Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Days off

     I've had almost no work, consequently I have gotten the clear coats back on the guitar.  Now I only have to sand it flat and spray one more clear coat.  Then I'll wait two weeks and sand and polish it.  After that I have maybe a day of fitting the pickup to the finger rest and wiring up the volume control.   Then I'll put it back together, tweak a few things and it will be ready to go.
    While I waited between spraying coats, I was able to get the back plate for the fourth guitar joined together and cut out.  So, the next guitar has been started.  I'm actually going to build two at the same time.  A 17" and a 16".  The 17" will have a water stain sunburst of greens and yellows, if I'm brave enough to try it when the time comes.  The 16" will have a mounted pickup with volume and tone controls.  People like them, because they don't feed back as bad.
      I'll leave you with this poem that Donna found in Sojourners magazine.

The Man Watching

By Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

     

1 comment:

Jesse said...

Wow. Awesome poem!