Turning wood

I’ve been taken on as apprentice in a local woodshop, learning woodturning, shaping gorgeous bowls and cups and goblets from raw harvested wood. Even in the hot summer in an un-cooled garage shop in Texas this is quickly growing on me. I truly wish I didn’t have a full time job that kept me away 40-45 hours a week. During the day I work and watch videos inbetween busy times, trying to hone my skills as I click away trapped at a desk indoors.

I find myself more contented turning wood on a lathe, that balance of danger and excitement and creativity swirling all around me while my mind is silent, just watching the wood turn and form and change colors as I move.

The trees have always talked to me when I’ve been outdoors among them. I think that’s why I prefer the woods to the desert, because there is so much awareness everywhere around, I can feel the trees hugging the winds as they dance, see their little fingers reaching in slow motion to the sun. There’s a low rhythmic pulse to trees that I feel to the deepest layer of my skin, my very cells pull to them in turn. I can’t help but touch them as I pass by, whispering a silent greeting out of the corner of my eyes, winking my secrets to the only ones who understand.

So when I take a branch or trunk in my hands to imagine the piece of art held inside, my soul longs to honor the living creature that once traced the skies. I ache to bring the swirls of my fingerprints in sync with the life circles held within.

To shape the body of a tree is to respect the decades of lives they nourished and touched, just a tree, nothing more, but to a beetle or doe or squirrel it once was a haven, a living thing, some ONE who held them.

Now I hold a part of them with these hands capable of horrible and ecstatic things and I can hear them pulse still, so I take care with the wood that comes to me. Because this is life and time formed in a living thing. This is the soul cast solid in my hands, and she came to me and only me for a reason.