Of Birthdays and Crosses

Posted on 01/26/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

Yesterday was my birthday.  It was a good day, but I am happy it’s over.  I just get too many weird thoughts on my birthday.  One of the first that comes to mind is my father saying to me, on every of his birthdays, “What’s this young kid doing looking out of this old face?”

Father’s been dead 13 years now and that still is one of my first thoughts on my birthday. I don’t clearly understand this strange duality that goes on in my head.  There is the realization that another year has gone by, and with that, the whole long list of things I had hoped to do but haven’t done.  About mid-day I was able to kick my brain into a better space and appreciate the fact that I am still alive.  I will admit that just after I received my diagnosis of cancer, I had a few dark weeks wondering if I’d make it this far.

Well, I have made it and now am in danger of living long enough to force my grand kids to pick my nursing home.  Life is good.

The cool thing I got to do on my birthday was to attend the marquetry’s club quarterly workshop.  I can’t think of a better way to spend a birthday that being in the workshop.  We made a box with marquetry on the top.  Here’s the one I made:

box with marquerty

Paperclip box. about 3 inch by 3 inch cube with marquetry top

box with marquetry top

Paperclip box with the top open

You’ll remember that a couple of weeks ago I listed some of the things I’d like to do this year.  Two were to do more marquetry and to sell a piece of my work.  Well, I did do a piece of marquetry last month for another box I am building.  No pictures of that today as it’s not ready to be seen by the world just yet.  I have a number of unfinished pieces that I plan to get completed soon.

I have one special piece that I plan to start working on that I want to tell you about.  It will be a piece that I will be offering for sale with the proceeds going to my church.  It’s a bit of a story so sit back and listen.

Long time readers of this blog will remember the fretwork cross I made two years ago, just after I finished radiation treatments.

Stand for fretwork crose

The cross on the stand

I made three altogether.  One I gave to a grandson and the other two are still in my house as I haven’t decided what to do with them.  I found the process of cutting this cross to be meditative and really helped focus my mind on something outside the problems my body was going through.  I’ve wanted to make another cross but haven’t made the time.

Well, I now have a motivation to make another one.  At our church there was this large and very old silver maple tree.  For a few years we’d been told that it was getting near its end of life and would need to be cut down.  It had been a fixture there for some 50 years and no one was rushing to take out the chainsaw.

Last summer the tree finally succumbed to its age and a major limb fell off.  We were fortunate that no one was under the tree at the time since the limb that fell likely weighed at least a ton.  That required the church to call out the tree crew and have the tree removed.  It was a sad loss of an old friend.

Our church has a number of very creative people, including a number of woodworkers.  Our resident wood turner, Jim, brought in members of his wood-turning club and they salvaged a large amount of wood from the old tree.  They took it away to dry and mill with the idea that we’d make stuff out of the wood for the church.

I did ask for some of the wood with the thought of making one cross from it.  Jim milled a number of pieces for me and they are now sitting in my shop.  They are now dry enough to cut and my work begins.

My thought was to make this project my Lenten project but Ash Wednesday is late this year, March 5th and I don’t think I want to wait that long to get started so next time I get into the shop I’ll start the long process of turning this raw wood into a fancy cross.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress – likely I’ll still be working on the thing when lent starts, but hope to finish before Easter.

When the cross is finished I am hoping to sell it at church along with some of the bowls and other things that are being made from the wood of our old tree.  Perhaps it will make a little money and I’ll have the satisfaction of having sold a piece of my art.

But just as likely, I’ll find the work itself to be the most rewarding.  It just amazes my mind that raw wood, fallen and salvaged can be turned into a beautiful work of art.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in General, Marquetry, Prostate Cancer, woodworking | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

Being a Writer

Posted on 01/19/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

It happened today.  I’ve been waiting for it to happen for a few months and today it did.  My blog has just passed 20,000 page views.  In internet terms that’s not much, but it’s more than I thought I’d ever have.  This will be my 170th post – more than I’d ever thought I’d write and officially I have over 100 followers of this blog.

When I was in high school I dreamt about being a science fiction writer.  I read most of the major writers of the 60’s and 70’s.  At one point I subscribed to four different science fiction magazines and read every page that was sent.  I bought books on how to write science fiction, attended conferences and talked to writers.  One thing I did very little of was actual writing.

Oh, there were a million excuses for not writing and frankly the few pieces I did write weren’t that good, but I will brag that I’ve been rejected by the very best science fiction magazines in the business.  Yup, the few short stories I wrote, I actually had the nerve to send to an editor.  And just as fast as the post office delivered my story, the rejection letter found its way back home.

I have to say that put me off writing for a very long time.

About 20 years ago I decided it was time to do something about my writing so I enrolled at the local community college with a mind towards completing a degree in English.  I figured that would be the best way to learn to write.  

One of my teachers said this, “What do writers do? They write.  If you aren’t writing, you aren’t a writer.  If you want to be a writer you have to write.”  She also noted that good writers also study the writing of others, to learn how to improve their own craft.

I did both but I’ll admit that I read far more than I wrote.  As I progressed through college and on to university I developed a taste for literary criticism.  That gave me the skill to view a piece of writing from many different view points and with many different lenses.  My teachers showed me some of the great works of literature and showed me hidden treasures in those old musty pages.

Delving into that vast realm of stories and human experience, I found new worlds – new ways to view the world.  And perhaps, just as you taste buds change and crave new foods as you grow older, I lost my taste for Sci-Fi and except for “Earth Abides” and a few Asimov books, I haven’t read Sci-Fi in years.

I let the magazine subscriptions expire and have not sought out the current writers of the Sci-Fi field.

I suppose it could be viewed as a loss – all those years of enjoyment.  All those dreams.  All that gone.

Perhaps.

But today I look at the body of work I have done.  The work I did to earn my degree, a few odd bits of poems, a couple of short stories and this blog.  

This blog.

This blog has done one thing that other writing hasn’t done for me – it’s kept me writing.  170 posts and I rarely miss a week.  True, it’s not going to set the world on fire or cause Hollywood agents to call wanting to buy the movie rights, but it is mine.

And for today, I’ll claim the title, “writer.”

You see, I write this funky little weekly blog that goes out to 100 subscribers.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Follow the Energy

Posted on 01/12/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

Last week I set out a few goals for myself and I’ve been working on the ones I can. “Find a new energy source for my writing,” is the one on my mind this week.  Cancer has been a driving force in my writing for the last couple of years.  I’ve also written about my woodworking, my life, vacations, my favorite book, the occasional poem and even the odd bit now and again on literary criticism.

I’ve always been surprised by what posts of mine other people like.  Last week’s post was one of the highest read posts I’ve written.  Other posts that get a lot of reads include my two posts on building a Murphy bed, my “first post again” about getting prostate cancer and interestingly, “What to Say to a Cancer Patient.”

I wonder why people liked those posts?  I am not sure it really matters, except that in writing class they keep drilling into your head, “think of your audience.” Well, basically that is good advice.  When writing, you need to consider your audience, and write for them.  So who is my audience?  Who do I write for?

If you read my “About” page, I boldly claim that I’ll write without regard to my readers.  Easy to say when you don’t have any readers.  But now, I know I have a few people who read my blog.  I get comments, friends send me emails and even one day at church a friend came up to me and said, “I liked your last blog.”

I might have to rewrite my “About” page since there are more than just me and Heather reading these posts and I do actually sometimes write about a subject that I think my blog followers might like.  So it turns out that I do care about what my blog readers think.

Mostly when I sit down to write, I just think of what’s been happening in the last week and start a stream of conscientiousness writing session.  Then I go back and edit what came out hoping it’s good enough to post.  Just after I started writing about my prostate cancer this was an easy way to write, since there was so much to write about.

The reason it was so easy is that it was such a powerful experience, words just formed themselves and hit my screen without much effort on my part – the event and words had an energy all their own.  Writing can be like that.  The problem comes when you don’t have that kind of powerful event in your life, or have something that you feel passionate about.  In that case, writing becomes more of a chore.  It involves more work – research, outlining, drafts, rewrites, more rewrites and final editing.  I’ve done that kind of writing and it doesn’t fit into the two hours I allow myself on a Sunday afternoon.

The place I find myself now is that strange place where things are mostly fine and the overall ‘angst’ level in my life is low.  I love my wife, have a nice house, a secure job – stressful and annoying but it pays well – and enough of a workshop to build a few things in.  Week in and week out, things are mostly in order and there are few high energy events, like a sudden illness to get excited about.

So, what to do? Here are a few things I’ve thought of:

  1. Have a major crisis in my life.
  2. Get passionate about something.
  3. Spend more time researching stuff.
  4. Ask my readers what they’d like to see me blog about.
  5. Solicit guest posts so I don’t have to write anything.
  6. Post more pictures.

Most likely, by the time next week rolls around, I’ll have forgotten all about this post and will end up writing about the new driveway we’re having built at the house.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in Prostate Cancer, Writing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Two Years

Posted on 01/05/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

It’s been two years.  Two years since that journey started.  Two years since that call – since…

Since the dreaded word, prostate cancer.

The journey to here hasn’t been easy but it hasn’t been as difficult as some cancer victims have experienced.  I am alive and the treatments are done.  There are scars.  There are long-term effects.  There are days I fear reoccurrence.

Then there are days in the shop.  Days with Heather.  Days just living and being alive.

There is a future.  There are possibilities.

Today I feel a bit introspective, a bit melancholy, a bit wistful, a bit …

Part of me wants to scream in rage.  Part of me wants to cry.  Part of me wants to fly.

I want to fly away from this disease – to just take flight and soar among the clouds and leave all my fears on the ground.  I want to create beauty.  My soul yearns to take wood, fabric, paint and create an object of such beauty that it would melt your heart.

My heart still beats, still yearns, still hopes.  The cancer failed to take that from me.  The beast did drive me down paths I didn’t want to take and some times still steals my health.  I was thinking of trying to catalog all the ways prostate cancer has changed my life.

I did try to write that long list, but when I looked at it again I realized that some of the items on my list weren’t true.  For example, I put depression on my list but then I realized that I’ve always fought some kind of depression most of my life.  Cancer just made it worse for a time.

After thinking, the list got shorter until it seemed pointless to keep.  I am largely the same person I was two years ago. Perhaps I don’t think as far into the future as I use to.  Sometimes I feel like I don’t dream the big dreams as much.  I feel the need to be in the shop more and feel the need to create more.  On the whole, emotionally and spiritually I don’t feel like much has changed.

However, my body has changed.  The radiation used to kill the cancer has left its scars and most things below the waist don’t function like they used to.  Last week I mentioned that I was going to see the doctor – well it’s not something you like to talk about in polite company.  I’ll spare you all the details but the short version is “industrial strength internal hemorrhoids”. The radiation passing through my prostate also passed through my rectum and other surrounding structures and left scar tissue in its wake.  In my case I’ve been suffering from some quite painful bowel issues lately caused by what is technically known as radiation proctitis.  I just call it a pain in the butt.  There are treatments – and I am getting better day by day – but it has slowed me down a lot lately.  I won’t get started on urinary urgency – let’s just say I now have a mental map of where every men’s room in the county is and exactly how long it takes a cup tea to turn into a need to find those rooms.  And the radiation damage to the nerves passing through my prostate has changed my sexual response.  There’s a whole subject I’ll won’t be writing about.

I do feel that my writing, or rather my need for writing has changed.  It was the cancer that really got me going on this blog and for two years has really been the energy behind my posting.  Now, as I move further away from treatment, the energy fades and I no longer feel driven to my keyboard like I was when I wrote, “First Post Again”.  I am a believer in following the energy, but don’t know yet where that will lead.  There will likely be changes in how I write and how I use this blog.

Generally I don’t like to say what I am going to do since that often leads to promises I can’t keep so instead I’ll offer up a few things I’d like to be able to do in the next two years:

Find a new energy source for my writing
Do more marquetry work
Sell a piece of my woodwork
Discover a way to retire early
Improve my health
Laugh more
Stomp in more puddles
Fly a kite

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in Prostate Cancer | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments