A Mason's Work

I think I can talk about this week's tool for the rest of the year and still not run

out of stuff.

This week we're going to be talking about the plum.

So to give you a little bit of understanding what the plum is and how it works to give

you kind of an overview, the plum is a tool that is used by carpenters, operative masons.

Anybody that's responsible for building anything that's basically going to go vertical.

And what it is, I've come to find that a lot of folks don't know actually what it does.

It's basically a string.

And on the bottom of that string is a very heavy weight.

And what you do is you hold that string up.

And it's going to, by default, because of gravity, make a straight line perpendicular

to essentially the center of, or perpendicular to the level, I guess, the easiest way to

say it.

The weight on the end of that line is attracted by gravity to roughly the center of the

earth, right?

So whatever, wherever it's pointed at the, at the bottom is essentially a direct line

that points to the center of the earth.

There's a bunch of signs involved that I'm not intimately familiar with how it works.

And whether or not it's pointing to the exact center of the earth, I'm sure somebody's

going to correct me in the comments and that's cool.

But the purpose here is to understand that when you want something to stand, working along

that line of gravity makes the most sense.

So you put a post in the ground and you want to make sure that that post is plumb along

that line so that the building stands upright and stays upright.

If you install a post or the beginning of a wall or whatever at an angle, having it

not succumb to gravity is very difficult.

So if you put a wall with an overhang or things like that, it can be done for sure.

But somewhere in that structure is essentially a gravitational plumb that will effectively

allow any cantilevered surfaces or any surfaces that are overhanging to be essentially carried

by another surface or another arm that's holding attention to keep it upright.

When we talk about that sort of from an operative level, it's like, oh yeah, it's just a

tool.

When we talk about it from a symbolic level, we're really talking about the ability to stay

grounded and centered to find that sort of that gravitational core within yourself,

in your beliefs, within your faith, within your sort of emotional range, your psychological

range, what have you, to find that center within yourself and stay centered even amidst

the adversity of everyday life, even when it's hard to do it, even when life throws

some stuff at you.

And this is why the plumb is perhaps one of the most productive implements in the craft

to meditate on to reflect on.

Spending time with the plumb is always time well spent.

When we get into it a little bit more over the course of the rest of the week, I think

you'll find it's useful in a lot of different applications.

But for you and what you're doing right now, just remember that the ability to stay centered

and in the moment and stay present is best described by the plumb.