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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Moving on...
- Thread starter Daniel Koster
- Start date
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2001
- Messages
- 4,501
Good luck, Dan. The new job thing is certainly stressful, but I am sure you will do well.
--Josh
--Josh
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2003
- Messages
- 1,710
May your next job be so wonderful that you only wish you'd made your decision sooner. Best of luck to you!
Here's a couple of poems to take along Dan-
They helped me a lot when I needed them most.
The Faces at Braga
In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight
the old shrine room waits in silence
While above the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, "Will you step through?"
And the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons.
We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word,
see faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved above,
eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.
Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.
Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers
we have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
then slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.
Carved in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve through delight of the carvers hand.
If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver's hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.
If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,
we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.
When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.
And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.
If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carvers hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers
feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.
Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration
to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver's hands.
David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
http://www.breakoutofthebox.com/table6.htm
They helped me a lot when I needed them most.
The Faces at Braga
In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight
the old shrine room waits in silence
While above the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, "Will you step through?"
And the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons.
We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word,
see faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved above,
eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.
Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.
Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers
we have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
then slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.
Carved in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve through delight of the carvers hand.
If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver's hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.
If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,
we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.
When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.
And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.
If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carvers hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers
feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.
Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration
to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver's hands.
David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
http://www.breakoutofthebox.com/table6.htm
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2002
- Messages
- 183
Much aloha, Dan!
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2003
- Messages
- 243
Best of luck!
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2002
- Messages
- 796
Dan, I have found out the hard way that things happen for a reason. Trust your instincts. My guess is that when you put in your notice, your boss will try to talk you out of leaving. That is if he is big enough to understand his mistake and values his employees. Some bosses will cut their noses to spite their face. Those you have to leave behind.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2001
- Messages
- 20,978
Here's the scoop:
2 projects are just about to go to construction. Total $$$ = 16 Million.
I did 80% of the work in getting those drawings done. While it's true that the boss is the one who is communicating with the client, making the big decisions, did the space planning, etc. I'm the one who did most of the work making it "buildable". When it comes to crunch time, they finally realize what they're missing...
Ben - fortunately, the feeling was mutual. I know he's relieved to see me hit the road. The decision wasn't as courageous as y'all make it out to be. It was pretty much a mutual decision. For me, it's getting out while the gettin's good.
It's not going to be pretty after I leave. I'm sure my name will be cussed for at least a year-and-a-half from now (until the projects are finished) and maybe even more afterwards. There are 3 boxes of paperwork already filed on these projects and I'm the one that did the filing. It's going to tough for the "new guy". That's why I held out as long as I could - I felt guilty leaving this in somebody else's hands.
Thanks for the support guys - liked the poetry as well. Today's the day that my resume hits the street running...wish me well.
Dan
2 projects are just about to go to construction. Total $$$ = 16 Million.
I did 80% of the work in getting those drawings done. While it's true that the boss is the one who is communicating with the client, making the big decisions, did the space planning, etc. I'm the one who did most of the work making it "buildable". When it comes to crunch time, they finally realize what they're missing...
Ben - fortunately, the feeling was mutual. I know he's relieved to see me hit the road. The decision wasn't as courageous as y'all make it out to be. It was pretty much a mutual decision. For me, it's getting out while the gettin's good.
It's not going to be pretty after I leave. I'm sure my name will be cussed for at least a year-and-a-half from now (until the projects are finished) and maybe even more afterwards. There are 3 boxes of paperwork already filed on these projects and I'm the one that did the filing. It's going to tough for the "new guy". That's why I held out as long as I could - I felt guilty leaving this in somebody else's hands.
Thanks for the support guys - liked the poetry as well. Today's the day that my resume hits the street running...wish me well.
Dan
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2002
- Messages
- 746
Best of Luck!
- Joined
- Feb 23, 1999
- Messages
- 4,855
Good luck in working out the stuff you're here for, Dan.
