What I'm Feeling

This isn't going to be fair, or probably smart, but this is personal about me, how I am processing change, which is not something I am good at. At all. Yes, I have a big fault in my character, and because this blog is my refuge, and it is late and dark and raining again, I am putting it here. 

For the space of this hour I am resigning all leadership. Do not follow me in this. Do your own thinking, and be practical and positive, and do your best while I mourn. I earned this. I need this. It won't last long, I hope.

Obviously our country is being pillaged, but I'm past mourning that I think, long into organizing and working together to salvage and resist. Traumatically, my son's leg is one big wound with metal screws through it, looking to me like a board worked on for an hour by a toddler with some big nails and a big hammer. Harder on me than anyone, perhaps, since it's so similar to what I went through and he's not supposed to have to suffer my same pains, the ones I know too much about. For me this child remains a part of my body even after 28 birthdays. He wouldn't see it that way, no one would. I'm not talking about physical reality anyway.

This isn't about those two things. This is about my beloved Saturday Market, which I don't own and I don't run, except for the fact that it is a membership that I am one of, and have been for 42 years, my whole adult life really. But yeah, that's something I serve, and work within, but don't control, never have, never will. I'm a tiny part, my importance being out of proportion to my sense of ownership, my investment. That disappears the moment I don't go, to a meeting, or a Market, and others do what they do. We each have our tiny part, but we don't own it, at all. There's a rich place where reality doesn't match emotional depth. You're in it when you're doing it, and then you are outside it, looking in. I'm still in it, I guess, but it's scratchy and kind of bloody in here. I'm wounded in here. 

I can't tell you the one story, which is mostly about people who don't really know what they are doing, and are trying to do their best, and shouldn't really be criticized for it. I don't want to hurt them back, call the one on his controlling sexist inappropriate behaviors and language, his ignorance, because it isn't really his fault that he didn't get to evolve with the culture like I did, to the place where we don't apply those behaviors to each other. He didn't hear himself doing it. I would actually prefer to never give him another thought, but I spent about three days agonizing over what he did and said, so in my sacred space I will say how angry that made me. How unjust it was, how undeserved. I was exercising my duty of care, but he didn't get that. It's probably forgivable, if some change occurred. There's no indication of that, but let's hope for the best. So, we'll move on, sit across the round-ish table, and work together, I hope. Not sure yet, actually. Might not get enough strength together for everything.

I shouldn't tell you the other, but reread the beginning where I say I am not a leader right now. I am not a good partner, I am not a good girl, I am not thinking about all the ways that I can work with this and make this work and bring my membership along to a brighter future. I'm thinking back to some posts I wrote earlier, last year, I think two posts that were probably quite repetitive about my fears for the Park Blocks. My fear was that this $5.2 million for improving the downtown open spaces was going to ruin what I helped to build. I worried about that a lot. I started a task force and informed my fellows and started going to meetings and taking notes and now have a thick notebook of all of the papers I collected about the downtown developments. I listened to everything they said, and I know I told you all what it was: they raved over how Saturday Market was the best thing going downtown, how it was so perfectly doing everything downtown needed, how great it would be to build on that success as a model of everything that works to bring people downtown, create a wonderful experience, and on and on. I can't tell you how many times that was said to me. I told you about it, in my delight. I believed it, because it is true, but I forgot that it isn't true in the ways that matter in reality.

I thought it was a little over the top, not sure if I mentioned that. I wondered why they were so enthusiastic in saying that, but it was great to hear, and I was lulled. I stepped right up and boy was I helpful. I told them all, city people and NY city people, all about us and how we work, what we value, who we are. I gave them everything they wanted so that they could do a great presentation, could be informed, could see why we were so loved and appreciated by our town. Wouldn't be embarrassed by not seeing us clearly, wouldn't put something out there that wouldn't fit us. I was sure I did that really well, got lots of praise. And when the report came out, it was pretty favorable. They didn't close Oak Street, something we fought, and there wasn't going to be a Starbucks in the middle of Market. So I even told the task force things looked pretty good. But the report is not the plan. The presentation is not the report. There's a different plan altogether, that they were saving, I guess, to make their bold statement.

So today, in our special meeting, in our preview of the presentation, somehow for the very first time we find out that the bold plan, the great idea, is to completely obliterate the Park Blocks we know and love, completely. Okay, some of the trees might live and be saved, people like the northwest look of the trees. They'll put lights in them and balloons and umbrellas and stuff. Art things. But it will be level, without the covered areas (I'd already said goodbye to them) and without the walls, which I spent about two hours last week writing up a detailed analysis about which really makes me look like a fool now. Pride does go before a fall, we know. I felt good about all that work. But they're coming down.

And we'll have our Market, with even more space, more room, without all those walls and grassy areas and what we have now. Benches. Fountain. We'll have a better fountain, and we can probably buy some new tables because ours will look pretty shabby in the new park. 

We even got to see a map with all our booths, perfectly 8x8 and white, in nice rows with a little curve here and there, because we told them we like the varied layout and our neighborhoods. It's a sketch, so no one says they have to all be white and uniform, that's a concept. This whole thing is a concept, you know, an idea, which is what they were hired to present. We can still bring all our local color, and be ourselves, you know, but on nice flat ground surrounded by beautiful new whatever can be afforded and whatever whoever wants to put there because well, we know we don't own the park. We rent the park. All the other people own the park, the whole city, and the people who own the city, who right this moment, doesn't really include me, because right now I have been stripped of all ownership.

First I was in shock, and then I felt sad, and now I feel played. Stupid, naive, gullible, outclassed, and played. Because who didn't see this coming? Even I saw this coming, but somehow I got caught up, and worked with it, and never actually saw anyone coming for my space, my beloved home where I go every week and every year, and place myself amidst my creations and receive my pay and my appreciation from my friends and neighbors and those who want to buy my work. I feel stripped of that. I am going to get a new home. A better home. 

Because I'm so perfect and great, so of all the things that can happen in this placemaking process, of all the possible things that can be taken and made into something else, it has to be me and my life. And my friends and their lives, the ones we have built in that space since 1982. So, progress. The park is shabby and since I'm in it, I'm shabby too. 

I will remind you I am not being a leader right now. A leader would say great, we will find all kinds of ways to make this work for us, this is a wonderful opportunity, what a gift, this will be so swell! We'll all get to choose new spaces, get new neighbors and neighborhoods, and no longer will my customers step in the fountain by mistake and receive a free tote bag while we laugh nervously. No fountain. A leader would be happy about that, and think about the new fountain that might be built using some of those moss-and fern-covered black rocks we love so much. 

A leader would be so thankful to the consultants for their genius and bold daring, to make the change that is so needed for our downtown to be successful. A leader would be generous in lending expertise and in fact, lending the future to this concept, which will surely succeed, because when has development made something worse or ruined it? It always makes things better, right? This is proven. Why, that downtown mall was a terrific concept, and people really liked it. And Whole Foods? Perfect in every way.

I know this mourning and grief isn't going to get me anything. It's entirely feelings, and as we all know, feelings aren't facts. I know I'm not going to go to the City Council tomorrow (actually today now) and say anything about this. I will probably smile at the councilors who greet me, smile at the consultant, and at the city staff I worked with. Probably they are all smart enough to not ask me what I think, because I think they know they played me. I think they knew they were going to, because when I think back to things they said, and did, it was all there. This is what they want. They think I can handle it.

They think Market can handle it. They see how strong we are, but they don't see how fragile we are. They don't see me looking at my ruin tonight. I know, that's overdramatic, but I'm mourning here. I'm mourning my sense of control, my trust, my willingness to work with them for our mutual goals, forgetting whose goals were going to dominate whose. It's not reasonable to think we could preserve the park with our love, when it's so shabby and so dangerous and so perfectly placed in the center of the city which is not mine, and can't be mine. 

A leader would say Market can handle it.  I expect we can. We'll spend the gazillion extra hours leading ourselves through it, making a new map, getting in line to choose spaces, making the best of it, learning to love all of the delightful new features. We'll show up and do it because we have no choice in the matter, because it is our lives. We'll smile. We'll put on our show. 

But I get to say tonight, that this is fucked up and I hate it. I hate it almost as much as I hate the political reality of the moment, which is the biggest hate I have ever felt. And unlike the fear I have for my country, I don't feel fear about the Market's future. I feel grief. Because it will be broken, the one we know now, it will be thrown away. We'll have a new one.

And lots of people will like it. Probably everyone, with a few exceptions, who will be marginalized and labeled the traditionalists or obstructionists or old hippies or whatever. I'm one I suppose. Call me anything you like. I'm fucked, so I don't care.

I might get to like it. But I won't forget that what we had got broken with one hand while being held up as perfect with the other. I don't want to pretend this isn't grief I'm feeling. It's going to take me some time, maybe all the time I have left, to recover from this. It feels like the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Not only the change, which as I said, I don't do well, but the playing. I don't think of myself as a chump. I had a lot of self respect built up there, and only a few days ago, too. I thought I was doing pretty well as a leader, with my thorough research and my diligence and all the countless hours I have given to this effort to work as a good partner for all these months, and to work as a good officer of the Market and do my duty of care and my duty of loyalty and my duty of self for all these decades. To work for my integrity and my honor and my honesty. 

And now I have to write to my task force and explain this somehow in a way that will be helpful, won't criticize, will be hopeful and present all the benefits and make promises about how we will do this together and it will be wonderful and we will get a gift we didn't even know we wanted. And I will try to make this live up to that expectation. You and I both know I will do my best with that, starting in a few hours when I will begin by smiling.

But when I walk across my spot on the West Block as I always do on my way to the courthouse, I will have to try not to cry. Because that is not mine, and is not going to be mine, and never actually was mine. I've got nothing.