Someone wrote to me last year and said that reading Hammer
Head was like being told his own story to...
Someone wrote to me last year and said that reading Hammer
Head was like being told his own story to himself, and it raised the question
for him as to whether there’s a particular set of books out there that together
combine to assemble a sort of biography of his life. I loved this idea, and it
made me realize that maybe this is part of why we read, in some ways in search
of our own stories told back to us.
He’d left his job in the business of words to learn
carpentry from scratch; we’ve both been at it for seven years. Recently we
talked about the experience of approaching something wholly new as thirty-ish
year olds. Can you remember when you learned to tie your shoes? Write cursive?
Drive? The thrill of competency, of being initiated into some new
understanding, of some new knowing how. What a thing to be able again to
experience that kidlike thrill with all its frustrations and fuck-ups and
getting it wrong until you finally get it right. What a thing to have proven to
yourself that you can start blank, fresh as a kid who’s only worn velcro, and
continue to learn and learn and learn. Maybe it’s the spring, the detonations
of color, the buds like light green shadows on the trees, but things feel fresh –
it’s daunting some days, how much there is to know, how little time, how slow I
am to learn. Other days, exciting, and scary, too. These fresh starts. New knowings. The dazzling and difficult experience
of the unfamiliar becoming familiar.
