Mechanics. That could mean a few things really. It could be one of the guys, named Phil. The one in the greasy blue jumpsuit with his name in a little white oval on his left breast pocket. Wrench in hand. He’s the guy who fixes your transmission, and such.
Or it could be the branch of applied mathematics…. the one which deals with motion and all the forces that produce motion.
It could be machinery as a subject in itself. Like engineering. OR it could be the way in which something is done…. like the mechanics of playing a violin. Perhaps.
The reason I bring this up? Well….. I subscribe to a little magazine called Popular Mechanics. And sometimes… it covers ALL these things. Surprisingly. It is a nifty little magazine. One can learn a lot there.
However, most of the pages are filled with DIYs. That means Do-It-Yourself-ers, for all you Rookies out there. They teach you to invent things, or to build things, or to fix your broken things. You know. Things.
Sooooo….. say….. you wanted to build a wall. Coincidentally… I DID want to build a wall. They teach you this in Popular Mechanics. The very first step is crucial. You need the money to take on ANY project. You have to be able to pay, in full…. for what it is you want to do. That’s Step One.
Thankfully, for my wall, I had the money. I wanted a Rock Wall, for my Meditation Garden… or Prayer Garden… or Rock Garden. I don’t really care what you call it. I go there and sit.
Anyways. I had the money… but I didn’t just want to buy rocks. So every day, for a lot of days… I went down to the creek by our house. I got down there in the creek, and hunted good rocks.
Rocks of all sizes. Big rocks, little rocks… some as big as your head.
Then I would carry those rocks up the steep creek bed, put them in the back of our farm utility vehicle, and take them to my building site. THIS is called manual labor. Some people don’t know what that is either…. but it does a body good.
Anyway, when I had enough rocks, I called an expert… like a Rock Mechanic… to assemble to wall. Which he did. Nicely. And then I paid him.
You see, this was my big idea, so I took care of it. Imagine if I had asked my neighbor to pay for the wall… and she didn’t even want it. Or how about if I told ALL my neighbors they would have to chip in to pay for this wall… and they didn’t even want it?
What if I was king of the neighborhood, and could make them pay regardless?
Oh… like THAT would EVER happen in a million years…. ….. ……. .
Uhnnnnn…..
At any rate, I just wanted to key you in on this nifty little publication. It really is great. Like this month, we could do the Build the Wall Project… or we could turn the page and find the list of the Ten Top Barbers in the U.S. Build a wall, AND get a hair cut.
More people should subscribe, I think.
“When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.” ― Charles Baxter
“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” ― Albert Szent-Györgyi