How to Deal With the Stuff

Thinking about hypervigilance, the defensive stance, and how easy it is to push people into traumatized reactions to what, to others, seem like ordinary statements or actions. Thinking about Facebook, how it keeps pitching me old posts from this blog, which sometimes I read out of curiosity, but rarely share. It seems lazy to share an old one. I suppose this will be the way I track my cognitive decline, when it comes...old posts will seem so good, and new thoughts mundane and hardly worth expressing. Or maybe it will be the opposite: maybe my old posts will be naive and trivial and my new ones compelling and passionately irrational. Sorry for you that have to watch...or maybe that is why you read these.

I wish I wouldn't think so much about aging and debilitating futures just because someone points out that I am not young now. Of course I blame the culture but really, it is individuals thinking these things that keeps it current. Yes, I don't want to move as fast as I once did, and I'm not motivated by the same things. Today I had thought I would get productive and go out in the shop, and the sun is out, so I could finish the pruning, but here I sit, wanting to write instead. So? Life passages are great. You be young, with all of the quickly made mistakes that set the course of your life before you know it. I actually like this slower pace here in the eddies at the edges of the mainstream. Do whatever you want on my former lawn, now tangle of blackcap raspberries.

I already did quite a few pages in my journal last night and this morning, working things over. I was spurred to put it down in words after reading a beautiful essay about author Patricia Hampl. It was some excellent writing, and reminded me that is why I practice writing...I want to create beauty like that. I feel lucky to have started this blog, because I put it here, people can read it if they want, but it doesn't create an object that will have to be dealt with. My living room (okay, house) (and shop)  is filled with objects. Even though I have started the process of getting rid of things, it's going to be a process for the rest of my time, and I don't expect it to get easier. No one is going to want most of what I have. Thank goodness for the free tree.

Lotte's family gave me more of her archives. This latest batch is much more poignant than the last, and I'm having a hard time delving in. One item is her copy of her book, (The Potter and the Muse) which upon re-reading provides wonderful insights into her work and through that, her life. Her extraordinary and ordinary life is part of my own musing now. I'm having an intimate relationship with her through her writing, one that is closed at the end but open for as long as I am the keeper of her things. The "and then what" part is what I'm chewing on.

I have lots of journals of my own, dozens. I put everything in there, all my misgivings and truth and probably quite a few lies that I believe are true. One reason I journal and one rule about it for me is that you never lie to your journal. This has saved my life a few times when I forced myself to check back and see what I said before, and the damning truth sits there, unalterable. Honesty has levels, and it isn't perfect. Perhaps it's more of an exploration of the veils of self-delusion, drawing them back.

Questions surface. Why do I think that, why do I feel that, why did I do that? Observations of what I have written about what I have done, causes patterns to emerge which can be identified. That's how I know about my hypervigilance and the many cognitive errors that I make under certain circumstances. I know if I'm writing at night, or putting aside other plans to write something scary, or writing long careful emails, or (horrors) the long ten-page letters to family members or lost lovers, I know that that pattern has meaning for me. Those are the signals that my trauma patterns are operating, and that something has set them off. While the material is essential to explore, sharing it is problematic. Mostly I don't send the letters. I save them though. I try not to read them.

Generally I can identify the causes now, of the patterned behaviors, which are usually multiple, subtle, and things that would seem ordinary to the observer. I can even have a rational track operating at the same time. If I'm defensive, the best thing seems to be to let it run its course, crafting the towers of self-righteousness and conviction, but then letting them collect dust. If I have to mount a defense, I have probably already lost whatever it is I want to hold onto. Somebody's wrong impression about me, my motives, or my actions, is probably not going to change through my defense. It has the best chance of healing itself through my actions leading forward, so if I can right my own ship so to speak, the sailing will get smoother. Back into the journal to discuss next moves.

Trying to fix everything, and thinking I can, is another aspect of the cognitive errors. (Google 12 or 15 or 20 cognitive errors if you don't know what I mean by that.) Feeling the over-responsibility syndrome, as I call it, means if the phone rings in a room, my hypervigilant self thinks I have to answer it. Even if it is not my phone. If I'm at a meeting or in a group, pretty soon I have just volunteered for everything, not to control it, but to set a good example of pitching in. Irrationality hates a vacuum. It's a heavy burden to set a good example. It's like trying to be a saint, very catholic. Have I mentioned it's Lent? Ash Wednesday still carries a shame charge for me, reminding me of how it felt to wear that smudge of certain sin to public school, and enter into that deprivation period when we gave up something we loved, like candy. That one was especially loaded as when Easter came, we got piles of it. Starvation and then gorging, so helpful for a life pattern.

I get that hoarding is about control, but I am not a hoarder, just someone with attachments to useful stuff and things that aren't finished with their useful lives. Like Lotte's journals. I could tell her family wanted to keep them, but they were all inundated with things that had to be saved. Anyone who lives 90 years and doesn't have to move into a place, has their history around them. It's essential history in some ways, and her Saturday Market history is really precious. I loved putting that together and look forward to working on it some more. They were very grateful to me for helping them sort things out.

From what I can tell with my little pokes into it, most of what I have now is Lotte's writing, and her writing about her artistic process and her pieces. My understanding of her work is increasing by leaps and bounds, and it's very profound. The materials would make a fantastic research project for a young artist wanting direction, or for some kind of retrospective about an ordinary potter and printmaker as an insight into how craftspeople live. Maybe it's museum quality...it is to me, but then I am the proprietor of the Jell-O Art Museum, so maybe I lack perspective on what the Smithsonian wants...or even the Lane County Historical Museum. Plus, they are full up  at LCHM until they get a new building, and UO probably is as well. Famous in Eugene is maybe not all that famous. Plus, potters are naturally humble, to my experience. Working with earth and fire keeps them very grounded and secure in the knowledge that back to ashes we will go. (Those damn Catholics again.) So Lotte probably expected it to be tossed into the bonfire at some point. It was important to do the work, and the product was less important. She wanted to give things away.

But when I add it to my own archives for the short term, (and I also offered to compile my Mom's writing for our family,) I get overwhelmed. I'm attached in a deeply emotional way to these materials, but I doubt that my attachment will survive me. I also have Mike's Mom's fabrics, and things all the way back to the sign-painting brushes and books and kits from a dying man, Charlie Toback, who lived over the fence from a place on Almaden Street where I lived in the 70's. I opened myself to what these people really cared about, and assured them I would make use of it. And I have! And I've loved them. I still want all of it. They might appreciate that their lives were extended in these ways.

Obviously the world is changing in a way that eventually makes these things useless and in the way, like me. I can fight it for awhile. I'll have to come to terms with it. Probably that will happen little by little, writing about it all the way, since some patterns are functional and do help my life. I could write a few books about it, if then they wouldn't become objects that had to be dealt with.

Probably should get tough with myself. Trick myself with routines like throwing away one thing a day or finishing books and then taking them to the Little Free Libraries. That's how I came across the Patricia Hampl thing. Now I don't want to get rid of it though. Maybe next week.

Same Old, and Also Brand New

Jell-O Goes Gold

I shared a seven-year-old post FB sent me, because it said a few things I have never stopped saying. Being engaged so much in crafting the elegant solution with so many people, lots of things don't change, and all of us, including me, need to keep reminding ourselves of how we get there.

It does matter what our process is. We do need to bring our best selves to every meeting. One person having an off day or engaging in self-serving behavior, or letting their fears overcome their manners, can have a devastating effect on people who are volunteering their time and energy. Every time someone goes off, everyone else goes home with the task of self-examination, checking on their own thought processes and priorities, and working on their skills and internal processes, just to get back to where they started at the beginning of the meeting. Careless words and actions are what drives volunteers away.

My two main membership organizations (Saturday Market and Oregon Country Fair) are full of visionaries, hard workers, practical planners, and dreamers. Our whole impetus starting out so long ago (hard to grasp the fifty year lifespan, already) was to create a better life experience, to share our talents, to work together without self-interest for the common good. Many of us were in our twenties and thirties, and if you were there, you remember why we needed an "alternative society." Mainstream reality was grim. Our generation of young men was being wiped out in Vietnam, brutally involved against their wills in a corrupt and terrifying war of imperialist domination (we had the draft and the lottery for it.) The government was clearly crooked and grasping (we had Nixon and then Reagan) and we had been collectively traumatized by the murders of our visionary leaders, the two Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King Jr, and many of the Black Panther leaders, who were trying to feed children and protect the lives of their community. Our country was described as divided in two, and everyone was fighting, even at the family level. It always seemed manufactured and phony, and what stuck in our minds was the advice to The Graduate: "Plastics." What a metaphor.

My cynical perspective sees everything differently than I did then, as history repeats itself but in ever-darker ways, but we have learned a lot over the years, and we have taught our children well. In my little corner of the alternative society, we're well established in experienced process, we practice peace, and we value self-assessment and education, and there's a lot of wisdom in every gathering. Some among us are excellent at cutting through the crap. One of my friends nailed it at a difficult meeting when she pointed out an absence of something basic, personal responsibility. We live with that every day as self-employed people, with our survival on the line with each action we take.

We aren't as flummoxed by bullies and gaslighters as we were in the past. Collectively the whole world is much less willing to tolerate coercion and negative framing and divisiveness, and people are much braver about speaking clear truth and leaving their fears and confusions outside the room as they focus on actual problem-solving. Crafting the elegant solutions comes a little easier now. Not that it isn't a constant challenge.

Facebook discussions have both facilitated and destroyed process but reading so many threads that are open to everyone has me convinced that on balance, these rather warped forums of participatory democracy are helpful. We can identify behavior patterns, illogical arguments, trolling, and inspiration. When people turn the conversation with positive framing, you can almost hear the cheering. When someone comes to trash things, they rarely succeed. Ranks close and their comments are either argued down to shreds or they sit like a turd on a platter at the end of the thread. People reveal themselves in ways that wouldn't happen in a live meeting. We can edit our comments when we say something that doesn't sound right. We can drill down into the issues and bond or identify areas we have to work on.

It can be too much. We still have to get in the room together and be vulnerable as we take step after step toward naming and solving the actual problems. But often the myths we carry are shown to be such, in the online process, and we can share that perspective and re-right the ship. We're more in charge of our own process than ever, at the same time being more bombarded by distraction and intentional obfuscation than ever.

Country Fair, with it's larger population of stakeholders and many more FB pages, does a lot more of this online processing then we do at Market. We actually do ours on Saturdays, since we meet there so frequently. Sometimes you could frame it as gossip, but I see it as the informal process that facilitates the formal process. We tend to stay away from online processing, (and I'm grateful for that) as our population is smaller enough to interact more in person throughout the year. You don't necessarily have to be a committed volunteer who goes to meetings to share your perspective with your friends and neighbors. I am convinced the networking that goes on during the day on Saturdays is invaluable to our work. We get discussion time and we reach a lot more of us who aren't online, including both the new or infrequent sellers and the regular every-week members on the Park Blocks. I especially like the morning set-up time and the 3-5 afternoon time for the easily shared communications that we can do ongoing during the season.

Of course the offseason is a different story. A lot of us go into retreat mode and turn our energies to other things, and the core group of people who are working on Market issues is smaller. But still, when we come together to work on our tasks and decisions, people bring skills. We slog through things that take time and care. We can't always be efficient and quick with how we work things through. Like with Fair, our event comes up quickly, faster than we are ready for it, and at the same time we can hardly wait for it. We feed so deeply on the actual gatherings. There's a thread right now on an OCF page where people are writing what they are looking forward to doing at Fair. It's as diverse as the population and illustrates well how many kinds of contributions there are, and how they all fit together to make the others possible.

Sure, there are always going to be people who cause other people to do make-work around them, who don't pull their weight, who complain and blame and make mistakes. Plenty of people try to eliminate process to just get the job done. It was easier when we were pioneers creating things for the first time, when individuals could exert more personal power and get approval for it. We have to be more careful now to create group buy-in, to get consent, to stop from acting long enough to make sure it will be the best way to get to the solutions. It can be frustrating, but we still have to do it, or pay the price by doing things over or repairing the damage.

We have always valued consensus, but it takes time. Now we lean toward it, but we don't always take the steps to find it. We increasingly go to majority rule, which is flawed in so many ways, and furthers division, to my mind. It fosters coercion and domination. It short-circuits the careful decision-making process. It forces the consensus-building out of the meetings into the informal networks, the FB threads, the Market neighborhood discussions. It's the way it goes. It makes our experienced, traditional leaders more important than ever, and it's unfortunate that they are often aged.

Young or old, people with developed skills at building consensus to make morally right, thoughtfully crafted, fair and equitable decisions should lead the process. Loud and demanding voices have their place, but it shouldn't be at the head of the table. Change can come, but not at the expense of what has been so carefully built.

Everybody has their fantasy of what our shared reality is like. All of the many thousands of Fair-goers have their perfect Fair in mind and they try to experience it every year. Everyone who comes to Market has a vision of what it is that serves them in whatever ways they need it to. None of these are perfectly correct for all of us, none of them are perfectly the truth.

But in the collective reality, they each play a part. Each of us has the task to envision the best possible practices and the best possible experience, and work toward it. We do this with amazing power and force, and each event is an explosion of this manifestation of love. Every Saturday, every July, we are stunned by the beauty and joy we create together. Sometimes we have to slog through some mud to get there, but our collective vision remains clear and bright. I am so grateful for that, and so in awe of how many people try so hard to create it.

It's not easy to make a beautiful vision come true every day. Now in our traumatized political state, it's harder than ever in my lifetime. But it's happening, and happening harder and harder as the daphne and violets bloom and the weeds take off. I'm thrilled for myself that I have the Jell-O Art Show as my annual vehicle to illustrate that. I hope you have something similar and a way to express your creative and dramatic self that includes some silliness and some hugging and some singing and some brilliantly colorful ways to clear away the grime. I'm excited that my vision is still refresh-able.

I had been feeling a little old and in the way. It's kind of a default forced on us as we wrinkle and our disks degenerate inside us. We slow down. But this has its important place. We have more time to reflect, and take in the wisdom of others. We have the undeniable advantage of historical perspective that can so enrich the enthusiasm and energy of youth. We get to support instead of lead. We get to sit back and be satisfied, and embrace joy and contentedness instead of just acting and doing. We get to set the example and bring forward what we've been taught. We're part of the continuum in a new way.

We're all playing a part in this drama. Make them laugh. Make them cry. Touch their hearts. Watch them play. Applaud. What a world! Thanks for staying in it, even when you feel discouraged.