i was visited recently by a gentleman who works around the block from my shop, inquiring whether i could drop by his wife's co-op grocery store to check out a cash register with an aluminum frame that had broken, to determine if it could be fixed with a simple weld and whether i could do it.  i like this community market so i dropped by to look at their minor repair.  walking in, an employee there--who i have long known as a customer of the store--said, "oh, YOU'RE the welder?!"  (ludwig wittgenstein, over the course of years became less and less capable of speech because of common fallacies occurring in everyday phrasing... to the extent that he became virtually silent.)  i ponder this expression: i don't feel like a welder, in no way do i define myself or identity as a welder, nor do i even weld that often.  i do, however, operate a metal studio which ends up encompassing different welding techniques, but the 'welding' in this capacity is like the rigging of a nice sailboat--indispensable--yet it disappears under a good beat.  enough!  i nod so as not to seem arrogant... it's just that the question doesn't make sense to me, like an accusation that a florist is a fascist.  "oh, you're the nazi!?"  (an exaggeration.)  i realize too along the course of this thought process that this statement is likewise a commendation, that my role is to provide a service and, as socrates says, "there is no higher purpose."  this is all of our duty, to provide a service, such that at the end of the process we have left the world a tiny bit better, with a hair's width more organization.  the jewish expression of world maintenance: tikkum olam... the duty of all.  i'm proud that i know how to mend this cash register, so i make good and fulfill my duty.  there is a way of performing the most mundane of tasks in such a way that the importance of the task disappears and the process is left supreme; in this world where everything evanesces and then waxes back on--through storms of human struggle to KEEP THINGS STATIC--we are left with only practice, process, patience... peace.  a wise yogi (chandrika) says do the simplest thing the way you would do anything.  this renders diplomacy with iran equivalent to washing the tea saucer.  all is one.  and there is no one thing you will find here that I DO, nor will i ask you to do just ONE THING, because it is implicit that we are doing only that, in whatever medium.  when the hands rise up and balance the feet, brush knee, block ear, step... a t'ai ch'i station, one is boxing an internal opponent... at the same time as running the hands through expressions of chi around the body, guiding this vital force through the meridians of the body, healing it, pouring liquid nectar into the cores of our being.  this is an expression of stillness and motion, war and peace, negation and creation...  this is my goal in service: if i deconstruct part of your house (destroy) to rebuild, repair, it is with a vision of health, to render it better, with more organization, harmony, such that it guides your life into peace... likewise if i shake your hand or write you a poem, make you a chair, make converstaion with you, or step out of your way, i seek not to attain, but to render your life better, more peaceful, with more organization.  now kick the ladder away and remember this as a whisper in a dream.  away!