Process is More Sacred than Product
by Melissa Kummerow
There are two wooden boxes before you.
One has been made of rough wood - the human maker did not have a planer to make each side equally thick, and only had so much sandpaper to get the box to a certain grain of smooth. There are a few gaps in the bottom corners. The wood has some knots. He had on hand a drill and few screws … at least enough for one side of the box. For the other side he scrounged around his garage’s junk jar of collected fastenings, and finally found some correct-sized nails - and where is the hammer? There is the hammer, under last week’s project! He had forgotten to put it back in its place. Afternoons were spent, creativity given; he bled a little, sweat a little, and with what he had on hand, formed that rough-hewn box.
The other box?
Smooth.
Dovetail joints.
Designed and fabricated in
two hours or less by
factory workers [status: numb emotionally, financially, physically].
Or maybe by a series of
tireless,
automated
machinery.
One box has more worth - indeed is more sacred - than the other.
