"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." - Dian Ackerman
This has been a week of reflection with our daughter home from school, sick for four days (sigh). That makes for one crazy week in the Micek household. So much going on, yet only in short, fragmented sections of time. Forget any hope of routine, although I'm not sure we have much of that in any normal week.
This week was also the anniversary of my grandmother's passing... now she was a lady who lived the WIDTH of her life. One of the things that kept my grandmother young, even into her nineties, was she always believed you needed something to look forward to, which nudged me to rifle through old sketch books reflecting on the past and encouraging future projects. I happened upon a sketch of this vessel and hence finally created after sketching over seven years ago.
It is turned from an oak burl. The wood was destined to rot away, but instead defies beauty and has a supple grain swirl against the worm holes. It's a piece that has simple lines so as not to overpower the character of the wood. What I love about this piece is that it is true, organic. It just is.
And speaking of growing WIDTH, I had an arrival of almost ninety board feet of walnut to the workshop. This walnut is destined to become a dining room table. The upcoming project energizes me on so many levels. Not only is it planned to be a cornerstone for our dear friend's new home, it's also a table. I love making tables as they bring people together and so much happy happens around them. It's a place where time seems to slow down and people relish in the idea of gathering.
And the excitement (errr, WIDTH) continues this week as I had the privilege of spending the entire day with a good friend of mine, Kevin Marlow, who is the visionary behind my first MicekMade video (squeal). May not be Oscar-worthy performance from me, but oh how the thought of it makes my heart pitter-patter.
As we enter a new week, this quote along with the one above resonates... "The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." - John Ruskin
What will you become?