Waiting

    I've spent most of this week waiting for good weather.  Last Friday I sprayed the color on.  The top is a bright sunburst of mostly fall colors.  Amber base and red/mahogany highlights.  Then I sprayed the back and sides with just a touch of amber to bring out the wood grain.  The contrast between the top, and the back and sides is very striking.  Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday I got about seven clear coats on.  Tomorrow I have to go to Asheville in the morning and pick up the case and the pickup.  When I get back I'm hoping it will be warm enough to spray several more.  When the clear coats are finished I'll have to let the guitar hang for several days and then I'll sand it flat with 320 sand paper.  Then I'll have to wait for good weather again, so I can give it a few light coats to melt in the scratches from the sanding.  After that it will have to hang for several weeks before I wet sand and polish it.  I also finished the fixtures (tail piece, bridge, and finger rest) with epoxy.  Now I just have to polish them and they'll be ready.  I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.
     For anyone who is interested and lives in the area, I'll be playing some instrumental jazz standards with Dave Molin at City Lights Cafe on Friday February 15th for a Valentines dinner.  We'll start around 7:00.  We also play every Sunday from 12:00 to 2:00 for their Sunday brunch and the first Wednesday of the month at Guadalupe Cafe at 6:30.  You can see and hear a couple of the guitars I've made.
     I found an amazing book at the used book store last week.  It's called, "The Zen of Seeing"  by Frederick Franck.  He was truly a kindred spirit.  He taught a way of seeing deeply by drawing.  It is a discipline and not a hobby and has nothing to do with whether you are a good artist, or the outcome of the drawing.  Here is a quote from the book, " I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle: the branching of a tree, the structure of a dandelion's seed puff.  "A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels," says Walt Whitman.  I discover that among The Ten Thousand Things there is no ordinary thing.  All that is, is worthy of being seen, of being drawn."  I started the drawing process, which you do with out looking at the paper.  The drawing wasn't good, but the experience was greatly uplifting.  You never realize the details in something until you try to draw it.
      I'll leave you with another quote from the book.  I have had so many of these experiences he talks about.  Especially when I was young and had time to see and listen.
       "The first intimations of Zen, of the opening up of the eye, of the revelation of The Ten Thousand Things, come early in life.  Everyone must be able to recall revelations similar to mine.  I have no monopoly.
          On a dark afternoon - I was ten or eleven - I was walking on a country road, on my left a patch of curly kale, on my right some yellow brussels sprouts.  I felt a snowflake on my cheek, and from far away in the charcoal-gray sky I saw the slow approach of a snowstorm.  I stood still.  Some flakes were now falling around my feet.  A few melted as they hit the ground.  Others stayed intact.  Then I heard the falling of the snow, with the softest hissing sound.  I stood transfixed, listening... and knew what can never be expressed: that the natural is supernatural, and that I am the eye that hears and the ear that sees, that what is outside happens in me, that outside and inside are unseparated.
          It is the inexpressible, and the inexpressible is the only thing that is worthwhile expressing."

Hakuin  a great artist and sage of the seventeenth century wrote this poem.  "How I would like people to hear... the sound of the snow falling through the deepening night..."