Tom's Journal...

5/18/99

Yesterday, my ex-significant other turned "payee" and friend, gave me a piece of obsidian. A strange thing happened when that happened. It came from a gal who I have run the gamut of emotions with, from anger to love.

In one moment, I saw briefly, a new concept of Love-in-effect, Hope as a multi-colored object, a concept of myself destroyed-then-put-together-better, of a peace I have longed for...

I saw a bits and pieces of actions that were done for me by my care-taker that I could not understand, now sensible... Of actions that seemed senseless and selfish, turned in some ways selfless, and giving.

Native Americans I am told, once used obsidian to fashion knives. Those knives were used to help fashion their world, helped make a more safe and healthy world for those they held close.

Like an obsidian knife, my piece of obsidian started a "cleaving process" when I placed it in my pocket. That process has in a very concrete way, allowed me to see my new life for what it is, a New Life out here in the Pacific North West... It has enabled me to get a glimpse of the new life that I now realize, I had "run away from home" to find.

I realized that the life I had being a "trouble shooter" in the mechanical world of high-pressure steam or gas, I will never have again. Knowledge of my disability would give any potential employer grounds to invoke the ADA in a negative manner, and fire or ask for my resignation.

20 years of labor, of learning, has been put to rest-assuming that it might one day come back, with a simple "conk on the head..."

What now? What can I do? Clearly I must look for something in another field.

I have long worked on wood when and where I had the opportunity, I started carving wood as far back as 1980, used carving as therapy last summer, and have finally made an arrangement to do it here, in my little "house on wheels..."

I can turn wood, much more slowly than before, but I have recently achieved som little sucess making what I have chosen to call "Reminders..."

A cabinet maker can be called upon to use those skills, plus more besides, and they are in some demand out here... I can [once I can redevelope some of my skills/stamina] investigate an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker in this land of wood and rock...

I have been called an artist by those who have seen some of my work, and that I can still work at-redeveloping my right side is important, and giving rein to my artistry is a reasonable idea...

My past is filled with incompetent lessons, with a pain that, it's clear now, nearly shattered my world at 20 miles per hour on a rain soaked street one Saturday evening... It was filled with some valiant attempts to correctly re-learn lessons no child should have been called upon to learn at all.

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