The Plane and the Patience
Shavings on a bench, a tool put down mid-thought, and why making is mostly the part between the cuts.
Left where the hand stopped
The plane is not posed. I set it on its side when the edge of the board went from whisper to tear, and I have not picked it up again. The chisel points toward the window, which is an accident of putting down. The hammer is there because a nail in the window frame annoyed me on the way in, and then did not annoy me enough.
Shavings curl across the bench like the notes I do not take. They hold the last pass of the blade. If I sweep them now I will forget how the wood was behaving, and I am not ready to forget that yet.
The time between cuts
People who do not make things imagine the pleasure is the stroke. The stroke is two seconds. The rest is looking, squinting, deciding the board is not ready, walking to the kettle, and coming back as if the board might have improved its character in your absence. It has not. You have.
Patience is not a virtue I brought to the bench. It is a mess the bench makes of my hurry.
Returning
Tomorrow the iron will want honing and the shavings will have gone dull. I will sweep then. Tonight the tools can stay in the arrangement of a thought that is not finished, which is the only honest portrait of the work I know how to leave.
