Heartcore.

There's a look in people's eyes, one I've come to recognize. I see the look when I run into old acquaintances and answer the inevitable, "What are you?...  Where are you?... How are you?..." questions. The look says, "Did he just say chicken coops? Yikes... I'm going to smile and nod now, poor guy". It's OK though, I get it, maybe I need to work on the delivery; but, to be honest, I don't mind the look all that much. Ironically, I'm more comfortable being the guy people don't get, than being the guy that needs to be like everyone else. Hence, heartcore.

Hand cut stamp, circa 2002.

I'm not going to be able to explain this fully, so if you get it, cool. Back in my rowdy teenage years I had a rowdy punk rock band, rowdy threads, rowdy hair do's, rowdy fixed gear bikes and rowdy friends. The rowdiness was partly juvenile, but also heartfelt, sincere and self-professedly noble in a way that sometimes, only rowdy juveniles can be. In my youthful efforts to refine this noble rowdiness, I came across a line in a poem / song, "while you rhyme about being hardcore, be heartcore, what is it that we do art for?"; and, it changed me a little bit. I drew up this thing, you might call it a symbol, that I silk-screened onto shirts and patches, carved into stamps, stencils and all that other D.I.Y. stuff that punk rock kids do. It stood for being real, genuine, undaunted and unabashed. It stood for putting your heart in to what you do and totally owning it. It stood for being stronger than tough, stronger than hard; true integrity and genuine courage draw upon a different kind of strength, one that requires you to expose your weaknesses, your vulnerabilities, and own them.

So, 12 years later, I'm almost 30 and I've come to a realization. In so many ways, I am very, very different from that rowdy teenage kid; but, in so many ways I'm also exactly the same. I'm building a goat house / chicken coop right now, and I'm doing it heartcore. I still have the same Do-It-Yourself mentality, with it's accompanying tenacious spirit, I'm just channeling it somewhere else. This build -for which the recipients thereof have kindly and patiently waited- is all heart. I decided to start with an oak log, cutting and splitting it into corner posts to form the skeleton of the building. In such endeavors, you loose a little bit of control, you forfeit perfect squareness and you sacrifice conventional form; but, you gain something that's almost difficult to describe, I sometimes call it the "conspicuously handmade" feel, you might call it soul.

I have to remind myself every time, that I hit this point in almost every build where I second guess what I'm doing, that it's too ramshackle, then I push through and it pays off (or I start over and act like I had it right the first time).

There's something about shaping a beam or post with an axe minutes after it was a log on the ground, then using it, that is utterly satisfying in an awesome, primordial way.

This little axe is called a "boy's axe", literally, I decided to keep that information from Georgie for a couple years. I keep eyeballing a few bad to the bone, real deal vintage broadaxes at the antique mall that are built for this type of thing. When I grow some hair on my chest I'm going to get one.

There's a fair bit of eye-ballin' going on here, I'm not going to lie.

Perhaps the #1 tell-tale sign of handmade awesomeness, hewing marks. Next time you're in a really old home with exposed beams, look for these. Each knick represents the blood, sweat and tears of a hard working man.

This is the moment where I realized how awesome this thing is going to look.

It's amazing how a couple pieces of trim give purpose, direction and dignity to what once seemed haphazard and chaotic. These blog posts are kind of like the trim on my haphazard, chaotic life. It doesn't seem so bad when I sit back and look at it.