Mondaugen's Miscellany

7: On my grandfather's watch

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.

---

 

When I was fourteen, my father showed me his father's gold pocket watch. I was allowed to look, but not touch. The dial shimmered with silver. He opened the back, and I saw inside a glittering of mysterious interconnected wheels, gears and parts. It had my grandfather's initials engraved on it, both on the back on on the gold pencil fob, initials that were also mine. It then went back into a locked drawer. "One day, son," my father said, "this will be yours."

Though I saw it just once, it became the token of my father's blessing. One day I would inherit the watch. One day I would be worthy of touching it. The golden watch would go to the golden boy. And I would know he loved me and approved of me.

I cannot overstate the significance of the watch. In a family obsessed with objects and their value, the gold watch was the singular item of worth in the house. My mother would talk about how valuable it was, and my father would stay silent. She would suggest taking it out and letting us all see it, and he would remain silent. But it was too valuable. Like a holy relic. I had seen it once. That was enough. One day, though, he would bestow it on me.

 

This summer, my father died suddenly, and horribly, eleven days after breaking his hip at age 88. He was tied to his hospital bed because he was combative with staff. The cause of death was pneumonia from aspirated food and drink.

In a four-page will that got his name wrong, he gave everything of his to my step-mother, also making her executor. I was, apparently, not to get the gold watch, or any object from my childhood, except, possibly, as a gift from my step-mother.

My sister's disorientation and sense of betrayal that her own father would disinherit her was extreme. They had gotten along fine. He had always talked of the things she would have, and that I would too, after he died. For me, the disinheritance was not unexpected.

I grew up in fear of my father. Most of our time together was spent working for him, using his tools, fixing his many machines, repairing the house. My time was his time, without compromise. Once, when I had a date over to the house, suddenly it was time to repair the roof. The choice for my date was to join me on the roof, stay alone in the house, or go away.

Damage to any of his things would be met with rage. If they were special things, that rage demanded my annihilation. I learned to make him laugh and thereby avoid his wrath. I found in this dynamic a semblance of connection, reading kindness and goodwill into his laughing smiles. I learned quickly, though, that no real demands could be put on our connection. His attitude was that I needed to go fix myself somewhere else to be a presentable son to him, to be his golden boy, which was my sole duty. His methods were belittlement, bullying and shunning. Eventually, slowly, painfully, I realized that I was serving the wrong master in life, and no longer wanted to be his golden boy, but to be my own person, with a different set of values. I demanded he stop belittling me. He replied with angry, paranoid accusations of my worthlessness. There would be no discussion if I didn't please him. We became distant. He continued with his "one day son..." to the very end, but it was a belittling joke.

 

My father left massive collections of motorcycles, guns, tools, books, and artwork. To my eye, they were a huge array of horcruxes, little repositories of childhood shame, punishment, feelings of worthlessness, his greed and possessiveness. In many ways the disinheritance was a blessing. I would not have the job of sorting through his life and values.

I told my step mother all that I wanted was a copy of his unedited, unpublished novel. He had refused to share it with me in his lifetime. Perhaps I could understand him better through reading it, now that he couldn't say no. She agreed.

My sister, though, asked my step-mother about the watch. She told my sister that the watch could not simply be given, it was too valuable, and had to be appraised. It seemed likely she would liquidate the watch for its cash value, and just didn't want to say it outright. It was gold, after all. What use would she have for an old pocket watch, one with initials engraved on it that did not match any of her children?

I had completely forgotten about the watch, and the memory made me laugh. The confirmation of being his golden boy was no longer possible. There would be no final approval as his son, and heir. The memory of having been shown the watch became ridiculous, the pomposity of the moment, the narcissism, the twisted priorities. The watch reemerged as a token of my father's deep personal problems.

 

My step-mother, in an act of reconciliation, informed me I could have anything of his that she could not sell. I thought about it, and accepted that offer, as some of his books and hand tools would be useful. She rewarded me with an insult for greedily taking too many things for someone who only wanted his novel.

 

Twenty years before, in one of our bigger fights, I accused my father of loving his things more than any person, especially his children. He denied it, of course, but then explained that unconditional love did not exist, that children had to earn their parent's love, and part of earning that love was respect for the parent's things. That argument marked one of our last serious discussions. His obsession with his valuable things would surface as a paranoia about their theft, mainly that I would steal them, was plotting to steal them, or had stolen them when he had misplaced them. Finding them later, he would reiterate that he still knew I was up to no good, that he was "onto me, and that I wasn't going to get away with it," but never reveal what I was supposed to be up to. His obsession with valuable things grew into the ownership of things he didn't own. Many of my possessions, that I had bought and paid for, magically became his if I left them at home for too long. When I'd ask why he had put several of my rifles into his collection, he would deny they were mine. I didn't challenge him, and let them be gifts. For my step-mother to now sell them for cash was a kind of perfect burial for them, a kind of whitewashing of their history into new hands that knew nothing of the roles they played dividing a father and a son.

Collecting, possessing, treasuring, was the my-precious-miasma of my youth, every object a kind of trap. I saw clearly how the worship of ownership and power takes us down to the bottom of a dark wet cave of self-importance and self-indulgence. I am no Marie Kondo, but objects in my life must have a purpose -- usefulness, beauty, or a good memory, not for mere enrichment, or the temptation and manipulation of the people in my life. I do keep some things out of laziness, hope that one day they'll be useful, and others with bad associations, mainly gifts from my father, for reasons that perhaps therapy would reveal.

 

In a perverse moment, I thought to ask my step-mother if she would sell the watch to me. Like Esau, I would acquire my father's blessing by other means! But then I wondered what would I pay for it? Not much. I realized that even $10 was too much. I had no clear recollection of what it looked like, no particular use for it. I really didn't want the thing. But apparently I still wanted the blessing.

 

A week ago, my sister called to say that our step-mother had decided to give her some family items, as she was feeling less anxious -- sets of china, a 19th century portrait of a cow that had hung in our family homestead, and the gold watch. She said she had discovered that it was some off-brand, and not the fancy brand that my father had told her it was. It was apparently not worth enough to sell, and thereby OK to give.

Holding the watch for the first time ever was a strange, weightless experience. I half expected some thunderclap, or zombie-hand clapped on my shoulder. But nothing happened. It was just a nice old watch.

It looked much smaller and simpler than I had remembered. The fob had my grandfather's initials, two other sets of initials with a line between them, and a date in 1930. I asked my cousin, the family historian, if he recognized the initials or the date, and he didn't. The brand, Phelps and Perry, came from a small shop near Wall Street, where my grandfather worked, long since closed. The fob, if not the watch itself, could have been a gift to him for being best-man at a wedding. More than this, I will likely never know.

 

The way past is through.

I could let this watch smolder away in my psyche, and remain a token of my father's scorn and step-mother's insults. Or I could redefine it. Objects, unlike words, can lose and gain their associations easily. Their past is easily forgotten, and thereby easily redefined. I sometimes wonder about the vintage wedding rings in jewelry shops, and their forgotten stories. As they're in shops, they were not successfully passed along to another generation.The buyer has the opportunity to give those rings a new, and happier story.

I carry a burden of pain that this watch represents. A father's murky and uncertain disinheritance, and watching the sale of my childhood objects, is nothing light or simple. In spite of this, I remain my father's son, raised in his house by his rules, and much of my mental architecture was built by him. I still feel the pull of his character, and catch myself acting like him; but I found many other fathers with guidance that resonated. My son doesn't have to carry any of my burden. My task as his father is to understand better what I give him, in love and in anger, and to do better than I received.

The plan is to have my son's initials engraved on the inside now, on the other side of mine. While I still have the watch, he will be with me. When I give it to him, I will be with him. When I give it to him it will be accompanied by my blessing, because my son is a wonderful human being, and I am most proud to be his dad. To carry the watch now will be a reminder to be a better dad, in spite of any and all of my human failings, for he is my son and heir, and a multi-generational watch can be a fun tradition, no matter how off-brand it is. There is room in the watch for the initials of generations yet-to-be. And I look forward to the day, soon, that he holds it, actually touches it, even opens it, and puts it in his pocket.

How to Tell a Stranger about Iowa

Last week I visited family farms in Iowa. It was my third trip. I came away with a feeling that I understood them in ways I had not before. I felt them.

Twenty years ago, at my great uncle Tom's funeral, my cousin Sophie read a poem:

Landscape--Iowa

No one who lives here
knows how to tell the stranger
what it’s like, the land I mean,
farms all gently rolling,
squared off by roads and fences,
creased by streams, stubbled with groves,
a land not known by mountain’s height
or tides of either ocean,
a land in its working clothes,
sweaty with dew, thick-skinned loam,
a match for the men who work it,
breathes dust and pollen, wears furrows
and meadows, endures drought and flood.
Muscles swell and bulge in horizons
of corn, lakes of purple alfalfa,
a land drunk on spring promises,
half-crazed with growth—I can no more
tell the secrets of its dark depths
than I can count the banners in a
farmer’s eye at spring planting.

                        --James Hearst

At the time, I appreciated Hearst's words as a stranger. I had never been to Iowa, though born and raised in Milwaukee. Instead, I had learned to scoff at the Midwest as flyover country, that farming was dull, not intellectual, and not worthy of consideration. I had learned a prejudice. Tom had spent much of his life managing my extended family's farmland in Iowa. Family politics offered a way to become involved, but at a price that I was not willing to pay. I could not say we were close--we were both woodworkers and yet did not visit each other's shops, nor did we talk much of Iowa and farming--but I had genuine affection for him that I believed he shared for me. I sat at his funeral, a close relation and deeply sad at his passing, but a stranger to his lifetime endeavor. Such are families.

The first time I visited Iowa, a few years after Tom passed, I was overwhelmed by all that Hearst's poem touches on. A rolling ocean of golden corn and soybeans. A grid of fields imposed over ancient glacial terrain. Machinery that dwarfed houses and was guided by satellite. Earth as black as night. Roads laid out precisely East-West and North-South, except where surveyors made mistakes and so added a curving jog. A giant sky above, the moving clouds writing out tales. It was not an idealized tropical island paradise, or soaring majestic purple mountains, or ancient dark forest. The farms I visited were not near any national parks attracting millions of visitors. But the beauty of Iowa was easy to find.

---

The second time I visited, I strove to learn. Arriving with different eyes, I saw different things.

Perhaps the greatest gift of working with wood is enforced humility. Boards do not become a table through the imposition of ego and will, but through respect for, understanding of, and negotiation with the material. I started by admitting that I knew nothing of farming. I read crop reports, market reports, watched grain markets, studied bin maintenance, tried to map out supply chains, learn the role of farm managers, understand corn and soybean agronomy. I watched the Millennial Farmer's Youtube channel to learn about the daily life of a Minnesotan farmer (and "Clarkson's Farm" for how not to farm). I learned how much there is to know, and how little I understood. I learned about good stewardship of the land and its many interpretations. I found appreciation and gratitude for the work of the managers and operators, all they know and do, and something of why they do it. I learned what my great uncle and cousins had achieved, through their smart decisions, honest management, kindness, and commitment, helping our family farms thrive. I felt awe before the whole endeavor.

---

This third trip left me quiet and thoughtful.

While riding in a combine harvesting corn late one afternoon, I asked the farmer what he loved about his job. He gestured directly in front of us, the twelve-row head noisily eating at the ocean of dry corn in front of us.

"I love combining. Isn't it beautiful?"

"The results of all your work over the year?" I asked back, hoping for more details.

"Yeah. It's beautiful," he replied, and stayed quiet.

No one who lives here knows how to tell the stranger.

I watched out in front of the combine, did my best to stay quiet, and just experienced what combining was. 

For its not about the words, those inadequate suitcases of thought and feeling. Words might be handy to transfer thoughts, but are no substitute for immediate experience. The poet's job is like embalming life.

I focused on the fields of corn, looked for their beauty. I thought of the beauty of the grain of a freshly finished board, the clear oil revealing what sanding had only hinted at. I felt beauty in the cornfield. It was easy to see when I looked at what was right before me.

---

Farmers know the joys of engaged work with their hands. The fruits of their labor are tangible, bought with hard work, and thoughtful problem solving. Their workplace is beautiful, their materials are naturally beautiful. The results benefit other people. Not every job offers beauty and usefulness so easily. A corporate lawyer told me his work offered neither, and the only thing about he enjoyed was the paycheck. After he detailed what he did, I believed him.

On the drive back home I wondered if we can only learn, appreciate, and understand what we can feel. Is emotional engagement the primary motivation towards knowledge? If you love it, you'll pursue it? If so, then Elon Musk is one big dummy. For as flexible and far-reaching his intellect may be, I sense he does not feel deeply about anything he says or does. Twitter, free speech, Ukrainian communication satellites --all feel like bottle caps he flicks back and forth between his fingers on a table, trying to pass the time waiting for his food to be served. His failure to understand free speech emotionally could be our undoing as a nation, the straw to the camel's back in the virtual public sphere that has lost its core connection to reality and responsibility. And he is one of many, like the corporate lawyer, who do not love their work, just the paycheck.

I hope to be back in Iowa soon, looking at the Spring planting, with banners in my eyes.

The Power of Holding a Koala

My mother lives in Perth, Australia.

Perth is just about as far away from Chicago as one can live, without wintering over in Antarctica. If she sought a job there, I doubt she'd have been offered one, as she's 88 years old and doesn't enjoy cold weather. So that left Perth. I don't take it personally that she moved there. She followed a wonderful Australian man down there. She wasn't running away. She fell in love. But that's another story.

My brother-in-law was explaining to a coworker where my mother lived. That it was far away. That it was exotic. The puzzled reply was, "Do you mean Perth, Franth?" He explained the difference, the different geography, but only partially cleared up the confusion. One has baguettes. The other has koalas. One is East, the other South and East, or West. One speaks French. The other sort of speaks English. Oh, the coworker said.

 

Part 1: Travel Heaven and Hell

Do you know how long it takes to get from my apartment in Chicago to my mother's house in Perth? Let me count the hours.

1. Our Apartment to O'Hare Airport: 45 minutes in a pleasant Uber, at rush hour, through stop-start traffic.

2. Chicago O'Hare Airport, Terminal 5: 4 hours of rugby-scrum security, TSA monotonously yelling at cowed crowds to take their laptops out, belts off, shoes off, and no you can't take water into the airport. Then, a three-hour wander around overcrowded, poorly-designed, badly-managed, shithole of a terminal hallways that smell of damp, gum-stuck carpet, with no food or drink on sale after 7pm, unintelligible loudspeakers, no seats that aren't free, or sticky, no luggage carts so we carry our stuff everywhere, mostly incompetent airport staff that scream at the top of their lungs at people to do this or that, most passengers sitting on the floor wearing bedroom soft clothes and wired into their phones. The signage is terrible, hard to know where to go, the most accurate signs are paper ones taped to walls by employees who still give a damn. The design of the place feels rabbit-warren, closed in and oppressive. Ceiling panels are askew, some with wires falling out, all are dirty. Even the brand new addition in Terminal 5 feels like a slightly wider hallway in a crappy mall, half of it used as storage for a huge collection of temporary room dividers. Expressions of exhaustion, indifference, annoyance and anger on nearly everyone's faces. I wonder how long the broken moving walkways, yellow police tape at either end, have been broken. The airport feels like a microcosm of American society today. Who will throw the first punch to start the total conflagration? 

How it is, as a nation, that we are not ashamed of our infrastructure, is beyond me. Oh wait! The billionaires in charge don't go through regular airport terminals! They have no idea of the shitty quality of our infrastructure! Duh. And so it makes sense to the Average American that spending money on our public spaces is a liberal waste of cash.

(To note, on our return, we spent 2 1/2 hours standing (never sitting) in a customs and immigration line at O'Hare, 0.9 miles long according to my Fitbit, in poorly ventilated hallways, and a series of rooms, surrounded by painfully screaming children because they couldn't go to the bathroom without losing their place in line. The first O'Hare staff member we talked to knew nothing, other than to tell people to stay in line, though she wasn't sure which line, and wasn't challenging anyone who was skipping it. The second staff member (one with "ASK ME QUESTIONS" printed on the back of her jacket) kept her back to me when I asked, politely, if she knew what forms we needed to fill out before immigration, and where I could find them. She wasn't giving any more out, was her surly answer, to someone else across the room. When the immigration officer asked for the filled out form, I explained what airport staff had told us, and he didn't reply, looked disgruntled, and filled it out for us....and perhaps only 3/4 of the visible TSA officers checking passports, the rest stood around, chatting with themselves leaning against walls (if you're going to do that, do it behind closed doors, not in front of exhausted passengers, unless sadism is really part of the game). Really, I saw no one working at O'Hare airport who looked happy.

Anyway, who has seen better? The rest of the world is a worse shithole, no?

 

3. Qatar Airways Economy Class, Chicago to Doha: 11.5 hrs. sitting in a new 777, run by polite and efficient staff, in reasonably comfortable seats, with a good but limited movie collection, three heavy and perfectly edible meals, and all the drink we can manage. Not a exceptional flying experience, but a perfectly good one (an 8 out of 10, if I would rate the average American domestic flight experience around 3 out of 10, with their hard-ass seats, stressed-out flight attendants with forced smiles, and unpredictable schedules).

4. Hamad Airport Layover, Doha, Qatar: 7 hrs to burn in an airport. As we get off the plane, Qatar Airways staff are holding up signs for all connecting flights, to help guide bleary and disoriented passengers. Are those free luggage carts to move our stuff around easily while we wait for our connection? Yes! Thank you! The Information kiosks are staffed, not empty. The people in them speak perfect English and have useful answers to our questions about where to find what. They look us in the eye and smile. We go through security to get to the main terminal, and the employees are amazingly efficient, polite, well-dressed, and no one yells at anyone. Staff, for the most part, look genuinely happy.

How is this possible, I ask myself, used to American standards of airport experience. Aren't these "guest workers" in Qatar treated terribly, paid terribly, away from their families and home countries, and struggling to get by? Aren't our American airport employees at home, among friends and family, paid relatively well, and have lots of rights through their unions, and if no union, then a choice of other jobs if they don't like one? Are the Qatar employees terrorized into seeming happy in their jobs, and the Americans actually happy with all their privilege, but just come off as surly, indifferent, even sadistic? Help me out here. Why should I not believe my eyes, ears, and nose?

We arrive at 5pm and the terminal is quiet, almost empty. The cavernous halls are gleamingly clean, the empty waiting areas huge, and filled with what look like comfortable seats and even some reclining chairs. By 2 am, when our flight for Perth leaves, the airport is crowded to capacity, filled with people from all over the world, speaking every language, wearing every kind of clothes. We mill past each other in huge crowds, but never feel shunted or close in or kept from where we need to go. As nothing gets in the way, the airport reveals its smart design. Everything just works. The shops are a bit maze-like, intentionally, so you wander them. But finding your way out, and towards where you need to go, is easy. The design adds to the experience of being in a special place, as the art should do.

We take a lovely shower in a lovely spa for $20 each, and it is worth every penny. Is there free Wifi? Yes, thank you! Is that a room with day bed that are free to use to sleep and only half are in use? Thank you! All shops open 24 hours. Wait, what? Thank you! The weird giant teddy bear in the great hall is disturbing, and the big restaurants are all under renovation, but the food halls are adequate, and the beer cold, if costing $16 for a pint.

I have seen better. The rest of the world is apparently not a worse shithole, but actually nicer.

We Americans need to travel more to understand that we need to up our game.

 

5. Qatar Airways Economy Class Doha to Perth: 13 hours in a new 777, run by polite and efficient staff, in reasonably comfortable seats, with and extensive movie collection, with three perfectly fine meals, and all the drink we can manage. A 9 out of 10, if I would rate the average American domestic flight experience around 3 out of 10). I just wonder why the movie collection was limited on the Chicago leg.

6. Perth Airport: 1 1/2 hrs. of deplaining, walking through an older but well-maintained terminal, then through small but gleaming duty free shops still open at 8pm, then through passport reading machines that work, no lines, then waiting for luggage for a bit, then competent customs people asking logical questions about what we're bringing in, then meeting my mom and her partner in the small reception hall. Perth airport is nothing to write home about, but it is well-managed by people who seem to care.

7. Perth airport to my mom's house: 30 minutes. A drive on the wrong side of the road with little traffic, through roundabout after roundabout.

Welcome to Australia.

Total transit time: 38 hours.

We left our apartment on Tuesday at 4 pm, and arrived at my mom's on Thursday at 8 pm. Somewhere, somehow, Wednesday got lost.

 

Part 2: Why We Travel

The primary reason for the trip was to visit my mother. We talked. We connected. We made meals together. We fell asleep on the couch watching TV together. It was good. Travel is always about people. Sometimes, though, it's also about the animals.

On our eighth day in Perth, we went to Caversham Wildlife Park, where, for $20, you can hold one of these:

Now, Koalas are having a tough time. They're losing their habitat at a rapid clip, and are now officially an "endangered species". They also have to face down the occasional minister of tourism who asks us to "forget the piddling koalas" and enjoy other aspects of Australia, as they are "flea-ridden, it piddles on you, it stinks and it scratches."

We beg to disagree.

James was his name, and my wife and son each got to hold him for a spell.

The looks on their faces as the park ranger handed James over, were magical.

James touched noses with my son. I doubt he'll ever forget that.

I looked on, watching my son gently hold that plump koala, imagining how he felt the warm weight, that special charge of care. I remembered holding him when he was tiny. I saw amazement and care and joy in his face, and I knew that he will make a great dad, if he ever chooses to be one.

I looked on, knowing my wife's hugs are pretty special, and hoping James could appreciate them a much as I do (but deciding that particular anthropomorphism was likely inaccurate). James was probably wondering wordlessly who they were, and if either of them had eucalyptus leaves on offer. I saw her glow with appreciation at James furry weight.

Almost shaking with excitement and joy, we left the koala compound wondering what office to submit our Bid to Adopt papers for James.

We wondered aloud what the world would look like if Putin had held a koala when he was growing up.

We hugged my mom harder when we got back to her place.

On losing a true friend

Andrew Engel

1961-2022

 

Andy woke at 5 am every day, Owen shaking his nub tail with excitement when he stirred. Rising, Micah, Gus and Owen would all follow down the stairs to watch him make that first pot of coffee, then bring a cup up for Pat. Stepping outside with the dogs into the cool darkness of predawn, Andy would just breathe it in, and find a moment of quiet, lovely peace at the start of a new day. For Andy got on with life. More than anyone, he understood that nobody was here to save us. Everything was up to us; and he chose his Everything better than anyone I know. Every morning, getting up more likely around 6 or 7, I wondered what Andy was up to. I'd often already find his comments on the day ahead in an email, among thoughts from the other Assholes. And thereby I could step outside my door, and breathe the day in.

Oh, a friend! How true is that old saying, that the enjoyment of one is sweeter and more necessary than that of the elements of water and fire!

-- Michel de Montaigne

Andy and I worked together, talked together, and laughed together for over 25 years. For the last fifteen, as part of a group of six, we emailed daily. He became a true friend, and our friendship grew with time. I feel his loss as if both fire and water had gone out of the world.

Andy gave so much, to so many. That his heart gave out on a random day is a wretched, unacceptable injustice. His family, his community, his profession, his friends, each feel a gaping hole of absence that is profound, and profoundly different, for each.

This is an essay on the loss of a true friend.

---

Smiling wryly at his own wit, my 11th grade English teacher ended each class at the bell commenting that "Our discussions do not end. They stop temporarily. See you tomorrow." I often wanted to smack him for the refrigerator-magnet wisdom. At the same time, I remembered the comment, and learned to notice the difference between something that stops, and something that ends.

Since Andy died, the most common painful thought has been precisely this difference. I see an unintentionally ironic advertisement on a train platform, and want to share it with him, and make him laugh. I complete a project in the shop and want to send him a picture of it, hear his thoughts on it. I want to ask his advice on a relationship matter. But each of these conversations has ended. Worse, when I remember looking forward to a planned visit, I realize that I can no longer look forward. That pleasant memory has become a liar, a ghost of things that will not happen. I feel betrayed by my own thoughts.

Did I tell him, as well as I could ever find the words, how much I appreciated his friendship? I no longer have the opportunity of completing that conversation. Was I fully the friend that I wanted to be? Our friendship is no longer open to amendment, or coda. Our friendship is complete when I had hoped of building more with it. I fight against this end by having conversations in my head. We sit at a bar over pints. I conjure his smile and laugh. I conjure his pauses, his puns.

He will be with me in my thoughts.

---

Agency. Choice. Who we are, and what we become. The unity of rights and responsibilities. Kindness. Gratitude. Respect. Trust. We discussed and distilled so much of life, over so many years, the process deepening our capacity to live.

He and Pat modeled a thriving marriage, a major ingredient in making possible my second, thriving, marriage.

Honest and vulnerable conversations shape who we are. When we listen, we choose, and we change. The ephemeral byproduct of such conversation is a debt to identity. When we can say I would not be fully who I am without my friend, we have a true friend. Andy was my true friend, and I am diminished by his loss.

---

Last Fall, at his 60th birthday, Pat hired a bagpiper. Andy was pleased as punch. Today, I asked the same bagpiper to come back for his memorial gathering. I asked him to play Amazing Grace.

We will toast his life with uisge beatha, or whisky, around a bonfire, and mourn the loss of water and fire in the lives of all his friends.

8: My Grandmother's Grandfather Clock

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.

Until three days ago, I had not heard the chimes of my grandmother's grandfather clock in 30 years.

Objects come. They go. Some endure. Some come back.

Those chimes brought back so much I had not thought of in years, perhaps forgotten -- a flood of my grandmother's sweetness and light. Her home. Those moments growing up.

Bong bong bong bong... The Big Ben chimes.

My grandmother Aileen lived on the second floor of a split-level on Murray Ave in Milwaukee, about a mile from my house. She taught home economics classes, mostly at night, at the local community college, starting in the 1930's and only retiring in the late 1980's. In her spare time she loved to make decoupage: lamps, wood purses, wall art, and much more. When she was younger, she would give whistling concerts and slide show presentations on her travels in the local high school auditorium. She cooked big dinners for our family, always an enormous Thanksgiving turkey, a ham at Christmas, with all the trimmings and special desserts. She had her hair done twice a month, sometimes with a blue rinse. Lavender and purple were her favorite colors, and she enjoyed wearing a fancy hat. Strangers on the street would compliment her hats, and the ensuing conversations could last an hour or more. She drove a '71 red convertible Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. She had a favorite 78 rpm record of zither music that she would ask me to play on her phonograph, because she wasn't sure how. My grandmother Aileen was very kind and sweet, and I loved her much. She seemed to enjoy her time with me. I have very fond memories of her and deep gratitude for how she cared for me as a child.

Bong bong bong bong...

My step-grandfather Harvey was blind, and mostly listened to baseball on the radio, drinking bourbon on the rocks, smoking his pipe and sitting in his comfy chair by the fireplace. I found him scary, even though he had the most gentle laugh. He would tell stories about his work that I couldn't understand. He died when I was 7, so I never got to know him well. Grandmother Aileen loved him much, and once told me, when I was older, that he was fantastic in bed.

Bong bong bong bong...

Growing up, I spent many weekends with my grandmother. We would go the park, or to the Domes, or to the zoo. I'd help her cook in the kitchen, and with the household chores. She made the best chicken liver sandwiches. I'd sleep in the guest bedroom, where Harvey had slept. There were bird prints on the wall, and a chest of drawers that held his bow ties and medals from the Second World War. The whole house had white wall-to-wall carpeting, so I ran everywhere in my socks, a big treat. She liked Louis XIV furniture, and had a bombe dresser in her bedroom that she decoupaged with Fragonard ladies on swings. In the hallway between her bedroom and the bathroom was a tall clock that would chime on the quarter hours. I'd sing along with it "bong bong bong bong". She told me they were the "Big Ben tones," from a clock in England. I imagined Big Ben as a clock about the same size, though fancier.

Bong bong bong bong...

For you, it might be smells that trigger memories, or the smells that return with memories. For me it's sounds. The ticking of the grandfather clock when I lay awake in bed. The gentle chimes every quarter hour. They somehow embody my grandmother's apartment and that golden time with her.  

My grandmother had an expert tune and lubricate the clock every year. It was special to her, for it came from her father's house, and she grew up listening to the chimes. My mother did as well. She told me she once tried to open the case with a knife, and got in big trouble. I looked and found some tiny scratches. So strange to think that my mother, now in her 80's, made them when she was a small child. And now it is in my living room in Chicago, chiming as I write this.

My children did not grow up with it. The clock had a long hiatus between the death of my grandmother in the early 90's and today. In retrospect, it is a miracle that the clock survived, and in working order.

In her later years, the clock fell into disrepair and stopped running. Some friend or visitor had scrambled the order of the hammers by bending their supports. Perhaps it was a drunken prank to hear the chimes backwards. Or a family member who couldn't take the endless chiming any more. It was hard to say, and she didn't get it fixed. My grandmother had became senile and forgetful. I delayed graduate school and stayed with her over a summer trying to help; but in the end, my mother put her in an institution, and she died two years later. I don't remember hearing the clock over that summer.

My grandmother left the clock to my mother, but she didn't want it, so I disassembled the clock and moved it my home in Connecticut. It was too tall to fit under the low ceilings of my home. So it went to my father's house, where there was room. As was his way with things, as soon as the clock was in his house, it became his. The prospect of repairing it was tricky. It involved negotiating comments about the potential "racket" it would make if it ran. It involved accessing his house (by negotiated appointment, which usually took a few phone calls). It involved learning about clocks I didn't understand well. And it would likely involve money that I didn't have. As I was the only one would would likely enjoy it, and I didn't live at my dad's place, or even visit often, I gave up. It stood, partially assembled, in his damp and moldy living room, silent, for 25 years. 

On his death, my father gave the clock to my step-mother. Thankfully, she did not seem to want it, or want to sell it, and told me I should take it. I put the parts in my car and drove them to Chicago, where, thankfully, the 9 ft. ceilings could accommodate its 7' 7" height.

I found a book online about cleaning and repairing old clocks. I read a few pages. I learned a few things. I reassembled the clock, cleaned it, lubricated it, untangled the twisted chime hammers, tested and adjusted them. Then I swung the pendulum. To my surprise, it worked. It worked well. The clock has run well for three days, bringing back so much joy in old memories.

This old clock conjures precious memories that no one can take from me. The clock is not precious in itself except were I to embed my memories in it. I am glad to have the clock again, but only because it brings back what I had forgotten about my grandmother. I expect my kids will, when I die, sell it, for it is meaningless to them. Or perhaps they will visit often, and hear the chimes, and associate good times with their dad with the chimes. Or maybe their kids will. Then they might want to keep it. Or not, as it really needs a big room and a family of heavy sleepers.

 

Happy Birthday, Ana Stelline.

Happy Birthday Ana.

It's virtual turtles, all the way down, for you. As for us.

 

You were born today, a fictional character in an alternate universe. As with all artistic creations, you and your character's life are resonant with meaning. And most delightfully, your character is about just that--being an artistic creation, or not, which is the essential human question. Did God make us, or are we the product of an unintentional evolution?

In Blade Runner 2049, we have already seen the first part of your life. Like your parents, you do not know who you are. At the end of the film, you appear to be on the verge of learning who your father is, that your mother was a Replicant, and that your father may be one as well. How will you react to this clarity of identity? And what will it mean to you? We do not find out.

Your profession is to create "realistic" memories, so we know you are filled with them and the lives they represent. You are human, but live trapped(?) in a virtual world because of your immunodeficiency. You seem perceptive, innocent and wise. We have seen you cry before, so we know you are capable of strong emotions. And you seem nothing like Replicant K, the emotionless hollow center of the film, who also does not know what he is. He was not born, but you were. Is that the difference--that because you were born, you have a soul? Or are you different at all?

Whether Denis Villeneuve's s artistic depiction is successful or not, we can step back and find a lovely symmetry -- for we do know that every aspect of your character is meaningful, as each attribute was consciously created, just as you consciously create the memories of Replicants. Within a fictional universe, you live in a bubble of virtual environments, work as an artist of virtual life, created by Replicant parents of virtual life, but you think you are human and real, until you discover that .... the turtle's backs that your turtle's backs stand on are virtual as well, all the way down.

 

How can it not know what it is?

But what is it?

Deckard asks this about the Replicant Rachel in the original film; but this is more of a human question.

Rachel can find out what she is. Her innocence can be replaced with knowledge. Humans can never be sure of who we are or what we mean. We've been trying for millennia, and have yet to reach a consensus.

We might have been created by an omnipotent God. Or by the accidents of evolution. Or designed by Aliens. (We also may be figments of alien imaginations moving through a virtual reality, created by them....) While many of us believe one answer or another, Humanity does not have a universal consensus. A Replicant that knows it is a Replicant has perfect clarity on what it is, and who created it, within its fictional universe.

We humans sure would love to know. So we watch movies about this question and wonder through them.

The key power of a fictional universe is that it was entirely created by a human consciousness. Every part of it was put there for a reason by the artist. All lives have five acts and a death that means something. Only a Human who believes in a religion can say this is true of his or her life. As to religion, we turn to fiction for answers and meaning that we cannot find in reality. We turn to fiction because we doubt the apparent meaning of our lives. Do we matter? And to whom and what? What does it mean when a child commits suicide? Or a father abandons a child so that it may live? Why were we even born in the first place?

We love to know that there are answers out there. That maybe life could be like fiction.

 

I want more life, father.

In the first film, Roy Batty has the singular experience of getting to meet his maker.

What would any of us humans do, were we to meet our maker? What would we ask? Roy has the distinct advantage over every human by knowing who his maker is, and his address. I'm not sure humanity would know what to ask, because we mostly don't know who to ask.

Would we want more of the same, as Roy does? Or something better? Or simply an explanation?

In the final scene of Blade Runner 2049, Ana Stelline meets one of her makers, her father. But we do not see what questions she asks him. Perhaps she will ask who or what made her father.

It's the key question of the film.

And the answer is... the credits roll.

Too much like life.

That aspect of this film -- finding voids where we really want answers -- has been criticized. It's terribly unsatisfying. Like never getting to see the monster. But it is the film's core takeaway, poking at our need for meaning and purpose and denying it in a particularly meaningful way.

Replicant K is the expressionless and apparently emotionally hollow protagonist at the center of the movie. We first see him become convinced he was born, and thereby think his life has meaning. Then we see him lose that meaning and become hollow again. A moment with an advertisement for Joi, his truly hollow fiction of a meaningful relationship, he chooses a path to create real meaning and purpose, for himself, by connecting a father and a daughter. K chooses to enable the real love of a father for his daughter over his ephemeral joy. It is no accident that Luv crushes Joi in an earlier scene.

The conscious, intentional choice to fill the voids in our lives and hearts is the meaningful undercurrent of this rather bleak but beautiful film. We may all weave virtual fictions, as Ana does, to give our realities the purpose that their existence asks.

K's sacrifice, so that Rick and Ana can be together, is how he fills his void.

Our voids?

Ana Stelline, the fictional weaver of fictional memories for fictional people, who lives in a virtual bubble, helps us humans, living in meaning-vague reality realize that we all must write our own stories -- if not by choice, then through ignorance of who or what we are.

 

I know what is real.

So the older Deckard claims.

An Architecture of Thriving Life

 

Chances are that you live in an apartment or a house, and not a grass hut, right? Please tell me why.

It must be a disgust with dirt floors. Or lack of screens on the windows. Maybe an issue of the absence of hot and cold running water. Or indoor bathroom.

You prefer flat wood floors, plaster walls, brick exteriors, shingled roofs, and the rain-free, bug-free, relatively dirt-free interiors they produce.

Nearly every culture loves nature -- walking through forests and fields, even camping in it. But we love our homes and the comforts they offer better. And essentially what a home offers is an escape from the natural world and all its, er, discomforts. Such as disease.

On Monday I start classes at IIT. I've already tried to start trouble by asking my studio professor "Why do we love the straight line? The flat surface? Why do we live in boxes? And because she doesn't know me well, I got a polite response. Euclid, and by inference, the whole kit and kaboodle of the foundations of Western Civilization are apparently responsible.

Well. That's a mountain to thought to consider. We live in rectilinear boxes and not grass huts because of an ancient toga-wearing dude curious to distill mathematical truths out of the natural world and drive them into the practice of conscious human choice. Fair enough. Plane geometry is fascinating stuff. If the Pythagorean theorem doesn't blow your mind, it should. It's truly mystical shit. Maybe all things really are numbers. Ones and zeros and the virtual realities they create today certain suggest as much, if you toss Baudrillard into the mix. Let's sit down over beers and discuss.

When did we decide to apply those mathematical truths to our daily lives by entrusting our buildings to their mystical truths? I dunno. That's why I'm going to architecture school.

But to read Vitruvius, it seems pretty obvious:

 

Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members, as in the case of those of a well shaped man.

 

It was a long time ago. Those Greeks did it in their temples. So many cool proportions! symmetries! And we can find them in the body too! But to my mind (here I play my hand), they seem like the connections of conspiracy theories. Or astrology. Or the Great Chain of Being. These can be beautiful (or sinister) understandings of the connections and between all things, but as a basis for living well, leave something to be desired. 

 

The building comes back to the body, and the body comes back to the mystical truths of numbers. Leonardo puts his Vitruvian man into a square inside a circle. 

 

Cool!

 

This is why we live in box-shaped rooms in box-shaped apartments stacked on top of other box-shaped apartments in the modern apartment building (receiving things in cardboard Amazon boxes from box trucks and box stores). It's all very economical and speaks to our bodies.

 

Mystical numbers and shapes--a form of astrology-- still rules architecture to this day. The purity of the line...

 

We need an architecture of the proportions of mankind’s living and based on mankind’s thriving -- not on who we imagine we are in a numerical way, but on what we do.

 

If I have Euclid's theorems in my head, then perhaps I can appreciate the aesthetic triumphs of the last 3000 years of Western architecture better than someone who does not. But if I don't all I see is the door handle I can't find, the step I trip on, the fucking cold granite countertop that I hate to touch in winter. Neanderthal me rebels.

 

An architecture based on the the proportions of living and thriving, not on abstract natural truth? What would that look like, and has anyone tried it before? I dunno. This is why I'm going to architecture school. This is my burning question. 

 

I will be sad to find only hippies living in sod homes as an answer. I don't like disease. I much enjoy hot and cold running water. Euclid has brought us much. 

 

But so did the Great Chain of Being.

 

Let us be thankful and move on. What is next? What can be the true science of designing buildings that are better than what we have? Do more for us? Make us happier? Allow us to thrive in ways that we can't imagine yet?

 

What could a 20th century doctor say to an Elizabethan era doctor to convince them that the theory of four humors, black and green bile etc.) was helpful, but actually the germ theory has proved more effective in understanding and preventing disease?

 

What could a 24th-century architect say to a Modernist today, who believes in the purity of the line, that Less is More, that glass and light are everything, and that there is another architecture that is better?

 

An architecture based on the proportions of our living, not the distilled mathematical truths of our bodies, seems worthwhile exploring.

 

What do humans do? We work and create. We build and make. We make families and live together. We play. We teach. We eat. We sleep. We crave company. We crave solitude. We argue. We fight. Oh golly, the list is too long.

 

We have grown into the economies of the straight line and flat surface. They have shaped our souls in good and bad ways. We can grow beyond them, though. To what? I don't know. Perhaps new technologies will break the economic advantages of the straight, flat and square, and give us other shapes we like better. Or not. Perhaps we will discover in 400 years, that we really still do love geometrical purity as the greatest magical ward against the horror of death, as the best way to keep (bacterial, viral, savage) life out of our dwellings to keep us safe. Those white walls and ceilings were the merest speck of dirt is visible fifty feet away. Those flat floors that reveal themselves entirely unlike a rocky hilltop where snakes hide, or undulating grassy plains where wild beasts lurk.

 

Then again, the enemies lurk within. We have more gut bacteria than human dna cells in our bodies. But we are omnibuses of life already. To live we need life. We just want to get the best of it. I'm on that page. No commune living in a peat hut for me, especially in Covid times.

 

An architecture based on the proportions of our living. OUR living. I remain fascinated by the basic structure of one person (an architect) designing a building for another person (client, class of people, what have you).

BUT

"Nothing about us, without us, is for us."

Our built environments are all about who we are and who we want to be, not just as architects, engineers, interior designers, tradesmen, and clients, but mainly the people who simply use them knowing nothing else about them. I heard this phrase from Maurice Cox concerning the rebuilding of Chicago.

Is there a way to hear every voice, our collected conscious, unconscious and as-yet-unimagined desires and needs for our created environments—then incorporate them in the design? Such a childlike question.

Can architectural design be so democratized as to include the real (not imagined) desires of the people who use them?

The art of listening would be key to this direction, but not of the words. I have yet to meet a furniture client who can articulate precisely what they want, their real desires. Watching how they live helps toward a better understanding, but is also incomplete. I imagine cities beyond stacked rectangular boxes, beyond grids, beyond and better. What of our ancient wild lives in forests and fields prepares human experience for environments based on the distilled concepts of abstract geometry? What have we gained? What have we lost? What do we risk? What can we reclaim from the compromises our materials and limited technologies have imposed on our living?

On Monday, I begin the job of finding out, testing my straw men (straw people), finding out who has solved these problems before, and then charting a contribution.

The Unknown Architect

About a month ago, while lying in a tent in Montana, listening to wind through cottonwood and maple, a train rumbling in the distance, a particular thought wandered into my head and sat down.

It said: “What are the things that you have refused to let yourself desire?”

And in that quiet moment, I didn’t laugh at the playful fortune-cookie language, or give the thought a joke-answer involving porn, or comment that it’s a good question at heart and I should think about it seriously. Instead, I let it stay. Then I answered it:

“To practice architecture.”

The simplicity and crystal clarity of the thought was a gut punch. Of course I do. And have for a long time.

I love furniture. I love teaching. I love writing. I’ll never fully leave them. But now I will pursue the study, then the practice, of architecture. (For the necessary credentials, I’ve been accepted to an M Arch program and can start next month, provided I can secure the funding to pay for it. If not, I will take my resume and hunt for a job in the profession, aim for a guerilla education, and leave the M Arch for later.)

In fairness, I had not answered the question properly. Nothing had been denied. Architecture has been an amateur interest all my life, and I’ve worked at its periphery. I have simply chosen other professional interests before it.

What I had denied was the possibility of doing anything else with my life. What you do is good, so keep doing it. If you enjoy it, why change? You’re 53 years old. It’s time to slow down and think about fishing in those lovely Montana mountain streams….

Yes, but...

One advantage to reading is that some singularly beautiful, seeking minds have captured complex insights into human nature, and set them down with simplicity and clarity. These thoughts are not available anywhere else, so not to read them risks the possibility of not knowing them, unless we come up with them ourselves. Tennyson’s “Ulysses” is one such insight into the restless spirit that drives us. It ends:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

It’s the last four verbs that strike me to the core. Four intertwined actions. This is the spirit of all life, not just old age raging against the dying of the light. Their renewal at every age is key to just that: living. (And architecture is all about living. Or should be. But more of that anon.)

Our fate is certainly guided, but not determined, by what we have done and who we have been. My furniture work is not alien to architecture, and a rather good foundation. Each step can be away from the past, or to confirm it. It really is our choice, though a choice embedded in kairos, not kronos. I could not have made this transition earlier. I don’t want to wait to do it later.

Eventually, I should sit down and consider my original question, if there is anything I’ve denied myself to desire, and if so, why, etc. But asking the question, I found, was quite helpful. Again, it is always the questions that have value, and rarely the answers.

When you listen to the wind (available to us all, I hope, who live above ground), what questions find their way in? Which ones do you let sit down and stay a while? Which ones inspire new and better questions? I let an unknown architect wander into my head and sit down. Who will you let in?

--

This is a time of the most powerful public debates that I can recall in my lifetime -- whether we want to continue tolerating a society that divides and prefers on the basis of race, or imagine and develop an intentional community of all humans in America, whether we want to smash the rule of law and government by the people for the people in favor of membership on, tenuous, populist political teams, whether we want to discount the benefits of rational science in favor of emotional needs, and what we truly owe our neighbors. An old friend has a saying of all crisis: that our situation is critical, but not serious. Gloria Gaynor might also be helpful: we will survive. Let's keep building the future.

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.

---

 

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.

---

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.

---

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.