Scraps and Off Cuts

Space is limited in my hotel room and using my bed as a writing desk is getting old. I’ve wanted a high desk/work table for some time but I didn’t want to spend any money on material. I also don’t usually have time to work on home projects. This week I went through the scraps and off cuts lying around the shop and came up with enough fir and walnut to build something simple and functional in my limited space. The result is a long narrow piece made of fir veneer and solid fir edging with a simple walnut inlay detail.

The top is close to completion. Next I need to figure out what I’m doing for legs….

Architectural Detention

Vancouver architecture is often deceiving. It would be easy to mistake this new building on the corner of 1st and Main for some sort of government detention center. An unwelcoming place where people are sent against their will. A building of cement rooms with narrow windows and heavy locked doors. Hallways that smell of antiseptic and fear. It would be conceivable to imagine a basement where the Geneva Convention has been replaced by heavily redacted documents.

This perception would only be partly wrong. This is a new social housing project. This is for the people. Our government appears to be hiring octogenarian architects from East Germany.

Melancholia

Sometimes on rainy days at the shop it is easy to slip into a state of melancholia. The rain coming down. Elvis Costello singing about diving for pearls. The solitude of the shop. Melancholia takes me gently so I barely notice until I find myself entering the next stage, the one I’ve heard referred to as call morbid reflection. This is when I begin reflecting critically on past decisions, situations I wish I had handled differently, the times I perhaps should’ve said something different.

The difference between nostalgia and melancholia is that nostalgia can be shared. With friends. With family. Even with total strangers. Melancholia is solitary. Nostalgia has potential for light whereas melancholia’s direction is inevitably towards dark and ponderous thoughts.

Today I caught myself in mid descent and had a quick flash of truth that brought me back. The fact is that I have a really great life! I wasn’t working outside in the rain. I was building a cute shelving unit for someone’s kitchen. I wasn’t hungry. I could change the music and no one would complain (The Ramones are antithesis of melancholic music). In that flash of truth was also the realization that I ought to be focusing on the task at hand rather than mulling over things I would never be able to change. I should be focusing my attention on building the best damn cute shelving unit possible! So that’s what I did…

Cutting dados for the aforementioned unit

Modern Division

A little something I whipped up at the shop.

A vertical grain fir sliding panel door as division of space.

Waldorf Diaries--The Waldorf Pool!!

The Waldorf is getting a new pool!!

Think Esther Williams

Think Chateau Marmont

Think Vancouver's Downtown East Side

You get the picture. It's going to be sweet!

Waldorf Diaries--The Flanover

Living at the Waldorf Hotel can be a dangerous experience. I’m not referring to the hipster onslaughts or the shady characters in the parking lot. I’m not talking about being accosted with inane conversation by barely 20 somethings hopped up on Mojitos. Nor the threat of breakbeats putting me at risk of suddenly busting a potentially dangerous move. I speak of a lethal combination served with careless abandon in the restaurant below me. The late night flan and espresso combo.

Seductive.

Delicious.

Together they call to me in irresistible siren songs through the floor. Beckoning me to venture down the stairs and partake in their contrasting yet enticing complimentary flavors. The warm creamy flan drizzled in dolce leche leaving a subtle sweetness on my tongue only to have that lightness transformed into something deeper. Something darker with a simple sip of coffee. Intoxicated and entranced, I am defenseless against its lure.

The immediate effect is one of euphoria, an electric exhilaration, a desire to express myself creatively, and a feeling of rapturous invincibility. Inevitably, an hour later, those ecstatic sensations are followed by an equally radical crash that sends me crawling shamefully into bed.

Then, in the morning, there is the unavoidable Flanover. Even before my eyes are open I feel the throbbing in my temporal lobe. The morning sun coming in the window burns my parched tongue that must’ve been hanging flaccidly out of my mouth while I lay unconcious. Dehydrated and delirious I lurch towards the bathroom and fall into the shower letting the water bring me into semi-consciousness. I brush my teeth staring at myself remorsefully in the mirror. My eyes appear as two red orbs sunken deep into my skull.

Espresso. Flan. Each of these individually pose potential risks. Together they can destroy a man.

This is my shame.