mastercraftsman

I think most people would seek therapy if they heard the voices I hear. I choose instead to embrace my madness, harness it and seek it out when I need spiritual guidance....
I may never know true love but I know that VOICE. She whispered to me a few weeks ago. A pleading in my spine. Where are you? Here. Help me, I can't see you.... I was skipping out the doors on a wonderful Friday afternoon wishing people a happy weekend, looking forward to fishing the coast near Wilmington, when I was caught off guard. A sniffle, a girl crying. Where are you? I tried to channel that voice and closed my eyes, searching my soul. It was faint, coming from the rubble in the dumpster. I carefully eyed the day's scraps. There. A crotch slab of Honduran Mahogany, disfigured and cracked in a swirl of turmoil; the heavy, brittle, and gnarly unworkable stump lay naked in all her glory in a pile of sawdust and cutoffs. Please, help me....
There was no denying that painstricken, choked up voice. Don't let me rot away into obscurity. I have endured hundreds of years. Disease and drought. Everyone always thought I was too ugly. Even now. I want to be beatiful, to be admired... I saw in her growth rings a struggle about forty years ago, growing maybe a millimeter a year. The diseases had given her the most extraordinary colors. Don't worry baby, I got you.... I heaved her over my shoulder and took her home. We talked about what she wanted to be. She wanted to stand up on her tippy toes, like a ballerina. She wanted to be useful and needed, not some trinket merely to be looked at. She wanted to be lovingly polished from time to time. I let her natural curves determine her destiny. No CAD drawings from achitects, no blueprints, no chickenscratch sketches or magazine clippings from rich clients. I worked from my heart, a labor of love.
She's now a simple table, to hold drinks or books or candles. And she's mine. Some of my children are born of their own free will, not merely built....