Looks like Fall

Lots of emotions swirling around today. A friend lost her husband, and he joins a list of lamentations that are a function of my age that I am struggling to get used to. Sure, we know people die, but many of us are still not equipped to ride through the storms of feelings that come each time. I guess it gets easier. Mom, at 92, is much more philosophical than I am about it. I'm sure I'll learn, the hard way.

OCF struggles with deep structure at the moment, and some issues are so complex I haven't even wanted to weigh in. I try to pay attention, to witness, but this last Board meeting wasn't livestreamed, though I sat there waiting just in case it kicked in, while I watched the Eugene City Council on another channel. I monitor the City Council for my Market community, so we can prepare for when they come to us soon about the changes to our home ground, the Park Blocks we have rented for 34 years (and 15 or so more if you count the Butterfly and Courthouse Plaza.) This is our 49th season. I've only missed the first five. I should have gone to the OCF meeting I guess, but I just don't have enough energy to get deeply involved when it's so complex. Even witnessing takes a lot of energy. It's chilling to think that my own volunteer efforts could come back to bite me. I have the skills to be a good Board member, but skills wouldn't be enough in the current climate. It takes true dedication to work very hard to find that balance of all those needs. I can't do it for more then KF and SM right now. I'm still working, too, when I can fit it in. I'm drawn to help OCF, but I can only be part of the mostly silent network that supports and waits. I will most certainly vote.

I find myself wanting to go out to Fair site in a deep way, to visit the Spirit Tower where I have always connected with my lost people, even though it has mostly disappeared and lost its sacredness. The river is still the same, the land is still quiet, and you can still hope to see the Pileated Woodpeckers and hear the tree limbs clacking together in the high breezes. That land is ours, is mine, when I need it, something which feels like the most amazing accomplishment of the community I am so lucky to be in. Grateful for the people who had the foresight to make that happen, the big group that raised the money and understood the need.  It's a safe place. Still, when I go, it's a bit like work.

I go to my booth, all packed up for winter, and poke around looking for lost pushpins or scraps of wood that will float, but it's usually quite clean. Sometimes I rearrange the vegetation into the living boundaries of our camping clearing. I try to envision the next project I'll do, and talk myself into the new design of the roofline. I am the one who has to do this. It's the same ownership as I have for my two houses. I'll think about my 50th Anniversary projects. I have big plans, but can't do them right now.

I vacillate between feeling too old to do the work and too young to give up using my hard-won skills. I evaluate my abilities to climb ladders and make the right decisions. I try to think about when I will fit the work in. In one sense it's vastly easier to pay someone to do the construction, but in other senses I need to do it. I need to go out there and see how my choices have played out, how my directions have been followed, and how nature has treated what I've made. On my two houses, (I have two small houses on a city lot, one of which is my shop) I've done substantial amounts of the work, in fact spent about fifteen years remodeling the larger house. It was life-altering work and it brings me a great deal of satisfaction. I thrive on a feeling of accomplishment.  Yet death reminds me I could go quickly too, so what projects should I prioritize? Everything's right at the top of the list; everything's vitally important.

I've been trying to find that satisfaction in less physical work, in archiving and writing, but it's harder. I recently removed a piece of the plywood siding on the shop to replace a rotten place, and had to take out the window and add some trim. It took a lot longer than I had planned and while it was relatively straightforward, it was just maintenance, one little project on a long list. I'm reluctant now to start another one, with the weather changing and deadlines coming up. Here I sit on a day when it didn't rain, thinking I need to get out there and start on that roofing. But my friend and her husband were roofing, and now I know she wishes they hadn't been. Certainly today is not the day for me to climb that ladder. So I got out the archives, and told myself I'd spend a day organizing and writing, but I have a feeling I will end up finishing up the summer pruning and preparing for the next rain.

I had to navigate someone's unjust interpretation of my actions again, and his attack. It wasn't the first time from that person, so I could discount some of his ire since I know how he works it, but of course it still derailed me a little. I'm mostly aggravated that he was thoughtless in his actions, in his drive to have his own way, and caused damage, not just to me, but to our process and other people involved. it wasn't major damage, but the discouragement of injustice adds up. Again, I'm getting used to it. I'm starting to tell myself things like "people will always be messy to deal with, and it's unrealistic to think that they will understand ethics in the same way I do." I'm trying to be patient with those who are young, rash, and need more education, because lots of people had to be patient with me while I learned how to be a little wiser and slower to react. I have enough support from people who do understand, but most of yesterday I spent checking in with various people, not even all the ones I needed to, and it was an astonishingly low sales day for me. I didn't even get near to $100, with my great-selling products that easily bring much more than that on a better day.

So it wasn't my day, and I joined the ranks of the discouraged who really get creamed by our fee structure, so I made a vow to bring out my chart early next January, and petition again for fee relief for the low-end earners. I commiserated with a lot of members yesterday who have had many bad sales days, so it isn't about me at all. I can certainly absorb one when it was mostly caused by my inattention to my customers and my job. I talked to many who are experiencing lots of marginal or just really bad days, and I don't think it is "paying their dues" while they build their businesses and improve their products. I think it is the capriciousness of our event, that on any given day there is a lot of luck involved in how well you sell. I think we can build a much more compassionate fee structure that acknowledges that unpredictability and eases the burden on the majority of our members without savaging our profitability. But I will set that aside for now, as it will be better done later and other things are on that horizontal list that push profits to the edges.

Fiftieth Season and Anniversary design projects are in the center, and stories from the archives, and the time is near when I will lose the opportunity if I procrastinate. I have good designs worked out in my mind, but nothing on paper. I dread that feeling when I try to go from mind to pen, when I am not really capable of expressing my vision. I know it's common and shouldn't stop me, but it makes it hard to start. Of course there is only one remedy for that, starting. Or saying maybe later.

At some point there will no longer be a maybe later available. Quite possibly that is the base fear that is behind all of my distress today. At some point I will have to lose my attachment to all my things, to all my future accomplishments, to all my visions and cares. I will have to let go of all of it. Maybe I'll get time to finish up a few, but maybe not. Staying off roofs won't help. Successfully processing small traumas won't help. Calling out injustices won't matter. It's all going to be one big injustice if I don't get my mind around the ultimate justice of It Is What It Is. What Goes Around May or May Not Come Around. Que sera, sera. Be Here Now.

Fortunately I can access a lot of wisdom from my community and what my generation has learned in our explorations, and of course, humans of the ages. They've all stood more or less where I stand.I'm not experiencing anything that new or that serious, just more steps down the human paths. Think I'll wander off for the rest of the day. I always feel at my best when I'm out in the yard, putting things in order, just enough to feel good to me but not enough to really disturb her comforting chaos. I guess I can thrive with a messy garden, so can thrive with a messy life. No sense in trying to change everything at once, even if I could.