December 9 2023
My tracks in the mud will rise, covered by leaves, soaked with water, the imprinted earth will recover into smooth ground. No one will know I’ve been here. Seeds I plant will bud, grow, die, bud, grow, die, forever. No one will know I’ve been here. Love has been given to me, swirls around, goes out of me in a me form, into you, swirls in you making a you form, into another, forever. Light from the beginning or the end or underneath or around enters our atmosphere, hits my skin, warms me, some of it reflects off of my eyes, goes back out of the atmosphere into the beginning or the end or underneath or around, forever. No one will know I’ve been here. I heard words, received teachings, worked with my hands, have these two beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful boys who are not mine but are gifts, tell them words, teach them, watch them work with their hands, maybe have their own kids. Forever. No one will know I’ve been here. This is all such a joy.
December 8 2023
I made a coffee table for me and the boys. I moved into this apartment with them a little over a year ago, and it only took me that long to get a proper table for us. There's no sarcasm in that – a year isn't bad for a personal project that isn't pressing. Up until now we've been using a bench I made as a stand-in. It served us well. Now that bench is used for butts and not for books and bowls.
Started with a piece of walnut I’ve had for a few years, the end of a slab that was a drop, or a cut-off piece, from a previous project. I've always imagined I would use it for a coffee table, but you never know. The board was leaning against a wall thinking about what it wanted to be.
I didn't draw out any specs or have a design in mind. Instead I simply made moves as they felt right, a sort of woodworking jazz. Walnut sings as a material. It doesn't need any ornamentation. I prefer to integrate all of the checks and cracks as opposed to filling them with epoxy. One of the reason to either fill a crack or put an inlay in a crack is to prevent the board from cracking further over the years as the wood expands and contracts during seasonal changes. I'm ok with it cracking further, and I doubt that it will crack enough in my lifetime to lose structural integrity. It'll be fine.
After I made the cuts to the board the shape ended up looking like some kind of shield or amoeba. I knew I wanted to funk around with the base of the table – not too loud to where it drowns out the table top, and not too quiet to where it feels boring or nonexistent. There's no right or wrong move.
My neighbor across the alley was doing some home renovations and he removed some copper piping from his basement and asked if I could use it. This was, I don't know, last spring. Yes I will take all of your copper. Copper is a great material. Give it a hundred years outside and it will transition to a green color. Old urban church roofs were sometimes clad in copper, and because they get rained on they oxidize over time and turn green. It's amazing.
So I like copper. These legs won't turn green, but they have a great patina from being in a basement for probably 60 years. I didn't do anything to the legs except cut them to length and deburr the edges so they wouldn't catch on the rug. I made plugs from plywood and hammered them into the legs using only a friction fit. This will allow me to add furniture glides if I ever need to.
Before I made the holes for the legs I placed them in various orientations and numbers until I found a look and feel that resonated. Who know how all this works, or if it works. The freedom is part of the fun. I ended up using all 9 pieces. It doesn't feel too busy to me, but I did think during the process, "Well I'm not making the vacuuming process easy for myself." So it goes.
I used epoxy to set the legs into the bottom of the table top then touched up the lengths of the legs so that they are generally equal. Last move was to oil the top and let it cure. The process took me a day but also took me 6 years of doing this kind of work and acquiring tools and expanding my aesthetics, curiosities, and a sort of courage to be weird with it to be able to do it in a day. It feels freeing. Make a move, make another move, consider those moves, go backwards or forwards or sideways, turn it around, talk to it, send it to friends, tell it a story, listen, make more moves, see what happens.
That's one way to make a thing.
December 7 2023
The Return
Some day, if you are lucky,
you'll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs of damage,
or change and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces of fur, or leaves
if thrushes have built a nest of your hair,
if Andromeda burns from your eyes.
Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit their own fleeting lives,
who barely taste their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them. We warned you, they might declare,
there is nothing else, no point, no meaning,
no mystery at all, just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute, afraid you've returned
without sweet elixir for unspeakable thirst, without a fluent dance
or holy language to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where no one crosses
without weeping for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone.
They tremble, hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings will redeem them,
yet they fear your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished mouth,
they-like you-must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.
- Geneen Marie Haugen
(My worst best friend Jeffrey sent me that.)
December 6 2023
“His father seemed to hear voices from far out in the night. He is described as a listener who encouraged. When William was nine or ten, his father, walking with him in his alert, bird-glimpsing way, remarked, ‘Now Billy, look carefully in these trees—you may be able to see the hawk better than I can.’ That's astonishing in this world where so many fathers compete with their sons: ‘Give me that wrench …you're ruining everything.’”
— Robert Bly writing about the poet William Stafford and Stafford’s relationship with his father (from the introduction to Stafford’s book of poetry “The Darkness Around Us is Deep”)
November 23 2023
Mythologically, historically, things fall apart for men at around 40. Could be 33 or 37 or 45. I don’t know when it is or if it is for women. Could it be that because women know what it means to bleed and to lose something of themselves from the time of puberty that they intrinsically know what death means in their bodies, over and over, rhythmically (the word -flow- here holds a poetic sense), and because of this knowing they don’t fall apart, a big death, like men do sometime near middle life?
This is a thinking that goes back to forever. Nothing is new except the shaping and molding of forms.
This falling apart for men needs a name. It needs to be named. It doesn't have a single name. I don't like "mid-life crisis"; it is a tame, domesticated. That won't do at all.
You have to listen for its name or name it yourself or give it a name others have given it before you. Let it go unnamed and it becomes far more dangerous. You can spot when a man has gone through a big death and not found its name. That man goes out and buys a car. That man dates someone and you think, “Dude. Come on.” That man gets a gym membership and tries to get his body to go back in time, become a boy again. He doesn't know he's still a boy. He could have saved so much money! (As I type the thought came to me "maybe I should get a gym membership".) Watch out for that man. Wish him well, hope for him, but stay out of his path. There is a trail of blood behind him and a trail of blood in front of him.
When you do not listen for the name of a big death then you are never able to sit in it and submit to it and let go of the control you thought you had. You will try to overpower it and you'll lose, but not by your own submission; it will slowly destroy you until your final breath.
Listen for the name and be crushed by it. Find out its name and discover that, while it is more powerful than you, it does not define you. It will not hold you down forever if you allow yourself to be held down now. The more you let go, the more it lets go, almost as if you are partnering with it, dancing with it, maybe even thankful for it.
The man who has submitted to that death – behind that man are footprints of ashes instead of blood. He accepted the poverty. Keep an eye on him and watch him fly. Nothing will stop him because he no longer needs to go anywhere. How can you be stopped if you do not need to move? He has everything he needs, wherever he is. When he does move it is in complete freedom. The ashes in his footprints nurture and rejuvenate the soil with every single step, depositing minerals back into the earth that would have otherwise taken decades to decay and decompose.
I know some of those men. They are amazing.
November 20 2023
No need to tell me about your successes. You’ll bring them up naturally, without knowing it. So will I. Do tell me about your disasters; those are always helpful. The ruined places are where we learn about each other. Tell me where you went down in flames, where you laid or are still lying in ashes. Now this is a dangerous telling, so be a good editor of your stories. Do not lie. People can smell the stench of falsehoods. Instead choose the truths to expose, and allow them to be spoken in time, sand falling in an hour glass. Break the glass and the sand buries the listener. Just let them fall as they fall and try trusting a bit, then a little more.
November 16 2023
Maybe the man who gave away his gold at too young an age, the man who lives with more than a modicum of fear, who lost something of his gravitas - maybe that man needs a push down a hill or a strong kick in the ass. Maybe he needs someone to say “show me what you got”.
Maybe that man needs to go dig a face-sized hole in the earth, lay down and scream into the great mother. Maybe he needs permission to say every word he has always been told not to say. Maybe he needs to go and break something beautiful or sacred, to get past that boundary in his mind and destroy what he knows should not be destroyed. Maybe that man needs to distinguish between bullshit machismo, the sort of living that stomps on others in an attempt to build oneself up, or a life that escapes into the brutality of sports where others suffer in play and battle while he sits on the couch safely screaming with potato chip crumbs on his shirt — distinguish between that machismo and what it means for him to be truly masculine, both safe and always in risk, reverent and irreverent, to know when to caress and know when to crush.
If a man cannot bring his intensity and strength in the daily then how will he ever be bloodthirsty against forces like mass incarceration or the killing of people groups or corporations who rape the earth or when his daughter or son is being taken advantage of?
Maybe you’re a man and you’re thinking “that’s not me” then oh boy, watch out. The man who does not think he needs it is the most dangerous one of all because passivity has wrapped itself around his neck and he has no idea that he can’t breathe.
The man who doesn’t need it — he doesn’t need it because he wants it and he finds it; he’s always looking for a little trouble.
But the man who needs it, maybe he gets pushed out or kicked out, he begins to start looking, and maybe that man will come back both softer and stronger, a wildness in his eyes, an energy you’ve never seen before because that man got a little bit of his gold back and he’s not giving it away to just anyone any longer.
November 15 2023
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
November 8 2023
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
(Tired of Speaking Sweetly by Hafiz)
November 7 2023
Let go of the hours, the overtime, the fear of not having enough. Let go of the tools, the keyboard, the emails, the markets, the interest rates.
Let go of the bar, the bottle, the glass in one hand and the cigarette in the other, the needle, the joint, the bowl, the powder. Let go of the numbing and the escape, the avoidance, the cowardice.
Let go of the relationships, the dependence, the fear of being alone and the fear of being known.
Let go of the new and the old and the shiny and the dull. Let go of the appearances and the preoccupations and the racing mind. Let go of what you think they think and what you think you think you think you think.
Let go of what you thought you wanted, what you want, what you will want. Let go of success and failure. Let go of the car that won’t start, the job that won’t grow, the disappointments of what never will be.
Let go of the notion that everything will stop if you stop, that if you lie down then everything will fall apart.
Let go of your idea of God and Jesus and Mary and Allah and Mohammed and Buddha and Brahma and Vishnu and Shiva.
Let go of your children, who and what you need for them to become. Let go of your father and your mother who were there and were not there.
Let go, Joshua. You are connected to all, and all is connected to you, so even if it is not yours, it’s yours. You’re not alone. Hold on to that.
November 2 2023
I showed these photos to my pal Phil, who has three teenage sons.
He said, “I will miss the imprint of grubby little hands on white walls. It used to bother me, now I count myself blessed.”
I told Phil, “That’s funny - yesterday I cleaned off tons of handprints. Then this morning Waits was doing this and I said my man let’s keep our hands off the walls. Then I realized how safe and boring that is and I said fuck it - I’m wrong. Do it again and I’ll take some photos.”
October 27 2023
There's courage involved if you want
to become truth.
There is a broken-open place in a lover.
Where are those qualities of bravery and
sharp compassion in this group? What's the
use of old and frozen thought?
I want a howling hurt. This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change.
Lukewarm won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by? Not here.
-Rumi
October 25 2023
These moments are moments, seconds in front of seconds and behind seconds, ineffably valuable, no more or less valuable than others that have gone and others that will come.
They are walking side-by-side on a wet, fall morning. I am nearly brought to my knees in gratitude. I want to worship that moment, kiss its feet, take it to bed. The beauty is too much. Take off your shoes and let your feet sink into the holy ground.
And the moments when the boys are fighting with each other, with me, when I am flooded with the uuuugggghhhh please please for the love of everything forever just stop that noise stop that fighting stop that whining – those hold the same weight of infinity as the ones when they were walking to school.
Take off your shoes, Joshua.
October 18 2023
There’s always been an intensity in me, around me, as if I have canvas sails that only catch hurricane winds and ignore the passing gentle breeze. This is one of those characteristics that is equal blessing and curse.
Blessing — I pick things up quickly and can excel with some ease. I want to learn how to do woodworking or motorcycle maintenance or baking bread, so I buy the tools, read the books, watch the videos, and go after it until I can do it well. I have German and French heritage, engineering and poet energies, problem-solving and abstraction. Mastery of any one thing isn’t interesting. Breadth of skills and experience is alluring.
Curse — All or nothing mentality. It’s difficult to go slowly. Overbearing, overwhelming, overeverything. Addiction knocks at the door, and addiction isn’t concerned with the typical substances; it’ll take anything for a ride — work, relationships, media, exercise, food.
The work is learning how to befriend intensity, to know when to ask it to lead, when to ask it to walk beside me, and when to tell it to stay a few steps behind. It’s in my being, so there’s no destroying it — if I attempt to crush it then it merely chuckles then intensifies. The task is to learn to converse and listen. Negotiation with intensity is a skill.
I was laying on the couch the other night and I hear Murphy from across the room. “Dad! Can I have this book?” He walks up beside me holding my journal, on which he had drawn on the front and back covers with pencil and marker.
Here’s a glimpse into how I tend to go about things. When I decide to buy a journal, for instance, I spend a couple weeks looking around and saving ones I like. When I find one that really tickles me I’ll look into who makes it, maybe find info, if it’s out there, on the origin of the company, what species of trees are used to make the paper, how they produce it, as far as I can go. Sometimes the rabbit hole tunnels so deep that I can find the machinery that makes the paper, where THAT is made, where those machines tend to fail, and how to fix them.
I know.
None of this is necessary. I don’t do this sort of excavation for every purchase, but I do get a kick out of it.
Back to Murphy.
“Dad! “Can I have this book?”
“Oh - that’s my journal!”
The ! at the end of that sentence does not signify the volume of my voice, but maybe the energy. Murphy felt it right away. I saw his eyes widen, possibly some fear, his chin dropping down to his chest. Shame ran down him like a steam from his head to his feet. My heart hurt in an instant. I needed to dam that river.
Sometimes I don’t catch myself in these moments. Thank God I did this time.
“That’s so good pal. Can you draw some more on the inside?”
He looked up, smiled so, so bigly (that’s the exact word for it), and wrapped his little arms around my waist. That shame didn’t stay with him at all. Kids can recover in miraculous ways. I’ll hold onto shame for a week before I can release it.
The notebook does not matter (Midori MD A5 notebook, in case you are a similar notebook weirdo). The words in the notebook do not matter. What matters is Murphy. His drawings are valuable because he is valuable. I shift (not curse) of my intensity towards Murphy in love and away from anger or frustration. Often I monumentally get it wrong, and sometimes I catch myself and get it right. He will never remember that he drew in my notebook, but he will remember a father that turned towards him more than he turned away from him.
And now I’ve got these great drawings, a gift I did not know I wanted. I mean, he’s not good at drawing at all — you could even say terrible, but how great are these?
October 15 2023
The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers' sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.