snow

Knifemaking: prayer, calm, and the Snowjumper

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“Blessings always beg for calm
In spite of their silvery arms”

Maritime- Calm

I pray a lot.  I really started about a year ago.  Growing up I thought it went along the lines of “Dear Jesus, please give me a pony.” I didn’t really understand prayer until pretty recently.  You can pray to Jesus, or whatever divine being you have faith in so long as it is bigger than yourself.  I talk to the Universe.  I didn’t talk to the Universe for a long time.  I found that I really needed help with the simple things.  There was little help in books, on the internet, or from people (books and internet both come from people, and nobody REALLY knows what’s going on).  So I started asking the universe for help.  This has never been easy for me because I try to do everything myself.  Instead of powering through everything, I would try (the operative word is try) to be quiet and still and ask.  The first thing I asked the universe for was guidance.

“Universe, please give me guidance.”

A week later I lost my job.

You have to be careful what you ask for because if you are expecting something specific you are probably going to be disappointed.  Once I got over the shock I tried to find more quiet spaces and ask for more simple things that could help me.  Universe, please help find peace.  Universe, please help me to trust.  Universe, please help me to know strong boundaries.  In certain situations I kindly ask the Universe to help me not fuck up.  And so on and so forth.

Most recently I have been asking the Universe for calm.  And the Universe has given me calm but something hasn’t been quite right.    The calm is there, I can project it, but I don’t feel it in me.  In areas where I find the calm but don’t feel it, I gently ask the Universe to help me to accept it.

None of this is overnight.  There is no flash of enlightenment or instant nirvana.  So I ask the Universe to help me find patience.

A few weeks ago we had a giant snowstorm.  There was somewhere between 12 and 18 inches.  I love snowstorms.  It is calm embodied.  Everything slows down and gets very quiet.  Many people stay home, the city shuts down, and nothing has to happen.  It happened on a Friday and all of my work got cancelled.  My girlfriend and I decided to get snowed in together.  We went to the store and stocked up on supplies and then headed to her place to batten down the hatches.  Then after a little while we noticed the heat wasn’t working.

I love this woman deeply.  I love how she makes things nice.  I love how she plans things.  She is talented and good at many things I am not, and will help me with those things.  She owns every bit of herself.  She is vulnerable and I see how empowering that is.  She is kind to my various maladjustments and occasional dysfunctions and the other parts of my being that I don’t love so much.  It’s far from perfect but it continues to bloom and makes me a better man.  Throughout all of this she is exquisitely beautiful and profoundly elegant and quite often gives me butterflies.  There are also things I am good at that help her.  Situations like heat and snowstorms are two of those things.

Back to the heat.  It was a full on snowstorm and it was glorious.  We went and picked up a kerosene heater from the warehouse where my workshop is.  We helped a couple of people get their cars unstuck.  We saw how beautiful everything was.  I have a 1997 Nissan Pathfinder with good four wheel drive and strong heat and we slid around a bit.  I found it to be very calming.

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I have a friend who does heating and HVAC work and he is a great guy.  He is also a workaholic.  I gave him a call to see if he could talk me through troubleshooting the system and he was actually up the street working.  He said he would be right over.  His wife must be a very patient woman.

Sure enough he got the furnace fired up.  I asked him what his price was for coming over and all he asked for was a couple bucks for gas.  That didn’t feel right so I offered to make him a knife.  He was down.  He likes to hunt and seems rather unfazed by the elements so I designed a skinner and named it the Snowjumper.  It is a winter blade.  I found some spalted Tamarind, which is a bright wood.  I used tin spacers: they are nearly the same color as the steel of the tang and are concealed in the way that the snow conceals the earth.  I also used steel rivets to match the spacers.

1095 spring steel:

 

    Hardened

Tempered:
Spalted Tamarind:  Those dark lines are actually where a fungus has eaten it’s way through the wood.

Time lapse of the handle fitting:


The Snowjumper:  1095 spring steel with a phosphoric acid etch, Spalted Tamarind handle, tin spacers, and steel hardware:

 

  Hidden tin spacers…

Be careful what you pray for.  Calm may come in a way you least expect it.  Accept it.

This is the lesson of the Snowjumper.

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.