Jeez it's bad

I haven't been writing, Perhaps you noticed. I don't have a theme or a subject I've been mulling over, or something compelling I just have to say. Probably shouldn't start, but I remembered that when I am troubled or rootless it has helped to write. Don't have that faith at the moment, but something has to be different than watching Colbert while I doze off in my chair and then going to take a hot bath, read for a few minutes and wake up at dawn to worry some more.

So many things are falling apart. I had an hour or so of feeling good this morning but that was killed by another long and difficult meeting. All the meetings are long and difficult these days. When we laugh it is with ironic detachment. We don't let ourselves feel much, we save that for when we lie in bed in the morning and feel like we don't want to get up and we don't want our stomachs to be tied in knots any more. It seems pointless to cry about it.

We probably don't all feel that. It's going to be sunny so there's a little glimmer of hope that says maybe I'll get some happy moments. I will, because I am easy to slay with a flowering shrub so when I walk downtown for one of those meetings I walk under those flowering chestnuts and past the quickly changing neighborhood of mollis azaleas and rhodys and sometimes even see a plant I don't recognize or hadn't noticed before. There's one dogwood I have to check on that's glorious. And I have a pair of Bewick's Wrens in the neighborhood, and a bushtit's nest in my fir tree. So there are those things.

I get a little thrill by the Little Free Libraries but I don't have time to finish the paper so it isn't a good time to get more books. I smile at people but they trouble me with their desperate energies and their transparent faces that I try not to really look at. Every so often I see a person who seems okay, but only rarely one with no worries. Maybe in the summer. We've had a lot of rain.

It's the beginning of my busy season. By some miracle of discipline I finished my big order on the day it was due but I didn't feel the love like I used to. I used to muse how each shirt was given its meaning by my hands and would go off to be treasured forever by the lucky hard-working volunteer who got to get it sweaty and hang it from their belt when they weren't working, make it into a quilt or wear it until it falls apart. I used to feel a connection with each person and be happy to see them wearing "my" shirt but I'm pretty heartbroken by my Fair world these days. Some of those people wearing those shirts are pretty hateful toward some of the other people wearing my shirts and some of my shirts shouldn't have ever been printed I guess even though they were done with pure intentions and no malice. They were made to bring us together but I guess "us" has changed. And we might have broken up, not sure, because we're not answering each other's texts.

It's not just Fair that's broken, the Market broke too. I'm pushed into leadership I was trying to move away from, a little, to get some peace for myself, to get to garden, to get to read, to get to do my work that I will soon have a ton of. I've been bullied and manipulated, and in fighting that off I took on another big challenging task, to change the bullying culture. My efforts will be tiny drops in a sea of meanness. Tomorrow I go in to watch more bullying and see if I can inject a tiny bit of wisdom or helpfulness in the midst of it, but I don't have a lot of hope for that. Maybe. Sometimes things don't go as badly as I expect. It's not all dysfunctional behaviors people should have learned about in grade school. Lots of people are trying to do their best, but they don't always know what that is. Sometimes things are a relief.

I'm so far behind in transcribing minutes of meetings I can't face it long enough to make a list. I'm going to have to work all of my days off for weeks to catch up, and we keep scheduling more meetings. I'm either in charge or being the note-taking witness, or both, and it's all urgent and it's all uncomfortable as hell. And listening to it again while I transcribe doesn't usually make it any better.
And making it about me is the exact wrong thing to do. Some time in the empathy tent would help perhaps, but as soon as I clear one worry away a new one springs forth. At least with the minutes I get to leave things out that shouldn't have been said.

There's no hope of being inspired. There won't be a special peach tote bag this year, and the only hat design I can think of is "Someday we'll laugh about this" but it comes with a derisive snort. We're nowhere near the laughing stage. Selling is still fun, especially to the students who love my hats and say things like they're the best thing they've ever seen in their lives, but all the tourists want to move here and you know how that boom town story goes
. I get a few hours of pleasant feelings on Saturdays but probably for the next two months I'll get a lot of concerned or angry members coming to criticize, try to get some reassurance, or simply to let me know they have no idea what is so hard about what I'm thinking and feeling, because they have the simple answers. It has been a long time since I thought there were any simple answers.

So yeah, the plants and flowers, and the birds. The humans are not doing so well. Who would have thought one evilly stupid person could have spread so much shit over everything, even the things that are really not related to politics? Who could have predicted that we had so many bullies waiting to be empowered who are now gleefully causing chaos everywhere? They must have been holding it in. A truck with a confederate flag drove right by MY HOUSE yesterday. Colleen, to her credit, yelled at him. I couldn't even raise my voice to do that.

At least I truly do have a few allies in this with me, a few people who know how it is and are working for the same goals as I am. Fewer than I would like but maybe more than I know. Some people are doing better than I thought they would. Some new people will come along and be even better than that, I think. Rising to the challenges is always gratifying on some level. Plus I registered for the parade and asked the Radar Angel Jell-O Artists to be in it with me. 

And then I remembered that it might be a lot of work. The fun part might be really worth it, but to do it well means I have to use that discipline I am so good at and stick with it and make it happen. It's again, up to me. Did I really give myself another challenge when I am feeling so unable?

Yes, yes I did. I decided that I didn't want to miss the parade and the chance to be a Queen, a chance that might not come again like that. I feel overwhelmingly vulnerable, and the wrong thing to do is make myself more vulnerable by revealing what I really care about that might make me look a little not exactly normal, revealing what I really care about that makes it something I can't afford to lose, something I have to work to protect and save and make whole again and somehow preserve to care about some more.

I keep thinking about the practice of filling the cracks in broken crockery with gold. Taking something precious, that's ruined, and putting something even more precious on the line to make that point, that this is treasure worth saving, that we have to hold it together until the gold hardens and the piece will stand on its own again. We have to. And we will.

Because that is what we do. We rise to challenges, we work harder than we want to and we work long hours and sometimes the hot bath is the best thing we have to count on. We make do with that until things get better. We didn't really think we lived in a rose garden without thorns.

This is hard on me. This is hard. I will try to do my best to make it less hard on you, and you can try to help me, and we will do the work and put our world back together. At least this small corner, we will preserve and protect. We will make our Market stronger and more polished and even more full of vital life, that which has built us and we have built, and we will ripen our peach too and somehow hold onto our flamingo family as well, somehow we will hold our friends until they can stop being hurt and angry. Somehow we will do these things, carefully and slowly and we'll make it last as long as we can. I'm not letting go of any of it. I'm melting gold. 

Here I am, in the late night, melting my own heart so I can push it back into shape. That's what I wanted to do. Thank the dark, thank the pain, thank the heart that can still beat through it all. There will be summer, a parade, lots of them in fact, there will be some laughs, there will be some results of our work, and someday we will laugh about all this. There. Fixed. Goodnight.