Warped Wood Lessons: The Table That Taught Me

My first drafting table wasn't bought.

It wasn't sleek, polished, or straight.

It was something my father and I made together out of warped wood most people would have thrown away.

We needed a table, and I needed a place to draw. The wood had other ideas. It bent and bowed, resisting the square and the level. But instead of forcing it, we listened. We built with what it gave us, not against it.

That table stood in my room for years. It held my first lines as a student of architecture, my first models, my first visions of a future I could barely see but desperately wanted to shape.

The table no longer exists. It's gone disassembled, discarded, replaced.

But the lesson remains, and I think of it now as one of my earliest warped wood lessons: not everything in life arrives straight. Materials resist. Plans bend. People surprise you. You can fight, or you can listen. You can insist on perfection, or you can make something honest out of what you have.

That drafting table taught me presence. It taught me that building begins with humility. It taught me to meet materials, people, and life as they are, not as I wish them to be.

And when I look back at that photo of me at the table, I see more than a young man learning to draft. I see the beginning of a practice that still guides me: learning to listen before I build.

Field Note:

Some things you build don't last forever. But if you listen while you're building, the lesson lasts longer than the object.