i'm getting older - could feel it in the deck chewing my buttbones but there's something attractive about this process that keeps you sitting there even though you know you're gonna be sorry
once you get the sun, the lens, and the piece all lined up you gotta stop shaking and quaking because you've not only got to keep it all in line, you have to keep it at the focal plane on the surface and get a feel for what kinda energy you got coming down, then let your mind move your hand -
you're working with a little hot dot on the wild end of a lever
sometimes the sun is hot and sometimes you see clouds or fog coming over it in the lens before the tool disappears -
that's one thing - the tool can just disappear while you're doing it , and your mind turns down as the radiation drops and the pattern stops coming out
you think you're burning a continuous line until you take a good look at it and most of the time it's a series of little connected dots like a computer screen unless you get brutal and really fry it
and the surfaces are all different, fast and slow and curved and there's this smoke coming up and without knowing it you start planning over the hill, keeping the focus, turning the piece, letting the pattern make its own internal sense
if you get in the way, it lets you know

/m
[image captured on 21june03 - ocean beach ca]