Mondaugen's Chicago

5: A Pair of Brown Shoes: That What is Lost Can be Found

30 Objects in 30 Essays

From the objects that I have made, objects other people have made, objects that I live with, and what they have to say. The products of hands and brains. The obvious differences between things and words. The tangible and intangible rewards of effort. Use and beauty as the two primary qualities of objects, words, hands and brains. For through objects we make the stories of our lives: a life made, a life bought, a life well-used, a life beautiful and useful.

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I own a Japanese white steel bench chisel that cost $150. It holds an edge like none other. It is a pleasure to use. It is beautiful. It was a bargain. I'd drop the same for it in a heartbeat.

Do you wrinkle your nose at the cost? Believe that a $15 Irwin chisel is just as good? You'd dare me to show the difference between the shavings? Or possibly you have no idea why anyone would buy a chisel in the first place, or make furniture at all? Ikea sells perfectly good furniture, and for much less than buying the tools and materials necessary to make it.

I find that more than $10,000 for a car is a ridiculous and unnecessary sum to spend. $20 for a haircut is my limit. More than that, and I'd feel as if I was putting on airs, or being robbed. You might think I'm cheap in these ways. Or profligate and pretentious with chisels.

But we just have different senses of perceived value in the objects in our lives.

A playful truism: that something is only worth what a person will pay for it.

In strict business terms, this is true, and even useful. Have you ever been insulted by a low-ball offer? And then not sold an item because no one was willing to pay what you felt it was worth?

In personal terms, money can nothing to do with the worth of an object. This series is about that kind of worth: memory, usefulness, associations, beauty, meaning. How much my Castle bed cost to make is irrelevant to what it means to me.

There is a third kind of value. Some objects have a kind of negative value. They have weight, instead of worth. These are the objects you want to get rid of. Even if they're physically gone, their associations persist. You want to forget them, but can't, not entirely. Perceived value, both monetary and personal, comes from the hodgepodge of our unique experiences, circumstances, desires, needs, and much more. What we will spend for any one object depends on us; some objects we will never part with for money. Other objects we can't pay enough to forget.

To this day I can conjure up a vivid image of a pair of brown shoes I had in the 7th grade. Light brown suede. Diagonal same-color suede stripes, two on either side, saw tooth edges. Rounded flat toe. High-edged yellow crepe sole with circle indents for grip on the bottom. Same-color suede laces. I can even feel my feet in them. Soft like a running shoe, but heavy like a dress shoe.

This is the story of those shoes, and the cost of getting rid of them.

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In the 7^th grade, I went to a fancy private school North of Milwaukee. I had to wear a jacket and tie to class. The bus ride was an hour long one way. If I fit a clique, it was Geek, specifically the physically-uncoordinated math nerds who played Dungeons and Dragons on the bus and were terrified by girls.

But I loved sports. I grew up idolizing the Green Bay Packers. I dressed as one for Halloween when I was 8, complete with cardboard helmet. I loved the Milwaukee Brewers and the Bucks. Once I got to see a Brewer’s game. A friend’s dad took me and my friend. We sat in the bleachers and dreamed of a catching a home run ball. We ate hot dogs. It was the best ever.

There were two afterschool sports for boys, Football in the Fall, and Softball in the Spring. I desperately wanted to play both. To be on a team was somehow a huge step towards achieving manhood. It was to be accepted by my fellow boys. To score the winning goal, to receive the beaming adulation of my friends—this was everything.

However, there were a few obstacles in the way of achieving this dream.

To start, I was simply not physically fit. I was asthmatic and got short of breath easily. I had a birth defect in my nose, one nostril always blocked, therefore always infected. It ran green and yellow snots all the time. When I exercised, my nose ran more. I would carry a tissue or two, but would often run out of them, so I’d blow it on the ground, or wipe it on my sleeve or shorts if I was indoors. My knees hurt all the time, especially when I ran. I’m still not sure why. I remember blaming it on an ice-skating accident, but that doesn’t make sense now. I was deathly allergic to peanuts, mildly to cats and dogs, probably to hay and dust. I produced lots of vomit and hives growing up.

Secondly, I was not physically coordinated or strong. Throwing a ball was a random affair. No matter the size or shape, it would veer in odd, unintended directions. Footballs wobbled weakly through the air like a cartwheel. Baseballs intended for second base went more towards first base, or bounced ten feet in front of the intended receiver. Basketballs wouldn’t even reach the backboard.

In PE class, I was one of those disaster kids. The kid everyone avoided. Get too close, you might get hit with a stray booger. Always the last picked for a team in Dodge Ball. Always the first out.

The PE teacher, Mr. MacDonald, a man whose eldest son played on the US Olympic Hockey team, had a hard time disguising his disgust for me. Once, after an extended period of shouted directions intended as instruction and encouragement in trying to throw a Frisbee, I stopped and shouted back that I wasn’t a jock. That comment broke the man. He ran at me, stopping an inch from my face, his eyes flashing with rage, and like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, screamed his way through the full litany of my sports failings -- demanding to know why something so simple as throwing in a straight line was impossible, why I refused to try because five minutes of trying was all that was necessary, why I refused to participate in this universal human capacity for hand-eye coordination, and why I imagined, that required “being a jock.” These are valid questions, and he was right to ask on all counts. I had no answer.

But I so wanted to play on the school team.

Lucky for me, there wasn’t a cut. Everyone who wanted to join the team could. How much I would play was another matter. Probably for 1 minute in the fourth quarter of a game we were winning 100-0. I could hope for that. It didn’t matter, though. What was important was being on the team. That meant social acceptance. That meant manhood.

As the school was wealthy, all the equipment was provided, with one exception. For the football team, I had to provide cleats. For the softball team, I had to provide a softball mitt.

But then there was the third problem: my parents and perceived value.

Growing up, we lived in a big, beautiful house. My father owned a Ferrari and a Lamborghini. My sister and I attended a private school. By all measures we were a rich family. On the other hand, all my clothes came from second-hand stores, including my jacket and ties for school (‘he’s just going to grow out of them’ I recall hearing—my father mocked my uncle as a supreme idiot for buying his five children only new clothes and wasting so much money). We almost never went on vacations (another collosal waste of money unless a museum or cultural site was involved). When we went to restaurants, the only options were the cheapest items on the menu (ordering something more expensive was arrogant and presumptive). When we lived in Paris for a year, we ate at all of the Three-Star restaurants; where, again, the only option was the cheapest item on the menu. At Christmas and birthdays, there would be an extensive array of gifts for me and my sister, bought from lists provided to my parents months in advance. My parents did all the house maintenance, from cleaning and fixing the heating system to painting the windows and repairing plumbing. Do you see a pattern?

Over dinner, my mother would go on at length about how poor we were, the things we couldn’t afford, and how difficult it was to just make do. Notably, I recall my father dressing down my mother in very sharp tones for having given me a third glass of milk when I was thirsty. It was a pointless expense when my thirst could as easily be satisfied with water. I tried to stop drinking milk because I knew it disappointed my father. We were poor and couldn’t afford it. I felt guilty when I drank it. While you might detect some cognitive dissonance, in what my family spent money on and hat it didn’t, it all made perfect sense to me at the time. Some of it still does.

So, asking my parents for a pair of cleats so I could play football was a tricky proposition. I didn’t know how to predict their perceived value of such a purchase. We were too poor, I would tell myself, and I shouldn’t ask. It would be selfish to ask. Sacrifices would have to be made elsewhere in the family. But I wanted to play so very much, so I risked asking.

I got a sideways answer from my mom that involved the necessity to ask dad. Eventually, the word came back, that, no, I had a perfectly good pair of shoes for sports, and should use them.

At the time, I owned one pair of shoes. They were those all-purpose kid shoes that had their moment in the 70’s -- brown suede, so they looked vaguely formal, but had a tennis shoe sole so you could conceivably use them for sports. When other kids changed their clothes for gym class and put on running or tennis shoes, I put on the same shoes I wore to math class. Yes. I felt embarrassment.

While my clothes were all second hand, my shoes came from an old-fashioned shoe store, run by an old man who personally fit all his customers. I forget his name, if I ever knew it.

Coming into the store, I would admire the gumball machine that required a nickel I never had while my mother would tell him what my shoe needs were. Though there were twenty chairs for shoe fitting, the place was always nearly empty and quiet. Shoes lined the walls, with cabinets below. There was a curtained door to a back room. The man would sit me down, ask me to take off one shoe, then place my foot onto a metal gauge for sizing, pushing my foot down in places as if he was pressing clay into a form.

I recall my feet always felt hot and sweaty. It made me nervous that this near-stranger would touch my feet at all, and his manipulation felt very strange. Standing on the cold metal gauge would send a shiver up my leg. The man would then press the curved measuring edges to my toe, capturing it, and to my insole, tickling it. He would then lift my foot up off the gauge when he was done, stand up and disappear into the back room.

I don’t recall buying the all-in-one shoes at the old man’s shoe store. They might have caught my eye and I thought they were cool. I might have been sternly required to accept them. Memory is not a fixed place, it is a fluid environment meant to help us survive in the future. The details I remember were all vetted on this principle. 

The brown shoes were perfectly fine for basketball and dodge ball, especially considering my abilities. They didn’t even look much out of place. (Ok, you might think that brown suede is certainly out of place on a basketball court, but this was the 70’s). However, I worried about using them for football, as I had been told to provide cleats; but a No from my parents was No. I would use my brown shoes.

The first day of football practice, I got my pile of equipment from the school locker room, got suited up, and put on my brown shoes, hoping nobody would notice. Nobody did.

I ran sprints. I did jumping jacks. Nobody noticed.

I ran a receiving pattern, and my brown shoes turned into ice skates. I slid several feet to the side and fell once, another time I kicked a foot out, above my head, to remain upright. I felt noticed.

The football coach was Mr. Kerr, a former marine who still sported a flattop. He was also my math teacher, known for his gruff style (he’d shout “Who pulled your chain?” at any kid who spoke out of turn. The wrong answer would often get a "Close but no cigar!" We were all on a last-name basis) He played at being tough. We played at being afraid. He was a favorite. I loved math class. I thought Mr. Kerr was the best.

After practice Mr. Kerr pulled me aside privately.

“Purdy. Wear your cleats next time.”

“Sorry Mr. Kerr,” I mumbled back at him, red-faced under my helmet.

I may have asked my mom again for cleats that night. I probably didn’t.

The next day I suited up again, and did my best at practice; but afterwards, Mr. Kerr told me that I could not play without them. I returned to my locker, broken-hearted.

Now, middle-school locker rooms are generally very dangerous places for snot-nosed geeks. Mine was no exception. Horrifyingly, my locker was right next to one of the worst school bullies, an 8^th grader of epic strength, athletic prowess, and a keen enjoyment of ridicule and minor physical punishment, especially via snapped towels. I used all strategies to avoid him, from knowing his class schedule to ensure he wasn’t going to be in the locker when I used it, as well as learning Olympic speed levels of locker use, just in case. The problem was he was also on the football team, which combined 7^th and 8^th grade boys. We had to suit up at the same time.

As I worked my combination, the bully started in with his usual comments.

“You are such a faggot fuck-up, Purdy. Running around like a chicken on the field. You Spaz.”

“Don’t worry, I’m quitting,” I explained.

“What? Why?” In a tone that was devoid of ridicule. It was a genuine question. I was flabbergasted.

“Because I don’t have cleats. My parents won’t get me cleats. We’re too poor,” slid out the reply that was like a loaded confession to a therapist. Who confesses to a bully? I did.

The bully didn’t reply.

I handed over my gear to Mr. Kerr on the way out that day, explaining to him that I didn’t want to play. I was no good at sports. The last thing I could do was tell him the truth. I had to cover my for my family’s poverty. It would be too embarrassing to admit it. My parents would be angry. I forget Mr. Kerr’s reply, except that he was kind, and encouraged me to stay on as team manager. In terror, I declined, joking that I’d screw that job up for sure. In reality, I would have found it too painful to watch the games that I so dearly wanted to be in. And I’d be teased for being a pussy and not playing. It was better to avoid the games entirely. Better to hide.

The next day after gym class, the bully appeared out of nowhere as I was changing clothes. I nearly shat my pants. We were alone, a highly dangerous situation. I thought of bolting past him, but knew he was quicker. I stood motionless, like a rabbit in an open field that has just seen a fox. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice me if I didn’t move at all.

“Hey Purdy, I have an old pair of cleats you could use. They’re in good shape. You can have them. I don’t want them back. I think they’re your size.” He said it in an honest tone. It was a genuine offer.

Second flabbergasting. I stammered a refusal. The offer felt impossible. It wasn’t right. A jock bully offering assistance to a snot-nosed geek broke several fundamental laws of the universe, down to Plank-scale level foundations. It had to be a ruse. A bucket of shit would fall on me if I took them and laughter from a hidden audience would start. I would get in trouble. It would somehow lead to problems. My parents would find out and be super angry. The bully insisted with a kind smile. I confirmed the refusal, turned and walked away.

And that was the end of my interest in football.

A week or so later, my mom asked why I wasn’t playing football. The answer was obvious, I thought. I had told her that I needed cleats. I had asked twice. Hadn’t I? She had rejected the needed-cleats as an unreasonable demand on family finances. Her repeated question apparently indicated that I needed to give her an answer that satisfied the family situation. I needed to lie. So I told her that football was dumb, which is what I believed my dad thought (he once disparaged another uncle for criticizing him for taking me to a museum and not a football game). I’m sure that’s what she told my father, if he had asked. In any event, I felt I was in no position to question my parents' authority.

I never played football, not in middle school, nor in high school. I learned to despise sports, and ennoble academic pursuits. I was better at them anyway.

But I did play two years of softball. In those brown shoes. I used my sister’s mitt. It had “A. Purdy” written on the side. That was also an embarrassment, but a manageable one. In the 7^th grade, I played right field on the 7^th grade team. In the 8^th grade I played right field on the 7^th grade team. Once, I caught a fly ball on the run, making a third out with a man on base. I heard two teammates actually cheer. My coach, Mr. Rodkey, jokingly asked what the hell happened out there, and I was proud for having impressed him. It was perhaps the smallest of sports moments, but it was everything at the time.

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Like most objects, those brown all-in-one shoes were a simple tool. They kept my feet warm and safe through the 7th grade. I should have forgotten them with all those other common place daily objects. Hats. Socks. Gloves. Underwear, No memory whatsoever. What toys I had then? I don’t recall any of them. They conjure nothing.

The brown shoes conjure up the defeat of never having played a sport I loved. Learning to hate sports. Learning to tell white lies to hide my fears. Learning to run instead of fight. Indeed, I was a middle school loser. I was afraid. I was probably clinically depressed. The memory of those shoes now contain those memories, a pair of little memory palaces.

Star Wars suggests that fear drives the child to the Dark Side, towards violence and destruction. For me, fear drove self-annihilation. I didn’t value myself much. I didn’t stand up for what I wanted. It was somehow better to not exist. Not have needs. No conflict. Then tomorrow would be less overwhelming, and possible.

I don’t blame my parents for this struggle and loss. I don’t even hold them responsible. They were doing their best, and meant me no harm. Their system of perceived value for how money should be spent is no better or worse than most others. I was fed. Given a roof over my head. Sent to good schools. This is much, much more than a lot of kids get from their parents, and I owe simple gratitude for all they did. More importantly, I could have reacted in a hundred other ways. I could have bargained or argued with them. I could have asked my grandmother for cleats. Most importantly, I could have accepted the bully’s offer. I could have told Mr. Kerr the truth. I could have told my mother the truth. I could have reached out to someone. All of those reactions might have ended with my one-minute-on-the-field. But I did none of them. I didn’t have it in me. All it would have taken was the tiniest bit of courage. A scintilla of courage to fight of my life, the kind that Eddie eventually finds in It. I didn’t have it.

It was those irrational fear-responses, not my parents, that served as scaffolding on which I built that reflexive self-annihilation. Later came Joy Division. Two parasuicides. Dropping out of graduate school.

The self-inflicted horror-clown comedy of my youth took a long time to dissipate. Out of it I’ve grown a perfectly healthy sense of worth and purpose in life. Finding faith, marrying a wonderful woman, and raising two great kids were each foundation stones in that maturity. Learning to design and make furniture that people enjoyed using was another factor. What is lost can be found. What speaks of failure can be salvaged. The work was to sort and sift the fractal labyrinth of age-old, half-remembered acts and consequences, to find the switches and levers on the tracks of our lives, then switch the mistakes to their glowing double, redeem the bad circular self-involved paths with open-ends, no longer be what I hate, but something better. A new pair of shoes to wear and walk and dance in. And then continue the comedy of life: we all avoid our parents’ perceived mistakes to create new ones with our kids.

The time and energy I have spent to make those shoes a memory that doesn't burn a hole in my head, are the costs of maturity. Well spent, every penny.

When my son was five, we took him to a learn-to-skate event. He fell in love with it, and played hockey on a travel team through middle and high school. He got to know what being on a team meant, what it took, what it gave. I found paying $500 for a new pair of hockey skates was expensive, but totally worth it. On the other hand, both my kids were given a lot of second-hand clothes. After all, there’s really no reason to buy new, because they’re going to grow out of it anyway…

3: 12-in. Starrett Square

30 Objects in 30 Essays

From the objects that I have made, objects other people have made, objects that I live with, and what they have to say. The products of hands and brains. The obvious differences between things and words. The tangible and intangible rewards of effort. Use and beauty as the two primary qualities of objects, words, hands and brains. For through objects we make the stories of our lives: a life made, a life bought, a life well-used, a life beautiful and useful.

...

I bought this 12-inch Starrett combination square in 1986 when I was 19 years old. Now, after 34 years of use and abuse at my hands, this square remains dead-nuts accurate. It is useful. It is reliable. It is beautiful. It is an extension of my hands capable of work my hands can't do alone. It is everything a tool should be, and nothing it shouldn't.

If my cheap, blue snorkeling mask opened up an alien world and expanded my universe, this well-made square opened up a world of work. But unlike the mask, it is inward-facing -- it speaks to my daily life, what I do and how I do it, and thereby what I am.

P.S. I don't mean this essay to be an advert for Starrett against any other precision manufacturer. I write simply from my blinkered experience.

 

Tools as Membership in a Tribe

I was working as a semi-apprentice in an architectural millwork shop. My boss told me it was time to stop using the shop tools, to buy my own tools, and to make a toolbox for them. He gave me a list -- a marking gauge, a deadblow hammer, a backsaw, a set of Japanese bench chisels, a block plane, and a Starrett 12 in. square. For the toolbox, I'd use shop scraps.

I looked up the costs and turned a shade of pale. Earning $4.25/hr., the total was far more than a week's work. The square in particular seemed expensive. I forget how much (they now cost $134 retail), but it seemed too much. The square was the only item he specified brand. I had used his, and it was nice, but I doubted why a cheaper one wouldn't do. All squares were 90 degrees, right? They all measured the same angle, right? Was this the only one that was 90 degrees? all the others at 91.3 or 89.5?

So I talked back.

"Why the Starrett?"

"Just buy the Starrett," he said, with that angle of head and look-in-his-eye that suggested other options were idiotic, and any further questions just revealed my blank ignorance. Which was true.

"Why?"

"Well," he sighed, "if you're going to do this a long time, you will regret cheap tools. They take more time and effort to use, they're not as enjoyable to use, and in time, they will cost you more," came the reply. "Furthermore, if you learn with cheap tools, you will likely learn cheap work."

These prognostications of an uncertain future sounded daft. Cheap costs more? Our entire economy was, and still is built, on making things cheaper, and more affordable, to 'save us money.'

I wrinkled my nose at him, especially over the last bit, and probably rolled my eyes.

"Look, you snot," he grabbed me by my shirt. "A cheapshit attitude leads to cheapshit work. And your Joy Division T-shirt and those torn jeans makes you look like you don't give a shit about what you do. If you want to show respect, put on a coat and tie. Or something at least clean. Clothes make the man."

"Yeah," I replied, reclaiming my shirt, "but that's got nothing to do with the inherent value of the..."

I dodged the smack.

"'Seems' and 'Is' go hand in hand. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck... Your goal is to do work that not just looks the shit, but is the shit. And if it isn't the shit, it won't look like the shit. If you can find a square that is the shit, but doesn't look it, then buy it. But you can't find that square. You can't find that work...." Ok, maybe my boss didn't say that at the time. But that was the core of his attitude towards work. Details matter. There are no true shortcuts, only efficiencies. Cheap is as cheap does.

So, at the sacrifice of a couple of movies and dinner at a good restaurant, I bought the Starrett -- perhaps mostly afraid of the ribbing I would get if I arrived at work with a cheap Chinese knockoff, or worse, a carpenter's Stanley. I was joining a tribe after all, and very much wanted to be a member. And in my shop, the Starrett was simply the price of membership.

 

It is Useful

Over the years, I have used this square every single day I've been in the shop: to set up and adjust my machines and other hand tools, and to mark out, check and adjust joinery in a hundred ways, at a hundred points in the process of building. I could list the specific uses and turn this blog into a tedious nightmare of length (isn't it already?). In short, the straight line and 90 degree relationship is at the very foundation of the modern world, not just the things we have and make, but also the tools we use to make them. Wooden boat builders you can all shut up right now. Your exception is noted. 

We all have a natural sense what looks "right." Our eyes can see level, plumb and symmetry in objects, to greater and lesser degrees. If a hanging picture on a wall is off plumb and level by millimeters, we can all see which way it leans. Symmetry is also easy to spot, though so uncommon in manufactured goods that an example is difficult to find. In handmade work, it is a sign of "room for improvement" -- the child's lopsided clay pot or the amateur's first sweater with one sleeve longer than the other. We can even see symmetry in a person's face, though we tend to recognize it as an aspect of beauty. Cut a picture of your face in half, copy one side and flip it, and you can see how symmetrical your face is. It's a disturbing, if giggly, photoshop exercise.

The square's use, however, extended beyond giving me the ability to create and detect these symmetrical relationships with far greater accuracy than my untrained eye. Without paying much attention, it taught my hands, my eye, and my head an appreciation and ability to see more precisely. And though this precision, a certain insight into our values and relationships with objects.

To some eyes, the perfections of manufacturing are good and right. Every iPhone is precisely the same as every other, the machined aluminum and glass surfaces clean, symmetrical, and "perfect" in a pleasing way. The variations between phones are imperceptible except, perhaps to their quality control managers.

Competently made handmade objects, especially in wood, also have these positive features, but to a different degree of perfection. The individual hand will be evident in their "imperfections." To some eyes, this is pleasing because each imperfection reveals the story of the person behind the making. To others, it's just imperfect.

The Starrett's precision is a manufacturing-level precision. Using it is with wood, which moves and swells and shrinks with humidity levels, is a constant reminder of degrees of imperfection, judgments of what is acceptable and not, and acceptance and appreciation for variations and what they say.

Working with a reference beyond my ability to ever attain adds to the enjoyment of the process itself, for the square has taught me details of how much wood moves and in which ways, how much is visible to the trained and untrained eye. The use of these insights.

The process of using the square evolved over the years.

At first it gave me flat, straight and square. I didn't understand them well, but knew they were necessary. It enabled me to find and use them. I was merely doing what I thought I should, as best I could.

Then it helped me get flat straight and square. I began to understand why surfaces (especially in joints) needed the type of precision the square could get me. The square and I worked on the same team, to the same goals.

Then it began to remind me, as well as help. In some circumstances I began to see and feel these relationships without the square.

Over the years, its usefulness has grown from simple use, to training my eye and sense of how things can and should go together, to stay together, and to look right. Without it, I would not have built those things as well.

 

It is Reliable

I have bought and used many other cheaper squares over the years. With the exception of the engineer squares, all of them eventually went off 90 degrees. Oce they do that, I don't pick them up again. I won't try to adjust either, because I know that I will be endlessly adjusting. That the Starrett is still spot on 90, in spite of wear parts, and having been repeatedly dropped (one corner was broken off by a student who dropped it, after I asked him not to use my tools; the other corner was broken off by me, after I told myself I was too tired to keep working and should stop), is nothing short of miraculous. I have never once had to re-true it. I wouldn't know how.

When I first got it, I would check the angle every now and then. (Take a board with a straight edge, mark 90 with the head facing one direction, then with the head facing the other. If you get two lines that converge at the edge, your square is out. The Starrett always gave me one thin line.) After a while, I'd check it once every six months. Then every other year. I now can't recall the last time I checked it. It has become a pointless exercise. It always gives me one thin line.

Other expensive tools in my shop are not reliable. Among hand tools, I have a dial caliper that drifts. I have to remember to zero it before every use. Sometimes I forget, and I get spanked: two different thicknesses for boards.... Among complex tools, my Felder planer-jointer must be checked and adjusted before every use. It is a high quality tool, but it does not hold settings. When I am in a hurry, it requires extra steps that I feel it shouldn't. It is consistently unreliable, and as such, a consistent burr under my saddle. Had I the time and money, I would keep buying and finding tools that were more reliable than these. But I don't, so I live with the burrs.

The exceptional reliability of the Starrett makes it a pleasure to use. (Perhaps mine is unique among them--perhaps other wood and metal workers haven't had my luck--but perhaps they have other ultra-reliable tools, to know this relationship). I just pick it up and use it. I trust it inherently. It always helps. It never hinders. I always understand what it tells me. I never have an argument with it. I am never frustrated by it.

All of these reactions are emotional -- to an inert tool, you could ask. But really, these reactions are to my own hands, and by extension to myself, and to my work. They describe the perfect relationship, in which there is no static in the communication. It is only a difference of degree, not of kind, between all other tools for all other work. For instance, a soccer player who loves a specific pair of shoes that feel good, give a sense of control, and never skew a kick in an unpredictable way. Or a motorcycle rider, who loves a specific tire for all the grip and feedback they give about the road. A tennis player and a specific racket. An editor and a specific laptop keyboard.

And through this perfect communication, I gain a wider range of control over my environment. Seamlessly, it gives me the foundational building blocks of 90 degrees, 45 degrees and straight lines in my work.

 

It is Beautiful

The blade has precise measurement markings that are easy to see. It has a satin finish that is easy to see in low light, but doesn't reflect bright light. The measurement marks are finely etched and darkened for an easy to see contrast. The color has not faded in 34 years, so it remains easy to see.

The level is a joke. I have used it once in a pinch, and regretted using it. I probably used it wrong. I lost the scratch awl fitted in the base about 32 years ago. I never use a scratch awl to mark, so have not missed it.

The head has a slightly rough, black surface that makes it easy to grip. The working surfaces are smooth.

While the square looks old, it does not look beaten up or in bad shape. It had an appealing patina on all of its surfaces.

The S-curve support in the head is Hogarth's 'line of beauty', the classical ogee.

It is a beautiful square.

But what use is beauty? What does that matter? Oh you wag, you.

Remember what my boss didn't say when I challenged him while wearing my dirty Joy Division T-shirt. Seeming and Is are not that much different when it comes to work. If it looks good, it is good. It can sometimes take a refined eye to spot poor work, but the evidence is always there. And it can sometimes take a refined eye to spot good work, but the argument is always strong (if there is disagreement, the argument isn't strong, and the beauty isn't universal).

All tools should be beautiful.

The beauty of a tool is not just a matter of being pretty or a pleasure to look at. The great part of their beauty is in the pleasure of using them, in the performance of their design.

Good design does not bring attention to itself (bad design does). A well-designed object simply does what it should without being noticed for that work. And in this seamless performance is beauty.

You pick up the square. You use it. You put it down.

It doesn't slip from your fingers. You don't squint to see the markings. A sharp edge doesn't cut your finger. It doesn't break when you drop it. It doesn't annoy or distract from your task in any way. This makes it beautiful.

The design of the Starrett accomplishes all of these things. The visual appeal of these features, our more common sense of beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I know what the satin finish means and does, so it looks good to me. To an untrained eye, the finish has no value, the precision of the markings no reference to judge them by. 

With use, the relative beauty of every tool becomes evident. If it's beautiful, we integrate seamlessly into our work, and into who we are and want to be.

2. Blue Snorkel Mask

30 Objects in 30 Essays

From the objects that I have made, objects other people have made, objects that I live with, and what they have to say. The products of hands and brains. The obvious differences between things and words. The tangible and intangible rewards of effort. Use and beauty as the two primary qualities of objects, words, hands and brains. For through objects we make the stories of our lives: a life made, a life bought, a life well-used, a life beautiful and useful.

 

...

 

2. Blue Snorkel Mask

"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."

--Roy Batty, intimidating and murderous Replicant, laser-focused on living life to its fullest (and acquiring more of it) speaking to the genetic engineer who designed his eyes, shortly before killing him, in the movie Blade Runner.

...what I've seen through my cheap blue snorkeling mask -- the alien universe of sea creatures...what I could tell the engineers and designers at U.S. Divers...I wouldn't want to murder them ... but I would want to know if they know what's out there....

The snorkel mask is not an object I made -- those essays come later because they are much harder to write -- nor is this object anything particularly special or beautiful in itself. It is one of a million just like it, designed to get one particular job done, made of molded cheap plastic in China for as little money as possible, in an industrial plant that likely pollutes its community and beyond, all to make its store price as low as possible, to be able to sell as many as possible, to make someone rich. I've used it perhaps 6 times, and it is nearing the end of its useful life, cracked and yellowing. Much about this object is depressing, boring, and disposable. It is only what it does that I value: it opens the Looking Glass universe of the ocean, which I could not see without it.

Like hunting, I came to snorkeling late in life. Our family vacations were short and done on the cheap--we stayed with friends, we did day trips, we stayed home because Work. But when we moved to India to teach at an international school, we had long school vacations, rupees in our pockets, and an entire subcontinent to explore. We wandered the temples of Madurai, Thanjavur, and Mahabalipuram, we climbed through the caves of Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta, we visited the Taj Mahal, looked down from the walls of forts in Rajasthan and the lost city of Hampi, felt the breeze at the Hawa Mahal of Jaipur. Then we rested our culture-weary bodies on the beaches of Kovalam and Goa, swimming in waters like I had never known, waters that didn't offer pain and hypothermia. You could linger in them indefinitely, body surf all morning, then all afternoon too. My kids loved the ocean, though the hotel pool was even better.

One of my teaching responsibilities was to chaperone school trips, and one of those trips was to Lakshadweep, a small, intensely beautiful coral atoll. Standing on the beach, the breakers seemed a mile away; in the calm waters lapping at the beach, dark masses of coral sprawled within reach. I borrowed a mask and waded out to investigate.

It was nothing short of a revelation to discover that I would not sink like a stone, but remain buoyant when floating face down with a snorkel mask on. That had never been my experience swimming in pools and lakes, wherein I'd sink to the bottom in moments if I let out my breath. I did not have to flail about with my arms, kick furiously with my legs or hyperventilate to keep my head above water. I could relax my body entirely, just float, and look down at all below, breathing just fine.

The mask leaked, making the view down blurry, but what I saw boggled my noggin. A brave new world of miniature alien marvels: strange brain-like corals, violently colorful fish, sand swirling with the waves and currents. Eyes peeked out at me from nooks. Fins waved at me indifferently. Ungainly fish wobbled past. Sleek ones darted. It was as if I floated above their world, a superman in their skies. I floated and watched and marveled until I heard the shouts of the other chaperones, worried I had been gone too long and died, my motionless corpse floating across the bay.

It became a fatherly obsession: get masks and flippers for the whole family, they HAVE to see this!!! We had four of the blue snorkel masks and flippers sent from the US. That Christmas, we flew to the Andaman Islands, and we all swam among incredible octopi, scary sea snakes, bizarre trumpet fish, ancient giant clams, elegant turtles and millions of Whatever Fish off Elephant beach and Button Island. The coral beds were visual playgrounds, technicolor worlds of impossible imagination.

At Button island, I decided to swim around the island, curious to see what was on the other side. It was such a small, round island, that I figured it wouldn't take more than half an hour of flipping along. The island was a rocky outcropping with no real beach a few miles offshore. My wife came along, and we set out from the gentle warm gardens of the leeward side where the corals sloped gently away from foot-deep shallows into green depths. The closer we got to the windward side, the more the waves rose into a chop, and the deeper and colder the waters got. Soon, the corals below faded into steep, vague depths, darker and ever darker with each flip of our feet. We swam into the middle of a huge school of trumpet fish swimming near the surface, gleeful at their shimmer in the sunlight. But then looking down, again, and though we were merely yards from the edge of the island, we could no longer see the bottom, a lurching feeling in our stomachs like a fear of heights, nothing under our feet, we could fall forever. We clutched hands and swam with purpose, nearly closing our eyes. Swimming closer to the island, we found only a cliff that descended straight down into inky blackness, waves threatening to hurl us against rocks, no purchase, no safety. We swam on. The more we looked down, the more we caught glimpses of large, vague, silhouettes of what seemed to be gargantuan fish, nothing like what we had seen in the coral gardens of the leeward side. We had wandered into a different part of town. We were no longer the big fish. We did not feel welcome. Reaching the other side, shivering from the cold and fear, we climbed into our boat and gathered our thoughts. The cliche 'out of our depth' played in my head, now with flesh on its bones.

...

A few years later, we vacationed on the island of Koh Tao, in the gulf of Thailand. It was there I met the sharks, the reason the blue mask is one of my 30 objects.

We snorkeled every day. Tiny fish nibbled at our toes as soon as we stepped in the clear, warm waters. The corals were not far, and utterly delightful, the colorful fish an endlessly entertaining technicolor universe to watch, compare and admire. What looked like a barracuda, mouth full of pointy teeth, guarded a certain rock. I asked the resort staff if it was dangerous and they smiled at me in a way to indicate, politely, that I was a moron: "Nooooooo." The next day, I swam up to the apparent barracuda. It was about the size of my leg. It looked at me without blinking. I didn't blink. It darted around the other side of the rock when I got closer. Afraid of me, eh? Well and good. I had no intention of biting it.

One evening I was in a thoughtful mood and decided to go for a snorkel shortly before sunset, explore a bit farther offshore than I had been before, and perhaps find the drop off, where the reef ended and deep water began. The waters were warm and clear as ever, the sky light orange, my confidence as a swimmer and snorkeler strong. I looked forward to exploring farther and deeper, and doing some good thinking.

I swam past places I had become familiar with over the last few days, admiring and marveling, but also a little bored. What lay beyond? About two hundred yards offshore the swell increased, and a very gentle coastal current carried me along. I swam down to the corals, twenty, thirty feet down, at the limits of my ability to dive without major ear and nose pain. I saw the drop off in the murky distance, its broad underwater horizon, and beyond, a vast unknown, the scale nothing like the tiny, friendly communities of the reefs.

Salt taste in my mouth, no smell, little hearing, the touch only of the water -- it is just eyes we have down there, our apex predator binocular eyes that can see colors, estimate distance, detect movement. The quiet in the depths is a lovely sensory deprivation. The experience focuses the mind like little else. In the world of the reef, the sensory limits are part of the fun. It's quite easy to sneak up on someone, tickle them from behind. But along the drop off, those limits begin to feel consequential.

Back up above, the swell seems to have increased and I get bobbed up and down in the waves, eater splashing into my snorkel tube, making it harder to breath cleanly. The shore looks far from two to three hundred yards out. In the evening calm, as the resort turns its path lights on, the serenity of shore seem another world, even more distant than the dark waters I bob along in, and I feel far from any home. Below me now it is black, though still inviting. I begin my swim back into shore, taking shallow dives to look around, perhaps spot a turtle. The pace is slow, slow, slow, the shore doesn't seem to get nearer. It will take as long to get back, as it took to get out to edge of the reef, and I have been swimming for an age. The sense of vulnerability and solitude increases. No one knows I'm out here. In the approaching darkness, no one can see me. It's a lovely feeling, an enjoyable sense of danger that really isn't. I am swimming easily, without fatigue.

The swell grows, and between waves I can't see the shore. Swimming below the water, I find I look left and right more often, below too, and behind, with a growing worry. I wonder if I am swimming in the right direction, surfacing to wait for a crest in a wave to find the right way again.

Focused binocular vision is most useful in a tree stand, looking for deer. But it is a serious handicap in a 360 degree environment. My eyes feel like a pair of flashlights in a dark room. Only where I shine them can I detect anything, one tiny spot of the whole world around, ample places for monsters to hide where I am not looking. No sea creature is built this way, as survival depends on a wide field of view.

I begin to think of how much we use hearing to know what's behind us. In the growing dark and deep waters, I begin to worry about what is behind me, what is sneaking up, what is bigger than me, that I cannot detect.

Of a sudden, I had a sudden sense that something really was behind me. I'd had it once or twice before, spun around in the water to see nothing. This time I flung myself around to look behind. And maybe 20 ft. away were two black tipped reef sharks swimming toward me. I'd guess they were each about 8 ft. long. They saw me. I saw them. My heart leaped. I didn't breathe. I pulled my legs up and watched as if paused in time.

The sharks moved with utter grace, effortlessly, majestically, their tails propelling them languidly left, right, left, right, their heads slicing through the water as if it wasn't there, closer, and closer, then along side me maybe 5 feet away, their unblinking eyes indifferent, with an unnatural purity, disdaining to acknowledge or connect in any way.

I ceased all thought. I could only watch them and wait for what they would do. Then they disappeared in the murk, continuing their patrol in search of something of importance, fading from sight perhaps only ten seconds after I first saw them. The hunters declined the shot. They rather informed me of my place.

My heart raced. I felt the thrill of my own insignificance within the beauty of the universe. A hapless terrestrial creature, a terrestrial apex-predator, laughably out of his element, helpless prey to creatures who live there, witnessing God's hand for a moment, the veil pulled for ten seconds, then replaced, left with knowledge of the ease with which I could have been no more, had the sharks been interested in a cunchy-bony dinner.

I swam slowly back to shore, regretfully leaving an altar, in near darkness. No longer concerned with anything, a deep strange peace in my heart. The awe and sublimity and beauty of those two sharks resonating in my head, respect for their power, gratitude for not being their favorite thing to eat. I hadn't floated above them, watching a cute TV show of colorful fish. I had floated with them. Skin in their game.

Did the first doe I shot, as she looked at me with her dying eyes, think anything analogous to what I felt next to those sharks? When presented with the hand that culls you from life, do all thinking creatures sense the same thing, to whatever degree our neurological complexity allows us? I felt a kind of unveiled peace, a physical understanding beyond words, that the moment was exceptional in its perfection. Like the period at the end of a sentence, the feeling is neither good nor evil, true nor false: it simply defines an end.

Samuel Johnson once joked about a friend, in jail for not paying his debts, and writing a play faster than anyone would think possible to pay them off: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Of course the encounter with the sharks was not a real, near-death experience. Black-tipped reef sharks don't eat people. And the chances of being bitten were relatively low. I am sure some part of my brain knew that at the time. I have nearly drowned, fallen off my motorcycle at speed, been in a head-on car accident, had a stroke, and eaten too many peanuts, among other true near-death experiences. None of them gave me the sense of sublime insignificance and helplessness against death that the sharks did. The moment's gift is the wonderful "concentration of the mind" that lets us see life in a new way, humbles all or pretensions to appreciate it more, reminding us to get back to its true business without all the Hamlet-style meanderings and distractions of mind -- that is, as we are able.

And for that I thank the sharks. And I thank the cheap blue plastic mask that let me see them slide by, so indifferently.

30 Objects -- Essays on Work, its Effort, and its Results -- 1: A Deer Skull

30 Objects in 30 Essays

From the objects that I have made, objects other people have made, objects that I live with, and what they have to say. The products of hands and brains. The obvious differences between things and words. The tangible and intangible rewards of effort. Use and beauty as the two primary qualities of objects, words, hands and brains. For through objects we make the stories of our lives: a life made, a life bought, a life well-used, a life beautiful and useful.

...

1: A Deer Skull

It's an essentially precious exercise to hold up a skull and contemplate eternity. Lend a hand and make yourself useful, Mr. Idle Princeling. Or at least get out of the way of us gravediggers. There are bodies here that need to be planted before they begin to stink and spread disease. That's useful work. And we can talk and have our wit while we work, rather while I work and you talk. In fact, when you're not around, I can work and create wit through my work. Wit just as valid as yours, better even, as it's grounded... What all your thinking and nothing-doing is going to get us in the end...

...More Death, as it turns out, in Hamlet. Premature death for a bunch of people, including good-guy Hamlet. Could have been avoided if he had just done something early in the play....

Who wins? Well, the gravedigger is the only character who can (and does) say a grave is his, and yet not lie in it. It's a minor victory for the working man, not to be run through by a sword to complete an orgy of plot twists and turns, the fate of his betters. Looking over the mess, he will make a big sigh and scratch his head, then go down to the scullery, fetch the maid and an extra mop, help clean up, lug the bodies to the graveyard, then spend his vacation time digging more holes for them. Not much of a win, really, except he gets more life than they do, and can perhaps appreciate it better.

Am I a frivolous prince? All talk and no action? Or am I a gravedigger? What work do I own, not just for myself? What have I created, that others may live and die? A life of questions is a life well-led.

I have several skulls, collected over the years. Several are from whitetail deer that I have shot. One is a raccoon skull I found in a field, and another is South Indian gaur I found in a river. I do not pick them up and sigh quietly to myself, intoning Alas poor deer... But I do think about them. I find them beautiful and expressive. How I got them, though, is what they mainly have to say.

There is little practical use in any of them. They hang on my walls and sit on shelves.

At a distance, a skull is a Halloween joke. Up close, it is a marvel of engineering, design, dreadful beauty and unanswered questions.

Raccoon teeth are strikingly large in proportion to the rest of the head. Alive, raccoons look like delicate creatures, washing their food in water, trash pandas up to some amusing mischief. Hidden under their bandit mask, under skin and fur, a certain edge of serious carnivorous business comes to the front. The raccoon becomes more complex. Big eyes to see prey. Big teeth to rend prey. A capacity to be a vicious little bastard. That bite would hurt.

Modern man did not design this object, could not have, and would not have: the smoking gun is the absence of a single straight line, the imperfect symmetry, the dents and shapes without design rationale. We humans love straight lines for reasons that still, after years of contemplating the matter, escape me. They're not really found in nature except for the horizon, perfectly still bodies of water, and in our imaginations as the shortest path between two points. In the last few thousand years, we have fetishized the straight line. It is pure, it is perfect, it is geometrically useful, etc. We use it everywhere and in everything (with notable exceptions). Still, our tools are mostly designed with straight lines to create straight lines, so they have become the easy standard. The curve, somehow, remains suspect, not perfect for not being straight, the dark partner of an ideal. Straight - Curved, Right - Left, (Dexter - Sinister), Good - Bad, Sky - Earth, Male - Female, Man-made - Natural, Perfect - Imperfect, etc. in which the first items of the pairs are somehow connected, and thus the seconds with all the seconds.

The bones around the brain are joined along the most intricate of wiggly and uneven lines. No person would or could ever join things like this. It's overly-complicated. Surely there is a simpler way to do it? Where is the clarity of intention? These unthinking bones joined together in a manner frankly alien to our sensibilities.

It amuses me to think of Mies van Der Rohe and other modern architects, and their unflinching dedication to the purity of straight lines-- all of them having these thoughts directly under the squiggly little skull-bone lines that hold their heads together.

The Meat says "I Am Not Meat!"

What part of my humanity do I resist in the name of some pure ideal? Truth? Justice? Honesty? Goodness? Or am I all wiggly, meandering, conjoined and blurred thought, just like my skull bones? Is this a fair or useful contrast?

Skulls are evening light. They illuminate the darkness inside and thereby the darkness to come.

They are made objects, but not by any hand or machine. Growth is perhaps the most noble kind of making. The common metaphor is that we're "made by the hand of God" (But I can't really see Him in his dusty workshop, fashioning us out of clay, adding sugar and spice...). What drives the stitching of those skull bones? What effort drives the DNA? You can push back to the first blob of algae, back to the ignition of our star, back, back, back and you just find another lovely question under the first, of what drives its precursor. It's tortoises all the way down, what holds up the universe.

Answers that aren't, are the best answers. Like parables, these answers distract only the dull, and inspire a hundred questions in the sharp.

The skull is what the meat has left behind. The skull tells us of the end of thought, of agency, and the arrival of our distant 'reward,' whatever that may be. They are the traditional memento mori. One day our skulls may sit on a desk. One day our dust will serve as bungs for barrels of beer. It is a humbling thought, a useful lens to reflect on our current pretensions, our pride, our system of values that too easily weighs our accomplishments and status heavily, and our quiet gestures of love and friendship lightly. Geological time erases these pretensions. A skull can be a lens to focus our lives, remember what time we have and ask what we do with it, towards that strange question of what can we take with us? and What can we leave behind that endures?

What do we build in our minds that lasts?

Nature does not know extinction, it only knows transformation. I think this extends to the information collected and processed by the mind. What does it turn into? Anything more than the specifics of our actions and efforts, and their results? What do we carry away, if the conscious sense of self is any part of what survives the transformation? The question is delightfully unanswerable without leaps of faith. It's a good question to have at hand in daily life.

That raccoon had a life. It was born. It grew up. It ate and drank, shat and slept. Maybe it had pups. It then died one day, in a field near my house. What was that raccoon's experience? What of it endures? Sure, I am a more complex animal than a raccoon, but the same questions apply. I know nothing of the raccoon's life, though the right nostril is slightly deformed, just like mine.

...

Another skull is from a South Indian gaur, a type of bison. I found it while on a school hike in the Palni hills. The gaur had died in a river, and the entire skeleton, undisturbed, rested on the bottom up against a rock. The 10 ft long and 6 ft. tall skeleton was undisturbed and visible through the clear water, as if the bison had laid down for a rest and turned to bones.

I waded in and pulled up the skull. The stink hit my nostrils instantly, like a spike to the brain. Bits of decayed flesh fell off it, much of the brain and nasal tissue remained within. Wearing only a bathing suit and a hat, a sense of vulnerability washed over me. What had I done? I had desecrated a grave. I will pay in disease and madness. But in a moment, I came back to my senses, and brought the prize back to the hiking group.

"Why did you take that, Mr. Purdy?" a student wrinkled her nose in horror at me.

"Isn't it amazing? It's beautiful!" I replied with glee, feeling doubtful, covered in slime and filth as I held it up.

Several students complained about the smell during the bus ride back to campus. I had stowed the skull below in the luggage compartment, so it was my smell they noted.

"One day, we will all smell like this," I reasoned with them, to no effect.

After much boiling and bleaching, the skull hangs on my wall. Huge. Impressive. Somewhat threatening. Beautiful to my eyes. It doesn't smell.

Very few people ask after it, perhaps worried there will be a long and intimidating or boring story. Perhaps disgusted by a dead animal on the wall. Perhaps they think I'm a trophy hunter, displaying my conquests? What each of takes away from any object-- its associations and meaning--is uniquely theirs, not mine. I get more questions about Princess Leia. I don't mind being misinterpreted. Much.

But the ultimate topic of this essay is this deer skull.

For me, this object comprises everything the others do, from intricate, graceful beauty to the questions of a life well-led, with an important complication: I shot this deer. She was the first I ever took in a hunt.

Some hunters hunt in uncomplicated ways for uncomplicated reasons. I am not that kind of hunter.

I started to hunt when I was in my 40's. It began as a question of principle. I eat meat. I like meat. Beef, lamb, chicken, fish. Some are mammals with limbic systems, with emotional lives perhaps as sophisticated as dogs, which I love, and would never consider killing or eating because they are "too close" to me.

I know that killing and eating an animal is, at some level, an awful business. But if I am going to eat and enjoy meat, I needed to know what it was to kill an animal, not let other people do it for me, to not cheat what it means to be an omnivorous human.

Secondarily, I finally had enough free time and extra money to be able to. I took a hunting class, took a test, and got my license. I bought a tree stand. I bought an orange vest and clothes detergent and soap that left no scent. I bought a rifle and ammunition. When all was said and done, I figured the venison I could get in a season would cost about $50 a pound.

The main expense, though, was time -- to hunt successfully, you need a lot of time. I never had that as a parent, a hockey dad, a husband, a self-employed woodworker. There is always something to do with the kids, fix around the house or do in the shop. A good friend had described the strain his hunting put on his marriage, as he was mostly away during hunting season. I didn't want that in my life. So I put it off until the kids were older and more independent, the shop a bit more under control, the day a bit more loose.

The first day in the field was one early December. I woke before dawn, got dressed, went out to the stand and climbed up in the dark. I waited. I got cold. My feet and ass hurt. My fingers got numb, The cold steel of the rifle burned a cold line across my lap. I waited. I watched and saw nothing. I got impatient. I wanted to check my phone constantly. I thought to go get a pillow to sit on, and another to rest my rifle on. I didn't move. I didn't speak. The light rose, then the dawn came, breaking through the leafless forest. It was utterly beautiful. Silent. Cars in the distance and planes overhead were a distant annoyance. I was alone. The forest was empty. The wait became rich beyond anticipation as scattered thought quieted into simple being.

Then crunch crunch crunch. I hear the impossibly loud sound of steps on leaves. I look, my heart beating a million miles an hour. It must be some giant deer, the crunching is so loud. It's a squirrel. Crunch crunch crunch echoes through the forest. Another squirrel joins and they chase each other. Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch. It's an unbearably loud racket and I want to tell the squirrels to beat it, they're a distraction, frightening away deer and the quiet of the woods.

One races up a nearby tree, gets about eye level, and shakes his tail at me making a chirrup sound. I gather he doesn't approve of my presence. I talk back at him, and he takes offense and runs up and down the tree chirruping. I am an outsider and I have been outed.

Five hours later, I climb down and go home. My body is stiff. I have seen nothing but the glorious shift of light from night through predawn gloom to brilliant morning. And a few playful squirrels. I am hooked and cannot wait to get back in the stand. The meaning of the forest has begun to shift.

Each time in the stand, I see and hear nothing but the forest, the emerging light, squirrels, birds of every stripe, deer at great distances, running in groups, moving closer then away. One morning after two hours in the stand I suddenly feel a presence and look to my right. Fifteen feet away in the next tree is a barn owl staring at me. He has been motionless and staring at me for two hours. I stare back. He doesn't move for another hour except for the occasional blink. Then he flies away.

After five days in the stand, I am despairing to ever get a shot. I should move the stand, I should wash my scent off better. I should be quieter. I need glasses. I have to think like a deer. I have to think like a hunter. I am thinking too much. Then a little yellow bird alights on a branch nearby. It looks at me sideways, then chrips loudly. It chirps loudly again. I smile at it. It hops about and chirps repeatedly. Within about a minute, I am surrounded by fifty small yellow birds all chirping very loudly at me. The little fuckers. I'm not supposed to be there and you're the forest alarm bell, eh? Well fuck you for exposing me. I am an outsider and I have been outed again. I see no deer that day either.

With no chances for a shot, the hunt became a glorious exercise in meditation. I learned to be still, outside and in. I listened. I watched. The beauty of the forest, the beauty of the changing light, the incredible silences and the peculiar ways it would be interrupted. A few hours alone in the stand would transform me from my usual anxious wreck to solid on my feet for the rest of the day. Thoughts would spend their courses, come to conclusions, and leave me. I began not to care if I ever got a deer.

Perhaps my seventh time in the stand, in the predawn gloom I see the silhouette of a deer perhaps 100 yards away. My rifle has open sights, I need glasses but don't have them, everything is slightly blurry, and the distance is ridiculous. I level the rifle at the tiny profile, hearing a voice in my head say 'this is not a good shot', with rising frustration and anger in my throat that this is the only shot I have had so far. BANG I fire the gun. I get down off the stand and go look where I shot. There is nothing. I missed entirely. I tell myself I am a fool, not a worthy hunter. What if I had injured the animal? I will never take a shot that is not perfect, that is not sure to give the animal a very quick death. I hate myself and do not hunt for a week.

My tenth time in the stand, after a dawn of beautiful clear light, I hear crunch, crunch, crunch, again, for the millionth time, as there are squirrels everywhere in the woods. But this time it is slow. I look and see a large doe moving carefully across the woods, 50 yards away. My heart pounds. The shot is too far. It is no good. I master the reptile brain inside and quiet it, and I wait. Watch. Learn. I abandon desire and hope. The doe looks around, flicks her tail. Sniffs the ground. Roots for acorns. Looks up. Moves a few steps. Looks around. She moves left, then right, but in a pattern that brings her slowly closer. I watch her. I can nearly feel her thoughts, when she tenses, when she relaxes. Her tail is expressive, shaking off her fears after she listens. When her tail is still, she is tensed to detect a threat.

She moves closer. 30 yards. 25 yards. 20 yards. Then 25 yards, 30 yards. Then 15 yards, 40 ft, 35 ft. She is walking directly towards me. My heart pounds harder with each step closer. I can hear it in my ears and wonder if she can't hear it too. I quietly raise my rifle and take the safety off, the click impossibly loud, but she doesn't move. If I am going to be a hunter, this is the time, it is now. 25 ft. nearly under the stand. My breath is slow without having to consciously slow it. My hands are not shaking at all. I am holding the heavy rifle with a deer plainly in the sights, with no other awareness whatsoever, and I am waiting, waiting for the perfect shot. She has to turn to show her side so I can send the bullet through both of her lungs at once. She turns to face me and stops. She sniffs the air. Does she smell me? Will she bolt? I don't move. She puts her nose back down and roots again. She moves to her left offering a perfect side view, but then steps in front of a tree. I wait. She takes another step away from the tree. She is 20 ft. away and I can hear her breath in the forest silence. Can she hear mine? She pauses. I stop thinking about the distance, the angle, all the technical aspects and I simply feel that the moment is right, as if time stutters and a gap opens. My finger moves against the trigger almost beyond conscious will, in a gray area of half-thought. The moment feels right BANG.

The painful sound is irrelevant. I watch the doe leap up and try to run as if in slow motion. My heart stutters. I see her stumble after the second step and fall. She gets up, then falls over again. My heart beats again.

I climb down the stand and run over to her. She hadn't moved more than 10 feet from where I shot her. I see the hole in her chest and I hear her trying to breath, gasping through her mouth, bubbles of air in bright red blood oozing from the hole in her chest. She is lying on her side. I put down my gun and kneel next to her. She doesn't move and I put my hand gently on her side, her killer to calm her. She takes a few more breaths, then stops. I watch her eyes go from quick to glassy. For a moment, I am not sure if she is dead or not. But then it becomes obvious. Of course she is dead. I keep my hand on her, feeling the warmth of her body, her recent life. A strange sense of awe at what I have just done, the animal's grace in death, the strange irony of trying to comfort her, all washes through my head. Then comes jubilation. I have just shot my first deer! Not bungled! A clean kill! Then comes gratitude and promises. I find myself thanking the deer, thanking her for letting me have her life, for the many meals I and my family will enjoy from her. I promise her I will not waste anything.

The next job is the Stupid State Paperwork. I must fill out forms in the field immediately, or risk a lifetime imprisonment and social shame for causing a bureaucrat's files to go wobbly.

Once done, the horror comes.

I have to gut her in the field to get the body temperature down to save the meat from spoiling. I have never seen this work done in person, only watched a video and read about it. I make uncertain, tentative cuts through the skin. I make a long incision and start pulling out organs. A large stomach, coils of intestines, what could be a liver or a pancreas I don't know, a heart, all steaming in the winter cold. There is blood everywhere. It is up my sleeves and on my pants, soaking into cloth and drying sticky. The fur clings to the blood. Bits of fat and skin attach to the fur. My face is cold but my hands are warm in the doe's wet interior. Trying and mistaking, I cut parts that I shouldn't and end covered in half-digested acorn mash and deer shit. I cut more parts that I shouldn't and parts come one bit by bit, whereas in the videos, it all comes out together. My hands slide in blood, I suppress disgust.

I have to reach up from inside her chest cavity to pull her esophagus down to cut it out. My arm is inside a dead animal up to my shoulder and I can barely grasp the knife inside. It is a practical problem of competence, the only thought is that I wish I knew what I was doing. All emotions have fled.

Finally, I must cut the anus away from the carcass without cutting into the scent glands. I don't know what they look like, or more appropriately what they feel like, as everything is inside the pelvis where I can't see. I jab, I cut, I pull, I tug, I cut some more and finally cut away the large intestine and the anus. They lie in a steaming awful heap next to the bloody carcass. I exhale and almost see myself from a distance -- a baseline human experience tens of thousands of years old: killing another animal to eat. It's a strange feeling of kinship with my full humanity.

Eating is, at heart, a desperately disgusting proposition. Killing. Cutting. Chewing. Digesting. Shitting. The Anorexic has simply thought it all through, and taken it too close to heart, felt and thought it through fully. To survive, we have to be deaf and dumb to some parts of existence.

I drag the body from the forest back to my truck. I drive it home. I hang it upside down in my garage and spend the next four hours taking the hide off, cutting the head off, cutting the limbs off, then dressing the meat on a table into specific cuts, wrapping them in paper, labeling them, and putting them in the freezer. I cut up the skeleton for dog treats. I hose out my truck. I hose out the garage. I hose off the driveway. I peel my bloody, fat and hair encrusted clothes off and put them in a bag. Then I shower, the dried blood and fur slowly coming off, the tallow fat taking a lot of soap, scrubbing and hot water to come off, the scent lingering nevertheless.The horror is apparent everywhere if I want to think about it.

The curious reminder, the true, humbling memento mori, comes when dressing a deer carcass: how similar hers is to mine: meat, bones, and guts. This is where PETA perhaps chimes in to say, Yes, and as nobody should hunt and eat humans, so we should not hunt and eat animals-- we are the same. I come to a different conclusion, that we are all part of a single cycle of life and death. My role is simply as apex predator, as hers was of prey. One day, I too will die, perhaps young, perhaps old. Once buried, my body will be devoured by the proverbial worms. The deer and I have different fates, but the same ultimate destination. I hope to be as gracious about my fate, as the first doe I shot was. I hope to accept whatever chance, opportunity, and my skills give me for my life, from beginning, through all of it, to the end.

The venison tenderloin with Bernaise sauce I made that night was one of the best meals of my life, certainly the most meaningful as it was accompanied by a broad range of emotions and thoughts.

Hunting and dressing a deer is a lot of work.

That doe fed me and my family. Her body kept us alive.

The simple adrenaline excitement of the first hunt took a long time to wear off. When it did, I was left with an appreciation of the hunt that I could never have imagined. It is beautiful. It is thrilling. It is horrifying. It is useful. It is deeply disturbing. It is deeply satisfying. From animal to dinner plate, it is not a straight and simple line of thought and deed, but one fraught with a hundred thrills, a hundred horrors.

By my tenth kill, the awe was no longer a thunder strike, but an abiding sense of gratitude, connection and respect that overlays the enjoyment of achieving something both difficult, satisfying, and delicious. Supermarket meat remains offensive to me, for I know how those animals live and die in comparison to the wild does and bucks I have taken. The act of handing $5 to a teenage checkout for a pile of hamburger under plastic is a modern travesty.

I preserved her skull. Her skull is now mine. I own it in a number of ways. It is not so much a trophy, or a memento mori, but a reminder of a responsibility. It is an ideal, the straight, perfect line that I impose on my hunting: not to waste, to be grateful, to be responsible to the role of being human, to appreciate the beauty and usefulness of the animal, to find humility in our similarities as living, breathing, thinking animals.

This is certainly too much thought in a deed, the learner's process towards comprehension. Over time it is all now no big deal. The skull reminds me of when it wasn't, when the Facts of Life were a revelation, and how insulated I lived by simply buying meat.

Maybe I should bequeath my skull to a troupe of Shakespearean actors to use as a most-believable Yorick prop. Actors using an actual skull? One that used to be covered in meat? Maybe help them put meat on the bones of their words. That would be useful.

A personal movie review of Joker

So my girlfriend Dinah and I went to see Joker last night, because, you know, we're adventurous.

 

What a movie... An experience akin to being chained to a radiator for 2 1/2 hrs. Exhausting.

 

It has a lot to say. And I think it says it well. And it's nothing I want to hear. Much I feel I already know.

 

The plot is a simple parable of the Deplorables against the Liberal Elite. Pretty straightforward. Apparently the Liberal Elite don't give a shit about the Deplorables (called Clowns in the movie), just want to patronize them and solve their problems for them in an impersonal manner.

 

What's lasting though, is watching a mentally-ill person seek, and be endlessly denied, real and benevolent human connection. And then, when he has totally lost it, and become the crazy killer of the comic book world, he remains capable of mercy in a way no "sane" person is.

 

Can't think of another movie that has a stronger plea with modern society to drop media-based understandings of each other, and be generous on a personal level.

 

- 10/14/19 A case in point here.

 

 

An apartment full of stuff

The email, sent to everyone in my building, was to the point:

Sheriff's deputies were here yesterday to officially evict anyone who
might have been living at XXXX-2. That was one more step that had to be
taken so that the bank can market the apartment. The bank, as required, had
arranged for movers to come and clear out the apartment. They came with
a totally inadequate vehicle for the task, removed some items, and left.
The bank has given me permission to let shareholders take anything they
might want out of the unit. They'll have to pay to clear the unit
of the rest of Michael's belongings. For those who don't know, Michael’s
family took what they wanted a long time ago and abandoned the rest. If
you want to take a look at what's left, let me know. This has to be done
during daylight since there's no electricity in the apartment.

-Diane

 

Two-and-a-half years earlier, Michael, an architect still practicing in his 60’s, had died suddenly. Apparently, the ambulance came one night, and he was gone. No one in the building ever found out what he died of. No one knew his family well enough to ask, or even who to call.

Two weeks after he died, his family could be seen coming and going. They spoke to no one. Then, they stopped coming.

A month later, a bank called the Co-Op Board. Apparently, the family was abandoning whatever interest they had in the apartment. The bank would take possession and, eventually, sell it.

Yesterday, the Sheriff's deputies arrived.

 

Diane let me in and walked through the apartment with me. A pile of garbage bags in a corner of the living room marked “Jackets” and “Long Pants.” A dining table piled high with photo albums, a DVD player, towels, candles, two alarm clocks. An office strewn with computer equipment, papers, stacks of magazines. A bedroom with a dresser on its side next to the bed, no sheets on it. A sterling silver business card holder. A fan from Japan. A picture frame with a smiling girl in it. Three corded telephones. Matching ikea floor lamps. A hummingbird mobile hanging from the ceiling. A box of screws open on the floor. A pile of clean towels. Cans of paint and paint thinner. It looked as if nobody had taken anything from the man’s life, just jumbled it.

Diane had known Michael. “His family didn’t even take his pictures,” she grimaced, pointing to the photo album. Faded Kodak prints showed a tiny baby Michael grow from a kid to a boy to a man.

Then I saw two cast iron frying pansl. I saw a Cuisinart. I saw good Japanese kitchen knives. I saw Metro wire shelving, many units of it. Bookshelves and boxes of screws. Hammers and mat knives and picture frames. All really useful stuff, and stuff I did not have. I didn’t really need any of it. Two years on from divorce, and not making a real wage during that time, I was still living in minimal bachelor mode. I had filled in the essentials (can opener; frying pan; coffee cup) at Goodwill over the first year, and my home and kitchen had most of the basics; but here – here were the tools for real living. And it was free.

I surveyed the mountain of stuff in his apartment, and got busy. Helen left, asked me to close up after I left. An air conditioner looked at me. An architect’s file cabinet looked at me. My back winced. It would all have to go down two flights of stairs, then back up three, my arms and feet the only tools to move them.

“I’ll only take a little," I said to myself. "Just a few useful things.”

The first box I opened had hand towels, a blanket with a designer label that read “Sensual Sessions” on it, a number of candles in jars and ten DVDs on how to talk to women, only one or two open. I closed it back up again. The boxes under it had about 100 porn DVDs in it, mostly “Tits and Ass” and “Seymore Butts” series. I closed them back up again. Another box of architectural photos, possibly culled from or intended for clients, were arranged on presentation mats. Then I blinked.

It hit me hard: I was picking at the bones of a life. Everything in the room, from the tables and chairs and lamps, had been a part of his life, useful and meaningful to him. Picking up a floor lamp and walking it to my apartment was one thing. But stumbling into a dead man’s stash of porn crossed some kind of line.

“Poor Michael.”

I began to imagine his life. Buying a set of DVDs online at 2 am, drunk, swearing to himself that he would never suffer the same humiliation he did earlier that day when a co-worker had replied ‘I like you as a friend.’ The solitary solace of a porn DVD a few minutes later. Then silence.

A Zenith portable AM radio from the 60’s. Probably his father’s. Or his when he was a young man. At the beach tuning in a little music, his nose white with zinc, hoping to see a girl from his class walk by. Maybe she'd wave and smile at him. But no.

I take a paper bag off a storage container that I could use, and peek inside. Sex toys. Masturbation sleeves. I fold the bag over the boxes and put it on a high shelf.

His kids abandoned his belongings. The man left a prodigious number of sex-related things. Did they come across them and recoil in such horror they left the lot? If not, they must have known other people might pick through his things. Why couldn’t they have tossed it all in the trash?

Did it matter? There is no shame in death, no way to embarrassed. His family isn’t around to meet the eyes of his neighbors, picking through his things. My own shame to have seen these things would be greater to bump into his son or daughter while I’m lugging his file cabinet down the stairs. What would they think of me?

I find Frank, another building resident, in Michael’s office, sorting through his file cabinet.

“Hello Frank.” I begin taking items off a bookshelf that I want.

“Hello Strother,” Frank says. “I wonder what this is.” It is a box about the size of a loaf of bread, and on the cover is some kind of plugged in electronic plastic device, looking a bit like a lava lamp. The label reads “Master Turbo Stroker.” While I have no idea how this thing works, it’s obviously a sex toy.

“That’s a sex toy, Frank,” I say.

“What? Really?” Frank stares at it more intently. He does not open the box. After a few minutes he puts is back.

“There’s no more shame in death, Frank,” I note. Frank doesn’t reply. He leaves soon afterwards. I decide not to contemplate what thoughts, judgments or sympathies he may be feeling.

I keep opening boxes. I keep finding new stories. Michael had collected, and kept, more electronic gizmos and wires and chargers than a Best Buy. I find six pairs of virtual reality goggles, a TENS machine, a hand-held clothing steamer, so many internet routers it seems each stage in the evolution of the technology is represented, flip phones and Palm Pilots and dozens of unidentifiable chargers, power strips, hard drives and two, three, no five DVD players. I find a waterproof stainless steel metal suitcase with hundreds of DVDs in it, all hand labeled with names such as “The Night Before” and “The Pasture”. I figure these are movies, but I don’t know any of the names. The cases are nice so I take them. I also take the movies.

Moving pieces one by one to my apartment, a small mountain of Michael’s jumbled stuff grows in my apartment, waiting to be sorted and integrated into a new life. I leave it and return to Michael's. Just one more look, I keep saying.

Opening a box of Pendaflex hanging file folders for Michael's file cabinet, the first file cabinet I will have that isn't rusty, bent and difficult to open, I find a 1995 XXX DVD review magazine inside. Not a banner year, if you’re curious. How it ended there is hard to say. A knock came to his door, he quickly put it away, then forgot about it for 20 years?

All the table lamps, floor lamps and half the furniture are Ikea. The rest is Metro shelving. He obviously had a "style" --clean modern inexpensive lines. My neighborhood is not wealthy, so I figure he must not have thrived in his profession. A poor architect? a slumchitect? Maybe he was disabled and didn’t work much. He certainly put a lot of time and effort into his porn. I find two binders in his office titled “Double Your Dating,” complete with brochure inside and twenty DVDs with topics such as “Eye Contact” and “Dog Training.” I put them down and begin to really feel for the fellow. Unlucky in love, he tried the best he could to meet someone. Perhaps he did. Perhaps these jumbled folders and things had been ferreted away in the back of a closet, never used in an otherwise happy life, never thrown away because he doesn’t do that, only to surface now and be jumbled with all the active parts of his life. Or not.

I take his portable AC unit, as I really need one for Augusts in Chicago, and a few family portraits. I feel I owe it to the man to take and save something personal as well, in thanks—one bachelor passing along his stuff to another, I should at least know what he looks like.

A box from Amazon, unopened, rests on his giant TV, a time capsule from last desires clicked online. No one had bothered with it, not his kids, not anyone. I opened it. The date on the invoice was from late 2016, nearly three years previous. It’s a cookbook. Maybe he was thinking to impress a date with a home cooked meal. Another box next to it is unopened: an Ikea lamp. I take them. I tell myself enough.

Locking the door as I go, I wonder who will go through my things when I die, and what my things will say about me.

(names changed, except mine)