Wishing for a Snowfall

Yes, you know if you are up at seven, watching talking animals on TV and reposting Facebook videos, you are a tiny bit lonely on Christmas morning. Really, I am most happy to have the quiet and solitude I need so much but the bustle of the Holiday Market is fading more slowly this year. I was one of the last two out last night, just taking apart what took twelve hours to set up, loading it on the cart, hauling it across the Fairgrounds to pile in the shop unsorted. I have a few more things to gather tomorrow when we open again for the last load-out of fixtures and debris, then will go through it and stow it away for April.

I counted up the money from yesterday's Basket Raffle and it was a piece of work I was happy to do. As the secretary of the Kareng Fund I have a long list of people to write thank-you cards to, cards I bought from Nancy Bright who would not stop giving me discounts as I paid her. I make it a practice to buy lots of things from my fellow vendors, partly because I want them, and partly because I want to share with them. I feel that when I do well all should do well. I'm not bragging about this, just admitting that there is a place where I am not selfish and I do not complain. It's a glimmer of the better self I have been working on improving for the last six and a half decades. I know you are all doing that too. We all start out with a tree full of presents and gradually learn that what is important is our presence. That and the trees.

This was my first year without getting to hug my son on the actual event day or the Eve. I saw him a couple of weeks ago when he was kind enough to drive down to visit me. I have been gradually getting to this day as we do the letting-go part of our relationship that is the natural way of life. I'm not upset about it, just missing him and all the years of putting him at the center of my life. Now I am fortunate enough to have the Kareng Fund to remind me how good it feels to give and how central to our lives that giving is. Presents finally really don't matter. I did buy and trade for a big pile of them though, and I love looking at every single handmade thing.

It would be work to take photos but maybe by the end of this post I'll be motivated. Each transaction made two or more people feel good and this video gives an inkling of that happy community. Colleen suggested me as a singer, and I said why not? My sister's family has been posting videos of them singing and this is pretty close. http://registerguard.com/rg/video/33890831-319/holiday-market-goes-out-with-a-song.html.csp?autoStart=true

I feel loved. My neighbor came by the booth and we smoothed out the ruffled feathers about the fence. I still hate it but not him. It will be fine. They actually ended up putting it on their side of the easement so I got the use of seven feet of gardening territory which I will use to shore up the tenuous friendship with his sister who lives in the side of the duplex next to me. We are both solitary people and a bit afraid of each other, but perhaps the raspberry patch will be the way we learn to share our lives more easily. He is easy to talk to but she barely talks. I am in the middle. I think it can work, and we'll get raspberries.

Holiday Market is an emotional rollercoaster but when you step off you are always sorry the ride is over. The Pottery Smash and Basket Raffle are both exceptional examples of how generous craftspeople are with each other. We seem to always want to be the ones who give the most. When we trade, each one of us tries to give the best value to the other. We constantly try to give away our work, not because we don't value it, but because we love it and want it to be loved by others. We make such an overwhelming mountain of stuff over our lifetimes, and it goes out into the world with our fingerprints all over it and is treasured far beyond the reach of those fingers. When others recognize what a beautiful thing that is, I just get all teary and tender.

Despite the downsides of consumption of resources and forced giving, I just love Christmas as the turn of the sun and celebration of the year that it is. I no longer get that twinge of disappointment when all the presents are opened and something is still lacking. That void has been completely filled by participating in the giving and sharing of my large and wondrous community. Many of us, alone, fail utterly to feel secure and right in the big world. We are not different from probably most of the people alive in these complex times. Feeling different and wrong is a common thing, and we can all see how isolation and misunderstanding builds and destroys many people who don't have a way to talk themselves through to the abundance and joy that lies there quietly waiting.

Thank you Kareng Fund and Saturday Market and Oregon County Fair and McWhorter extended family for everything you give to me. I feel so very lucky. Now all I want is a snowstorm. I can be patient. If I have to I will wait for next winter, too.

I will have my Jell-O Art to sustain me in the meantime. Once Holiday Market is put away, Jell-O Season begins. The year goes round and round. Seems like a good one. Enjoy!

Having Faith

I want to write. Maybe because this is the day my writing group meets and we are on a hiatus due to Wednesdays being too full of other things, maybe because I see the offseason ahead and plan to do some serious work on my research and book as my house turns 100 on January 10. I have the desire to do the writing, but also the self-awareness to know that my feelings are way too close to the surface right now and it may be better to just hide out and say nothing.

I guess I've said that a time or two in the latest posts. I hesitate and give excuses and don't want to seem too sure of myself. I'm full of misgivings. Part of this is just this season when I would do better if I did not watch any TV and stayed off Facebook and did not read the paper either. I ought to submerge in a good novel. I have been doing a lot of reading, and that feels good, but of course I recognize the escapism. Perhaps more exercise would be better, and if it were not so wet I would spend more time outside in the garden.

My neighbors are seriously talking fence again and this time it seems inevitable. It remains to be seen where and how high this fence will be. No matter how small or transparent it is it will impact my gardens and for the first time in almost 30 years I will be cut off from the open space next to my small yard, which is of course their yard but a space I have been tending and using most of this time. Lots of renters didn't use or care for the space so I would cut the grass, prune the trees, feed the birds, and my gardens extended well beyond my property line and into the easement between us. I don't know if they will put this fence five feet from my shop walls on my side of the easement or if they will put it on their side, giving me seven more feet, but either way there will be a wall there and it will likely remain walled for as long as I live here. I was thinking that would be several more decades, but the yard is seeming so small to me now, and getting smaller.

Development happens, and I keep trying to adjust to it as what I love disappears. That ability to stretch out a little when I go around into the side yard might be gone, as I am reduced to a path threading my way through whatever raspberry and black raspberry bushes will survive the fence and its building. If I get the easement it won't be bad, but if the fence goes in on my side of the easement I will literally have to cry. They will also be getting some little dogs. Nothing I can do about that either.

The theme seems to be about all the things I cannot control. I guess that is my fears surfacing about keeping my own self under control when so many things are happening without my consent or right to consent. I have these squirrels and possums who keep moving into my storage racks. Obviously removing the racks will eliminate the dry spaces for the animals and I could also cut down the ancient apple tree so
they couldn't nest there. I could plant a new tree, maybe one that would give me more fruit. I have convinced myself that the Gravenstein is the oldest tree in the near neighborhood. I think Tillie Van Harken planted it almost a hundred years ago. It is really big. I need to pay someone to shape it a bit as it has gotten out of the reach of my pole pruner. I might buy a new pole pruner to increase my reach instead. I want to be in control of that tree.

Another murder has entered my sphere. I can't deal with it, and completely shut down my empathy when it comes to thinking how impossible it is to cope with these things. Cancer seems like murder as well, and all the environmental catastrophes caused by the greed of people who are thoughtless about the repercussions of their actions. I want to be conscious of my repercussions as well, but everything I buy, do or say seems to be attached to the web of all of the people I know. Doing some good here and there does not seem to be enough. Even the cruelties of aging add to my distress. I certainly see why people turn to religion and immerse so deeply in this fabled birth of a savior. The innocence of a little baby, the compelling stories told about his life, the example of his deep and undying love for us, sinners that we are, thoughtless beings that we are...what a comfort that must be.

Alas, I can't go there. I don't even have so much faith in some benevolent force guiding us as I used to, any at all. The faith I can muster kind of just says "it is what it is." I guess learning to live with this is a worthy goal. Acceptance and moving on and just doing what we can with what we have has to be enough.

I had this feeling the other day, a very strong place inside where I knew what it felt like to be completely alone in a bright, snowy landscape with no sign of other humans, just me, alive and warm in my body in a place of simplicity and survival. There was an exhilaration there and the knowledge that all was right and powerful and nothing mattered in the least. I had a sense of my pure connection with everything there is on this earth and in this universe. I knew exactly how immense this existence was in and outside of me.

I don't know when or where this happened in my past, or even if it did. It's romantic and it's a feeling, not a fact, but I hold on tight to it and the knowledge that I can go there again if I need to. There is a place on a mountain where everything is just and right. It is a place where a person could die or be born, into the greater consciousness that may or may not be a figment of our imaginations. So I hope we get some snow, so I can sneak out into the side yard and behold the neighbor's space and feel it as my own one last time before the fence goes in. I can stand in the middle of my own 60x90 lot and know that it would take a lot to dislodge me from there, the spot I can look up into the universe from and connect sun and earth. Buildings and fences and trees and centuries exist there and don't exist. It's my place to lie upon the earth and open my heart.

It's too wet right now to do that but I can hold onto those times it wasn't, and those times in the future when it will be benevolent and warm again. The fence will give me more privacy, and I will grow to accept it as I have the neighbors themselves. The tree will have to come down at some point as well as the racks and then the squirrels will move to someone else's yard. I can always call them back with more sunflower seeds if I need them.

There are other places where I feel at home on my land: my spot on the Park Blocks, my booth at the Fair, and they aren't really mine, as this property wasn't mine in the past and won't be mine in the future. It's a big thing to accept, that we are temporary on this spot and that we aren't sure what part of us is not, if any. We exist in memory and in the memories of others, and our pure essence may not really exist, except maybe in that long moment when we stood on that snowy mountain, if we ever did. Ah, life. What a trip we are on, what a place we are staying in. I hope that I can be a good guest and continue to follow the house rules, continue to leave it all a little better than I found it. I hope I write things that will honor my memory for a little while after I am gone. Guess that is enough of a reason to put this on Facebook and get on with the work of my day.

Warmth and Colors

So glad I took the time to bring in a fir branch and put up the lights and the antique Santa with his reindeer. My ornament collection is mostly hand-crafted ones I've bought at Holiday Market, with some made by my son in his early years, and it's bringing me a lot of joy. I found a notice on my front door that the neighbors will be caroling on Friday night, and I am super excited and will join them. I love to sing. I know so many carols and harmonies for them from growing up with three sisters, that I am constantly singing along with the tubas and kid's choirs at the Market, confusing my customers.

I'm so glad to have customers. Saturday was as busy as could be and while I was able to do two Sudoku and a crossword puzzle on Sunday, I am happy with how well sales are going this year. It's constantly amazing how many people love to buy these things we make and hope to use to keep ourselves going. I'm closing out my women's clothing and it is a lot easier than I thought it would be to sell my beautiful shirts at half of what they were priced at last year. It seems that when I am finally ready to let go of something I am able to do it. I guess that will be the trick of de-cluttering my life: I just have to be ready for it. If I still think of myself as someone who makes cast paper, I won't be able to let go of the molds and paints and ideas collected for that. As long as I am a screenprinter, I will have piles of screens. I expect that I will hold onto the Jell-O Art and the Radar Angels costumes until the end of my life. I seem to have taken that as an important part of my identity. I bought this new apron to go with this outfit that I wear at the Jell-O Art Show. Costumes seem to be an ever-increasing part of my wardrobe. Here's one from 2012, right after the surgery to take the metal out of my foot. Holiday Market costume themes are pretty fun. I think this one was "Your favorite color," which in my case, was Jell-O. Kim doesn't seem to be taking everyone's photo every time like she used to, but that's okay as we so often wear the same costumes. Everything gets old. I support people who are able to change things up.

Selling at the Fair seems to be something I might leave at some point. Getting rid of the clothing will simplify that path, as it will free up the room to take in another crafter and although I picture that process taking at least another decade (Gawd willing and the creek don't rise) I hope to be deliberate about it so I don't lose the investment of my decades of work out there. I'm already mostly unwilling to rebuild the booth, which is going to have to happen within a few years, at least parts of it. While I'm dedicated to my work on the Craft Committee and Scribe Tribe, it's fairly frustrating much of the time and when I look at the volunteer activities on my plate, that one could go...perhaps to be replaced with another. My work on the Kareng Fund leads me to think I could use that experience to do some other type of philanthropy. Pretty much every organization needs a good scribe so as long as I am willing to type and archive things I expect I'll have skills in demand.

Letting go of screenprinting is a huge change that I am not ready to do, though my body keeps telling me to get with the program of taking an easier road. I enjoy work but not necessarily the repetition. I like the jobs that bring meaning with them, such as the staff shirts, but I recognize that I don't own that one and other people want a turn at it. I have to be poised to let it go. It doesn't change who I am to change the contribution that I make, in fact it could possibly improve the quality of my contributions if I change what skills I employ. Skill at articulation and writing is (arguably) of more value to membership organizations that manual labor, however skilled. I want to do the shirts, and the other crew shirts I do, because of the human connection, but when I stopped being able to do the backstage bandannas it didn't hurt that much. When I see a shirt from one of my former clients I do still get a little pang of nostalgia for that connection, but it really just means I am challenged to make a more personal connection not based on what I do as work but what I do as a person. I could do more social things, go to the potlucks and hang out with the people. It's a goal.

Not today I couldn't, though. I had a hard time talking at times yesterday and I don't even want to answer the phone today. I really need the silence and space after all the bustle and noise. I like the rain when I am inside, and I didn't really mind so much loading in and out in all the wetness. The Fairgrounds is reverting to its wetlands origins with giant lakes and hummocks, so you can almost picture it without that layer of asphalt. Our neighbor who lived in the pink house, May, told me that in the thirties and forties our whole street and block would get flooded like a lake. My yard used to when I had more grass, but now the gardens must be better at moving the water through the soil. The hardest part about this weather is thinking about how hard it is for the people who don't have a good roof and heat and the right clothes to protect them. There are lots of ways to help and lots of people are doing that, thank goodness.I could do more on that front.

I read something that did give me pause, though, and needs some further chewing to digest. I read about the juggalos, a group I was aware of but didn't understand. Can't say I do now, either, but this was a nonfiction report of one of their gatherings, which was of interest to me as they also call themselves a family just like we do at Fair. That insider-outsider paradigm has been bothering me lately. Insiders don't feel like they exclude, but see it all as a feel-great-we-are-connected win that doesn't have a downside. Of course it looks really different to those who would like to come in. We don't want to admit that inside the "Family" we have lots of class and power differences and we like to pretend that it's all about a party. Even to craftspeople the party falls apart, as to us it is our work, and we work really hard at it. Many many people do work hard during Fair and to support it, and there's nothing wrong with making it fun, but we have some imbalances to work on within our organization. We pretend that we are all about love, as most families do. Maybe it is this season and too much TV but I see so much that isn't love-ly. In short, the juggalo family seems to have taken the "it's all good" and "whatever" cultural approaches to the level of extreme Fuckitall. They act out in violent and what seems from the outside to be incredibly negative and destructive ways, but from the inside they feel their own definition of love and connection. It's highly ironic and deserves examination.

I for one am ready to let go of the whole concept of Fair family and admit that when over 20,000 people are involved we need a new word for what is way bigger and less connected than a family. It could be a long look and a lot of discussion but the change is already happening as we become more divided and less able to see the experience of our siblings and the many generations. I'm putting my cynicism in perspective as I recognize the vulnerability and sensitivity of the cold wet dark times, but there's an edge to my joy that it might be hard to diffuse. I'll try to keep enough sugar and caffeine in my system to maintain my hope. I think the neighborhood caroling will help a lot. I hope you find ways to maintain your joy.

See you at the best retail venue in the known world next weekend. If I start to complain just tell me to shut up and throw a full can of beer at my head. Open it first for maximum effect. No, wait, let's defer that whole cultural examination for Jell-O season. Maybe we can work it out in a Radar Angels skit. Let's maintain the illusions. That's one reason we hang those colored lights and sing those pious songs. We need to.

Writing Isn't Safe or Dangerous

I'll take a minute before I start a big day of work to thank those readers who have appreciated me and let me know they are fans of my writing. I got discouraged about the blog, not sure about all the nuances of why, but I stopped posting the link on Facebook and immediately stopped getting readers. That added to my discontent about FB and how we all use it. It's a bulletin board and a short cut and it has made it easy to rein in our bandwidth and limit our input...we let it filter our experience and suffer for that. Yet it is such a condition of our collective life that we love it too. It allows us to keep in touch and think that we are covering all the bases of this complicated social life, but it makes us vulnerable too and this time of year especially I really want to limit the ways I lay myself open to what does not serve me.

I do know that laying myself open is one of my strengths and it is welcomed by others as an example of an almost careless courage that is an antidote to fear. The first time I consciously acted this way was when I was involved in a deep friendship with someone who struggled with some sociopathy. He wanted to be kind and loving but he could almost not help being predatory to get his deep needs met. When I realized that to be his friend I might be prey, I decided to surrender emotionally and not fear my transparency and lack of defenses. I made the choice to open all of my thoughts to him and would send him my journals, first drafts, etc. We actually wrote a sort-of-good novel together in six months that remains one of my most exciting writing experiences although I doubt I will ever get it out and do anything with it.

The interesting thing about predators and prey is that once you manage to move in close to the controller, you become an ally and in the circle you are protected and only the outsiders are prey. Of course the danger is that you take on characteristics and habits of the predator. They seem right and useful. I was able to allow myself to be dismissive and critical and laugh at others. I have that part of me, though I suppress her actively and try to do what Thumper taught me (If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all). I sharpened my wits and my writing got really good and except for the troublesome guilt and shame over being mean, it kind of worked as long as I was in close to him.

Of course that eventually fell apart and he turned on me with a vengeance and discarded me in an ugly way, which did a lot of damage to my psyche, damage I had invited in my naivete. Coming out of it (the whole relationship took half a decade) I counted myself lucky that my trust and innocence was so strong that I was able to still be that good girl, even while tempted to be the inner bad girl, and I learned some fantastic life skills like empathetic listening and the differences between romantic and rational thinking and relationship behavior. I got a great education in codependence and anger patterns, came out strong in my own defense over time and still count him as one of my great teachers and intimate friends even though we have had no contact in many years and probably never will.

It was a terrible example (a good example of what not to do) for my then teenage son, as I was obsessed with the relationship during a time when my son needed a much more focused parent, but then again I brought my son and his friends along in my learning process as much as I could. The struggle for nonviolence in a violent world and the ability to listen well and really analyze emotions and other people helped my son with his own psychological studies of highschoolers and those who try to control them. My son never was someone who submitted much to authority and I helped him get some skills to at least figure out what he was thinking and feeling. It's impossible to say what parts worked and what parts didn't. I took his existential crisis seriously and got him some good allies of his own and I think that really helped the separation of son and mother which we had to get through no matter what. He loves me now, in his mid-twenties, and all is pretty well between us. He is a fine and strong person and I don't have to worry about him.

But I have never wanted to be an authority. I'm okay with being thought of as wise, but some of my writing here has seemed pontifical and romantic to the extreme. I do deeply love the Market and Fair communities with all of our flaws and tendencies, but often I lack compassion for the individuals...at least until I get to know them. Each one has that soft underbelly where their wounded parts are held, and each one can be hurt. Even the strongest and most dismissive of us have that tender pain that they hope no one will see. I hate putting my own out there for people to dismiss. I hate my weaknesses as much as the next person. I despair of my intolerances and hesitate in so many ways to act, fearful that I will be found out and somehow skewered.

Maybe that is why so many people are afraid, to speak out, to ask questions, to persist. Fear causes us to clam up when asked about something we are not sure how to defend. I struggle with policies I don't support, because my respect for the process leads me to think that once a policy is made, I need to get behind it and help with its implementation. The nonprofit policy change was one Market thing I didn't support and hope to see as okay in the long run, but I still feel it was a selfish choice and shortsighted. I notice that one of the main complainers about the nonprofits isn't even selling actively at our Market now, so I feel that because of a small number of complaints we threw the baby out with the bathwater. I may be wrong. I don't have a vote and many people who do, voted, so the group process worked and the decision was made. Whether it was right or not, it was done. It's a year later and even reversing the decision won't help now.

As with the relationship described above, the unsettling parts do settle, and often the right parts do overcome the wrong parts. It isn't that simple as a duality; few questions in life really are dualities. I tried to learn not to think in black and white...apparently that is a fundamentalist and Catholic tendency that we learn and must unlearn. Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell...you can easily see that nature provide far more shades of grey than dualities. Someone said to think in threes. I try to see a spectrum as well. Easy with things like gender...I can certainly see that there is a spectrum of gender-based characteristics that varies with the individual. Same with many human traits; no one is all this or all that. It helps to think in more vague and indeterminate ways, even though it is less secure and safe to keep questioning things. Nothing is all right or all wrong.

So it becomes hard to make definitive statements and I am uncomfortable doing it here. I can't tell you that everything is fine and right and good. Some things are. Some things are intolerable and tragic as well. I don't have the wisdom you seek, or maybe I do have something that will help you along the path. You get to pick up what serves you and discard the rest. I act as a witness most of the time to just try to articulate what seems to be evident and unspoken. I try to be helpful. That Girl Scout stuff resonated deeply.

I'll try to keep putting it out there even when it makes me uncomfortable. There is plenty of important work to do in my small universes. We are going to be called to defend our home in the Park Blocks and we are called to keep our Country Fair on the track that serves the most vulnerable of us. We are all facing death and loss in every way, so we are called to keep our own ship sailing in favorable waters and we are always called to do as much for others as we have the capacity to do. It can be a tiny thing, as those multiply. It can be a big and stunning thing that makes us cry every time we remember it. I was lucky enough to have both of those this year, to be on the spectrum of giving and receiving, and here we are again in the season of giving.

I bought myself a big jar of capers and some pink salt. I think that is all the presents I need. I got thanked for writing. That is more powerful that seeing a published book to me. I have more work than I can do in this lifetime so I see that my life will always be as full as I can carry. I have my gifts. I hope I can share them enough to fill you all up too. Have the happiest highs and the most heartfelt sorrows and keep on going. Soon it will be Jell-O Art season and Opening Day and all the glories of spring shall return. In the meantime, enjoy the hope, the fires in snow, the piles of dead leaves that feed the worms. Don't focus on the parts you don't like, try not to complain too much, and wear something fuzzy and comfortable. Saturday is Wild Wild West fashion day, and Sunday is Faux Fur and Feathers. Let's have some fun in there. Let's try to keep the most important of our senses, our sense of humor, intact as we travel through this often confusing and troublesome life.