obsession?

Okay, I came home from my furniture making class but haven't been able to work on my project because I don't have a workshop set up or even a vise, or worktable to attach it to. It has been frustrating. I went to Lowes and stared at the tools; the table saw, drill press, the band saw. I saw a wood vise. I don't have a proper space for a worktable. It has all obsessed me a bit. So much so that as I was standing at my butcher block counter eating watermelon for breakfast early the other morning, still in my nightie and already thinking about my joinery, I looked at the pulpy fruit, and at the knife in my hand, something about the wooden counter...and then, well, here is a movie I made to show exactly what happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5EJ9wWKxMI

school

Here is my school on a Thursday night in June, after the potluck dinner and croquet tournament and everything is cleaned up and we're ready to work on our projects some more...until maybe 11 pm or even much later. It was what I had to do and couldn't not do. I came home from Maine, my little bench still in pieces, still at step one, but what a step it was.

I have always considered the process. I have wanted the process to produce something beautiful, but have rarely cared that it remain. Food is eaten, I hope enjoyed but still, it's gone after moments. Knitting scarves and hats in winter- they're always given away as gifts. Methodically washing the floor is enjoyable to me even as I walk across it after it is cleaned, leaving footprints. However, I learned something at this school about process that changed everything about process for me. I must start with my feelings about perfection: I have always thought that imperfection is so much more interesting. I've held strongly to the tenet that perfection is not only unattainable but undesirable. I never knew that that may have limited me in the exact way that I believed perfection must limit things. Wood is quite unforgiving and I wanted my joints to fit together and I couldn't get them to. I wanted them to be good, not perfect, but the pieces wouldn't accept each other. It was challenging me. Then, one night I heard my teacher give a talk and show slides about his work and himself and the eventual creation of the school after a lifetime of being a furniture maker. It was all interesting and inspiring. At the end he made one last comment, and I had my process-altering moment. What he said went directly to the brain of me. He said that it is not enough to consider the process while transforming material, one must consider the transformation in ones self during that process. ...Whoa. I change while I "do" something?? It isn't always all about the "doing" or the thing?? I then recognized that something was changing in me while trying to transform these two pieces of unforgiving wood. I had to forget about non-perfection and really go for something more perfect than I believed was in me...or that I even wanted in me. That was the transformation! I never really got the things perfect but they were quite beautiful in the end and they did accept each other and it didn't matter anyway because I changed too. My lesson about perfection AND my lesson about process. Does this make sense to anyone? Does everyone already know this?

Anyhoo, the day after the class ended I rode my bike around town, sat by the harbor and drank coffee with my new friend/host and then she drove me to the top of Mt. Battie. I saw the plaque with Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem that she wrote while standing in the same spot. Here is a bit of it:

ALL I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked the other way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I’d started from;

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see:

These were the things that bounded me;

And I could touch them with my hand,

Almost, I thought, from where I stand.

And all at once things seemed so small

My breath came short, and scarce at all.

epiphanies

I am at woodworking school in Maine for 2 weeks. My classmates ask me why I am here. I know it is because it is the process that attracts me to the endevour. Here is my first dovetail joinery. It took me forever to do, isn't much, crude, and I plan to do many more, but I am enjoying the process. The dovetail ends of these boards will be cut off and I'll start again. Everyone else in the class has at least taken a shop class sometime and as it happens everyone seems to have a home workshop and has made things... except me. What was I thinking coming here having never made anything before, my workbench neighbor asked. Then later I realized that I was starting pure, if not just ignorant. There is nothing for me to unlearn. I didn't know there was a difference in how things are constructed and never will. It was the second epiphany of the day. The first was touching the back of a cabinet in the school's gallery. It was like glass, but warm and instead of reflecting the wall and my hand, it spoke of tree. It was humbling. It is another universe. What was I thinking coming to this class?

I just like to do.

2 flowering bushes

Say what you will about the hot-cold-hot-cold weather, you can't beat the Spring fleurs this year. Even the dog willing posed next to a monster flowering bush in the front yard. Hmm...maybe she feels a kinship to it.

sugar

Here is my daughter covered in sugar for a photo shoot she was in while in Portland Oregon a coupla weeks ago. She lives in Chicago. Now. But today, with a tip from a friend (thanks Ron!) her mum-zy found an apartment for her to rent in NYC. And with the help of her dad, his quick action, decision and a run to the bank, it became her future home. I am so excited. She is really really coming east and to a great neighborhood, to a cute studio. I love Chicago but it is far away and at 25, with a book contract, agent and publisher in New York, she should spend some time here. And then if she wrangles a fellowship to London next year, her dream, she'll be ready. Sweet.

shiny

Voila, my beautiful new kitchen is almost fini.

What it was is below (and that was on a good day.) Amazing what only new cupboards, countertop and a minor rearrangement of things will do. (Okay, and I had it painted.)

But I am:

~proud of how little I spent

~kick myself for not doing this ages ago

~and ready to get back to cooking!

I am going to go butcher on that butcher block.

fern giant

These amazing ferns grow in a damp, shady spot next to the house. I don't remember planting anything so they are there of their own free will and each year there are more, and they're bigger. I used to try to eat the fiddleheads but had to admit that it was like eating grass. I am much happier marveling at their marvelousness.

Mothers Day

Organic, New Paltz farmer Pete Taliaferro gave me these beautiful columbines on the first day of the season for the Rhinebeck Farmers Market, yesterday. It being Mothers Day and all, I graciously accepted. It was just what I needed seeing that I was not with the one who makes me a mother and the day was chilly and my own mother had just hung up on me. Whimper. The rest of the day went well; a divine felafel from the new vendor, Aba, heavenly sheep cheese from the charming couple at Dancing Ewe, who travel hours to participate, a celebratory micro-mini kir from Clinton Vineyards, and happy, beloved Meri who sells my granola for me at her stand. After all that good goodness, we took ourselves to a late afternoon screening of Babies. Lots of awwwwwws. The day ended with the anxiously anticipated phone call from the busy, peddling daughter at the Toronto Comic Arts Fest (lerve) and even an apology call from mom (wha..?!)

a moment

This is Pip enjoying the sunset. She is a "sensitive" person, read: a nasty cat. When she was a kitten she had a bad eye infection which was probably brought on by the stress of too many in the litter for her comfort, thanks. And then when she came home with us the old household cat terrorized her. We finally moved her to the office in the barn. She refuses to go into the house ever again, even though the other cat has been departed for years. She was not happy about the addition of the puppy (now dog) to the family and what's more the dog's neighborhood dog-pal, Maxx hangs around the office, too. Pip skulks around, fuming, batting with claw extended at anyone who accidentally comes within her reach. Many have tried to break through the shell - and she will allow herself to be petted. Then, as you pull your hand away, she flails quite precisely and often draws blood.

However, like any sensitive person, she truly enjoys a beautiful moment.

lilackia

Okay, there is nothing I can say that these lilacs aren't saying, better.