being

Snow days and the importance of letting yourself be

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(Originally published 2/23/2015)

I’ve always enjoyed a good snow day.  I like the idea of everything slowing down. I like how quiet it gets and how the familiar gets cloaked in white, allowing one to see it in a totally different perspective.  Most of all I like the stillness of it all.  Living in the fan you can always tell who decided they weren’t going to drive or go to work by the layers of snow on all the cars.  I find this to be very calming.

IMG_1618One of my favorite things to do is to go drive places in the snow.  Just to see everything in it’s moment of winter culmination.  With all this snow we’ve had I try to make it to the woods.  It’s quite stunning:IMG_1619

I think what I love most about all of this is that everything just is.  The trees don’t complain, the river doesn’t get anxious, the trail isn’t bothered by the snow.  They’re all just in their moment.

This is the point where I become quiet.  And I don’t really notice it.  So often there is the tendency to feel like there isn’t enough time or enough isn’t being done and I lose my moments being consumed by those things.  Doing.  Always doing but not necessarily accomplishing.  I want for more of the quiet of being and It seems so elusive at times.  Then there are times when it is right there, familiar and loved, like a worn book you’ve read dozens of times.

Then there is the state of becoming aware of these moments of being and trying to hold onto it rather than just let it be.  In trying to hold on to these these things I find this is where I suffer- probably where many people suffer.  I aspire to be more like the trees- bending in the breeze, bathing in the rain, and being patient under a blanket of snow.  Continually growing and present with all of the elements in their world all while being deeply rooted.

There were deer out today.  I’m sure they are out everyday but they are especially conspicuous in the snow.  I really wanted a picture, because seeing deer running through the snow doesn’t happen in my world as often as I’d like.  They are fast.   I walked some more.  After awhile there was a deep moment of stillness and this happened:

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Ethel and Geraldine. And then they were gone. Apparently Thursdays is bingo day at Pony Pasture…

Moments and being and snow days.  Doing is important but if it’s a full time job then you miss all the nuanced bits of your world and life becomes extremely uncomfortable.  It’s a beautiful thing to slow down and surrender to those moments.

Knifemaking: reaction, the sacred pause, and the Querencia

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“In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to what I call the art of pausing, as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador’s perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.”

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance


Up until this point I noticed my knives were relatively polite and concise.  Maybe there was a reaction to some imagined expectation of what this undertaking should be.  Sometimes we might restrain ourselves for fear of how others may react to us.  It could manifest itself in muting our truest selves or limiting our potential so we don’t have to deal with any unpleasantness that may arise from this.  We build ourselves around others’ expectations of us and brace ourselves for negative reactions when we inevitably fail to meet those expectations.  It continues in a cycle.  This is no way to live.

This is where the sacred pause comes in.  Where you are in a position to just observe everything you are doing to hold yourself back.  I like to think of this as creating some space- and this is what I’ve found meditation to be helpful with, however you choose to approach meditation.  You take a step back and survey everything.  At first it’s a bit painful and the tendency may be to freak out but once you get past those waves you can start to find yourself.

In this space I gave myself permission to be wild, large and maybe a bit scary.  In this blade I wanted something a bit more unbuttoned, unbridled.

With this blade I also wanted to capture the essence of a being that has come out of his reactionary rage, found his power, and become something shining and beautiful.  A being that is no longer dangerous and unpredictable but a force to be reckoned with.  These are things I’ve looked for in myself.  This is the lesson of the Querencia.

I ordered a thicker gauge of steel.  It’s much wider as well.

I wanted something bull-like with a forward momentum.  Muscle in the front end and a set of horns.  This is what I came up with:  

  Full flat grind and it took a long time…
  Flattening the blade with some draw filing

Heat treat…

 Lovely mesquite wood, milled by my cousin from Texas…
In keeping with the idea of letting oneself shine, I picked up some brass for a golden lining:

My lovely millwork…  After grinding off the excess, this was revealed:

  He got rather warm whilst trimming the brass and I was afraid the epoxy would lose it’s bond or worse, the blade would lose its temper.  So we took a sandwich break to cool off….

  

 Sometimes you have to take a break from everything before you can find yourself, your real self.  Take all the time you need.  This is the lesson of the Querencia.

Knifemaking: The Saj Epilogue- embracing the unexpected

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“Kiss a lover
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure…

Face your life
Its pain,
Its pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.”

Mrs. Owens, from Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

(you can find the initial crafting of the Saj here)

This is another blade that sat on my bench unfinished for months, made from the same bedframe steel as the Spellcaster.  I ignored him for a long time.  I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to say with him.  He’s different- a thinner blade that has a good flexibility, Eastern and exotic in function and very gentle in the hand- you hardly know he’s there.

I could see a lot of my earlier mistakes in him.  Scratches I couldn’t get out, unevenness in the bevel and a really quirky handle shape. 

Sometimes you have conversations with people where you aren’t entirely sure what to say.  Maybe it’s someone important- your boss, your future boss, a figure you admire, someone upon whom you’d like to make a good impression.  Maybe you go into it with an idea of what you want to say, points you may want to hit, things you’d like to work in.  As the conversation moves forward, the energy and flow may start to feel trite and contrived- forced, even.  Trying to put things in a place where you feel they should be, even though there is another being present who may have a different idea of where things should be…   

That is where I was with this knife for a long time.  Trying to manipulate the conversation and getting nowhere.

These are the moments to let things play out as they will.  This is easier said than done, especially if you are someone with varying degrees of control issues and anxieties…

I have a notebook full of sketches of knives that never make it to fruition.  This one was spontaneous and just sort of happened.  There’s a reason for that I think- those are some of the best things once you accept the idea that things will happen whether you plan them or not.  That relationship with someone you wouldn’t have expected, the job you didn’t plan on taking, even the recipe you may have botched but turned out more wonderful than you imagined. 

Sometimes those unexpected things don’t turn out in a way you would like.  That’s ok too even though it may not feel like it.  These are the times when it’s best to have a drink and think about what you are going to do next.  That part about leaving no path untaken applies to both the easy and the hard paths.

I went back and fixed my mistakes, knowing a little bit more than I did when I started this blade.  I let it be what it was.  When I found myself trying too hard, I stopped.  I worked on other things, sorted other things out, and felt my anxieties.  It’s important to be patient…

…then sometimes you just have to dive in

Some of the scratches were harder to remove than others.  I let those be.

     I have a cousin in Texas who’s a woodworker.  A really wonderful gentleman.  He sent me some Pecan wood that he milled himself.  I was really excited to work with it.  The state tree of Texas:

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As anxieties eased, I began to really feel the beauty of the process and not so worried about the outcome…

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The figures are really quite lovely…

      I ended up being rather enamored with the wild elements and rugged bits of this blade…       The nature of life is you really don’t know what will happen.  Try to relax into that.  I’ll try to do the same.

Knifemaking: finding your home, braving the elements, and the Northerner

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“A farm of your own is better, even if small. Everyone’s someone at home.”

Hávamál, st. 36

Home is what you make it.  The first thing I do when I go into anybody’s home is notice how it smells.  There are many things that can be inferred this way.  It may smell of cooking and spices, a fireplace, clean linens, pets, Murphy’s oil soap, and the people who live there.  All these things are things of love, cultivated in a place where the person who lives there can just come and be.  It’s a safe place where we can take off whatever armor we may wear during the day.  It’s a refuge that shields us from the elements in our lives.

Some brave harsher elements than others.  And in the times we live in, the elements are no longer relegated to heavy rains, freezing blizzards, or lands parched with drought.  They are deadlines for work, the threat of unemployment, passive-aggressive emails, fruitless battles with the DMV, quarterly tax estimations, health insurance premiums, our police executing citizens without arrest or trial, politicians stripping us of our civil liberties and thousands of other things we have little control over.

This can send our stress through the roof and it’s a small wonder.  From an evolutionary standpoint our reactions to stressors were designed to help keep us safe and alive.  You see a bear, you react appropriately by stressing out hard and in turn releasing enough adrenaline to haul ass out of that situation. Then you calm down, throw some logs on the fire and snuggle up with the misses.  Or the mister.  But these days unrelenting stress can lead to unhealthy anxiety and this in turn often leads to depression, ultimately leading to feelings of being stuck and health issues.  Depression and anxiety have their evolutionary purposes but I feel their effects been blown way out of proportion by the amount stimulation and unnecessary stress in today’s world.

This is why it’s important to have a home.  A place where the elements won’t creep in.  This may take some work.  An inspiration for me is John Wemmick from Dickens’ Great Expectations.  He has an unpleasant job, deals with many stressors but goes home to his castle, a safe and gentle refuge he has built for himself.

Throughout history and literature the people from the northern areas are by nature a people more hardened to the elements.  They are a people capable of great acceptance, aware that they can’t change the elements but instead find a way to thrive within them.  That is the inspiration for this blade.

I had to do a bit of research on blade shapes and functions.  I wanted to make something that would aid a modern day Northerner in his outdoor tasks.  This blade is loosely based on a composite of bushcraft designs.  It is a drop point blade with a partial saber grind.  I tried to find a balance between having a deep enough belly for slicing and having enough of a point for effective piercing.  I am rather fond of the O1 tool steel.  It is relatively easy to work with and hardens up beautifully.  it takes a keen edge and is forgiving of my mistakes.

 Cut and profiled

And the grind.  A little bit at a time… 

 

Ground and sanded.  The larger holes help to lighten the blade. 

Wet sanding after heat treat.  I have been using WD-40.  It won’t rust and I find it gives a smoother finish. 

I went to a lumber mill to try to find some more exotic wood.  It was awesome. 

I found a beautiful piece of quarter sawn white oak.  It is sawn in such a way that gives it more stability and shows the grain more beautifully.  Here is a lovely video on the process and how it affects the grain.

Handle work: brass rivets that I bevelled and the oak shaped and rough sanded.     After much more sanding….  A dark shade of Danish oil

  The Northerner

The grain is stunning.
  A fabulous backside is always a bonus….

Edge detail….

There will always be things in our life that will challenge us and create stress.  As long as we have a place we can go, whether bricks or mortar or built within ourselves, we will always be able to brave the elements.  This is the lesson of the Northerner.

Knifemaking: being content, releasing, and the Minimalist

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“Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.”

Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

Originally, I wanted to call this blade The Monk.  When I see images or videos of Buddhist monks, or anyone living in a monastic setting, I used to wonder how they survive on so little.  Recently it was explained to me that they aren’t choosing a life of poverty.  They are choosing a life of contentment.  The idea as I’ve come to understand it is that they have enough and this brings contentment.  Enough, but in a gentle and satisfactory way.  This is pretty much counter to most of the ideas of what we are taught about being successful in Western society.

That was the inspiration for this blade.  Something simple.  Enough.  Content to just be.

There is an elegance in the simple.  Simple is difficult to pull off well.  Think of the best things.  Bach is simple but by no means easy to perform and certainly not lacking in beauty or depth.  Then there is steak- the best steak needs nothing but salt, pepper and a hot grill.  The list can go on.

This is where the beauty is.  An idea or tool or work of art or meal that has everything it needs and nothing it doesn’t.

There is a practice in many Buddhist temples that consists of tidying and cleaning.  It is believed that a tidy workspace helps with concentration.  There are books on the matter of getting rid of clutter.  Behind this is the idea that when we release the material things that are no longer serving us it will follow that we also release the emotional things that hold us back from being our naturally vibrant selves.

Ultimately I find this blade to be a reflection of how I desire to be.  In a way I am this blade.  As I was slowly removing the things that ultimately didn’t serve the purpose, function, being, beauty or existence of this knife I thought of the things that don’t serve me that I desire to release.  Like the grinding of this blade, release doesn’t happen all at once and if I tried to do it all at once I would be an overwhelmed, anxious, and contracted human being.  I’ve been there.  I think we all have.  Breathe deeply and appreciate how beautiful the simplicity of something can be.

I started this blade with a bit of O1 tool steel stock:

I wanted to make something simple and functional and beautiful.  This is what I came up with:

 

And a flat grind…

 

In keeping with the idea of not having anything unnecessary, I removed some of the stock in the handle.  It also makes it lighter.  Here he is after filing and sanding….

 

Hardening and tempering.  It took some tries but I got a forge built that gets plenty hot: the Brigid Marsal 3.0…

 

And after a dunk in some warm cooking oil…

 

He cleans up nice:

 

So for the handle I went back to the idea of the monk- enough clothes to keep you warm and decent, a safe place to sleep, and enough to eat.  Having just enough to help you really feel your inner being.  I found a dough proofing board used by bakers.  I made the handle out of that, one’s proverbial daily bread.  A simple coat of Danish Oil protects the handle and brings out it’s beauty.

 

 And the secondary bevel…

Handle detail.  So much love…. 

As I learn and grow, I find that some of the things I thought I needed aren’t serving me.  It’s ok to release these things.  This is the lesson of the Minimalist.