Playing God

The circular saw moves with a torrid force that shoots right to my bones. But I'm most fond of the sensation when it quits. It's not just that I can once again hear the birds, or the kids playing next door. It's that something I wanted done is complete. The board was cut as I hoped, as I planned. And in that late afternoon sunlight, with the cheap cigar hanging from my lips and the April breeze soft against my forehead, I pause momentarily to  connect with every man whose ever done this--every man whose ever straightened up after leaning over a sawhorse and taken a sip of cold beer on a warm day, every man whose ever looked down at his dirty white T-shirt and smiled at the life in those stains, every man whose ever felt an ache in his back and ignored it because it's just more living letting itself be known.

Churchill said a change is as good as a rest. He did not take a nap when feeling the strain of his duties as prime minister. He did masonry. The writer, H.L. Mencken, did the same. Upon leaving his typewriter aside, after completion of another brilliant but savage screed, the sage of Baltimore laid bricks. Those two men taught me to find escape in simple back yard construction. I'm indebted to them. It has been a form of salvation.

I am no carpenter. Few professionals could stomach my approach to working with wood, my carelessness, lack of patience, and  belief in finding my own way when better, well-established ways are known and universally admired. But I am at peace with my style. It is  a beautiful recklessness.

Do you know the feeling when an old log is spiked against another old log? When a plank of cedar is nailed in place and the grain catches your eye in the twilight? When a loose board takes the threads of a brass screw and shifts so solidly into place that it's as if its set in concrete? If so, I think of you when the work for the day is done and all that's left to do is admire the creation that only hours ago wasn't there.

Is it wrong to stare? I'm so often alone just admiring the beauty. Are we all just playing God at such moments? Creating, resting, declaring it good. If we are feeling sensations God knew, how fulfilled he must have been at the end of his work week. What a joy to admire that cosmic handy-work. I hope he stared long and lovingly. I hope he knew the guilty pleasure and intoxication in creation, the primal power, in it's myriad pulsations. I hope he inhaled so deeply that his exhale pushed the wonder into each of us and inspired us to carry on the sacrament.

Creating. Resting. Declaring it good. It is forever man's noble and holy pursuit, whether placing the last hand-hewn stone on the great pyramids or the final cedar board on a simple deck. Creating, resting declaring it good. No beer tastes as fine as the one in that setting sun, when the electric tools are once more still, and the birds can be heard, and the wooden wonder before you is every bit as alive as when it grew as a tree, strong and tall from the good earth.