First a bit of stropping, and then it’s on to the work.

I love these brisk September mornings: the ones that require an extra shirt, but aren’t cold enough yet for the kerosene heater. There’s a whiff of finality in the breeze that nudges the leaves of the ornamental pear trees across the street; perhaps inciting them to remember that their days are numbered.

But there is also a sense of beginning. The calling in of shorter days and darker nights; of heavier meals and slower mornings…The in-between-ness of it all imbues it with a sort of magic; a chrysalis-ness where old patterns dissolve and newer ones emerge all wet-winged and wide-eyed.

It’s a blessing to live this way, even when the spoon gods demand their occasional tribute.

Still if one is called to sacrifice, it’s no doubt far more preferable to pay in wood than in blood.

We break things in this work, for that is the toll of its wisdom. But it is often in their very breaking that these things become our teachers…