this morning...

I have a staff meeting at the Clear Spring School in which we will work out our class schedules for the next year. If the calendar were just the same for each year, we could get to the point that everything would run like clockwork. But that is never the case, and if it were, there would be no creativity as each and every other thing would fall into a rut.

So we should be grateful that the earth's rotations create a calendar that is not precise year after year. That things are slightly out of kilter, mean that we adapt and create anew. The same goes for human performance, and the work of the hands, every time they are brought fresh into our creative concerns.

This morning, I'll haul some white oak logs to a local sawyer to be milled and try to be back before meeting time. The logs have grown up in the natural world and will no doubt carry the life they led in my forest into my creative time as I craft beautiful and unique objects from the lumber that comes.

On Sunday, we attended the first time production of a one act play written by my friend Tom Gorsuch. When voices come together for the first time on stage, there is some creative chaos that emerges, and it was wonderful to see the interpretation on stage as local actors gave their own voice to Tom's written words. Count Spatula, in a comment below, offers a translation of a Norwegian poem, and describes how written words and musical notation, are narrowed so as to miss the greater potential available when things come truly from the heart and the full soul of human expression. Human expression can not be reduced to musical notation, or to written words. Even poetry can ill suffice.

And so, I write regularly about the hands and what they bring to life. It's up to you to provide directorial response and interpretation as you engage in the wisdom of your own hands.

Yesterday in the wood shop, I turned yet another maple box. This one has a small turned heart at the top.

Make, fix and create...