Tree Love

Well, this happened. It filled my heart and I even put on a mask and went out to take a photo. Earth Day! I remember the first one, in DC. I was there, and was changed. Now I live next door to this...probably a hundred years old. I think about the people who probably planted it, to shade their cows. 

Finally cried. Took a bottle of cider and a writing project. I wrote the project sober, two times, and got that feeling afterward...that euphoria that something powerful happened. It's why writers keep at it. You sit down for several hours, completely focused, and you don't look up until that last paragraph happens, and then the feeling comes over you and your life is meaningful. For five minutes, anyway.

If you are smart you don't send it to anyone, but you fondle it. You wait until the next day and then you edit it, reminding yourself how stupid you are, how making yourself that vulnerable is such a terrible mistake. You send it to your writing group. If you are lucky, they know what to do. Some edit, and send you a document you don't open. Others just praise. That's what you need, encouragement. You just opened a vein. It's kind of a terrifying image, but yes, you tapped into your heart. Everyone benefits, mostly you.

It's dramatic. It's emotional beyond the limit most people are willing to go. But it's the job of a writer, of an artist. That is why people love you. Sure, they love you when you don't do it, but it''s what you can bring, and when you bring it, they want it.

I was surprised at myself, that I hadn't accessed that grief. Not accessing it is bad for you. I had pains...like in my lungs, kinda. I was kind of inviting death. I was not fighting it, I was wanting to hurt. Because this fucking hurts, missing out on everything we love. I haven't lost people yet, all the way, but I have lost everything I do...all of my gatherings, all of my jobs. It's massive in that there's no end in sight. Right as we think our hard work of staying home will pay off, everyone starts talking second wave.

DAMNIT! Every one of us has that neighbor...they aren't helping. They don't care about us. And then all the ones who are helping! Everyone offers to shop for me. I can't stand feeling this cared for. I can't stand having six zooms a week. I just want my life back.

I wrote for hours, I edited a long, long article. I plan to submit it to the Weekly, as a gift, and I hope they take it. Unlike my usual process, I love it and think it is brilliant (wait until morning...) I want to give what I have to give.

And then I sat on the deck in the afternoon sun and wept. Hard. There were chickadees and jays. The apple tree and orange/peach Mollis azalea were glorious. The neighbors were thoughtless and I hate them. I rode the stationary bike. I thought about getting even drunker. I thought getting drunk was a big mistake. I cried and cried.

Then I came in and got the perfect message on my email. I figured out dinner. I turned on the news. I thought of someone I wanted to reach out to, who lost her husband a year ago. I think I am sad. She must be way beyond sad. I still want to cry some more.

But I will watch a movie or something. Actually I will go through a million photos of Saturday Market for the article. They are amazing. Thank you so much to people who took photos.

Fifty years, and now what? No one knows. Maybe we'll be luckier than  we think. Maybe it's meaningful.

There's a Hole in My Basket

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csZV3w_nscg

I don't know what people say, it's been so long since I've seen any. I guess Zoom counts. My closest relationships right now are with squirrels, who seem determined to chew up my deck structure. I'm zooming with three groups, which is more socializing than I did before, when it was all compressed into one or two days a week. Not much to say, though.

Market is now put off until May 23rd. More than a month from now...so discouraging. Sure doesn't motivate me to print anything. Or do anything. I'm just shuffling through the motions, trying to accomplish one or two small things per day.

I did scrape some paint today, and put primer on, something I usually do in August. I lasted for about a half hour. I'm trying to be compassionate with myself, as I put on the pounds and crave all the things I don't have, and don't really need. I enjoy being productive, but am having trouble getting started.

Easter got to me, because I realized now that I have put all my eggs in one basket. I always thought I had a pretty diverse thing going, with lots of little pots of money coming in from different sources, but they all just disappeared at once. Sure, they'll come back. We'll have meetings again, and we'll sell, probably in June, July, and August...maybe. But right now I feel like a fool like so many of us who thought we had some kind of security.

I did file for unemployment, and it wasn't hard, so I guess I won't run all the way out of money. I have  social security, all $450 a month of it. I'm not spending much. That's the upside of not selling things...I don't have to buy more. I have enough stock right now to take me for months. I could do Fair tomorrow...but of course we're not having Fair.

Al Green is comforting. I guess it was his birthday yesterday, as I saw on Facebook. I don't even care if it's true or not. Most of my music journeys these days are just random things I find on FB, just clicking on links in case they work a little. Some of them do. I'm thankful for the creativity of others, who are doing a stellar job of putting it out there. AJ just told me to go watch Obama's endorsement, which he said would make me have some hope.

I thought I was settled in until today. I have the archives, and have been working through it slowly. My greater sense of irritation about all things is making it a little hard, and a little hard to love us all. We have some problem people in our midst, and always have, though they are of course the minority. But they keep coming up as the ones who need the help the most, so I want to get to some kind of faithful compassion and forgiveness for us, since we're all doing what we need to do. We made it this far, so we're doing more things right than we are wrong. Mostly we do very well with our challenges.

It's good to see the times when we were strong and making solid decisions, as well as the times of struggle, as I deepen my understanding of how our organization works. Sometimes the combo of Board members or Chair and Manager is just fantastically powerful, and sometimes it falls apart. Things happen, illnesses and things the City says or does, and sometimes leaders have really different ideas of who we are and what we should be doing. Right now I am reading about 1993 when to my surprise, a lot of changes were made in the point system. I've just assumed that it was always one person one point per selling day, but that isn't true! That's the ideal. And there are actually a lot of point systems going at once. It's easy to forget things like that over the long term.

I'm feeling that all this knowledge is so valuable, but I still don't have a handle on how to write about it. I haven't actually sat down and solved those problems, and know that it will take actual writing to do that. I've tried for an overall vision. I've made tons of notes, and outlines and sheets with lists. The challenges of each decade, for instance, or the themes of each phase, but I still have to get it all compiled and studied to really see that picture. I do feel like I can, and now I have a more extended time frame to do that.

But our 50th Birthday is May 9th, and we will not be open. It really spoils the party. I was planning to celebrate my 70th as well, May 5th. I don't really want to have some zoom dance party. I want to cry.

But I know I am just in a phase, a not-so-happy one. It will pass. I can watch a movie or sit on the deck and read. I do have a great book right now, In Search of the Wild Tofurky by Seth Tibbots. It's amusing and sweet. It has given me some moments of comfort and joy.

I can do whatever I damn well please. No one is watching, no one really cares much. Everyone is fighting for their own composure and staying power. Some are fighting for their lives and to feed their families. I am one of the privileged ones, with my own spaces and my own yard. I could be a little happier.

I'll do the dishes. It's always better to look at a clean kitchen and then maybe I will make a cake or something. Cake would help. I'll just start celebrating those birthdays today. And every day. Al wants me to stay together. He wants me to dance. But yes, I am so tired.

Epidemics from the Past

Back when we had the Food Circle

Watched a PBS show about polio this week...it took 60 years for them to harness that virus. Kids every summer were restricted in play and full of fear (probably the parents were more scared) because it was crippling and a killer. Adults got it too, but kids were very susceptible. Swimming pools were key to transmission. Sixty years, but then it was eradicated. People my age remember the shots and then the sugar cubes. And then we had HIV, too, I remember that horror quite clearly. Reagan wouldn't deal with it, and it was blamed on Haitians and gay people. We've come a little way since then, as a society. Not far enough.

This is not my first quarantine. When I was 5, I got scarlet fever (on Thanksgiving, which ruined turkey for years...) and had to be hospitalized. That is a strep, not a virus, but it had a deadly power and could lead to rheumatic fever and heart damage. Now I realize no one else in my family got it, though as I recall they all had to take penicillin, but I guess, looking back, I had a serious case. I remember watching out the window as my two sisters played on big rocks in the park...I know I thought I was the one who liked playing on big rocks the best and it was just unfair. I know I did not think I could die of it; it was just painful and inconvenient and NOT FAIR.

Back when you could touch

I remember getting shots in my rear a few times a day, probably four, since they had to wake me up at night. I would hold onto the bars of the bed and scream...hey, I was five, and I'm sure it was my first time alone like that. The thing that popped into my mind today was that all the presents I got, the stuffed animals and the adult-sized high heels and the dime I got from a neighbor, whatever else I got...it all had to be thrown away when I got out of the hospital. Waah.

I do feel like crying and maybe even screaming quietly today. This missing Opening Day is JUST NOT FAIR. It's always such a gratifying explosion of affection and anticipation and yes, sales, on the first Saturday in April. I told myself to just go down to Farmers' and get a few things and it would feel better, but I am not going to do that. I already feel sad and resentful and some other irrational emotions about seeing photos of the West Block without us.

I guess a tiny part of me is glad some other people can sell things...I know everyone needs the income and fresh local produce is what keeps us all healthy and living the good life here. Still, the photos I saw didn't look much like fun for anyone there. It's cold and rainy and they have to do weird extreme things to stay apart and safe. I am glad they are taking it seriously. I am actually glad it isn't me down there, despite my other feelings. I hope they succeed in saving their businesses and their market.

I always go sell on the cold and rainy Saturdays, but it is hard. You need the popup and the weights, you need the extra clothes and your feet are cold all day and you can't warm up even when you eat three meals, and of course those Opening Day meals are so wonderful after months without them. It seems like a long day but I am always a little nostalgic packing up even on a marginal day, and I miss my routine and my work. I miss my people.

So the Opening Day we do get will be great...we can look forward to it happening eventually. My fear is that it will not be May, though, since we have all been so good at staying home, our curve is flat and extends into July. But I am guessing that once the amount of cases goes into decline, and people figure out all the ways to deal with it, and we maybe have something definitive to really protect us, then maybe life will resume. Of course all the events of June are gone now, all the reasons we would have the great tourism and families gathering for weddings and graduation, well, we won't have those. Maybe some new celebrations. July could be fun...August could be fantastic.

So we're having a more robust online set of options, and Saturday Market is nearing the fruition of a big database improvement campaign, paid for by the great year we had in 2019, so we'll have a page for each of us with photos and contact info and people will even be able to find our spots on a map each week, so when it is in place we'll be enhanced. Should be quite soon, except for the site map.

We need to get some advocacy for the USPS, since for me, mail order will be much easier with that home pickup service I just tried out this week. It's easy and while not cheap, it takes away a lot of my arguments against remote selling. I've got packing materials and my stuff is easy to mail. So as soon as people feel safer, that will be a good option, but of course we are having a few problems with the priorities of the federal government. Maybe we'll get a state PO structure. Pony Express can come back. Horses are out of work too. No hurry to get things delivered.

I've been trying to get motivated to work, but keep going to cooking and reading, that's just the way it is going. I'm trying to be kind to myself. One half day of printing was plenty, and I took some photos of my new bags. I got my starts in the ground. My neighbors are not paying any attention to safe practices on one side, even though all the other neighbors on the block are old enough to be high risk. These young people are just foolish and partiers and now they are standing out as dangerous to all of us, so I don't even like working on that side of the house. Where my berry patches are. I guess I might be doing some washing of the berries this year, when they are ripe.

I glare at them when I'm out there and they come and go. Maybe they have jobs (a couple of them might) and maybe they're doing their best, and I was young once so I can kind of imagine having a casual take on all this, but I feel endangered. So I'm inside. Looking out. I had actually forgotten about the scarlet fever time until today, but since I was so young, that is pretty firmly embedded in my memory. Vivid. I even think the little boy who was in there at the same time is someone I later had as a boyfriend in school, though we were not able to prove that.

I wonder how my family felt about it. Did it seem like I might die? Even my parents couldn't visit me, I think...maybe my Mom did, I don't remember. I know those stuffed animals were important. I got out a little stuffed bear from my son's old ones that I've saved, and I'll put it in the window, and I cuddle it a bit. I made a basket with a pillow for the cat my son was going to bring me, that now he can't, and I put the bear in it and pat him on the head. I'm not getting wacky, you are.

It's just weird times, and I guess we have to get used to it. I feel like I did when it was so smoky here two years back...all of a sudden I went from having my longterm survival all dialed in to having no plan for it at all. Outdoor retail depends on a healthy outdoors.

But I got a great phone call from someone intending to nurture community and there was a t-shirt project discussed...so I remembered that work will happen, that we will make normalcy reappear. Once we do get out, there will be a creativity explosion and that is happening now on the internet.

Long, long ago I decided as a self-employed person that the money will flow, and the first rule of that was to trust that the money will flow. It just will. Work will reward us with more work. It might look a little different and require a few more skills, but work and money will flow.

Trust is hard, but I had good nurses in 1955 and I am guessing they are even more skilled now. Even if I screamed, they decided to keep me alive so I could get out there to play on those rocks. I think just maybe I did get a chance to when my next sister was born in 1956. I think I remember that.

And thank goodness, we have nurses. We have doctors, and we have friends, and we have a very strong community. I got several porch deliveries (thank you so much!) and I might suit up and make a couple myself. Kind of waiting for a sunny day when I won't be able to stay in. Today, I can do it.

Today, I can do this.