The Table, the Flying Saucer

Remember the scene in the first Men in Black film where the bug man jams his flying saucer into the exterminator’s van and drives off in search of the Universe?
Well, the good news is that I’ve carved and painted the Tibetan tabletop and my colleague The Other Tim has taken it back to his shop to add beautifully-crafted legs.
But in his pickup, it did look like a flying saucer…

The text, as you may recall, is based on the wonderful Buddhist calligraphy of Tashi Mannox. It reads “graceful kindness,” repeated six times, so it acts as a kind of mantra.
In theory. To be honest I know very little about Buddhism or mantras. But that’s the intent.

Anyway, we had to wait for a break in this rain, which is doing wonderful things for my new plantings but would not be kind to the tabletop, but finally we had a clear, bright, early-summer day, and it was time for me to say goodbye to the item that, like a stylish wooden alien, has been occupying most of my house for the past six weeks.

And one of the great pleasures of that absence is that finally I could see the original Endangered Alphabets table again.
For those of you who don’t know it, it’s still one of my favorite creations. Maple and walnut, and in the top I carved a blessing I wrote and had translated into Balinese.
It reads:

Bless this food
Bless these people
Bless the table
That brought them together.