Meditations on "Order"

When I look around my shop, I generally see "aftermath". Chaos is the wake of my creative process. I'm far too in-the-moment to place a piece of sandpaper back into the drawer where it is normally kept. It goes on the table. So do the tools I use. There is dust and dirt everywhere.

After a while, though, this sense of overwhelm creeps in and it casts a long shadow over my creativity. I usually have to stop, assess, and rebuild from the destruction before I can continue to create again. I must have a certain amount of order, even if I do thrive in agile environments.

The pressure of maintaining order, I have always personally felt, detracts from the ability to be in the moment. If the only way to truly relax is to have everything in order, I doubt there would be much time for relaxation. Then again, the abundance of disorder can also trigger tension. I feel it when I look in the back yard and I see patches of tall grass, cardboard that hasn't been put in the recycling, the trailer loaded with junk that I haven't taken to the dump yet, countless "almost" finished projects. Thoughts like these can sit in the back of my mind as a constant pressure. 

I don't know how normal people maintain order and have time for anything else. Folks with clean yards and basements, especially folks that have kids and still manage to pull this feat off. Does the order give them peace or is it a haunting expectation they press upon themselves?

"Order", to me, seems to define most accurately a state of control, of predictability. You can argue that "cleanliness is next to godliness" but I think it goes deeper than that. Then again, godliness is ultimate control. Isn't that what makes a god godly?

Control is an important instinct. It's the ultimate tool in the survivalist tool chest. When we can control our surroundings - take dominion over them - we gain a certain clarity. We can see just a little bit farther out in time. We can more readily construct a plan. What I'm saying is there would appear to be an evolutionary reason why we don't feel comfortable in a state of disarray.

The deeper you go down this path, you begin to gradiate into the spectrum of OCD. There's rational order for the sake of optimal performance, and then there's order as an unattainable objective that stands between you and any peace at all. It is a compulsion, not reason, that drives us to push the boulder up the hill. It feels like we're doing something to combat this nagging underlying sense of smallness - the whispering existential dread that we will never control the depth and breadth of being, of decay, of finality.

But if we are clean, we benefit by being less sick. If our grass is regularly cut, we are at less risk of snake bites. If our houses are organized, we give off the image to others of reliability and safety. The evolutionary benefit of controlling our environment doesn't work to the extent that it filters out the inner anxiety that abuses us into a state of perceived perfection. 

So, for now, I'll say "no" to those tasks that aren't directly impacting my safety or well-being. I'd rather have the time to expand out into the world around me now than wait until I've calculated and addressed every risk. To accept my smallness, my decay, my finality... This is the balance between chaos and order where I will strive to exist.

Entry 2: Integral Handle

6/24/20 - The recent failure with the handle on the damascus sgian dubh left me frustrated. I usually have solid success with walnut, but the particular block I chose had hairline cracks all the way through that were exacerbated by the sanding process and ultimately chipped away. So for the canister damascus dagger handle, I poured over my inventory not really feeling particularly chipper about using wood, but that's all I really have, so...

I pulled a block of white oak out of the mix - nice and heavy with no cracking, when I suddenly remembered the bucket of cow bones Gid and his friend Donnie found while hiking through the woods. Initially, I thought I could at least use a segment of the bone in the handle - blend it together with wood. Maybe slip a brass spacer in between. But as I was looking through the pile, I noticed a section of rib that tapered down to a straight and thick enough portion that maybe, just maybe, I could fashion into an integral handle.

I sized up the blade handle to the bone and then began drilling out the porous material inside. I believe this is called the endosteum? The drill press got about as deep as it could go so I began holding the bone and reaming out the opening as best I could against the spinning bit.

At this point, the knife handle could only go about an inch deep. I had a good 4.5 inches to contend with, so I took the handle over to the belt grinder to take off mass from the sides as well as narrow down on the taper out to the end.

This gained me about another inch, but now the issue appeared to be related to the curve of the bone. To solve this, I put the knife in the vise horizontally and on its edge. Taking my map torch, I heated the end of the handle up to a glowing heat, keeping an eye on the steel coloration toward the blade to ensure that the blade end didn't loose tempering. I then took my needle nose pliers and began gently curving the end of the handle to match that of the interior of the bone.

While the handle was still relatively hot, I began jamming it into the bone to burn out more of the interior that I couldn't reach with a bit or file. The smell was... well - burnt hair and steak?

Now I'm at 3 inches. 1.5 inches to go. I took the blade handle back to the belt grinder with the idea that I could file the end of the handle down to a sharp scratching head. I also removed slightly more mass along the edges. Now, with the pointed end, I was able to insert the knife handle in and scratch out material around the elbow of the curve. A few minutes of this and I was able to snug the blade down to the aluminum-bronze bolster I cast.

At present, there is a bit of a hairline unevenness between the bolster and bone and I haven't quite figured out how I want to address it. The most attractive option presently would be to use a slice of leather between the bolster and bone. This would serve as both a cushion to absorb shock from a stab in addition to sealing up gaps from uneven surfaces.

The bolster, however, does still require some work to flatten. I may address this with a rasp as the belt grinder, even with the platen attachment, seems a bit to wily to control on such a small piece.

Entry 1: Hegel and Craft

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's work "Phenomenology of Spirit", or at least the little of what I was able to comprehend of the first few incredibly dry chapters, had a heavy impact on my perspectives concerning interest and learning.

The work, in part, dives into the methodology behind knowing and understanding, emphasizing the importance of of suppressing the ego and opening one's self up to the full experience of the external object/idea of focus. He encourages his readers through the often aggravating process of development - the hardships are often necessary in achieving not only a more full understanding of the external but also, self discovery as a byproduct of the endeavor..

This is ultimately why I invest so much time in craft and why I don't weigh the process down with expectations of financial profit. I am interested in more than just an end-product in and of itself. My interest is in what the end-product represents - the degree to which I have mastered my ego. In so doing, I am exploring and defining my existence as a being inside of a system of external objective truths. In an age largely ruled by subjectivity, this is my personal means to an existential, non self-loathing, compass.

A few excerpts underscored with my personal takeaway:

"Just as little as a building is finished when its foundation has been laid, so little is the achieved Notion of the whole the whole itself. When we wish to see an oak with its massive trunk and spreading branches and foliage, we are not content to be shown an acorn instead. So too, Science, the crown of a world of Spirit, is not complete in its beginnings. The onset of the new spirit is the product of a widespread upheaval in various forms of culture, the prize at the end of a complicated, tortuous path and of just as variegated and strenuous effort." (paragraph 12.)

I like that. You don't judge an oak tree by its acorn. Oak tree is the result of a long and involved process. So, too, is the understanding of any craft - the basis of any skill set.

"The goal is Spirit's insight into what knowing is. Impatience demands the impossible, to wit, the attainment of the end without the means. But the length of this path has to be endured, because, for one thing, each moment is necessary; and further, each moment has to be lingered over, because each is itself a complete individual shape, and one is only viewed in absolute perspective when its determinateness is regarded as a concrete whole, or the whole is regarded as uniquely qualified by that determination." (paragraph 29.)

Skipping over the frustrating or hard parts of a process is cheating yourself of the fullness of the knowledge of a thing. Further, it is a blatant disrespect of the object of interest in favor that the ego should be satisfied. The ego does not offer a path to, but away from, true craftsmanship.

"Since consciousness thus finds that its knowledge does not correspond to its object, the object itself does not stand the test; in other words, the criterion for testing is altered when that for which it was to have been the criterion fails to pass the test; and the testing is not only a testing of what we know, but also a testing of the criterion of what knowing is. (paragraph 85.)

Knowing a thing is meaningless unless you first ponder the question as to what "knowing" itself means. Truly knowing something to me seems like an unattainable goal. There is, of course, a state of possessing sufficient knowledge of a thing - a knowledge which competes or dominates the knowledge possessed by others, but this isn't to be confused with complete knowledge. In most people, this idea of sufficiency is a byproduct of the ego which I understand to be the death of learning.

"Consequently, we do not need to import criteria, or to make use of our own bright ideas and thoughts during the course of the inquiry; it is precisely when we leave these aside that we succeed in contemplating the matter in hand as it is in and for itself." (paragraph 84.)

Again, ego detracts from understanding. Understanding, however, can and often does refine ego.

"But the life of Spirit is no the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself." (paragraph 32.) 

Don't shy away from the hard lessons or failures. They are essential to a full understanding of a thing. I believe somewhere buried in the text, Hegel mentions that the knowledge of what something isn't is as important to a full understanding as what a thing is. In this perspective, there is great value in leaning into a mistake or failure to appreciate the understanding of that experience as a method of better defining the metaphysical ideal. That's not to say a repeated mistake or failure shouldn't be purely frustrating. A repeated failure is symptomatic of ego placed over understanding.