Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Anvils

Subject: Story of Everyman Many Anvils

Your "He who dies with the most anvils wins." is a truism.

What is it about anvils? I want to buy everyone I see.

Sometime ago a wise man wrote

The anvil is a metaphor for, variously, 1) immortality;
2) God; 3) ones lost childhood; 4) permanence;
5) power; and, 6) virtue.

Relative to a human being, an anvil is highly durable -
a single anvil may go through many stewards with
proper care. One develops an affinity with ones anvil,
ones partner in creation, and so one comes to
identify oneself with the anvil upon which one gazes
during creative endeavors. To own an anvil, and to
invest ones anvil with oneself through work, gives
one the "feel" of immortality.

The anvil as permanent object and partner in
creation takes on almost Godlike qualities in the
deep reaches of the psyche - it is durable, faithful,
is able to absorb our frustrations without changing,
is immovable, and it communicates with us directly
without the intervention of a human voice.

An anvil speaks of the lost moments of ones childhood -
a time when everyone knew what an anvil looked like,
when a cartoon could show a falling anvil landing on a
character, and no child would say "What was that?"
Anvils were present at the founding of our nation, and
yet predate it. An anvil we possess might have been
used by an ancestor, who themselves gazed upon the
anvil and wondered what of their progeny might share
a relationship with it in the future.

An anvil is therefore a symbol of permanence, of a
continuity of relationship between and across
generations of its owners of the same blood. Anvils
are the tangible metaphor for the invisible anchors
that moor our families and our civilization against chaos.
One may not believe in ones friends or immediate
family, or the President, or whomever, but there is
no denying the rooted permanence of a 300-lb. anvil.
It's there pal, no doubt about it.

Possession of and use of an anvil is the exercise of
power - the power of creation, and the sheer vital, physical
power of muscle-against-wood propelling steel-against-
steel. The power to possess and anvil is the power to
direct the path of industry and creativity, to bring forth
beautiful objects to command the awe and respect of
the aesthete, and weapons to command obedience
from those who would otherwise try to take ones anvil.

Finally, the anvil is the model, the archetype, the spiritual
symbol of virtue: all-weathering with faithfulness,
accepting every blow without complaint or attempt to
dodge, answering the strike with the consistent and
beautiful ring of truth and integrity. The anvil may be
beaten, melted, cut, and otherwise defaced, but with
the last molecular connection of its being it maintains
its anvilness to the last - an example to us all.

One buys every anvil one sees for four reasons: To
assimilate through association the virtues, power, and
character of each of ones anvils; to inherit the creative
powers of all those with whom the anvil formerly shared
relationship; to build a mountain of anvils upon which
one may place oneself, in order to shout to the
world " I have many anvils!" and finally, to deprive
ones competing suitors for all those anvils of the powers
inherent in their possession.

The draw to collecting many anvils is the desire to
accomplish all of the above, coupled with the subliminal
reaction to the knowledge that even anvils are impermanent,
That they rust, are stolen, and that, for all their other virtues,
they pass from one hand to the other without allegiance,
sentiment, or loyalty - gotta have some spares.

The above-described and pervasive impulse to collect good
anvils is why I seem not to have any anvils at all: by
the time I realized their value (only recently), I find that
someone else is hoarding them.

"Let he who has two anvils give one to his neighbor."