Can Wood Dance?

Twenty-some years ago I brought home from my father’s orchard in New Jersey several branches of one of his cherry trees.  The wood has been waiting for me all these years.  Last October I began to carve one of the pieces. My mind saw a “dancing Zorba” just waiting to come out of that piece of wood.  Transferring that mental vision of a “dancing Zorba” to wood, however, became a real challenge. (Arthritic hands do not help).  I started and then stopped, started again and stopped again.  Can wood dance?  Can what I see be?  Is there really a Zorba in this piece of wood just waiting to break forth?

Two weeks ago I became obsessed with the carving again.  I sent a photo of the unfinished carving to a friend.  His response was an honest one.  “I can see Zorba the Greek in the carving.  I will admit though, that I couldn't until you told me.  Maybe after you've finished the sanding?”  I responded, “You are such a kind fellow to say you can see Zorba in the wood carving photo I sent yesterday.  You are honest, too—admitting that Zorba could not be seen until I told you it was Zorba!  I don’t think any additional sanding is going to bring Zorba out!”

My fascination with making a piece of wood “dance” goes back a long way.  My first attempt was some forty years ago when I carved a number of “dancing figures” from walnut and oak. Other attempts to make wood dance have been undertaken through the years and most of them discarded because the wood just would not dance!  

Kazantzakis wrote that when words became too constricting for Zorba, or when he felt himself somewhat suffocated, he would leap to his feet and begin to dance.  Perhaps my attempts to make wood dance occurs when my words can no longer express what I see, feel, and yearn for?  Perhaps my attempts to make wood dance is a way of leaping to my own feet and dancing because I cannot transform the dance into words.  Nor can I transform the dance into wood.  Perhaps Kazantzakis was describing me and my carved figure, when he said, “Zorba reposed inside me like a chrysalis, swaddled in a hard, transparent shell.”  The question, then,  is not whether wood can dance.  The question is will I free-up the Zorba in me and the Zorba I see in a piece of cherry wood, “swaddled in a hard, transparent shell” to dance?  

I'm telling you this is a
"dancing Zorba"