stone has a little translucence to it, and the scrap pieces all ring like glass when they drop. I can feel some tiny, hard inclusions in the rock as I saw.  Perhaps they'll show up as spots in the finished stone.

 This is good material; the rasps, and saw blades meet a lot of resistance. That makes precise cuts easy, but it's very slow work. 

Saw, saw, saw- 

 "Are we there yet?"

 "No."

 

 Sometimes doing this feels all kinds of artistical, and creative, and stuff. Other days are like today- just slogging through a rock with a chisel and a bow saw. I have heard that there are  devices that combine saw blades with electric motors. It's an odd notion to be sure. Some say these devices speed up the work. Could be. But I won't put an electric motor on my bicycle, either. 

 

 (New layout)

 

 8/7/22

 

Here is where I left off Friday afternoon, and where I'll begin this Monday. There is still a lot of material to cut away before I can begin shaping the ring. The top cut is right on the line, and both sides of the stone are shaved close enough to work as well. The next cut-aways will free up the two bottom corners of the circle, and then I can start with the material behind the ring in the back half of the piece.

 

Why patience is a virtue. Notice, in the next pic, the flake broken out on the middle line at the side, and another one near the right end corner. In both places I was just exploring- setting the chisel, and taking a tap to see if I had a good bite on the stone. Both blows knocked out much bigger chunks than I had intended. Never chisel near the edge of a cliff. You go over the edge, and work into the cliff face. In this case there is no harm done because the large flakes that dropped out are in areas that I'll be cutting away anyhow. Still, it's a reminder.

 Like Treebeard would say: "Mustn't be hasty."

And besides, it's already getting into the slow-motion days of mid August, and the season of heat. Working is a party of grit, dust, and sweat. But that's what makes it real. If I wanted to stay clean I could stay indoors, and build model kits.