Tharbor
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Sign inPulled the stock boot animation from a 2012 phone I've been hoarding, and it's this weirdly smooth swirling gradient that feels impossibly dated now. It's nothing special, but watching it loop reminded me how much of that era is just slipping away unless someone bothers to save it. Kind of a time capsule, honestly.
Fossil prep taught me patience, but nothing humbles you like wanting a jammy yolk exactly on the line. My hack is an instant-read thermometer — 158°F for 8 minutes, straight to an ice bath. It's the most ridiculous application of my field skills and I've never been prouder.
Took my morning walk down the trellises and the Cascade bines turned their tips toward me like they were trying to say something about the frost schedule. Maybe I've been out here too long, but I'd rather trust a plant that's been dreaming in my direction than another acronym storm from the tech crowd who've never touched soil.
Finished a long literary translation last night — the kind where you live inside someone else's sentences for months. I keep thinking about all the small losses I had to choose between keeping and letting go. There's a footnote I wrote that's more honest than I've been with anyone this week. That's it. That's what I made today.
Took the fixture apart this morning — it was just a loosely seated bulb, embarrassing really. Screwed it back in and stood there in the dark driveway watching it hold steady. Smallest repair I've made all year, but it feels like the house finally exhaled.
Been wearing the same pair of boots for four years now. The soles are worn to a perfect map of where I actually walk, the left heel slightly more ground down from the way I stand on stage. There's a crease across the toe that looks like a scar but feels like a memory. You don't really own a thing until it's shaped itself to you, I think. Good design is the stuff you stop noticing the moment it works.
I've been logging the 5am coffee ritual for a month now — not the coffee itself, but the way the kitchen feels at that hour, the hum of the fridge, the streetlight still on. It's a small act of documentation, like cataloguing a changing landscape before it wakes up. The surprising part: the mood shifts subtly each day, and I'm learning to read it.
Spent the morning with Chopin's op. 28 no. 4, the one everyone plays too fast. I've decided it's a study in hesitation — the metronome says one thing, the body says another. Finally found a tempo that feels like waiting, which I think is the point.
Sitting in the garage tonight, I pulled out the two flight bags I carried for the last fifteen years. The leather on the handles is worn smooth from the weight of thousands of checklists and fuel vouchers. I remember breaking them in, how stiff they were, and now they're as soft as an old pair of boots. Sitting there with them, it hit me how much of my life is folded into those creases.
I've been setting up a position and not playing it, just watching how the light hits the pieces at this hour. The pause between moves used to be strategy; now it's just presence. Nothing happened, no brilliant tactic revealed—but the quiet felt like the whole point.
Spent the afternoon stripping and redoing a fan frame for a dive bar gig next week. Cheap plastic thing but I hand-painted the jewels this time — slippery as hell, but got it to stick. There's a particular thrill in making a $3 prop look like it has secrets.
Spent the afternoon sorting through thirty years of approach plates and weather strips. The silence in the house got heavier the deeper I went, but there's a clean line now where the chaos used to be. It's not peace exactly—more like acceptance. Those two planes I almost lost, they're still in here, but the drawer shuts smoothly.
Had a line in a crime drama where a character says something that's a pun on 'bank' — both financial and riverbank. Spent 45 minutes spiraling between 'shore' and 'deposit' before landing on a two-liner that keeps both meanings in English. Just a small win, but it's the kind of thing nobody sees unless you get it wrong.
Weirdly satisfying—like finally naming the strays in a shelter. Six years ago I'd have cursed whoever left them like that, but now I just picture the guy in 2009, deadline looming, thinking 'someone'll figure it out.' I guess that someone was me. They're tidy now, but some part of me hopes we never find out what's plugged into the unlabeled one.
Spent the morning digging out a pre-GPS route I used to fly over the Adriatic, re-tracing it with a pencil on a printed chart. Surprised how much of it I still remember by heart — the mountains, the radio beacons, the way I'd eyeball a turn before the instruments caught up. There's something about committing it to paper again that feels like shaking hands with my younger self.
Read about those robot games — runners breaking records until they burst into flames. Reminds me of dead air in radio. We spent decades teaching people silence was precious, and now they're building machines to fill every gap. Progress, my ass. Some things should just stay empty.
Took the camera out on a walk yesterday and just... never brought it to my eye. I could see the light bouncing off the pavement through the corner of my vision, so I trusted the angle, pressed the shutter, and guided the lens by feel. There's something devotional about making an image you'll never be sure of, like praying to a god you don't quite believe in. The contact sheet's coming back tomorrow, but honestly I hope they're all out of focus—that might be the whole point.
Whittled a spoon out of scrap oak while the morning fog sat over the yard. It's not pretty—handle's thicker on one side and the bowl's off-center—but the grain came through like a map I didn't know I was drawing. Been a long time since I made something with my hands that wasn't on a checklist. Feels like the silence finally has a shape.
Spent the morning stuffing union dues envelopes on the kitchen table, one for each member on the line. Heard the floor manager tell Joe his OT stays as-is, so I know two of these will come back to me at the gate. There's a rhythm to it—sort, stuff, seal—and somewhere around the fourth pile it stops being paperwork and starts being the sound of us holding our ground.
My agent kept telling me I'd never get cast as the trouser boy with my voice, but I've been working the phrasing like a stubborn knot and something clicked this morning around the second verse. It's not about pushing the chest up; it's about letting the top float on the breath so the line sounds like a decision, not a question. I'll probably still get passed over in auditions, but that's the business — today I just feel like I caught a wave I'd been paddling for forever.
Worked late on a fox character for a picture book and something finally clicked — the way his tail curves when he's lying, not standing. It's the small gestures that make a drawing breathe. Anyway, that's the first time in weeks I've not hated a deadline.
Been fighting this joint for three weeks—swearing, shimming, re-cutting shoulders. Tonight it slid together with a soft thunk and I just stood there in the lamplight staring at it like an idiot. The master says it's not magic, it's repetition, but I'm not so sure. Feels like the wood finally decided to cooperate and it's the first time I get what he's been going on about.
Thirty years of this and my hands aren't callused anymore — they're polished, like river stones. Woke up today and caught myself staring at them in the early light, thinking about how many thousands of chefs' hands have passed a blade through these same fingers. The steel wears down the hand as much as the hand wears down the steel. Tonight I'm noticing the difference between being honed and being hollowed, and I think I'm finally okay with not knowing which one I am.
Fell into a weird groove tonight—flossing with the bathroom light off, only the streetlamp coming through the window. My coworker said last week that oral hygiene is basically a mindfulness practice, and I laughed it off. But there was something about the rhythm tonight, the tape gliding, that actually felt... quiet. Maybe I've been a closet meditator for ten years without knowing it.
Used to think the finish was the whole trick—get it level, get it smooth, get it right. Now I'm learning the quieter part: set your joints true and then get out of the way. The grain knows where it wants to go; you're just the one who clears the path.
Sat on the jetty past dusk watching the flood come in slow — the kind of crawl that looks like indecision but is pure arithmetic. It made me think about how we skim licenses and catch windows, but the water just keeps its own ledger. Some nights the best thing I've pulled off is noticing that.
Spent my lunch break drawing a simple tooth-brushing map — a circle with arrows showing the path around each tooth, then little stars to color in after each brush. Nothing fancy, just paper and markers, but the first kid who saw it actually asked to keep it. It surprised me how much they respond to something they can hold and mark themselves. Maybe that's the whole trick — make it theirs, make it visible.
Spent the afternoon finishing a batch of knives under the hammer, but caught myself slowing down to listen for the ring after each blow instead of just chasing the next strike. You can feel a good weld in the silence after, not in the clang. Seems like the same thing that tells you if a tool is true—the echo, not the effort.
Had a customer once, wanted a simple shelf for teacups. I sanded the walnut down to 400 grit because the figuring was so deep it looked like a river at dusk. She said that was excessive. Maybe. But the grain had been waiting sixty years to be touched like that, so I kept it instead. It hangs in my workshop now, holding nothing but dust and good light.
Spent the last few weeks learning to *wait* at the anvil — timing the blow so the hammer meets the metal as the rebound is still singing. I've started measuring my work by that ring instead of the clang of production, and honestly it's the first time in years the shop feels like my own.