not to put too fine a point on it…

I’ve spent a lot of time with this here new blog not writing anything.  Just staring at that electronic blank sheet.  I feel like there should be something monumental, or at least pressing, to kick things off.  A purpose, if you will.  But nothing keeps happening.  Over and over.  So, alas…here we go.

A while back, in another lifetime, I wrote about some axes and laid on some father/son imagery nice and heavy.  Well, I haven’t stopped thinking about axes, you see, but everytime I’ve gone out shopping for one all I can find is some newfangled composite handle job.  It seems no one makes a real wooden handle anymore, the kind you can carve down into a hatchet for your kid when the time comes.

And I haven’t stopped being a father.  Or a son.

A couple of weeks ago I was in my parent’s garage, going through some of my dad’s old tools.  Even though he’s been gone a while, it never stops feeling solemn and strange.  especially in his space, touching his stuff.  I’ve taken some things over the years, sentimental items or just stuff I thought I could use, but there is still a lot sitting right where he left it.  Moving them for the first time in years was hard; they felt heavy for their weight.  Over the course of a couple quiet, reflective days, I was able to fill a toolbox full of memory and inspiration.

And then, on a bright and clear late winter afternoon, whadya think I saw sticking up in the far corner of the garage?  Yep, an axe handle.  Wooden, weathered, and touched.  Used.  By my pops.  And right near it, I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a hatchet.  Sometimes I look really hard for things that are close at hand.  Sometimes if you need an axe, just look in the garage.  As we drove back to Nashville with the toolbox weighing down the trunk, and the axe and the hatchet, I imagined the look on my old man’s face as I tried to explain the symbolism of it all…and Gary Snyder…and Ezra Pound…and Chinese poets.  But the thing about an axe is, it can’t have too fine an edge, or it’ll just break.  You have to keep it honed just enough, or else it misses the point.