Just between us.
For reasons I can't explain, I reached a point where in a moment of total uncertainty and hopelessness in understanding what is to come next, even if I finished everything I was working on tomorrow and got paid the money to feed my family for a lifetime, I chose to let go of everything and found myself in the woodshop carving a 125lb piece of cypress early this morning.
I can't not sculpt. It's as much a part of life as loving, sleeping, engineering, breathing, or being a dad. When I don't sculpt, I feel like I am dying. I wake up in the morning with a layer of anxiety for all the energy I can't express. The sinews of my muscles pulse with emotions blocking me from the depths of my inner core. The energy relegates me to a common human animal foraging for something to conceal my lacking and want.
In the shop, I become an extension of an energy manifesting itself into form. My mind looks for the shape it wants to create, but it goes insane, and leaves me holding nothing but the connection I have with the environment around me. The shape, no matter what I want it to be, reveals itself on its own, and I am only a midwife for its birth. My fingers become a chainsaw blade on a hand grinder, spinning at 11,000 rpm.
This morning, I let go, and a familiar form emerged. It will probably weigh around 85lbs when it is complete, and I look forward to seeing it glow with energy from the 80 years of sunlight that brought it to fruition in Golden Gate park.
I can't not sculpt. I tried. Every time I do, I start dying. When I do, I come back to life.
