Waking up

I’m rereading Sam Harris’s newest book 'Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion'. I love the intellectual honesty of Sam’s thesis. No part of Sam’s project has to be believed in. It is all open for examination by either objective experiment or subjective experience. He defines consciences as our experience before thought. To develop a presence to the present moment focus our attention on consciousness, letting thoughts come and go without attachment or aversion. It ends up that turning our consciousness on itself without thought is freeing. Thinking is not bad for we needed it to do everything that we value but we are not helped by most of our thinking and surly not the automatistic thinking we are usually subjected to by our self talk. Most of the time I’m so caught up in automatistic thinking that I don’t even realize that I’m thinking. No chance to be in the present. No chance to be here with you, with my love. 

I wish I could write as eloquently as Maria Popova here and here about Sam’s project. Lots of practical value in Sam's project. Some of us exercise our bodies to keep them healthy. Not to many years ago this was thought fringe. Today, exercise for the consciousness in the form of meditation is thought fringe. That will change. 

'Look for me in the weather reports.'

The only thing I’m sure about is that ‘I exist’ and soon I won’t. This is not sad. I’m going to die. I want to face this as a fact. It is hard. I will die. Probably not today, but sometime soon. Very soon in the overall span of my time, but I’d like to live a little longer.  There are things I want to accomplish. I wonder how accomplishing anything will have an impact on what is left. Wanting to accomplish anything in the face of my impermanence seems silly. But maybe not. What I want to accomplish, if accomplish is the right word, is love, connection, and friendship. 

I didn’t worry about the time before I was born, so why should I worry about the time after I die. I came from star dust and I’ll return to star dust. The atoms that currently make up me at the remnants of stars, planets, rocks, animals, plants, and dead people from history and eventually some of the atoms that make up ‘me’ will be available to make up a very tiny part of many other future people. Wonder of wonders.

The final quiet. When it comes, I only worry about the suffering and pain in the transition. I don’t want to be in too much pain when the time comes. This is what scares me the most. I don’t plan on dying soon, but it could happen. I see the finality of my life. I worry about the people I will leave behind. I want them to remember me but soon enough I will be forgotten to the world. I have no children so my DNA will not be replicated. All the thoughts, ideas, gestures that I’ve shared have moved from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. Even those who have these memories will eventually die and the light of these will go out. All traces of ‘me’ and my short existence here will be gone.

I didn’t choose to be born. I didn’t choose the circumstances of my birth. I didn’t choose the overall trajectory of my life. I certainly didn’t choose all the fortunate luck I’ve had. I will not be able to choose the timing or the circumstances of my death. 

I am grateful for all the love I’ve experienced and all the luck I’ve had. I’m grateful for my intelligence and wonder. I’ve had the opportunity to love and be loved, to laugh and cry. What more can you get in life? Eternity owes me nothing. As Saul Bellow said “Look for me in the weather reports.” 

Idealism

My friend is a little behind in his orders for repairs and rebuilds of wheels. He is a wheelwright. So I've been helping him out. These wheels I turned the hubs, fitted the spokes and fitted the felloes and welded the steel for the rim. Bill mounted the rubber and primed the wheels for painting. Interesting an fun making.

There is an interplay between imagination and creativity. Creativity is the makers craft. By that token, there is a lot of creative people in the world. Imagination is a conjuring activity of generating ideas in the domains of pictures, prose, music. Imagination creates ideas that creativity makes. Being both creative and having a strong imagination is the realm of idealists. There are many more makers than idealists (designers).

Doing magnificent work

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Spoons by Yoshiyuki Kato  

I'm acting like I have all the time in the world to do the magnificent work I envision for myself. I said this a year ago and I say it again today. What will it take to spur me on to action?

Discovered a spoon maker that, if you are interested at all in wood, you should check out. Yoshiyuki Kato  Beautiful aesthetic form and function over fancy. This is the aesthetic that catches my eye. 

Welding today. Working on a roof rack for my truck. 

A little at a time.

Doing something wether it is writing or blogging or woodworking or metal working, doing a little every day is so helpful to in the big picture. Not sure how to explain this. If you do a little every day then each days contribution is not significant. Significant in that it moves the project called life forward but if is fails or is sour it is not relevant to the broader picture of things. Some things will be mistakes. This is a given. But you won’t know which are which if you don’t try. Advice I'd give to me. Call it self coaching. 

New business cards.

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Making mental pathways

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“Secret of Adulthood: What I Do Every Day Matters More Than What I Do Once in a While.”

— Gretchen Rubin

Knowledge makes improvements in a haphazard way. A way that we not really aware of and certainly not in control of. The illusion of an "I" making choices in this realm is strong but an illusion none the less. We are not as smart as we think. How can we become less dumb? As a start, we can talk less and only say positive, loving things.

I still have a problem excepting my mistakes. If life is a game with rules we make up and while we don’t get to choose our circumstance, we do get to choose how we fell about them, then why is excepting the consequences of our mistakes so hard? Is it the unexpected outcome? The failure to execute perceived perfection? Are some people just wired this way? 

This week in the shop I’ve been finishing up commitments and feel like I am getting ready for something new. I spent yesterday cleaning and organizing the woodshop and found two old stalled projects that have been lurking partly done hidden in the shop. 

I sent some time this week talking with local woodworkers, metalworkers, and fabricators about the desire to attract more discriminating customers. People who will challenge us to produce our best and in so doing create even bigger and improved mistakes. How?  

Production and Mistakes

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Production of breadboards for the Farmers Market

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Production of metal material rack and bird feeder bracket. 

Thinking some more about mistakes. Mistakes of co-mission and mistakes of omission. Examples of mistakes of co-mission are, cutting to wrong side of a line, not sanding all the marks out of board, miss measuring, drilling too large of hole, planing a board in the wrong direction. Examples of mistakes of omission are, forgetting to share appreciative thoughts with friends, not sharing where I can, cutting corners and leaving of decorative or functional details on projects. These are the mistakes that haunt me. They so where I am not fully present. 

Production. It feels good to be in a production mode. Creativity done and now producing.  I have a couple simple production runs under way. Kitchen cutting boards - six of them at once - and a set of three material racks. Nice to do one after the other, each operation in sequence. Working towards a finished item, product, thing - brought into the world where nothing existed before. This is a far cry from “art”. So be it, It feels wonderful to be the guide in the loop of production. Without the actual work nothing would get done. In the work, in the doing is where the good stuff is. The feelings of flow.

Things I’m working on in the shops. Too many projects all at once.

1. Cherry table top for Paul
2. Under counter cutting board replacement for Sara
3. Cedar outdoor alter shelf for Paul
4. Six cutting boards for the Farmers Market
5. Three material brackets for metal storage
6. Decorative bird feeder bracket
7. Roof rack for my truck
8. Long curtain rod for outdoor bamboo shade 
9. A dozen spoons in various stages of completion
10. Bottlestoppers
11. Rolling pins for the Farmers Market
12. Rebuilding a pair of 16 spoke 4’ dia. wooden carriage wheels