Lost Faith or Faith Lost?

My Cross

Four tapered sliding dovetails in the legs.

I deeply deeply believed I could do.  I had the faith.  Waiting for the school bus one morning in early winter in Beavercreek, Ohio, I knew I could run fast enough to run across a thinly frozen very small pond without breaking through.  With all my heart I believed I could.  It was first or second grade.  I backed up, I saw myself running so fast that my feet barely touched the ice.  I ran and went to school that day with wet muddy shoes and pants.

I kept the faith though.  Now we all know that wood contracts and expands according to humidity and temperature.  Everybody believes that.  I went through a phase where I didn't think those laws of wood pertained to me.  I built furniture without taking in account the age old wisdom that says you must build around the notion that the wood will move on you.
And you know what?  That stuff I built back then when I had the faith has stuck to my faith.  The dining table that Taylor has now should have had the joints opened up but nothing has moved.  A mitered breadboard on a 3 foot wide solid piece of wood?  Those miters are supposed have been ripped apart by now with seasonal shifts.
They are as tight today as they were almost 30 years ago.  I had the faith.

I've lost it now.  Maybe it lost me.  Dunno.

Either way, I'm going to extraordinary lengths with the Iron Bark Kimono to bow down to the immutable laws of wood.

The wood I'm working with came from the same tree, having been cut apart into brothers and sisters.
And damn, this is one beautiful but dysfunctional family.  They are all shouting loudly at each other, trying to make themselves heard over the other.  I'm like the referee in the middle of a 3 way incestuous mud wrestling match.  Clothes are being ripped off, more and more skin is showing.  Gorgeous skin, glistening skin, supple skin but man, what angst it takes getting there.