Floating

 

I begin this in my living room on Saturday morning listening to a groovy collection of John Zorn music. New to me and highly compatible with my current state of mind. There are tulips blooming everywhere, the leaves are emerging and the mountainside is changing shape and color with every moment. The garden is coming together here and at the Urban Farm. The Japanese maple outside the bedroom window that reminds me where I am in time is greeting me with delicate chartreuse leaves extended on flaming red branches. On the nights when the moon was full and the night was clear the tree was black and white as if covered in snow. Waking and seeing it at first, I could not believe my eyes. It took a moment for my brain to understand that it was moonlight and not snow after all. I heard some good poems read and I saw a few concerts and reconnected with the dreaminess of listening to art performed. By chance we got a hand-me-down piano, something I have wanted for a long time but was not sure I could afford. My neck is healing. It has taken awhile and it is still not quite 100%. I am feeling reclusive, selective about who I see and what I take on beyond what I am working on. I think it is a healing response and at the same time I think it is a transition period for me.  Taxes—the most recent obstacle to my creative pursuits— are done. And today I am washing my office floor—preparing the space for work. Space to work gets lost in the chaos of life; hidden under paper, place mats and unopened bills. The truth is the cleaning is all part of the practice and that is why when the thought came to me to wash the floor, I said yes. This is an important part of my daily practice, saying yes to doing things, whatever they are. I stop myself all the time and consequently things have backed up on me, I take too long to do things. I am too sporadic. So the idea of the practice is to add consistency to the behavior I am working on developing. Why is it so challenging to give myself an hour a day where I take time to move my creative—non-work—work along? This is the hurdle, making time and doing it. Taking the time and sinking-in to do the deep work, without losing touch with everyday life, that is what I wrestle with. It feels like losing control but I know the only way to explore creatively is to let go, really push off from the dock and float alone into the darkness of the catacombs where it all originates from.

Wanting

I am struck this afternoon by a young Libyan woman expressing her joy at Muammar Gadaffi's death. She said "We can want anything now". What struck me is that living in a democracy as I do I have never been in a situation where there were things I could not have. The only thing between me and the things I desired was usually hard work and I have generally worked hard. Lately I have been faced with a question that I can't seem to answer, it has risen out of the work I am doing on the novel I am writing. The question is: what does the hero want, and so I invert this question and wonder what do I want. An old friend resurfaced this week and she expressed her want as a desire to thrive. I keep running up against the question and I can't quite drill it down. Sometimes I think it stems from a lack of interest in anything or an interest in everything, it might be both, a plethora of choice has numbed me. I am happy doing very little, watching the meat birds eating is pleasant, so is watching the laying hens peck around. I am pensive and quiet, I enjoy that. I want to do what I want to do, not what I have to do. This is the challenge, trying to frame the want in a positive way, I want this, not, I don't want that. I don't want to die for example. I don't want to have to work for money forever. I want to work at what I want to work at. All the other stuff I have. A family, a good relationship, a place of my own. Maybe that's it, I have what I want, wanting more would be gluttony.

I realize in writing all this that picture for this post is rather meaningless except that it's what I am working on at the moment. It's a Rowan Yarns pattern by Kaffe Fassett. I cheaped out and didn't by the prescribed Rowan Yarn, it was just too expensive but the stuff I chose may be too soft, not structural enough, but we'll see. Looking at it here I actually don't mind it and some blocking will help. I am learning the hard way to go faster with these projects so that the details are handled consistently. I think I made the right front panel slightly longer than the left. Asymmetry is a look perhaps.

Beyond all of this I was invited to a birth this week of an old and dear friend so at the moment I am reveling in the amazing process of her tiny son appearing in a bath of water not 36 hours ago. My husband is flying home tonight after 10 days away and I am looking forward to being in his company again and hearing his stories. I am struck, struck by all of the love and connection I have witnessed this week. I guess if I wanted anything it would just be more of the same.

Mail Experiment No. 2

Dear Mr. Bothman,
As it seems that my earlier postcard to you has not arrived I decided today to make you another one. I went to your Facebook page and stole a picture of you. Please don't be creeped out by this, it's not as if I snuck into your house and cut a lock of your hair. As far as I know you wear your hair quite short making this type of thing difficult. Lucky for me, you seem to favor pictures of yourself that feature your outfit more than your face. I am just learning to paint so this makes it easier on me. A plaid tie is so much easier to create than a nose. I have decided I will include your zip code and 4 digit helper number on this postcard in hopes that the hapless postal carrier can more easily direct the card to you. I honestly think my hand painted Frankfurter is magnet-ed to some civil servants fridge as I type this instead of yours, it makes me mad and sad too. With all this geo-locating and the like I had hoped the poorly addressed card would present a personal challenge to the faceless carrier who's route it ended up on. Apparently not. So here goes, I will post this portrait of you tomorrow and hopefully soon enough it will arrive at your domicile and you and your small dog can enjoy it together.

Yours sincerely,
RMS

Mail Experiment No. 1

Dear Mr. Bothman,
I have accepted your challenge. Yesterday at 10pm I put a postcard addressed to you into a group mailbox in the Barkley District. As requested the address only includes a description of your home and it's relative location to a creek. I have documented the postcard here in the event that it doesn't make it to you but I hope that it will. I used a sixty cent stamp instead of the usual first class postage. I hoped this would send a clear message to the postal carrier that I recognized there would be extra effort needed to get this particular piece of mail to it's destination. I did not include a personal message on the card, instead I chose to make a painting, the subject of which I thought would please you. It pleased me in it's simplicity and multiple meaning. Who doesn't love a frankfurter, or painting of the same.

Please watch your mail and let me know what happens.

Yours Sincerely, RMS

Completion

Dragged myself out today to buy a set of double pointed needles. I have other things to do but this hat that I have been obsessively knitting for the past couple of weeks had to be finished. I wandered out around 2pm, right as all the over scented high school students were beginning their end of the day migration and made my way with them up to the drugstore to mail a condolence card. A store bought card which had traces of guilt on it. I can't make everything. The words printed inside seemed good enough but still it felt cheesy. I could have just written a note, but what to say. Your life will never be the same, you have lost your only father. Your heart is broken. You won't get over it, why would you want to? Instead I sent a card with a lovely painting of a single purple tulip on it. The members of this club of grief stricken people will understand. Grief is overwhelming and familiar, we all understand so we nod at each other with these crisply designed cards whose words are appropriate and safe presented in tasteful fonts.

I walked from the drugstore to the knitting store quickly as it had started to rain while I was mulling over over-priced eye brow brushes, luckily I was dressed for the rain. Still I felt cold but also sort of hot from the briskness of my movement past the nondescript buildings that make up our suburban landscape. I wished I was wearing a sweater.

In the knitting store I unwrapped myself from my shoulder bag and loosened my scarf, removed my gloves and began my usual contortions about what I needed, what I was making, how it was making me feel, why I was doing it. My usual public dance, speaking quickly my hands flying around. The owner wasn't in but her helper was able to sort me out. There was a young woman there winding yarn into balls on their machine. She was exactly the type of person I have been hoping to run into in this shop. I considered coming back later with my pattern and project but really I just wanted to work it out in silence on my own and not feel like I was performing for anyone as I tend to.

On my way past the vegetable store next door I noticed a man loading his car, resting a gallon of white milk on the roof before placing his bags in the back seat. His skin, white as his milk, had a dense but short black beard at a right angle to his neck, a thin bright column standing up out of his black colored coat. His black jaw length hair falling in his face. I wished he had on a fine orange knit hat such as the one I was rushing home to complete and perhaps a scarf of bright colored wool to warm up his overall chiaroscuro demeanor. As I passed him another young man decked out in excellent punk rock style passed in between us and I had to catch his eye and smile because I approved of how he looked and off I went feeling pleased to be out on a gray Monday afternoon.

Press proofs

Saw the first proofs of the 100 Years book yesterday and they looked great. Only made a few little adjustments here and there which is to be expected. I am incredibly grateful to our rep Tegan Cutler. She is so thorough and extremely conscientious about every aspect of the project. We met for about two hours and on my way out I ran into my good friend Katrina and her boys. I have not seen her enough lately. I got home around 5:30 and was happy to get a phone call from Pearl and one from Mark before settling in for a nice evening of wine and cheese with my friend Kate. The weather was perfect finally and we sat outside until almost 9 getting up a few times to corral chickens, we are after all just a couple of farm girls from Everson. All things considered it was a pretty nice day.

Making Friends

In my perpetual quest for a satisfying life this question has been plaguing me lately. How do you make friends in a new town? As kids, if you move to a new place you have the arena of school in which to sample the various flavors of friends. As an adult if you move with your job, the workplace offers an instant supply of personalities to connect with. Time and routine also create friendships. I have lived in Whatcom County for 16 years and have made friends in a handful of places, the library, the grocery, post-office, the farmers market, work interactions.

Mark bought his place in Abbottsford with one singular reason in mind, to be closer to me. He works at home by himself as I do. 6 years have passed and I look around this town and think how the hell do we meet people here? Don't get me wrong, I have many friends. I am not forlorn and friendless unable to connect with other humans I just want some friends here in Abbottsford, someone to play cards with on Saturday night over drinks. It presents an interesting sociological problem. How do a couple of people in their 40's make friends in a town where they don't got to church or school, or even work, not to mention that we spend a lot of time away.

I am solution oriented personality so I think what can I do. What if I put a little flyer up around the hood that read, Professional married couple seeks similar for light social activity, cards, tennis, rides in a big red car, BBQ-ing. And our phone number. Seriously what would happen? Swingers is what comes to mind for me, freaks, and other lonely misfits. So sad, I need a friend, will you be my friend? It's more complicated than all that of course, developing friends.

I walk the dog in a park near us and occasionally I see someone who looks nice and we might stop and talk about dogs. But then it's time to go and it seems so socially awkward to suddenly blurt out, I need a friend here in town. Here's my card, call me anytime. Well not anytime because I am not actually here that often but sometimes I am. I met a woman with a really fat Weimaraner and thought okay now we're getting somewhere but she lived up the coast. Thwarted I was.

Yesterday I ran into a woman who attended the same dog obedience class as we did 4 years ago when Luna was a pup. She had a little fuzzball dog called "Butters", a name some of you will recognize from the long hours you spend watching "South Park". She barely recognized me but was happy to chat once I explained who I was again. The whole time we talked I was thinking, give her your number she is funny, you could be friends. She lives in town and probably has enough friends already, that's the other thing, by this age people seem to have all the friends they can manage, why take on more?

I have 259 friends on Facebook. According to Mashable this is the optimum number any one person can hope to interact with in a meaningful way, which really means that of that 259, about 40 of them actually participate regularly in normal FB activities, posting pictures, making status updates, sharing links. I like Facebook but it is a slightly empty experience after a time and sometimes I just want to encounter a real person. But how?

At my place we have friends near and far who are happy to come over. We go to town occasionally and meet friends there for music and meals and holiday parties. When we got to Vancouver we have a mix of friends and family we routinely encounter. Occasionally some of the Vancouver people pilgrimage out to Abbottsford but it is a long drive home especially if you have been well fed and watered. Our American friends don't come to Abbottsford often, I feel it is an imposition to invite people up because of the border crossing, not everyone is comfortable with the scrutiny and frankly some people just can't cross so I don't ask.

Again, what to do? Join something? A quilting group, museum boosters, tennis or running club. It all takes time. I just want to see some nice couple who sort of resembles us in natural fibers out with a dog and at the risk of coming across as completely strange, say hey there, need a friend? Me too, here's my card.

No News

http://www.anemia.org/images/anemia/blood-donor-bags.jpg

As I lay on the portable gurney staring at the ceiling the attendant asks me in a routine way, what's new. I search my now blank mind. It's 4 in the afternoon, I am hungrier than I should be. What is new? Nothing. My days seem indistinguishable and I can't say if this is good or bad. Nicky, who is prepping me to donate recognizes this too, how little things change in the two month span between blood drives. Life goes on fairly unchanged. Pearl is with me, waiting on the other side of the room, away from the needles and bags of blood. I tell Nicky when you have a child, predictability is the goal and change is not really sought except quietly to yourself.

I lose track of time as the pint drains out of me. It doesn't feel like anything, I won't miss it, I focus on breathing deeply in order not to feel anxious. I am not afraid of the needles or the bags of blood but I always feel vaguely ill at ease in the process, the scrutiny of my stats, will I be allowed to donate. I was turned away the first time I went, unbeknown to me I had a low fever. I had stepped into a wasps nest the day before and my ankles were badly stung, I was undeterred and went back the next time and have been going every two months ever since. When it's over I am instructed to take a moment and get up slowly and go to the table where another volunteer has a little display of cans of juice and cookies. She is saving the pull tabs from the cans for a friend who needs dialysis. Each pull tab is worth one minute on the machine. I choose Cranberry juice and a chocolate chip cookie, Pearl has Apple juice and a Molasses cookie. We sit there while I try to gauge how I am feeling.

As we leave the volunteers thank me, genuinely for coming. I am blood type O-negative which means everyone can use my blood. This makes me a useful commodity to them and they are grateful which makes me feel good because it's no sweat off my back to do this good deed. When I had given a gallon they gave me a little metal stick pin. Last time I went the blood supply was very low and they gave me a little gold key stick pin to acknowledge my part in donating my universally useful blood on that day. I was on the fence about going yesterday as I am up to my eyeballs in work but I find the whole thing so satisfying that I hate to miss it. I feel like I would be letting down the cheerful volunteers, Sarah and Beth now that I have made this commitment to be a regular blood donor. Maybe in July I will have something new to share with Nicky.

Happiness

Helmet Head Family

Just a few quick words. I have been writing outside the blog again and since I am generally in a mood of decreased anxiety these days I don't have such an urgent need to purge every little feeling I experience. This is a good thing. Calm is good for me, a much healthier state of being.

My little family has been skiing of late and I just wanted to say here how happy it makes me. I grew up skiing on Hudson Bay Mountain in Smithers B.C.. My family back then was bigger, there were 6 of us and in the winter we skied, religiously. While other families worshiped together we fueled up on pancakes and then piled into our VW van. My dad had his own version of preparation anxiety and would occasionally yell and slam the basement door expressing his frustration with his troop of ill prepared kids. Skis! Boots! Poles! he would yell while pulling out of the driveway. Once on the mountain though, all that anxiety was replaced with gratitude for the place and the activity of wooshing down hills under clear blue skies filled with sparkling ice crystals. These are the happy family times that I am modeling my own family experience after.

Pearl's skiing is coming along. She is careful and moves methodically down the hill. Mark goes ahead of us sometimes for a blast of speed but we both take turns taking up the rear, skiing behind Pearl, protecting her from fast moving snowboarders. Even though I can ski aggressively I am enjoying the slow pace, savoring the turns, keeping my shoulders pointed down the hill, marking each turn with yogic precision, shifting my weight from one leg to the other, gripping my toes in the imaginary sand. My lungs filled with clear mountain air add to my euphoria.

Riding up on chair 8, in plain sight of Mt Shuksan, I am overwhelmed with love for Pearl and Mark and with happiness that the three of us can have this experience together. I say over and over how happy I am. I can't help myself. They roll their eyes behind their goggles but I know they feel it too.

Normal Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is a pain in the ass. I think we all have it to some degree. In the worst cases people just give up putting themselves in situations where these nasty feelings are triggered. As part of my little recovery program I am working on dealing with these feelings and it seems to be working because last night I went to a party and actually danced. I have not danced in years which is a real tragedy because dancing is fun and considering my enormous size I think I am an okay dancer. When I was in college I danced all the time. My fellow art students and I would drink Long Island Ice Teas at the Coconut Teaser on Sunset Blvd and we drove the boys a little bit wild. It was great. Then I got married and somehow we stopped going out and we never danced and then I started to develop the evil pattern of social anxiety that has been strangling me ever since.

Here's my plan. I don't worry ahead about the outing even if I happen to dream about it the night before. When I am there I work on being a good conversationalist, I like listening to what other people have to say and I have plenty to say myself, so that part is easy. I turn off my monkey brain that shouts insults at me and I take into consideration that everyone else at the party feels a bit nervous about something so we're all basically even. Then, and this is key, on the way home, I don't berate myself about what I did or didn't do or say I just think about how much fun it was. And man it was fun.

I Heart the Interweb

So I am sitting here this morning in my office in Podunk Washington, the dog asleep on the couch. It's rainy, it's grey. I am designing some 4th O'July ads for the Bellingham Farmers Market that are due today. I like to leave things until the last moment. It heightens the excitement level in my life. In between designing the ads I am reading an interview by my friend Maria McLeod with Poet Lucia Parillo and I am struck by it. I stop and draft a quick poem to be refined later for a little series I am working on which I hope will mark the final chapter in a rather confounding period in my development. I go back to the ads and notice that an email has come in from Etsy. It is from a writer inquiring about one of my wrapping paper images. He is writing a Design reference book for Rockport publishers who I am coincidentally designing a book for at the moment. I call him up, we have a nice chat about letterpress, not being a designer he has just discovered it and all it's wonders. I hang up the phone and send off the ads and just feel really good about the world and how connected we all are.

The image for today is of a map of the US, maybe a nice embroidered one on a souvenir scarf and there are red ex's on Everson, Phoenix, Olympia, Sedro Woolley and Boston with red embroidered lines connecting them all. (Happy sigh).