By B.H. Fairchild
Leonardo imagined the first one.
The next was a pole lathe with a drive cord,
illustrated in Plumier's L'art de tourner en perfection.
Then Ramsden, Vauconson, the great Maudslay,
his student Roberts, Fox, Clement, Whitworth.
The long line of machinists to my left
lean into their work, ungloved hands adjusting the calipers,
tapping the bit lightly with their fingertips.
Each man withdraws into his house of work:
the rough cut, shearing of iron by tempered steel,
blue-black threads lifting like locks of hair,
then breaking over bevel and ridge.
Oil and water splash over the whitening bit, hissing.
The lathe on night-shift, moonlight silvering the bed-ways.
The old man I apprenticed with, Roy Garcia,
in silk shirt, khakis, and Florsheims. Cautious,
almost delicate explanations and slow,
shapely hand movements. Craft by repetition.
Haig and Haig behind the tool chest.
In Diderot's Encyclopaedia, an engraving
of a small machine shop: forge and bellows in back,
in the foreground a mandrel lathe turned by a boy.
It is late afternoon, and the copper light leaking in
from the street side of the shop just catches
his elbow, calf, shoe. Taverns begin to crowd
with workmen curling over their tankards,
still hearing in the rattle of carriages over cobblestone
the steady tap of the treadle,
the gasp and heave of the bellows.
The boy leaves the shop, cringing into the light,
and digs the grime from his fingernails, blue
from bruises. Walking home, he hears a clavier—
Couperin, maybe, a Bach toccata—from a window overhead.
Music, he thinks, the beautiful.
Tavern doors open. Voices. Grab and hustle of the street.
Cart wheels. The small room of his life. The darkening sky.
I listen to the clunk-and-slide of the milling machine,
Maudsley's art of clarity and precision: sculpture of poppet,
saddle, jack screw, pawl, cone-pulley,
the fit and mesh of gears, tooth in groove like interlaced fingers.
I think of Mozart folding and unfolding his napkin
as the notes sound in his head. The new machinist sings Patsy Cline,
I Fall to Pieces. Sparrows bicker overhead.
Screed of the grinder, the bandsaw's groan and wail.
In his boredom the boy in Diderot
studies again through the shop's open door
the buttresses of Suger's cathedral
and imagines the young Leonardo in his apprenticeship
staring through the window at Brunelleschi's dome,
solid yet miraculous, a resurrected body, floating above the city.
Outside, a cowbird cries, flapping up from the pipe rack,
the ruffling of wings like a quilt flung over a bed.
Snow settles on the tops of cans, black rings in a white field.
The stock, cut clean, gleams under lamplight.
After work, I wade back through the silence of the shop:
the lathes shut down, inert, like enormous animals in hibernation,
red oil rags lying limp on the shoulders
of machines, dust motes still climbing shafts
of dawn light, hook and hoist chain lying desultory
as an old drunk collapsed outside a bar,
barn sparrows pecking on the shores of oil puddles—
emptiness, wholeness; a cave, a cathedral.
As morning light washes the walls of Florence,
the boy Leonardo mixes paints
in Verrocchio's shop
and watches the new apprentice muddle
the simple task of the Madonna's shawl.
Leonardo whistles a canzone and imagines
a lathe: the spindle, bit, and treadle, the gleam of brass.
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All the excitement of my day involved things like going to the bank, stopping at CVS to get composition books for Daniel, picking up new hair moisturizer because my old hair moisturizer is failing in an epic way at this point in the summer, and things of that nature. Also, I folded laundry while listening to Mendelssohn because the kids were doing homework -- well, one was doing homework and one was trying to solve the Rubik's Cube because they had a brief discussion about it in geometry class on the first day of school and now he is determined -- and I figured music would be less distracting than State of Play, which I still have not managed to watch.
Bob Essell and Lisa Nelson performing with their ultralight at College Park's AirFair 100.
Kevin Russo doing flips in his T-6 Texan.
Greg Koontz of the Alabama Boys Comedy Act.
Reenactors and their car from the era of the Wright Brothers.
Some of the military helicopters on display.
The naval plane Ally Edwards.
A Coast Guard rescue helicopter.
A member of the Misty Blues All Woman Skydiving Team.
The Ravens finished their preseason undefeated with a win over Atlanta, which is much better than the Redskins, who finished 1-3 after losing to the Jaguars. I watched a Next Gen episode I loathe that I must review tomorrow, "Violations" (or, "He successfully raped her mind but he didn't rape her body so it doesn't count") and that did not leave me in a very good mood. Neither did Facebook -- to quote my friend from grad school, "Mila supports universal healthcare, but not universal status updates." It's like being inundated with chain letters from nearly everyone I know, with huffiness and questions from a couple if I refuse to pass them on.
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