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Pleiades Slotted Wooden Spoon

Pleiades Slotted Wooden Spoon

New Moon, New Spoon

March 07, 2019 by Ashley Look in Carving

I’m pretty focused on fresh starts right now and with a new moon upon us and spring around the corner, I’m starting to shift gears. Unfortunately, change doesn’t always arrive lockstep. It feels as though I’ve swapped one holding pattern for another, and waiting and time remain the constant backstory. After four years of sitting idle caregiving for my parents, they have both now passed and yet I remain. Even the dog is no longer company and so the question of home feels foreign as I remain in their house but lack everything else.

There’s an emptiness here that I hope holds space for a new beginning. However, cold starts are a struggle and the days are slowly slipping into months. It’s hard to grasp the slowness though. Whereas before the nothingness dragged, I am now consumed by the clock ticking and yet, I have nowhere to be. No job, no curfew, no obligations to be accountable to… Just me and again, this strange relationship with time.

The Pleiades Slotted Wooden Spoon is available in the shop. Click here.

The Pleiades Slotted Wooden Spoon is available in the shop. Click here.

If you read my father’s obituary then you know Space was a big deal for this household. Like, as in “lunar landing/ satellite telemetry ” big deal. Growing-up with a human calculator was no easy task for a girl afraid of math. But somewhere along the way I gathered the significance of measurement relative to his passion for Space. I remember him giving me a gyroscope once as a gift and forever trying to get it to spin upon a string. Only now, as an adult, am I making sense of it. In watching this gyroscope video and seeing one in action do I realize how planetary this gift was and his own interest in celestial movement.

Time often accounts for change and those changes parlay seasons. And now, amid all the change that lays so heavy in my air, I am reminded that the seasons of life can account for nothingness and without much attention, life just passes by. So, if you have ever come to this page and wondered about the Full Moon Baking Club or my obsession with time it’s probably worth noting that the space-time continuum is some complicated mathematical model that I’ll never truly understand but thanks to the gyroscope, I can trust that this time will pass. Nature is cyclical… Seasons are cyclical… And if there is ever a clock worth trusting, it’s not the one that tells the time; it’s one that tells where we are in the cycle.

It’s understandable that the seasons of life can be difficult and if you are anything like me, you might find yourself far from one that brings a good harvest. The growing ain’t good right now cause I have nothing much to sow. I’m just now sorting seeds. It’s not realistic to assume life will magically fall into place. But time itself is a kind of magic and so a little intentional seed planting now will surely grow into something later. What better time keeper than the moon? (I think my dad would agree.) And what better way to track change than pursue a craft? Time lends itself to the artisan maker and good craftsmanship can take a lifetime. For the moment all I have is seeds. Time will tell but until then… new moon, new spoon!

March 07, 2019 /Ashley Look
how to feed a senior, Pleiades Slotted Wooden Spoon, hand carved, Handmade, reclaimed wood, woodworking, Made in the USA, sustainably made, locally sources, wooden spoons, slotted spoon, caregiving, fresh start, time, time management, tracking time, gyroscope, seasons, clock, Full Moon Baking Club, new moon, new spoon, Nothingness, artisan maker, craftsmanship
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Oak Serving Spoon Set

Oak Serving Spoon Set

Holding Space For The Nothingness

The Guild
August 09, 2018 by Ashley Look in Carving

What's truly depressing about a the lack-luster life is that so many are living it.  Days like a run-on sentence, leading us to believe whatever we choose because we lack the human connections that help challenge our mental dialogue.  I keep questioning why?  What ill-fated sharp turn was taken onto the path of nothingness?  Or was it even a turn at all?  Maybe arriving at nowhere was just a course that was set; a sail hoisted by someone or something without much communication of how or why? And yet here we are, together at nowhere, living isolated in the village of suffering.  An army of nothings void of our something...  

In the wake of all that's depressing I find myself annoyed at the self-help community. I'm hung-up on Anthony Bourdain, the Parkland School shooting, Nia Wilson's murder, my mom's death...  I'm emotionally coping with my father's dementia, my unemployment, and knowing that soon, our dog will have to be put down.  I can keep going with sob stories but that's not my point. We all have hardships and it's a disservice to the human condition to line them up in comparison.  Everyone is hurting.  Our friends are hurting.  And more than anything, our relationships are hurting. This pain has never been more visible than in convenient statements like "thinking of you".   Our lifelines have been reduced to lip-service as if sending "thoughts and prays with love and light" was somehow enough? 

Surely we recognize these statements do not suffice but more than anything it's telling how we lack emotional capacity for others.  What's worse, is that we have given-up on the cause.  We've stopped trying to effectively connect and diminish our discomforts by mindless scrolling.  We occasionally pause for words of convenience leaving benign messages like "sending love", content with ourselves and our broadcast of care.  But the truth is, those voices and those prays; they are just noise. It's just clutter in the ether for that desperate person to sift through.  

Adding to the volume doesn't help the person searching for ears that listen.  These drive-by comments perpetuate more hardship.  If you don't have time, then yeah, just scroll.  And if you don't know what to say, just say that! Treating discomfort as something to push past as quickly as possible steals space from recovery and robs us of connection and knowing ourselves through others.  We need to stop treating depression as a problem to hurry  past and rather dig-in some and explore the roots of where the nothingness lives.  We need to explore the bottom and understand how pain is stabilized and get familiar with the things that hold it in place.  Ignoring this only compounds the emotional debt.

Making spaces... Something from nothing.

Making spaces... Something from nothing.

Not everyone can move on and not everyone wants to; at least, not yet...  That voice of pain has fallen on deft ears and the whirl of society races leaving many chasing recovery which is not recovery.  Chasing anything is not rest and this systemic push to move-on is eroding the fibers that connect us in the human experience. The rush to move past sadness is falsely conditioning cultural attitudes by implying that "evolving" is somehow more important than being... 

My own wanderings through the nothingness have me bound to believe that everyone craves someone that understands.  The soul of humanity is tethered to personal connections and therefore we have a responsibility to foster opportunities that bring us together. And as much as we likely don't hold the answers for others but we can still hold space for them.  Space to grieve, space for despair, space to explore pain without judgement... Sometimes you just need space in order to connect; a moment of quiet so your something can be heard.

I'll be holding space for some spoon carving therapy at The Guild this Saturday.  The class is an introduction to carving but my hope is that it evolves into an introduction to community.  I  have big dreams for starting a carving club and what that could mean for communities everywhere.  It's mostly just a dream but I hear, life is but one anyway so, why not?  It's just a matter of time...

Make some to take some.

August 09, 2018 /Ashley Look /Source
how to feed a senior, Holding Space, Nothingness, pain, depression, community, carving club, connections, thoughts and prayers, love and light, communication, discomfort, emotional debt, Intro to Community
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