Where We Are Today

I finished a lengthy post about Jell-O Art and the Parade and all of that over on my Jell-O Art blog,  Gelatinaceae so feel free to wander over there and find out more than you want to know about those gorgeous and joyful details of my life. This blog is where I get to explore my more personal thoughts and reflections and boy howdy, would I like to. I'm not entirely sure I can say much of anything about what has been going on in my life. It's fraught.

You know how I used to write those glowing post-Market essays about how much I love and value Saturday Market and Country Fair and my crafting life and my roles as witness and transcriber and all of the many ways those two organizations work so well in my life. Yeah. I still feel those things briefly, but I will say that I really did not anticipate how far Trumpery would work into my personal and political and social life. There's not enough resisting in the world to undo the damage that has followed that so-called election for me. It feels like hell on earth. And today we face another escalation in hatred and bigotry and sliding backwards in history a century. It's more than any of us think we can handle most of the time. And yet when I mentioned something vaguely political to one of my customers from out-of-town, she said "I have no problem with it, I'm getting rich!" So there you have the crux of it.

When it benefits you, all of your morality and sensibility go right out of your mind. Humans! What does it take to get you to see other people and care about them? I do not feel full of hope and love for my people today. I had a brief moment of loving my Saturday Market family sometime in the last nine months, but it flew out the window after about five minutes. Sometimes I hate almost all of you and myself as well. That's why I haven't written, that's why my days off are full of yardwork and escapism, reading novels and eating delicious foods. I am very disappointed in the humans these days. That does possibly include you. I know I am not living up to my expectations.

That's why I pour my energy into Jell-O Art and volunteering and making lots of inventory and standing on the concrete simply smiling and selling my goods. Some of the rest of what is going on is not believable and you will thank me for not telling you. It's far from pretty. You can go down to the Park Blocks and look at the cut through the wall for the dining deck with its surrounding chainlink and construction zone and dead rhodys and that can be your operating metaphor. My stone wall of solid love for my organization and my crafting life has a big, sawed-open gap in it and so that no one will fall into it and break a hip and die, we'll put an ugly, awkward fence up and wait. Surely the deck will look sharp and clean and with picnic tables and umbrellas, and we'll heal our dismay at the mangled wall. Maybe they'll face it with some lovely granite sheet and finish it off nicely. I always like to try to expect the best. But metaphorically speaking, I do not appreciate the gaps in the solid walls of my life. Put down that saw!

I have to say that the skill level of ordinary people in navigating moral complexity and right action is low. The bar keeps getting lower. I have to avoid Facebook most of the time, keep a poker face in meetings and conversations, and refuse to engage pretty much every day. And then I go home and agonize and my need for therapy increases and I certainly am not going to get it from a donkey who leaves his poop on my neighbor's space and is still in my bike tires from the parade. Can we get some real help here? Anyone? Is everyone completely overwhelmed with despair? Sometimes I think so.

Of course, I can right my ship, and do daily. I know how to keep working and I can always default to that, but there is an increasing list of things I don't want to do. I don't want to go to any more meetings where people lie and bully and pretend to be innocent when they are undermining everything we have worked for. I am shocked at people who still pretend to be my friends when they are actively ruining what I have worked so hard to build, with so many other good people. I have to believe that they are not aware of what they do. I have to actively work to forgive them and keep picking up the trash they leave behind. I have to remember that they are being seduced by some short-term gains while others of us are holding steady and will be ready to rebuild as soon as the way is clear. But I innocently never imagined this level of destruction.

One of the main issues is that so many people are really quite fragile and all this uncertainty and meanness has pushed them right over their edges. That's what's going on with the guy who sorts food out of the trash and then tries to sell it to people, and the one who walks out into traffic right in front of the bus. They've lost whatever support they used to have to maintain. They're the ones that you can see, but a lot of the others are hiding out at home or doing what they have committed to, the meetings and the tasks, but inside they have lost it and are not maintaining. So do we call them out and fight it out? Do we sit around and share our feelings and cry together? Well, maybe we do that in the empathy tent or our therapist's office or over coffee, but why don't they see that we can't do that in the meetings? Why can we not do our work without all the static and interference?

Perhaps it's widespread sonic bombardment. It's the pervasive smell of Febreeze all over everywhere. It's cars and fumes and the hot weather and travel for entertainment and entertainment and escape over substance and some of it is simply overwhelm. Life shouldn't be intentionally made harder.

I go back to Marshall Rosenberg saying that the reason we are here is to make life more wonderful. That's what is our goal in every human interaction: to meet the needs of the other person while identifying our own needs and working toward the mutual meeting of both. It's the win-win attitude for life. Why do we try to make losers to dominate? It does not work to make us feel better. We are not here to climb to the top of any heap, certainly not the compost heap of everyone else after we destroy them.

I watch hard for my few real-life heroes and try to blow them kisses and let them know they are seen and appreciated. I really appreciate those who check in with me about my downcast eyes (I have never been big on eye contact...I'm really sensitive and have to protect myself a lot, so I go within.) I like it when they ask me if we're okay. If we're not, it gives me a chance to say so, and if we are, it gives me a prod to be more demonstrative with my appreciation. I still do have a lot of hope in a lot of specific areas, and sometimes things go well, and sometimes people exceed my expectations and work hard and do the right thing according to my shifty moral compass. I remind myself daily about all the good people I meet, all the kindness I see and the strong, fearless people who keep moving forward. There are lots and lots of them. Mostly they are being a bit cautious and self-protective as we see what a long haul this is going to be. Mostly we collectively have a lot of hope that good will prevail and hate will be diminished as people bond together for the common good.

But gee whiz, it used to be easier. I know I'm old. Sixty-seven is getting up there. It's going to be one thing after another. I've been really lucky so far that my injuries have developed more compassion in me than disability. I'm lucky for my immune system and my sensible tendencies and my low-key lifestyle, and my plain luck. I am very grateful. I am trying hard to keep building on the compassion and keep trying to suggest avenues forward based on that and not on retribution, punishment, or domination. I do not ever want to get caught up in domination games or control patterns, except the ones I use to establish my own inner control and domination over my more base impulses.

My ability to identify control patterns is proving to be quite useful and I am dedicated to sharing my studies. If we can reduce someone's behaviors to the factors that are driving their control patterns, and identify their greatest needs, sometimes we can help them work to get those actual, underlying needs met. When they work so hard to mask and obfuscate and hide their real needs, when they catch us up in their fervent strivings for revenge or destruction or whatever they are using to establish what they perceive to be their safety, we all get lost in that. We all have to suffer with them until someone gets a glimmer of that underlying need and says the magical things to ease that specific need.

Once in awhile these openings that come are transformative and I continue to believe that empathy, listening, and setting our own sufferings aside and trying to see that of the other, do help. I've participated in it countless times and it has worked for me to work with someone who also can do that. Some people really do have skills, and practice them, and if you doubt me, step into that Empathy Tent next time you see it and work on one of your concerns. Complain, vent, cry or criticize or whatever you need to do at that moment to lessen your suffering, and see how one of these listening experts responds. More than likely, your heart strings will resonate and you will feel the shift. Listen for it. And also try to build those skills. Slow down, wait to let the other person finish, and try a bit to draw more out of them. Encourage them to see you as a safe person to work with. Be a safe person to work with. Be fucking real. Drill down.

We are all having to count on each other, to depend heavily on each other to navigate these times. We need gentle humor and sweet reassurance and we need to reground in our basic values almost every day. We have to find the energy to not give up, to not let dominators do that, to call out controllers and take away their effectiveness. We have leaders to follow on these things. Support for our leaders is always as important as taking the lead. Not everyone can get out there in front, and many of those who do are quaking in their boots, but they get out there anyway. Stand beside them. Sit with them. Get out of your inner dilemmas and look at them (this is a lecture to me, always, you know.)

We will get through this. We will build our Old Hippies Home and figure out a way to live together until we die of life. We will not submit to hatred and ugliness and call it normal. We will take care of each other and however clunky our process and procedures are, we will bring our real, good hearts to the tasks and we will use them for the forces of good. There is really no other choice.

I think sometimes that I have outlived my usefulness to the Market community. I have tried so hard to help with this Park Blocks future and to get good staff in place and to maintain transparency and do the right thing, to not be moralistic and judgemental but rather to gently point in what I believe is the right direction. To look at each thing we do and see if it is the best we can do, to keep up with the fast pace of changes and not get pushed over, to be open to change and still bring what needs to stay the same, these have been some of my efforts. Most of the time I sound like I'm telling an innocent tale of the way I wish things were. Most of the time I am ignored and lots of the time I am dismissed and probably if I had to be elected to leadership I would find out the truth, that I am of the past and need to let go. But I won't step out of leadership until people actually, plainly, tell me to.

I see myself as the one person in place to carry forward the legacy of our original founders, that group of artists who had the vision almost fifty years ago to give us this life. Both of our organizations, Fair and Market, came from these same roots, as did most of what makes Eugene the weirdly wonderful place everyone now wants to move to. We made it for us and for all. We each did our small or large parts and we are still trying. I'm not giving up easily. I'm not stepping aside until someone takes up the mantle of carrying forward the legacy. It might take some decades of study for someone to want that position. It might not happen. Maybe our model is not a good model for nowadays, maybe we can't bring it forward any farther.

That is possible. That isn't clear yet, and it would have to be made abundantly clear to me before I'd agree to it. But in the meantime, I am here and I can be your foundational block in your beautiful stone wall. I will work as hard as I can for the survival of our old stone walls, metaphorically and in real downtown life. If you want to support me, see what you can do to help. Many of you have stepped up, to make the Guidebook, to work on the Craft Policy Working Group, to persist with the meetings and committees and keep waiting for other people to see the need and want to participate. I thank you and I am depending on you. We need more of us. We need help from those who have worked on their needs and can now see the needs of others. Our small lives need vision and support.

Do your part. Then do a little more. Remember what they say about that arc of history bending towards justice. Keep inspiring yourself and keep inspiring me. Now is our time, and we are the ones. Thank you so much for listening, and for this brief moment of peace that I will now go and savor.