Breaking Pots

I'm supposed to be tired, and I do have to go to bed early, so I thought I'd wait and write next week, though a friend today urged me to do it despite my fear of repetition. Repeat it better, she said. She talked about what we needed now, those of us still traumatized and grieving for the progressive society we thought we were building. We're afraid, and we're tired of fighting all the time, when we thought we were feeling rather safe, and on the right track to a world we were happy to live in, one working toward real and solid equality and justice.

It was surprisingly easy to derail us, shockingly swift, and though we have been valiant, the damage has run deep in everyone I know. Damage or denial, or both. Defiance, and determination to hold onto what we built, what we loved, and the resistance has been strengthening, and the safety probably imagined to begin with. Perhaps we were lulled, and I'm cynical enough to believe everything was calculated and that those far, far more cynical than I prepared well for what seemed so swift a denoument.

But it ain't over, and that arc of history (edit: the moral universe) bends toward justice, and that pendulum is going to swing like hell and I still have heart. What she was saying we needed was that. Heart and soul, which is what we get when we gather, and why we come.

So I sat down to read and rest, and the first thing I read was an article about teaching writing, which said that too few programs make service to the community a central tenet of writing. This was so close to my conversation with my friend about this place where I write, that I put down the book and came here to all of you. Tomorrow will be a heart-wrencher, a busy Saturday, always our best days at Holiday Market, and in the morning the Auction with Percussive Interludes, aka the Pottery Smash. It starts at 8:30, and you are invited if you like. It's not public, but it isn't private either, and if you know us, you can come.

We are the Kareng Fund, and the Saturday Market. Three potters do the work: Frank Gosar, Jon King, and Alex Lanham (former potter), with assistance from quite a few who stepped up "organically" as we say, to take on duties to make it happen. It's an auction of seconds, surplus, and donated goods from mostly potters, but also many others, with the proceeds going into the Kareng Fund to give grants to artisans in crisis. The Fund has been going since about 2002, when it grew from hat-passing to an actual bank account and from there to a 501c3. I serve on the Board, with eight other kind souls who try to make good decisions about what we can do to help people who need it, and who try to raise money to grow the fund and give more grants. None of us are super-great fundraiser type people. Asking for money is hard to do when you are shy and kind of poor and a down-to-earth hermit. Not all of us are that, but it does go along with the typical artisan personality.

So the Smash developed. The first year it grew out of boredom and was very literally potters bowling their pots down the aisle. Pots break when you do that, of course. It completely horrified those of us whose work doesn't break when you drop it, as we didn't understand breakage. We felt loss. It took some time to work through that to feel release. Over the decade and more of the Pottery Smash, fewer and fewer items are broken, but we can count on a few people to toss that stuff into the specially-built cage for it. No bid for this bowl? Jon will pretend to let it slip off his upraised hand, with a glimmer of glee in his eyes. Like this one? Oh well, it has a big crack in it, so CRASH!

There are so many crucial steps in ceramics, seconds are a given. There is no shortage of them. As a bowl collector myself, I keep a box of shards in the shed for my eventual mosaic whatever. All the favorite pieces break if you use them. You can't really fight it. It's built into the art form.

And loss? Just the other side of gain. Have/Lose. Like death, we pretend it won't happen, but that never stops it for long. Like most inevitability, the grace comes with acceptance. Sigh. Lotte died, slipped away, although we loved her hard and tried to let her know that. Had to happen. She gave us as much as she had to give, and set a wonderful example of how to make an artisan life.

We say she was our founder, but everyone, I hope, knows that Lotte didn't do it alone. Saturday Market isn't about ownership, and never was. A group of people around a table ate homemade food on homemade dishes and decided to make their work close to their homes. They put their efforts toward something direct, from their hands to ours, put their minds to working out how it could be best accomplished, what would last and be fair and what we would want to live with. They worked by consensus, a concept also homegrown and refined here in our region, though an ancient model made hippie style from new roots during that same fertile time a half-century ago now. It basically means you come to agreement before you move forward.

Eugene didn't like The Market at first, like people didn't like the Smash. People who made businesses the conventional way were resentful at the easy ownership of each artist, who merely had to bring their work and join in, with little overhead investment and no bankers, no buildings, and what looked like no rules and no taxes. It was self-governance, and it took time and dedication, but the foundation was built on something ephemeral: community. It took a community of artisans to make it happen, and a community of appreciators to complete the circle. Thus it was born and thus it happens today, seemingly effortless and profoundly full of determination, resistance, love, loss, and face-to-face equality. It costs more now. It isn't easy and never was, but it has always been fun and that won't change.

We have breakage. We had a two-day complaint fest on Facebook this week, which was witnessed by about a hundred people perhaps, where we looked within and found we didn't see quite the same things. I found it damaging, but at the same time, I had no trouble showing up today and sitting with my goods once more, saying hello to those I didn't agree with, working together once more to do what we do. I'm not afraid to work on consensus. I have great confidence that when everyone gets in the same room and starts to work on a problem together, a solution will be found, and it will be elegant. It might take more than one meeting, and there might be more than one problem. But after four decades of working in community like that, I know it can be done. I also know what prevents it from working, and what destroys it.

But those are subjects for other posts, because what is up tomorrow is sweet and kind. Enthusiastic appreciators bid happily against each other, siblings and partners and fast friends, and everyone feels like they win. We usually raise enough for at least a grant or two, and with the Basket Raffle the next day, we usually raise enough for several grants, and at the same time during Holiday Market we give several. Oddly, over the years of granting, the amount in the fund stays rather constant, growing slowly, and the 80-some grants keep amounting to more and more given out. It's magic, like the money comes out of the air somehow. It flows through and gets where it need to go, helps the ones who need it the most.

Tears will be shed amongst the happiness tomorrow. Someone who is here today will not be here next year, and we remember many who were with us until they weren't. It's a big family, enclosing thousands if you count everyone, and thousands more in the outer ripples. It's rather astonishing that it works as well as it does. We all pay in what we have, what we can, and the sharing happens and the people who we pay to do what we can't do ourselves, do that, and everyone gives what they bring and takes what they need. It goes around and comes around again.

My neighbor brought over some cookies and asked me what I will do for Christmas, and really, this is what I do. Holiday Market is my holiday. Maybe I'll see my son and his wife, or maybe we'll do it next week, and on the day of Christmas I'll cook something and sit and read and watch a movie, happily in my solitude, feed the birds, listen to music. Write in my journal. Look out the window. The day after I will go and get the rest of my booth and bring it home for the winter.

I'll be happy to be alone, because I will have spent the last three days right in the middle of our community. It's got everything. It's diverse, it's lively, there are people who give and those who need, people who laugh and some who cry, people with kids and those without. Broken legs, new babies, dementia, funny stories, horrible embarrassments, tender hugs. We have it all. It spreads out over us. It's what we built because it's what we need. It's abundance and joy.

This is what we have that no tyranny can destroy. We laugh in the face of the desperate selfishness and greed that we can hardly imagine. That's not the world we're making. That's not the story we're writing. That's not what's going to happen. I know it, and you know it too. We're better than that. We might feel helpless and discouraged, but there are a lot of us, and we're not as susceptible to their devious techniques and mind-bending as they think. We might flounder individually some or a lot, but in community, we will not fail. We bring our hearts, and our hands, and we are good at it.

See you in the morning. If you miss it, see you in the spring. See you on Impeachment Day. See you in the funny papers. Have a lovely Christmas, and a wonderful year. Keep giving, and keep bringing it to the commons. Those things are ancient, and they will not be destroyed. Break a pot, save the world.