Work

After the U-Haul truck was unloaded, and the tent erected (a person on each pole, raise and raise and raise and then SNAP! in place), and the flooring puzzled together, and the shelving units assembled (x4), and the lights clamped to each shelf, and the glass unpacked, and dusted & polished & arranged, I announced that my back was finished and that it was time to quit, and there was no protest from Miss M.

And although the temp was a benign 77 degrees it felt like 99 (in the middle of a hot flash) and M. maneuvered the massive rig onto the interstate and stopped-and-went in rush hour traffic until finally we rumbled up to the 'hood and finally the day was finished.

Rarely do I stop and wonder at the state of balance and grace in which one must exist in order to move ones body around so much that is fragile — and not just the likes of us fragile artists and poets but the borne-of-fire vessels that pass through our hands every day, each piece subject to keen examination. When I pass a diamond sanding pad over a chipped edge (for smoothing), or level a tippy vase on the grinder, or use the dremel to correct and repair odd blips of paint, I rarely give the task more thought than the twenty-or-thirty second fraction of a minute that it takes to make things right. Rarely ponder what alignments of planets occurred to land me in this unsuspected landscape of light and color, where, even after too many hours in too few days of intense production, we unpack piece after piece and swoon and exclaim over their magic and beauty. Ask ourselves: did we really do this? Really?!