Let's Fall in Love, Rewritten

Let's make Jell-O,
Why shouldn't we make Jell-O?
Republicans screwed us, they took us to hell,
Why shouldn't we jell?

Let's all eat cake,
Thanks for all that Dana can make,
We've got Dave's cookies, we've got Pad Thai,
And we can get high!

Dance, while we still have our health care,
Smile, while you still have your teeth.
Play, while you pay off your mortgage,
You won't get tax relief.

Let's shift our eyes,
And notice we live in paradise,
Here we have love, here it is mellow,
And we always have Jell-O!

If you know me you know that for me, Jell-O is not the stuff you can mix with water and eat when you're in the hospital,it's my metaphor for sacred joy. Jell-O Art is my vehicle for fun, my glamour, my saving grace, and all winter after we close our retail season, I sing and write parody songs and scripts for the Radar Angels performance, and fill my living room and kitchen with strange and wonderful creations made with the transparent, brilliantly colored and sometimes jiggly substance that the uninitiated eat. It feeds me, but not in conventional ways. And on the advent of spring, sometimes on Opening Day of Saturday Market, high holy day as it is, we have the Jell-O Art Show, and it is glorious and Joy Incarnate. And, bowing, I am Your Queen of it. Humbly.

But it's only December, and this was quite a week in politics, and it's the Holidays. So after reading the paper this morning and before heading off to my day of retail at the Holiday Market, I spent a little time yelling obscenities, a little time lecturing myself, and by the time I was slogging through puddles at the Fairgrounds, I was composing songs.

My lecture was about letting politics get to me...I paid way too much attention to the tax debacle and was way too scared by the zombies who think they are in charge. I'm quite terrified of what those people are doing. It puts me in this state I call the matrix fantasy which is the cynical feeling that no matter what, I am enslaved and playing whatever game they want me to play, powerless and complicit and doomed, so doomed. I've felt it since the Kennedy assassinations, really, so it began when I was 13. When it began I was too young to know what I was doing, but I worked on my resilient qualities, taught myself to escape into trees, books, and creativity, and cultivated my joy.

I had a traumatic childhood, as did many of us, and I feel for you if you are as unhealed about it as I am. Holidays are particularly bad for me, so this year I vowed a drama-free six weeks. I decided I would limit TV, mute all the commercials, and do whatever I had to do to avoid laying my feelings on someone else, most particularly those who are close to me. I get hypervigilant about my particular conditions, and I know my patterns and weak spots really well by now, so avoidance works and if I stay low and don't get too vulnerable, I am always hopeful that I will not fall into those dramatic patterns. My lecture involved restricting my social interactions, not allowing myself to be too vulnerable, not eating the things I know make me sick, not doing the things I know make me sad and helpless and anxious.

Yeah, wish me luck. All that is pretty incompatible with selling one's creations in the public marketplace. Being at Holiday Market is like having an open house of the heart. I am lucky enough to see all of the people I love (who live nearby at least) and I treasure our short but deep conversations and check-ins. I thrive on the warmth in the room, with so many people I know and have worked with so long. I eat well, and I'm proud of my work and how popular it is. I have reams of observations and stories about what goes on there, and I do love it. But it does make me vulnerable and there are a lot of people there who get my heart strings twanging and it's not always harmonic.

But today, people from the very first were SO KIND! Everyone, from the start, was sweet and nice to me, appreciative, welcoming, generous, loving, and wonderful. I have experienced this before when things in the big world got bleak. Each time, like after the election, after the financial crisis, after 911, or after significant deaths in our community, each time people came out, spread love, and managed to salvage some peace and some joy from the wreckage. Determined, deliberate, and making a statement. That is how the people are among whom we live.

At one point, and this was tragic with a side of comical, I was over buying sweet potatoes and the fire alarm went off over at the Farmers' Market. A loud voice said to Evacuate, to Leave the Building!! Repeatedly, with a very loud alarm and flashing lights! People began to comply but I literally ran back to my booth on the complete opposite side of the building, and thank goodness this was not happening on the craft side. However, the alarm and flashing lights were loud and bright enough to be intrusive, and that's when things got comical. Sadly for the farmers, it shut them down, but for us, we shut the doors and Pickles and Peppers kept playing, everyone gathered in the aisles, hoping against hope that the sprinklers would not come on, and it was kind of like Shopping While the Titanic Went Down. People kept shopping, people were laughing at ourselves, and all of the stories came out, of the time the ceiling fell in in Holiday Hall, which was during the big snow, and remember how booths were empty so other people moved into them for the day, and remember when we sold outside, and on and on.... It was a party. I guess it was hard to play clarinet but it was once in a lifetime, and a good story is always going to be a good story.

I felt terrible for the farmers, who were having a great day because the Fix it Fair was really fabulous and brought lots of people in. I think it did shut them down, though I'm pretty sure they didn't get deluged with water because there was actually no fire, just a teense of smoke from some soldering that I suppose no one thought would be a problem. I know it was hard on them, traumatic maybe, and I do care very much about that. Some day they'll laugh but probably not tomorrow.

It healed me, though, because there was one part of my day today (but only one!) that was hard. I was having a really great visit with someone who recently left the farmers' market, and our friendly conversation actually turned into a fight! He started trashing Saturday Market, repeating all of these mythical things that some of them think about us, which I won't of course tell you, because they aren't true, but I was kind of laughing and trying to tell him that no, that's what we say about them...and it would have been funny except it was ugly instead. He was hating us. He was holding resentments he had held for over a decade, because I know he had them then and it was the last time I actually had a conversation with him. I had forgotten why I avoided him. He hates us. He blames us for everything that isn't working for the farmers, or didn't work at some point, or hating us for everything we are and do. He really had it stored up.

Fortunately we were interrupted by some shocked customers and I told him we'd have to finish our conversation some other time, because I honestly feel that we do. We have to have it out until we both understand that those myths held by all of us about the "others" are not true and are in our way. And they're hurting us. They're not going to be helpful as we move together into our mutual and connected futures. And they're similar to other myths that other groups are operating within. It reminded me about the perils of division and irrational thinking and blaming and holding others responsible for things we ourselves need to work on and fix, and how we are really going to have to do that in concert. We really will. We can't split our town or our country or our world into two halves and operate separately. Anyone promoting that is putting us into the matrix fantasy and I simply will not accept living there. It's not the world I am willing to co-create.

So. It has been decided that I am vulnerable and will not get away with trying to pretend I am not. I will have to struggle through the holidays and the politics and the realities of aging and death and so will you, and we are stuck with doing it together. We cannot separate from each other, we can't separate from our myths and delusions, and we are going to have to work with them. We are here and it is now. Feel your grief and your fears, and so will I, but we will also bring them on down to the community gathering place and spread them around a little. It will help us all to do that.

That farmer and I may not get around to another maybe less ugly conversation, but at least we had the lovely one before we started to disagree, to remind us that sometimes we like each other. Us laughing and partying while the farmers had a hard time today will hopefully result in more of us supporting them tomorrow to get past it. (By the way, the sweet potatoes I got were amazing!) People buying or not buying things today will be just like them buying or not buying things for the rest of the month and then again for the rest of my life, and I'll love it and be bothered by it as it comes. It's the life I chose.

And I chose it here, and I made it here, because of all of you, so if I isolate and don't write and try to protect my tenderness, I won't do it very much until something makes me break through and sing and dance and wear Jell-O on my head. Because that is how it is. That's the joy I want, and that's the joy I make. Thank you for doing your part!