The unidentifiable beauty of imperfection.
I just started with the natural grey hair period of my life. The meandering paths away from that straight highway, leading to the unavoidable coffin, made me see the most breathtaking views, pass the dark corners of society and brought numerous kinds of unexpected encounters with the good and the bad. A, not always understood, but inexhaustible and relentless creativity made me enthusiastic for 12 trades, resulting in 13 accidents before realizing that one doesn’t need to travel on ready-made roads.
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Maybe because I tried to do everything perfect, a goal that’s a utopic dream, most of the expeditions towards success became dead-end lines on the Halfway to Everywhere map. To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, what would I have to say for myself, what emotions could I share, if it was not about the meagerness results of walking around on this earth trying to make something out of my life and the lives of those who I care about. Nothing is perfect, well according to some, God’s creation is, but we all know how we treat something that seems to be just that. I guess we all share those moments of thinking to have found something perfect. That perfect car, however, turned out to be a piece of junk, that perfect trousers didn’t seem that perfect anymore after gaining some weight. Even after quit a few years you ended up divorced because that perfect partner was…well, you get the picture. So what makes life perfect? Money? Success? Status? I’m convinced that the lac of luxury won’t have any influence on the footprint that your soul leaves behind.
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The rock ‘n’ roll hair is cut, the bandanna’s dropped in the big bin of rags, blue suede shoes exchanged for steel nosed boots. A 300-year-old ruined building was transformed into a workshop, the garden into an open-air stage and the little cottage on that lonely hill in the vicinity of rural Portugal turned into a home. Doors are open, clock’s don’t count hours and food is cooked instead of brightened up by microwaves. Old things become new things just by treating them with a little passion, some 12 trade tricks and compassion for that little paradisiac spot on the planet.
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My workshop is called Not Just Sawdust, Não Só Serradura because it isn’t just that. It’s the evidence reflecting the relentless urge to create, the proverbial blood of that beautiful material nature provides us with. It’s the sharp teeth that cut, the subdued mind that finds out what a piece of wood harbours in itself. It doesn’t have to be a perfect chair, table or whatever functional item you thought it had to become, as long as you have respect for, the hardness, the grain direction, the moister content and most of all the secrets of nature that won’t make it easy.
.
Those perfect imperfections are not inadequacies, they are just the result of human effort to do the best possible. The only thing you could see as a real mistake is not sharing the traps you walked in, keeping all experiences a secret and all gathered knowledge to yourself. Of course the young will want to find it all out themselves, learn by making mistakes, grow by each event in life that crosses their path. It doesn’t mean you’re excused from teaching, sharing and warning for the horrible side-tracks that humanity was capable of taking. We’re not perfect, far from that. We’re not executing anything perfectly, we are just not able to. Nothing to be ashamed about….
.
Maybe because I tried to do everything perfect, a goal that’s a utopic dream, most of the expeditions towards success became dead-end lines on the Halfway to Everywhere map. To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, what would I have to say for myself, what emotions could I share, if it was not about the meagerness results of walking around on this earth trying to make something out of my life and the lives of those who I care about. Nothing is perfect, well according to some, God’s creation is, but we all know how we treat something that seems to be just that. I guess we all share those moments of thinking to have found something perfect. That perfect car, however, turned out to be a piece of junk, that perfect trousers didn’t seem that perfect anymore after gaining some weight. Even after quit a few years you ended up divorced because that perfect partner was…well, you get the picture. So what makes life perfect? Money? Success? Status? I’m convinced that the lac of luxury won’t have any influence on the footprint that your soul leaves behind.
.
The rock ‘n’ roll hair is cut, the bandanna’s dropped in the big bin of rags, blue suede shoes exchanged for steel nosed boots. A 300-year-old ruined building was transformed into a workshop, the garden into an open-air stage and the little cottage on that lonely hill in the vicinity of rural Portugal turned into a home. Doors are open, clock’s don’t count hours and food is cooked instead of brightened up by microwaves. Old things become new things just by treating them with a little passion, some 12 trade tricks and compassion for that little paradisiac spot on the planet.
.
My workshop is called Not Just Sawdust, Não Só Serradura because it isn’t just that. It’s the evidence reflecting the relentless urge to create, the proverbial blood of that beautiful material nature provides us with. It’s the sharp teeth that cut, the subdued mind that finds out what a piece of wood harbours in itself. It doesn’t have to be a perfect chair, table or whatever functional item you thought it had to become, as long as you have respect for, the hardness, the grain direction, the moister content and most of all the secrets of nature that won’t make it easy.
.
Those perfect imperfections are not inadequacies, they are just the result of human effort to do the best possible. The only thing you could see as a real mistake is not sharing the traps you walked in, keeping all experiences a secret and all gathered knowledge to yourself. Of course the young will want to find it all out themselves, learn by making mistakes, grow by each event in life that crosses their path. It doesn’t mean you’re excused from teaching, sharing and warning for the horrible side-tracks that humanity was capable of taking. We’re not perfect, far from that. We’re not executing anything perfectly, we are just not able to. Nothing to be ashamed about….
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