week 3
This is my third week back at work after Tools & Techniques.
My forearm hair grew back, only to be razed again by new chisels. I bike faster than ever, thanks to Fort Bragg's strong winds and hilly terrain. And I generally don't know what to do with myself.
I am struck, at odd times, with an extreme longing for the bench. I have longing for all sorts of things: the barre (ballet), the mat (yoga), the lane (swimming), the easel (painting). Unlike these other waves of nostalgia, I hesitate whenever I begin woodworking, halted by my newfound knowledge of just how high one can set the bar of craftsmanship. And just how short I fall of it (for now).
Sometimes, it's enough to tell myself I'll get there eventually. After all, what skills I have, I've labored slowly and surely to obtain. And I've long since given up the notion that I'm a "Natural" at anything.
Other days, I get stuck in the abyss of comparison, of "what if I just don't have the god-given gift in me" -- all the self-sabotaging mind-games I'm familiar with.
The only project I'm actively working on is a dovetailed cherry box. It's small. I've made one before, using 5-minute dovetailing techniques (I didn't know about chisel paring then). It's a masochistic exercise but one I'm now committed to seeing through. I look at other people's hand-cut dovetails and critique my own. I productively procrastinate and sharpen every chisel. And, outside the sanctuary (yes, that's how I think of it sometimes) of C/R, everyone feels obligated to tell me there's a power tool and jig and a faster way to cut dovetails.
I'm not ready to have a long-winded conversation (me, talking, no thanks) about it, but I really want to master these hand-cut dovetails. Because I've always been able to trust in my fine motor skills: the precise, controlled use of my hands. Usually, my body is the source of little betrayals and disappointments: hips and body proportions all wrong for ballet, hands too small to hold an octave on piano, the obvious too short and too light that make getting started in any athletic pursuit difficult. I've never had to overcome any of this with my manual dexterity. Or if I did, I did it all when I was too young to remember the struggle. As long as I can remember, I've always had good handwriting, painted well, built foot-tall horse sculptures when other kids were making pinch-pots. So a great amount of my identity and self-worth is tied up in the ability to make things with my hands. Meditations on Violence has wonderful insight into this phenomenon: that the threats to our conceptions of self ("my hands make beautiful things") are more terrifying to us than threats to our physical existence ("sure, I can jump out of a plane to skydive, but I can't admit I can't cut these dovetails"). To that end, I need these dovetails to work out to reinforce this aspect of my identity.
On a more lighthearted note: I snapped a wedge off along the long grain of my board while bearing down to pare a tail yesterday. Just me, standing on my toes, using my body weight. A first. I was terribly shocked and also terribly pleased that I, too, could be a brute.