I’ve been playing with Google Wave for a couple of weeks now and am very impressed with the engineering feat they’ve delivered on. It is quite a rich application on a very extensible platform which will be interesting to watch grow. There are however some things I feel that need to happen before this can become truly mainstream.
Meditation Stool #1
The other evening at my meditation class, one person asked me how long it took me to make my small meditation stool. I made it over a weekend and it only took me 3 or 4 hours to pull together and apply the finish (not including waiting/drying time).
On my way home I found myself thinking about this a little more. It didn’t take 3 or 4 hours at all. It took more like 155 years + 4 hours and is still taking time as long as it continues to exist.
Perhaps it was the after-effects of meditation, but I began to realise quite acutely how long a piece of wooden furniture really does take to make. The tree has to be planted, grown, harvested, milled & dried. Then the furniture has to be fashioned. Finally, the timber continues to change over the remaining years of its existence.
Nothing more to say about this yet, except that this brief conversation has changed the way I view my working with wood.