Dovetail

“But one day I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed…” Alice Walker, The Color Purple

It was a dovetail joint; I knew that much. The two ends were seamlessly placed. And I can’t explain what it meant to me. And my connection to wood, how I understand it, how I live and breathe it though I know so little about it… I knew only that it was the dovetail for which I was to look.

“That’s the strongest joint there is.” That’s what he said to me. I took it as true; I think I still do.

I sometimes think my furniture speaks to me, tells me stories of truth and make believe. And my hand slides across the surface, though it’s more intimate than that, and I remember the dream where I understood the connection, the give and take. I understood hand placed in water and hand lain on plank—how all of that made me whole. In that dream I walked into the depths of me with the boards getting older and sturdier as I went. There was nothing slipshod in the wood, in the work. I was once afraid of tree roots made hand. That much, at least, I understand. That I no longer fear, no matter how much of me is made up of trees.

And our yard had three magnolia trees, two hickories, three oaks, a peach tree that didn’t quite make it, plus a couple apple trees out by the shed, and back behind that lived the woods made up of conifers…mostly pine. I miss the way the wind used to whisper between the leaves, then bare branches, then buds. The fragrance of outdoors came alive in spring. It blossomed into its own living thing with the resin in the pines moving freely again and the buds beginning to bloom throughout the yard. It was the most beautiful sight born fully of scent. I don’t know when I developed this adoration of tables, of chairs, of desk, of pipes, of everything around me living and breathing and speaking to me. I don’t know where it came from, but I know just enough to always look and feel for the dovetail.

“…Look at them trees. Notice how the trees do everything people do to get attention… except walk?” The Color Purple (1985)

(February 21, 2008)

[Via http://valeriehunt.wordpress.com]