Driftwood Sign Amor Fati Details

• Completed: April 5, 2020
• Medium/Materials: Driftwood, iron spike nails
• Finish: mineral oil

Driftwood found on Plymouth Beach in February. The unseasonably warm and clear weather allowed us to walk on the beach without shoes (or a jacket).

The wood was wet and warped and falling apart, so I clamped it down to straighten and dry for several months.

Since the wood was fragile (it would easily have split horizontally), I glued a backing of 1/4" raw pine wood on the back taken from a slab project. I removed the old nails that were cut off from face and back, but still stuck into the wood. I scraped them out and replaced them with metal masonry spikes and then cut off the back of those so they didn't stick out. They are anchored in using super glue.

Amor fati is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary.
—Wikipedia

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
— Friedrich Nietzsche