Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I did another carving experiment today after looking at Islamic art at the museum. It's a really simple experiment (with the bumpmap drawn in Photoshop by hand by the way) of some simple weaving just to get an idea of how detailed the machine can produce it, as well as giving me more ideas on how to generate the source images and how they translate into wood.

I wanted to do a “woven” design because I think my next project is going to be a simple chair — a three legged stool, with either a pillow or a rope coil pad, and then a carved rim. The legs will be out of flat board (rather than dowel) and carved as well. That said…

…I really need to make some picture frames! These types of patterns would work nicely on those as well. The funny thing is, as I've hand finished a lot of it, I find that I much prefer working with my hands than I do designing on the computer. The one good thing about the world economy being about to collapse is that hopefully working with your hands will finally become competitive again with what can be mass produced.

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Back to the land! Next week I am going to go and look at some yurts… I figure it's the ideal structure for me to have. It's a portable structure that I can pay off without debt (there is no way I'm going to have a mortgage — I was talking to a friend about their beautiful farm, and while I am very jealous of the fine land, I am not jealous of their bank relationship), is portable, and can be anything from a temporary home (and then guest home) while I built a sand-bag house (or whatever), to something that I live in long term.

A few people have questioned whether it's good parenting to want to live somewhere rural and build a house from scratch and live in a glorified tent (which is what a yurt is, I suppose), but personally when I think back on my own upbringing, most of the memories I have — and thus I assume the things that shaped me — are of farm work, my parents making things and building things, and independent thinking and living. Who knows how I'd have turned out if they'd stayed in the city. Maybe better, maybe worse, but I have nothing but good things to say about my childhood.

Why should I mourn the passing of my people? Tribes are made of men, nothing more. Men come and go like the waves of the sea. Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all, we shall see.

One thing we know which the white man may one day discover. Our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land. But you cannot. He is the God of man. And hit compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to Him. And to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The whites, too, shall pass – perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land, and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

We might understand if we knew what it was that the white man dreams, what hopes he describes to his children on long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds, so that they will wish for tomorrow. But we are savages. The white man's dreams are hidden from us. And because they are hidden, we will go our own way.

That's a quote from Chief Seattle in a letter to the US President Franklin Pierce in 1854… I was thinking of it today because it's excerpted in a book I was reading on how to build a house for $500. Seems like a good deal for a house?