Divine Light Mission

 What I want to do I can't.  What I want to do is draw a very precise and exquisite pen and ink.  I want to freehand lines with a Micron 005...black...1/32" apart.  Can't.  The most I can do is watercolors on tissue

I can't because it was long ago and because I wasn't there for a lot it. I was there for some of it though.  Very there.  And when you're very there for some of it, you can throw color around with feckless abandon.

My male coming of age story can be told with the above photo.  Five people facing the camera.  Met in Missoula, Montana 1970 and me and those four others facing the camera could not have been a tighter group.  i'll go with the small i here and while i say we could not have been a closer group, i understand this story has been told a million times.  mine is not any different than all the others.

Could not have been tighter.  Chris and I, Chris is that one brushing his hair back in the back of the picture, started an odd job service with the State of Montana.  Bought a 57 Chrysler so we could transport a lawn mower around.  It had a push button transmission.  We paid $57 for it and a bag of weed.  Almost used more oil than gas.  Chris and I were hired by a contractor to move a dump truck of sand from a pile, down a basement and spread it out evenly.  He liked how we worked and hired us full time.  And that led to Chris working for a long time in Alaska as a carpenter.  I built houses along the west coast of the US and Canada for twelve years after that.

Ben, the guy tossing the glove.  This one question changed my life.  I remember it as a very cold fall day, Ben and I were driving in Chris' van from EJ's trailer park where everybody lived.  Ben was telling some real deep something he was going through in his life.  He got done and I sat there.

Ben said, What? You have nothing to say?"  I didn't.  I had no emotional language at that point.  It took me so many years to be able to wet myself in the aquifer that runs under all humans.  "What, you have nothing to say?" The best gift I've given myself is crying about something every day.  Those things that define us are universal and that's the aquifer, the one river we cleanse our self in.  That started from that morning with Ben.

Bryant, he has his head down.  Maybe thinking about what his father had said.  Bryant, Ben and Dennis, I'll get to Dennis in a bit, were on football scholarships at the University of Montana.

I remember Bryant sitting on the floor talking with his father on the phone with tears streaming down.  His father was ordering him home to Edina, Minnesota if Bryant was choosing not to stay on the football team and lose his scholarship.

We partially named our son after Bryant.

Ben and Dennis as well were choosing not to play football. They gave up the free ride.  It was LSD and pot that made them see the light on that.  I was a lightweight.  They were not. Hundreds of acid trips.  Dennis famously played a collegiate football game on acid.  Ben told me once tabs of acid no longer had any effect on him.

 Anyway, Bryant made that choice too.  Silly to play such a silly game and hit people hard and have others hit you hard.  He had to leave the group and move back to Minnesota.

I'm the headband-er on the left.  Ben and I went to party where I met a woman, I later married her.  I met her and at some point moved in with her.  The four, Chris, Ben, Bryant, Dennis, blamed her on being the Yoko and breaking up the Beatles.  Truth be told, that wasn't the case.  But it was at that point that I peeled away from the group and that's when the pen and ink became swishy water color on tissue.

Dennis, the headband-er on right just died a few days ago.  Bryant said "mercifully."  Dennis' god thought it would be a good thing to put him into the suffering thing for many years.  Or maybe Dennis' god thought it would be funny.  Or mean.  Or just because Dennis' god is an Asshole.  And for many years he suffered.  

I don't know if drugs lead people to religion or the other way round.

Since I had moved away from day to day with the group, everything afterwards became watercolors on tissue.  I heard something from somebody or what was told to me is was a memory of someone else. There wasn't email yet and so no instant back and forth to catch up.  Maybe a phone call once in a blue moon.

Dennis, and probably to a lesser extent, Ben started to follow the 14 year old Perfect Master, Prem Rawat of the Divine Light Mission, North American headquarters in Denver, Colorado.

They cut loose this life in Montana, bought that truck below, put a house on the back and went to Denver to become one with the One.  That's Dennis on the left.  They were going to devote their life to Divine Light Mission.

Dennis sold his car so they could buy enough psychedelics for the duration and built a false floor and put them in there.  Through some shenanigans at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake, an entire police escort of flashing lights and sirens led them forever out of the town.  So I heard.  Many times.

Ben recently saying he could not understand why they weren't arrested.

Much of who I am today I can tie back to those four.  

Back in the year Taylor graduated from High School (this is important), I pushed and cajoled the five us to get together again in Missoula.  Because you know, we don't know when one of us won't be here anymore and because we were such a force together.

It so happened that I arranged this re-union at the same time Taylor was graduating.  Yes, I screwed that up pretty good.  I did both.  Flying up to Missoula for a day and night, then back to Berkeley for Taylor then back to Missoula for another day, then back.

By this time in history, Chris has a recycling company with 900 employees, given up all types of stimulants, Dennis and Bryant have become PrimeTime Christians.  Dennis has a venture capital firm and real estate firm,  Bryant works for him.  Ben has an insurance business in Billings, Montana.

Dennis would not come to the reunion.  Embarrassed for his past life or some shit like that.  If you read his obit, he's left behind in death a philanthropy for those less fortunate.  Cool.  But like he couldn't come to Missoula to sit and talk with the people that had become a tattoo on his arm of his early life.  That tattoo is indelible.

Bryant decided to leave his wife.  Dennis said he could not work for him any longer since he violated God's rules around marriage.

I have a belief.  Religion is the pox of humanity. Like Lenard Cohen says.  

"I stuck a needle in my arm,

Did some good

Did some harm."

It may sound like I'm down on Dennis for his ultra christian crap deciding his past life wasn't worth revisiting but my religion won't allow that.  Dennis was just being human.

My religion is that aquifer that we all baptize in. 

Dennis, my friend, Thank you for what you've given me.

Sunday Speedbump

 You know how good it feels as you slide in the groove and hit that smallest of speedbumps.

So nice.

Something's come up that will take me away from finishing up the Purely Paso Wine Table for the next couple/three weeks.

I'll bring you up to about 45 minutes ago.

Switched from muscling large thick straight wood to swoopy curvy dips and dives in pieces of wood that I can carry with one arm.

The bottom of the pedestal legs.

 

 Not sure what to call these pieces....the lower "urn"shapes?

The top and bottom of the Ash column was cut to accept the top and bottom legs and outriggers.  Did what I could on the table saw but finished the depth of the cut with the band saw.  "B" is for bottom.  I really like to label everything to prevent mistakes.

I think using files and rasps on wood is one of those dying aspects of woodworking.  And cabinet scrapers.

But it's so satisfying shaping wood with rasps.  These Japanese Iwasaki rasps are unbelievable.  Very aggressive but the surface they leave is actually very smooth.  Often very little is left to smooth after using them.  Find them in whatever country you're reading from.  http://www.iwasaki-y.com/english/index.html

Latched on the idea of working the large concave curves with the belt sander.  I put a few layers of gaffer tape on the edge of the sander and then tracked the belt off the platen a bit to create a rounded profile.  Works good if you sort of "pulse" the sander on and off and use a light touch.

The legs were half lapped.  You can see a single one near the floor in the background.

Looking at the elements in their elemental stages.  That black streak is some epoxy filling a defect that I haven't taken off yet.

The lower "urn" shapes were mitered two ways.  I could rip one side, which of course, is the way easier way.  The other side I had to run through the saw with the sliding table as a miter gage.

Rip.

Sliding table miter fence.

They came out real nice.

At this point in time, just about every horizontal space has something on it.  Using the kitchen island marble top to see what the urns look like in a dry fit.

Again, seeing what the elements look like.  Still nothing has been glued or put together yet.  Well except for the legs in the column.

It's starting to look exactly like I drew it!

Alright, folks, see you in a few weeks.  Adios.

Hey, also, the people behind the blog is telling me that they are no longer going to support you who have signed up for email notifications starting in July I think.  Thanks to all those people who signed up.  I appreciate it.

Phase ll

 We'll begin Phase 2 after a few last Phase 1 pics.

The two halves of the tabletop right before glue up.

Let's just talk a bit about those pipe clamps.  I had a house in Berkeley back in the 90's that I put an outside deck on.  My son, Bryant, and I did it.  The neighbors eventually started it calling it "Kirchner's Folly."

I basically built it like a huge piece of furniture, it was big, it was a hyper intricate shape.  Most of it put together without nails or screws.  Used very complicated Japanese timber joints in Chechen wood which is a dense dense wood.

It all had to be sucked together a little at a time and I latched upon buying long pipe clamps that I could extend by joining ten foot lengths of black plumbing pipe with screw joints.  30' long.

So I used those here since the table top is quite long.

We sold the house and I ran into the man who bought it later on one day.  I asked why he wanted the house so bad, because he paid over asking.

"It was the deck."

Alright back on topic.

During the coarse sanding grits on something I like to cover the surface with pencil marks.  When you sand off the pencil mark, you know you're good to move on to another spot.

At the present moment, the top is standing up on edge while I fill in those damn beetle trails.  Early morning coffee light here.

Phase 2.

The legs will be two pedestal types.  Took my small scale drawings up to full size.  I don't do the full size drawing thing too often.  But I needed the curves to look right so this time I did.

The superstructure will be these 8"x8" Ash I glued up.  There will be a stretcher located slightly below mid point.  Laying out the mortise for that with the marking knife.

Drilled out from both sides since the bit wasn't long enough to go the full 8".

Was able to pop out the inside with some gentle persuasion.

 Then you sort of just pare off the high points.

And ready to be wrapped up with Walnut.  The mortises are at the same height, but the one on the left is upside down.  Also note the upright but bottom side of the top behind.

So I'm going from the big heavy pieces of the top to the much more manageable sizes of the pedestal.  Curvy band saw work ahead!