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Le Restaurateur (Drechsler – Turner) Palermo
I envy this guy. I’ve envied people who work with their hands for most of my adult life. Carpenters, bakers, bricklayers, machinists, cabinet-makers, glaziers — at the end of their day they have something tangible they can point to and say ‘I did that.’ I baked that cake, I laid the brick for that wall, I laid the foundation for that building, I manufactured the beams that hold that bridge up, I made that table.
Most of my professional life I’ve dealt in thoughts and ideas and information. It’s been worthwhile and fulfilling, but at the end of the day, what do I have? Five pages of a manuscript? An interview with a witness? A student who finally grasped a subtle concept?
This guy? He’s part of a long tradition of making things out of wood. He makes things using his hands and tools that have been used to make things for centuries. Ancient Egyptians were using hand-powered lathes 1300 years before a certain Jewish carpenter made a name for himself in Palestine. This guy has roots and tradition and physical things he can touch at the end of the day.
I envy this guy. I wouldn’t want to spend my day doing the work he does, but I envy him.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
