Every time I pull the knife through, the dull wood curls away showing bright grain. The robin I left behind, in my father’s workshop, as we went around the world, left but not forgot. I remember, scratching the design out with pencil, screwing it tight into the vise, and filing, and filing, and filing. Occasionally, I would run out to pick dandelions, turn rocks over rolly-pollies and worms, or to escape the loud noise of the saw. But I would come back. And then we left and it waited for me, with the string of holed shells that I found at Riverfront Park, in the corner of the old kitchen cabinets relegated to the shop, locked in with all the rubbermaid totes of clothes and toys and old homework and our bunk beds dismantled against the wall. But I never forgot. And when my world felt overturned, when I wept into my father’s sweater, I came back to it. Sometimes, the best thing to stop crashing is creating something with your hands. To make something and put something good and right back into the world. To breathe with every shaving. It is not how I would make it now. The head is out of proportion. But it came before I could carry reference pictures in my pocket. It was only a memory of my favorite bird, cheerfully hopping around after the rain, cocking their heads to peer for worms. And there’s a goodness into coming back into completion. And a physical reminder and meditation that my Maker is not done either.
Grain – wheat – Amber waves of agricultural oceans across acres and swaths of the American heartland invoke a feeling of pride, industriousness, and somehow wholesome nobility out of an ancient crop familiar to the calloused fingers of civilizations since recorded (pre-celiac hypocondriac laden) time. Indeed the irony of the soviet hammer and sicle emblum – glorifying the nobility of domestic farmers yet …..
Dans tes yeux je ne trouve pas ce grain de folie que j’aimais tellement, ton regard sur moi n’as plus d’amour et ta peau ne me reconnais plus lorsque moi je ne connais que la tienne
Every time I pull the knife through, the dull wood curls away showing bright grain. The robin I left behind, in my father’s workshop, as we went around the world, left but not forgot. I remember, scratching the design out with pencil, screwing it tight into the vise, and filing, and filing, and filing. Occasionally, I would run out to pick dandelions, turn rocks over rolly-pollies and worms, or to escape the loud noise of the saw. But I would come back. And then we left and it waited for me, with the string of holed shells that I found at Riverfront Park, in the corner of the old kitchen cabinets relegated to the shop, locked in with all the rubbermaid totes of clothes and toys and old homework and our bunk beds dismantled against the wall. But I never forgot. And when my world felt overturned, when I wept into my father’s sweater, I came back to it. Sometimes, the best thing to stop crashing is creating something with your hands. To make something and put something good and right back into the world. To breathe with every shaving. It is not how I would make it now. The head is out of proportion. But it came before I could carry reference pictures in my pocket. It was only a memory of my favorite bird, cheerfully hopping around after the rain, cocking their heads to peer for worms. And there’s a goodness into coming back into completion. And a physical reminder and meditation that my Maker is not done either.
Grain – wheat – Amber waves of agricultural oceans across acres and swaths of the American heartland invoke a feeling of pride, industriousness, and somehow wholesome nobility out of an ancient crop familiar to the calloused fingers of civilizations since recorded (pre-celiac hypocondriac laden) time. Indeed the irony of the soviet hammer and sicle emblum – glorifying the nobility of domestic farmers yet …..
Dans tes yeux je ne trouve pas ce grain de folie que j’aimais tellement, ton regard sur moi n’as plus d’amour et ta peau ne me reconnais plus lorsque moi je ne connais que la tienne