Another important thing

I've been a member of Saturday Market for 33 years, since way before they had memberships. It has formed me as I have contributed to it.

We're a subculture, craftspeople. Whether we make things out of wood, wool, food or words, we have a lifestyle in common and a way of looking at the world that feeds us and keeps us tied into making things. I don't expect to retire.

I started out painting signs, in the fantasy of being a traveling signpainter inspired by Woody Guthrie. (On the back of the sign, it didn't say nothin'). I had a Willys panel jeep with "Signs" painted on the side, and drove around the four corners area of Colorado. I landed here in 1976 and made lovely wooden open/closed signs to sell at the market, thinking I would use the opportunity to find customers for my real work. My first customer was Humble Bagel, and I did go on to paint lots of signs around Eugene.

I also made handpainted greeting cards, and then taught myself to silkscreen, so I could make more of them, and the calendars which developed in subsequent years. At some point this morphed into t-shirt printing, which is mostly what I do there now. I didn't always sell at the market, but at times I was very involved, and I've been that way again for the last several years. I took about 12 years off from Saturdays to build my house and raise my son, but I helped start the Holiday Market and have sold every day that it has ever been open. And I've taken minutes at a lot of meetings.

So it isn't possible to separate the Market from who I am, and in the contemplative years I'm in now, I have been paying a lot of attention to the emotional aspects of this life. I enjoy observing my fellows and how we see things and do things. It's amusing and revealing and perplexing and gratifying and I like the way Saturdays feed me and exhaust me.

To connect with my previous post, last week I took my Jell-O Art to Opening Day. It felt very adventurous for me to expose this passionate ridiculousness, but like many things during the Market day, it went, for the most part, unnoticed. I was frustrated that I had invited quite a few people to come see this aspect of my true self, and most of them were too busy to do that.

I had to laugh at my disappointment. I forgot how hard we are all working on Saturdays, and how self-involved we all are. I would venture to say that every person who set up a booth, came for a shift, had a shopping list, or brought a marimba, felt that they were on an essential mission, had an almost overwhelming number of things to complete, and took very little time to appreciate the wondrous offerings of everybody else.

There were moments, of course, and I did explain my deep passion to a couple of people. I had a few appreciative viewers who really got it. One or two people saw into my heart and soul, and one or two people is a lot for a day in an ordinary life. I didn't do a lot of specific appreciation myself. I noticed some lovely baby kale, talked philosophy with one farmer, and commiserated with some of the other people waiting for spaces in our loose group in the morning. I was comfortable in my usual neighborhood and stuck close to my stuff, and was businesslike most of the time. Plus I confess I had to leave early to get to the Jell-O Show, so I missed some of the best parts of the day.

It's almost too big to grasp all at once, our Market. I'm too far from the stage to hear the performers, though I love and give dollars to the random buskers who come close. I catch a phrase or chord in passing on my important errands. I check on the farmers I'm connected with and I get my crepe or pad thai when the lines are short. I wait and engage with my friends when they wander into my zone. I'm often brought to tears, and I do try to thank the people who have that affect on me. But it all goes by fast and there are so many wonderful artists I don't know and don't see. I know there are many who go home feeling unnoticed and unappreciated and I'm unable to do much about that.

There are also so many things they don't know about what I did notice, what I thought deeply about the next day or vowed to see or buy the following week. I've written short stories about quite a few of the people I watched during the moments between sales. I've modeled my own display or products after ways they've inspired me with their unique creative genius. There are people I think I would love to be, and things I wish I could even attempt to make. They can't know this, just like I can't know how many people saw my Jell-O art and were touched or amazed.

There are layers and layers of color and texture in the precious living gel of our Market. All of us have intensity and fathomless complexity that lies underneath what we bring to sell or just to show, or to sing about or to serve. I'm really working hard to see underneath the surface of my Saturdays at this point in my life. I eat it up. I look around at the beautiful trees and the light coming through them and the weather to the west and the flow of the people and the way we all move through the hours and the weeks.

I'm so lucky to be there. I'm so lucky to have this life, and to have had this time. May I never take it for granted. May my expectations never get in the way of what is actually happening.