Holiday
I have not updated this journal with any serious content (nor have I even looked at my Wordpress blog) in some time. I apologize to those people who seriously follow the doings of my life. I’ll get through the boring stuff quickly. I am still unemployed, although I admittedly have not been looking as much. I need a swift kick to the ass to get jumpstarted, I think. I am still single, although I admittedly have not been looking as much. The pickings in the immediate area are slim and I generally don’t feel comfortable enough to venture down that path again. More because of my economic and living status than anything else, I suppose.
So. Onto the holidays, which is more of the reason why I’m posting here. Mine were decent. My family always gets together on Christmas Eve to have a dinner. Well, family in this sense is my brother and I, my uncle (mother’s brother) and his girlfriend, my other uncle (father’s brother, the only one who still keeps in contact post-divorce), and my mother herself. My brother’s girlfriend came this year, so we were pretty tight. The past few holidays though (Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve) we’ve been having a few of the older neighbors from the street over for dinner and/or dessert. Then, of course, we do the presents between my uncle and his girlfriend that night, because they go back up to their respective homes. Christmas morning is set up for the three (and sometimes four) of us, being my mother, brother, uncle, and myself.
I don’t want to go through a list of goodies that I got but I do want to go through some highlights. Christmas was rather small this year, which is perfectly fine by me and I feel that I could have done better. But next year, yea?
One of the biggest, and most surprising, gifts I received was from my mother’s brother. He ordered me out of the living room and to hide, because apparently the gift he got me was not able to be wrapped. And I come back and …there is sitting a 100-pound anvil on an I-beam of steel, with what I assume to be a 2 pound sledge hanging in one of a pair of U-bars bolted to the center of the steel.
Of course I had asked for tools and things to start forging, since blacksmithing has long been an interest of mine. I’ve been attempting for years to gear up enough to do some rudimentary work and practicing of the basics, but without any form of income I haven’t been able to get more than books on the subject. This represents a massive leap and from what I can tell my uncle is really pushing me to do this - he thinks it’s great (going so far as to send me links that he finds when he has time at work, etc).
So now I have no excuse to not start gathering things for a forge proper. There are many ways to do this, particularly on a small-scale budget and to get started.
Spiritual aspect: I’m drawn to blacksmithing not only because of the history, but because of the very aspect of creation that it entails. To that end I’m going to attempt to learn more about the anvil. Its history is shrouded in mystery - my uncle purchased it from a used tool store up north (managing to get a hell of a deal on it due to the negligence of some stupid teenager helping him) so I may never know where the hammer and anvil came from. But it is painted this slate/gray-blue paint that is fairly evocative of marine paint. I’m of the mentality that things that humans create can and do have or develop spirits of their own and may not necessarily have to have to be “woken up” in the sense of a new item.
I’d love suggestions or thoughts about this aspect of it. A friend of mine brought this up with the subject of consecration, which is intriguing, but I’d rather get to know the spirit before I dedicate it to something that may or may not agree with it.
So. Onto the holidays, which is more of the reason why I’m posting here. Mine were decent. My family always gets together on Christmas Eve to have a dinner. Well, family in this sense is my brother and I, my uncle (mother’s brother) and his girlfriend, my other uncle (father’s brother, the only one who still keeps in contact post-divorce), and my mother herself. My brother’s girlfriend came this year, so we were pretty tight. The past few holidays though (Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve) we’ve been having a few of the older neighbors from the street over for dinner and/or dessert. Then, of course, we do the presents between my uncle and his girlfriend that night, because they go back up to their respective homes. Christmas morning is set up for the three (and sometimes four) of us, being my mother, brother, uncle, and myself.
I don’t want to go through a list of goodies that I got but I do want to go through some highlights. Christmas was rather small this year, which is perfectly fine by me and I feel that I could have done better. But next year, yea?
One of the biggest, and most surprising, gifts I received was from my mother’s brother. He ordered me out of the living room and to hide, because apparently the gift he got me was not able to be wrapped. And I come back and …there is sitting a 100-pound anvil on an I-beam of steel, with what I assume to be a 2 pound sledge hanging in one of a pair of U-bars bolted to the center of the steel.
Of course I had asked for tools and things to start forging, since blacksmithing has long been an interest of mine. I’ve been attempting for years to gear up enough to do some rudimentary work and practicing of the basics, but without any form of income I haven’t been able to get more than books on the subject. This represents a massive leap and from what I can tell my uncle is really pushing me to do this - he thinks it’s great (going so far as to send me links that he finds when he has time at work, etc).
So now I have no excuse to not start gathering things for a forge proper. There are many ways to do this, particularly on a small-scale budget and to get started.
Spiritual aspect: I’m drawn to blacksmithing not only because of the history, but because of the very aspect of creation that it entails. To that end I’m going to attempt to learn more about the anvil. Its history is shrouded in mystery - my uncle purchased it from a used tool store up north (managing to get a hell of a deal on it due to the negligence of some stupid teenager helping him) so I may never know where the hammer and anvil came from. But it is painted this slate/gray-blue paint that is fairly evocative of marine paint. I’m of the mentality that things that humans create can and do have or develop spirits of their own and may not necessarily have to have to be “woken up” in the sense of a new item.
I’d love suggestions or thoughts about this aspect of it. A friend of mine brought this up with the subject of consecration, which is intriguing, but I’d rather get to know the spirit before I dedicate it to something that may or may not agree with it.