Winter wonder: Nothing clears the mind like chopping wood.
Photo by
epicurean
The world is full of annoying conundrums like Sudoku and forgotten passwords for password protected accounts, but after a nice red I always find the best thing to do is stop trying to understand everything and chop wood instead.
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Chopping wood is one of the great joys of winter. It’s a wonderfully masculine activity that involves all the exciting stuff like physical violence, berserk destruction, and occasional pain without having to face any consequences. I reckon Nick Kyrgios should try it before a game.
You can really shake your sillies out with an axe. If like me, you spend all day trying to work out why toast always lands jam-side down, or, if like Nick you spend your days working out why a ball bounces this way and not that way, then swinging a big heavy blade while shouting can really help.
When you swing that big blade the world makes perfect sense. Things need to get out of your way or they get hit. You’re in the zone – focused on a block of wood that could be a speed camera, an internet scammer, Vladimir Putin, or that man down the road who owns the bottle shop and asks “what about this weather, eh?” every time you see him.
Sometimes I find it helps to shout like a Viking to concentrate the force. Then sometimes I ululate like a Zulu warrior woman, but that’s usually only when I miss and hit my shin with the reverse backspin thrust. These are just little tricks you learn when you’re an old wood-chopper like me.
Frustrated?: Find a quiet corner and chop your sillies out.
However, there are some mental aspects to wood chopping. Things like knots – my solution is to work yourself up into a lather and get murderously angry, and then find another piece of wood with no knot. Then there are the little subtle things like swinging to the flow of the grain like a blend of Jack Nicholson and Fred Astaire, or knowing that redwood is harder than boxwood and that when something has been eaten by ants it can explode into a fine red powder and result in a nasty case of the above reverse backspin thrust.
I have a little wood chop spot in my backyard that I retire to every evening when things just get too confusing. Whenever I accidentally catch the TV news as I pass through the lounge room to clean the fire grate, I just can’t wait to get out to my wood chop spot and sort everything out. Why can’t celebrity spouses and footballers sort things out over a biscuit and tea? Why has the world become so complicated and asinine?
When I find myself standing in shopping malls wondering if there really is any difference between Trans Barbie and Binary Barbie, and why conservative governments always cut taxes so people can buy more tattoos and sugar doughnuts – the wood chop spot beckons.
But of course, when you’re over 65 the world is never conundrum-free. Not even wood-chopping. For instance, why is it that when you’ve finished chopping wood, the last thing you feel like doing is lighting a fire? That’s up there with Sudoku and Barbie’s friends.
