Nuts and Bolts
The nuts and bolts of things are what hold everything together. This hardware keeps our stuff, our machines and devices held tight. The threads and heads and surfaces and planes and angles that keep our world from falling apart, from shaking asunder, from vibrating loose. Iron and steel and brass threads made of inclined planes and wedges that tighten up with purpose but seem to loosen for no good reason. These bolts and nuts that mate together like pepper and salt, like crackers and cheese, like a summer tonic and vodka.
Nuts and bolts hold our center inside us together too. These underpinnings, our beliefs are what get us up each day to proclaim with our efforts, Yep, life is still worth living. It is still worth it to get to a bench.
And the work that we do some days at this bench, when we get down to the heart of the matter, this work is hard to do. It requires fortitude because we have to face heartbreak and failure and just plain stupidity. Why did I just do that? I ask myself aloud. And Myself has no reasonable answer. Because I made a mistake, I squeak out. Not good enough. Now I have to fix this, mumble, grumble. . . whatever it may be.
We have to face this constant failure and a two day job, on the face of it, just two days to build these doors gets stretched out into four days because of flow in the shop and my mood when I walk in and I’m not ready to build just right after lunch. I’m tentative and fat. My brain is slow and torpid. I want to nap, again. Where did I put my ruler? Where did I put my brain? Four days can go by fast and you’re still getting ready to begin this hard work.
And this is also the reason that we do this stuff. Because it is hard, because it is something that takes skills that I am still learning as I try to do this job. It is not something that I learned just over one weekend. Once through the door of this craft, the world opens up into a very large place.
We go down on one knee to look through the keyhole to peer inside at this craft and it seems so small but it’s our point of view that is small, not what’s on the other side of the door. It’s our POV that is tiny. We can’t see it all from where we kneel in ignorance. Our vision has blinders simply because of how we make our first encounter. And then we may, depending on our sense of pride or maybe self-image, we may say, Yep I know this stuff now. I have spent two months doing it. I know what’s going on. Hitch up those big boy britches and wipe our nose with the back of our hand. Yep.
Now open the door up and all of a sudden we see what a large room we have stepped into. What a majesty of place, what a pantheon of knowledge lives here. It is humbling to realize this. The person who stuck his eyeball on that keyhole had no idea where or what she was stepping into. But once inside the door, he has to sit back and be properly put in place. Wow.
But this place, that is hard to be in, is much the same as the place we are at in the midst of this current state of affairs. Everyone feels lonely even if you have people around you. Everyone is depressed because there is no roar of the greasepaint or smell of the crowd. We have become used to our loneliness and the roar of politics does nothing to comfort.
You are not alone feeling depressed by all this sorrow and animosity towards science/ climate change and peace and forgiveness for wanting a better life. You are not alone in feeling alone, not sure of what is right even though you may be doing everything right.
Here’s my advice, to myself. Get your nuts and bolts straight, lined up, tightened. Don’t get distracted by another job twiddling its fingers at you. Go straight for what you started for. Distraction is your enemy these days because we don’t want to think about how truly scary the world has become.
Pick your battles, decide what it is you want, and then focus on the job until you get there. It won’t look exactly as planned but it will be close. And a far sight closer since it’s actually complete than if you sat for another day and stared out the window wondering why a screw seems loose.