I don’t know why I like that phrase so much, I guess it hits me the same way seeing someone who can actually draw does. The phrase obviously, not the hammer. That would just hurt. Which I wouldn’t like. But I do like all the analog connotations it conjures. It just evokes some potential. Idle hands are the devil’s tools, or so someone says. A hammer just gives the hand some extra purpose. Anyway, I stray.

So after visiting my former home back in January (it took longer to write the opus about its history than it did to draw it), I took a stroll down 2nd Avenue to see what was what. Things were starting to look different. What was once a big mess while they were installing the slurry walls on the west side of the avenue was now looking systematically laid out and enclosed. This of course was minus the few remaining spots that still needed drilling of sorts. I watched as one guy up on top of a vertical stack of pipes, had to be at least 15 feet, was coating the threads of the pipes and latching them on to the crane before they were hoisted to a few feet from where I was standing. A second and third guy guided the pipe and turned it onto the last section that had been pushed into the ground. As it was going in the second guy, or third depending on how you count, was beating the pipe with a sledgehammer. I am still not sure why, but after about five lengths or so, I imagined it was to wake the devil and tell him, “idle hands this.” But that was just because I was hanging out with laborers all day.