Cooking Blue Wood

I spent so much time in the shop this last week that I decided to do some soul restoration. So I’m sitting beside a campfire with Jovi, giving up on trying to get us both to smile for a selfie at the same time.

I’m also cooking blue wood.

Below is a quick video showing the wood cooking after two hours. The fumes are noxious.

That’s why I do this outside and sit a little ways from the oven, beside a campfire, with Jovi on a chair beside me. I keep thinking she’s going to jump over me as I type because chipmunks play in the pile of rocks a few feet to my right, and she’s, well, a dog. This keeps me grounded and humble. The Almighty watches, anticipating his next perfect creation that I’m going to kick over by accident, or possibly willingly if I’m in a foul space, and maybe shrugs it off, thinking, well, it’s a Clayton. I knew this going in. I kinda dig some of his stupid shit.

Maybe the Almighty tires of working through old ladies who read their Bibles every day and couldn’t say shit if they swallowed a burger made of it.

Jovi is profoundly good at being a dog. Hear me out. This isn’t nonsense.

I love Jovi for her canine attributes, even her pain in the ass attributes, and when I do a certain meditation that connects me to the Eternal, I feel the same light shining on me as I shine on her. So I go forward unhappy with my progress in stopping myself from chasing chipmunks, and other assorted foolishments that come super easy to me, yet glad to realize the Eternal was aware when he made me that they’d be there, and I’d lose the fight against them, and he shines on me regardless.

As I said, I’m cooking blue wood today. A minute ago there was an ant crawling across my laptop screen. God, what a beautiful place you’ve given us.

I’m going to memorize the first paragraph of the book of John. I remember most of it. I keep thinking of the words because they are a riddle, of sorts, that unfolds into a world-reorganizing kind of awareness. Each word carries layers of meaning. I’d argue the opening few paragraphs are the finest writing in any language, any people, any history, I swear. Think about mind, consciousness, how thoughts flow, how everything that exists around you supports the story you’re in, and you’ll see why I have no doubt who the real author is, and why our stories — every single one of us — are precious, and why when John says darkness has not overcome the light, it means rejoice! All the good in you, all the life in you, all your struggles toward a better world are not yours alone, or really yours at all.

Man that blue wood is fucking gorgeous!