Hammer Time

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Crack!

            I Pause. I take a breath. I resume hammering.

            Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Pop!

            CRASHHH!

I stand there hammer in hand, looking down, grinning a big fat grin - demolishing walls is soooooo much fun. It’s an intrinsically enjoyable activity (to me at least). Yet, I don’t know why hammering brings me joy. It simply does: I love the impact of hammer against wood; when that powerful, destructive, beautiful force hits something solid. Unchecked destruction brings harm, but channeled destruction, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something within that terrible force that’s awesome and fascinating. I guess normally we aren’t allowed to destroy things for fun. We’re always holding ourselves in check. But with that wall, not only was I destroying something, but I was having a damned good time of it.

While I’m hammering, I get this certain feeling of aliveness - my forehead glistening with sweat, my forearms dusty and aching, my breath ragged and panting, and my ears ringing from all that Banging! And my mind concentrated totally upon hammering. No stray thought wafts by - I’m in the zone. This feeling of flow, of rapture, of ‘being in the zone’– it’s what we are all after, I think, in music, in religion, in art, in friendship, in sport, in learning, in love. This feeling, wherever we experience it, is right simply because we absolutely recognize it to be right. Or perhaps, we never experience any rapture ever and all of our efforts in life made in attempt to experience it. Maybe rapture is a part of everyday life if we only woke up to it. Hell, I don’t know, go figure it out yourself. For me, I like hammering. I leave it at that.