Chainsaws & the Rewards of Writing
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RT has found respite in a worthy activity: this weekend, for the first time in more than a couple of years, he has gone out and earned honest money. The work, however, has been highly unusual for him: he is helping a friend and her son clear their sizable property of fallen tree trunks and branches. He freely confesses that part of this work has involved the use of a chainsaw (in fact, more than one), by far the most powerful (and dangerous) machine he has ever operated.
Saw and axe (and while we’re at it, hammer and nail) share a peculiar place in the human imagination. As anyone who has read Gilgamesh has probably realized, this hero’s expedition to the Cedar Forest is merely the first recorded incident of mankind’s absolute obsession with felling trees. Why we must cut down the most beautiful forests (or climb mountains or erect standing stone pillars) is anyone’s guess, but the motivations seem intertwined with our deepest spiritual impulses. To panel the Sun God’s temple in cedar, to reach the habitation of the gods, to compass the stars are all ways of connecting with nature and the absolute, of rendering homage to the unfathomable.
And yet there is also no denying that these activities are among the most destructive we engage in. Perhaps the problem lies in stripping the sacred from human activity, of turning a temple into suburban sprawl, of creating traffic jams of people waiting to get to the top of Everest, of littering low Earth orbit with space junk. What began as worship has transmogrified itself into mountaintop removal.
I enjoyed working with the two chain saws–neither of them especially large and one adapted for removing low-hanging tree limbs. I am reminded of Rita Mae Brown’s advice–the intellectual work of writing should be balanced with physical labor. Or again, I think of William Faulkner’s sabbatical spent working in a factory–as Benito Juarez spent his exile from Mexico in the United States. For their own sanity, writers must occasionally engage in the first worship of physical exertion.
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Latest update: i’m still helping my friend clean up the house, but now the work is decidedly less glamorous (but all the same, safer). Two weeks further into this gig I’m cleaning up several rooms that will be rented as an apartment. & these rooms have not been well-tended in some time: dirt, grease, dirty fridge…you get the picture. On the other hand, my boss is ADD and has *no* problem with me getting up to blog at 2:30 in the morning, since she (and often, her son) are up at the same hour doing whatever. & it’s nice having a room w/ a door i can shut & kitchen privileges.
What does this have to do with being a writer? I guess every writer needs to discover that an alternate universe exists where such things as ADD, writing, and the willingness to do manual labor are assets. RT
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Image: Early Mechanical Saw, 1860; Hamilton; WikiCmns; Public Domain.
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