I remember mentioning something about winding up archive 12 this last week. And I did. Wind up archive 12, that is. In fact, I just got it done a couple hours ago. It is a little after nine o’clock Saturday night as I sit here at the keyboard.
Took me all damn week to do it.
The task started with re-formatting the catalogue of paintings. Reformatting was just lots of mouse work: re-size images, change page breaks, make sure labels, captions, and notes are all consistent. I like working. I complain a little, but I really don’t mind this kind of dull clerical stuff. And it was all going along pretty smoothly. Was.
The task started with re-formatting the catalogue of paintings. Reformatting was just lots of mouse work: re-size images, change page breaks, make sure labels, captions, and notes are all consistent. I like working. I complain a little, but I really don’t mind this kind of dull clerical stuff. And it was all going along pretty smoothly. Was.
I got all the entries in the catalogue re-sized,
and proceeded to put the last 80 or so pictures in the catalogue.
When I finished entering pic number 659 I noticed that the
serial numbers on the .jpg files, and labels on the pictures suddenly jumped
from arc12P659 to arc12P670.
Shoulda’ been P660.
I made an error consisting of a single key stroke. Then I multiplied
that error by 63 times. The count on all the serial numbers and, worse, all the
labels was off by ten. I noticed this on Tuesday of last week. Like I said, I
just got done fixing it all a couple hours ago.[insert angry face emoticon]
I was pissed. I set to work with Pete’s voice in my head. Pete could be volatile. He was subject to
overwhelming anger over frustrations and setbacks, and he wasn’t one to hold it
all in. I could all too easily imagine Pete being caught in a similar fix. I
could see him shaking his fist at the heavens, and hear him shouting one of his
favorite curses: “YOU TRICK OF A LIFE!”
Actually, it kinda’ made me laugh. It’s hard to stay pissed
when you’re laughing. But I still had to fix all those entries.
This week I looked through some message files from last year.
It was a year ago, July 26, that I got the phone call from Pete’s
sister-in-law, Jerri, and dropped what I
was doing to drive over to St. Jude’s. The visit with Pete was as horrible as
it was brief. I never saw anyone so sick. He was gone that night.
Yesterday, I got this note from Pete’s brother, Richard:
John...Peter left his worldly bounds
to begin his new journey one year ago today. Peter was a believer in the after
life and judgement day. Looking at Peters life holistically, I truly believe he
will get the well deserved peace he never experienced on this planet.
All I can add to that is “Amen.”
Pete seldom talked
about it, but he had his own deep and private
faith, and he did believe in God and in Jesus. Writing this brings to mind a
snip of conversation I had with Pete when I was in the angry atheist phase of
being young and stupid. I asked Pete, “If God’s so powerful how come I can
insult him all I want and he doesn’t do anything about it?”
Pete simply answered,
“He will.”
And Pete turned out
to be right. He did, and over the years I have become a believer, myself.
And that dovetails
into a subject that Richard and I talk about pretty much every time we touch
bases: the notion that there is a Greater Hand at work in our lives. The Voice
is real if only we will open our ears to hear it.
I look at Pete’s
easel set up in my den, and consider the months of work that have brought me to
this point, and will continue into the foreseeable future. Consider the blog,
the photo archives, the catalogue now at over 400 pages. A year ago, all this
stuff was days away, and I had no idea that any of it was going to happen. I
consider the long and tenuous string of
events that began two years ago, and how those events have converged into my
sitting here at the keyboard this very moment.
“John,
do you want to go to the Sawdust Festival?...”
There is a pattern
that flows through all things, and there is a purpose underlying that
pattern. Call it what you will, the
Greater Hand is real, and there are things in our lives that happen for a
reason, and to a purpose.
So for now the
project is up to date, and I am ready to move on with the last couple of
collections. Tonight, or tomorrow I’ll set up for the next photo session. By
next week we should have Pigrats.
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