Slowly, slowly (redux)...

As I have discussed before, the pandemic has wreaked havoc in most people’s creative impulses, and I have not escaped that damage. It’s been a lesson in patience and zen simply to sit and realize there was nothing to be done. But then…

An image just popped into my head that might be useful to you: remember the Millennial Falcon, what it took to get it off the ground? Solo and Chewbacca had to flip all those switches — one presumes in a specific order — before all the lights would go blink-blink and the engines would roar to life, allowing them to zoom off to hyperspace.

I think it’s that way with our creative energies as we emerge from the pandemic — it’s not one big switch, the kind the Coyote might have thrown to turn on whatever contraption Acme Corporation had delivered, that will get us off the ground, but lots of little ones that have to be flipped. Vaccines (pretty big switch, actually), masks, restaurants opening, cruise lines laughing in Ron DeSantis’s face, all of these add up to a sense that it’s safe to attempt the Kessel Run again. (Not so sure about cruises, but you know what I mean.)

You will have noticed in this image that it’s not you or I who are necessarily in charge of switch flipping. We are not Han Solo; we are the Millennium Falcon.

All of this to say that last Friday a little switch in my life got flipped on, and apparently that was The Switch I needed. I’m not on the board of directors for Alchemy any longer but I still edit and produce the Alchemist, the burn’s newsletter, so I still get to sniff around the edges of what’s going on, and last Friday I was told that the Art Fundraiser had been scheduled for July 31.

Besides being a hopeful indication that we’ll be holding the burn in October, the immediate result of the announcement was that I could start thinking about and doing actual work on the GALAXY Project. But then I also was motivated to head out to the labyrinth and tackle the new steps at the entrance.

(The rest of this post is just boring “look what I got done” photos, albeit with a lesson at the end.)

The problem: the new landscaping timbers are taller than the old ones, which means that the steps at the entrance to the labyrinth were wonky. It was suggested that I make new ones with landscaping stones, etc.

And so I bought all these landscaping stones, some dirt, and some ferns and hostas to plant around.

Notice how the timbers used for the steps have about 6” of dirt holding them up. That first step is a doozy.

So much stone…

I thought the hardest part would be getting that first timber pried up, since it has two large pieces of rebar pounded into it, but the recent two weeks of rain made the ground particularly obliging.

The concept was that I would build two steps to accommodate the new height of the wall, beautiful curved things to match the rest of the labyrinth’s circles, and place paving stones on the steps in the same pattern as the labyrinth’s entrance walkway.

Quick gallery of the work:

This took a couple of days. Yes, it’s hot. Yes, I sweated profusely. Yes, it rained and I kept working. Yes, I woke up with a sore back. Yes, I have at least one more trip to Home Depot and a couple more days of work. But the result so far?

It’s wrong. It’s too big for the space, and the sheer amount of concrete overpowers the rest of the area. It was a good concept, but the reality sucks. So I have to take it all down and try again. ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS, and all that.

(But all systems are go!)