Loss of Hope

                My mood has plummeted recently. In the wake of all the insanity of our false president's first half the year in office, inside of the utter chaos that is climate change and the general malaise of working with the public – I feel a deep sadness that I can't seem to shake.

                For the first time in my life I feel hopeless, I do not believe in a better future. In fact, I think that things are just going to get worse before they get better and I doubt their ability to get better at all. I think of the oligarchy, the 1%, the wealthiest people who have stolen all the wealth from everyone else, who have taken the abundance of the earth, who have raped the mountainsides for their own lined pockets, they are winning. They have invented war after war and the least informed of us, the least educated of us, have bought into these wars hook, line and sinker. Will continue to buy into the wars and die for nothing, for profit, for an imaginary idea of geography boundaries.

                This is a very strange feeling for me. I've never felt this despondent before, I've never felt that the future was bleak and hopeless and terrible and worse than today. Normally I can live in the Now. But the Now feels foolish, a wasted endeavor. Because there's nothing that I can do, I feel like there is nothing I can do. I see people that I respect and love taking action. I see them feeling just as hopeless and powerless as I feel, and taking actions which I know in my soul are futile and small. Actions that are truly a waste of energy. I feel the need to gather my energy in the battle that is to come. I don't know what form this battle will take, whether it's spiritual or physical but I know it's coming. My navelgazing and adoration of poetry will not stop it, will not calm it, will not even faze it. But alas I'm human and shall navelgaze on into my despondency. 

Dystopian Dreams

American entertainment oozes dystopian fantasies these days. Walking Dead is probably the most popular one of these. But what is it within these dystopian fantasies that we are all enamored with? Is it the simplicity of survival? Literal survival, not rat-race make more cheese than the next rat survival. Is it going back to a more animal nature? Is it all the killing?

These characters are more in tune with the Earth, they hunt their food (sometimes in abandoned grocery stores, sure) but the more successful, the more USEFUL members of a tribe can kill, trap, farm. I believe its an inherent call to go back to the earthways that we are longing for in these tv shows and comic books. The knowledge we all have inside of us of survival, to build our own shelter, to have close companionship that isn't just one special partner, to have a tribe, to contribute to the common good without expectation of the illusion of paper money, to honor our food with every harvest. At least, I hope it is.

Myself, the fascination with this genre started very young. In fact, after listening to THIS ted talk yesterday, I realized it started before my birth. My mother was in a surviv- or-die situation the entire time I was gestated and she passed necessary traits onto me. Hyper-vigilance. Exceptionally good smell and hearing. Traits that make it easier to survive in rough circumstances, so I've always felt a little off in the American society of excess and gluttony. I expected a different world, I was made for a different world. While I spent the majority of my childhood in that survive-or-die mode as soon as I was pushed out into the "regular world" everything grew uncomfortable for me.

As I seek a path closer to the red road, my hope grows that those dystopian fantasies seed within the collective mind and we find a way to live closer to the land before we kill/eat/consume every resource the Good Earth provides and we're left living in a barren Mad Max world.

Refocus

Nature is wabi-sabi and for me wabi-sabi is the most beautiful of all. From wiki:

Wabi-sabi (侘寂?) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete".[2] It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin?), specifically impermanence (無常 mujō?), the other two being suffering (苦 ku?) andemptiness or absence of self-nature (空 kū?).

Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, asperity (roughness or irregularity), simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes

When I am falling in love with someone, I usually find their “imperfections” to be the most charming of all. My high school boyfriend had a wide gap in his front teeth and I found it amazing. I adored it. When I meet new people, I tend to look at them and the thing that society would call “off” or strange is often the thing that catches my eye.

In nature it is similar but everything is wabi-sabi so it is hard to choose. I can look at a group of mushrooms and each one has it's own wabi-sabi element but as a whole they can have this element in the context off all the things around them.

So I am changing the focus of this blog to the natural world which is art to me but is also in need of intent and focus. Lately, its all I can think about. I spent yesterday upset for hours over the state of the environment. I reached out to a close friend who told me to focus on the solutions not the enormity of the problem. We have gotten here so quickly, really only since the Industrial Revolution. So I am going to focus on the solutions and teach myself to teach other to see things the way I see them: beauty in imperfection and the innerconnectedness of everything. 

My house

There was a moment when I first moved in that this felt like forever
As I was scraping and painting this house back to life I thought that I would know peace
That the home I had never felt had finally become revealed to me.

Now I fear that home, he is talking about a place that is a forever place
A love that is a forever love and I feel that old fear creeping in
The distrust of my past choices lingering like an old sickness

I can’t help but remember the words that we spoke to one another
Not this we but the old one, the me and her one,
And though we always said the words hesitantly, laughingly like we didn’t believe them
Because you know…even though we were stupid we were wise

Here I am in the now and all that was said isn’t true
Perhaps it was true as it was spoken
we thought if we said it first we could find the time later for the believing

but his is belief first, he is audacity and ruin and truth, capricious and unmoored
he is a wild storm at sea and I am hoping for an anchor and dreading an anchor
and choking myself with the idea of a chain

what is time if not a chain?
Linear and unbroken but made of of tiny pieces called moments.
There was a moment when I first moved in that this felt like forever.

Waiting for the Answers

You say I’m irresistible
then you resist me
You say you’re in love
then you update your online dating profiles
You say we are meant to be
then you are pretending none of it ever happened
You say I don’t realize I need time alone,
Then you say…really you do.
What am I supposed to believe?
You never lied to me
But your truths are more confusing than a lie could ever be
You say you’re sure
Then we’ll see.
Your words are sand in my shoes
What am I supposed to believe?

You say you are going crazy with wanting me
Then you won’t make a plan for Wednesday
You say you don’t want to use me
But can I give you a haircut?
You say I smell like the first time…in the coffeeshop
Then won’t tell me what that means.
You look wonderful to me, edible even
But I used to put you down.
You make my breath catch in my throat, my face tingles with desire
But when I had you, I ran away.
What are you supposed to believe?

Why does the world change so drastically in one day?
How can I pray for something earnestly only to receive it too late?
Why is there a whole maze of pain to walk through
before love will show me the way?
Why do I have to make every mistake five times
Before the lesson is tattooed on my soul?

How come my soul isn’t louder?
Speak, Soul. Speak up. Stop whispering.
We are all waiting for the answers.

symbolism

Here is my desk. Imagine an iceberg. This mess you see on the surface is only the tip. Inside each closet, the basement, cabinets, drawers and my attic is the rest of the iceberg. I came back from vacation with a strange fire inside me to get rid of everything I own. But still I slept (unnecessarily) until 9am. So now I am going out to mow the lawn (its way overgrown). Another aspect of the iceberg.

This is my first iceberg I liked. I gave it away as a birthday present.

Here is the second one I made that I really liked. I gave it away as a "thanks for visiting me from far far away" present.

This is my favorite one so far. I always did love minimalism...in possessions and art. I am keeping it (unless it gets consumed by the strange fire and I have to get rid of it too) Dear Universe, I am ready to let go of everything. Every Thing. (willingness)

icebergs

Lately, I am thinking about icebergs. I love the idea of something floating along on the surface as a warning signal but beneath the ocean is the real bulk, the unknown enormity of it. So much of my behavior and thoughts are like that, what seemingly is simple...Oh I don't know if I want to fall in love... beneath it: a weight, a mass of issues and problems and feelings that the iceberg of the original thought barely even hint at existing.



So I am beginning some drawings of icebergs, I really like the square looking ones. And I think I'll start with some drawings then maybe do some paintings of icebergs. It all reminds me of the hanging things I was drawing last year. I'll have to dig up some photos of those.

up in the air

Sometimes life is just up in the air...as soon as I want to nail something to the floor, gravity gives way and its space camp all over the place. Unfinished business is stressing me out lately. Speaking of that...
Here is a piece of unfinished business. I began this felt wallart a few months before E was born. I was going to put it in his nursery, I let K pick all the colors that she liked. But then her mother painted everything in primaries and it didn't match and I never finished it. EXCUSE ALERT! Oh man, I'm good at that. I just picked an excuse and ran with it to avoid finishing something that could've been amazing. So now I've lost the zest for that piece and I probably STILL won't finish it but maybe I can do SOMETHING with it. Make it into something new. I think I will cut it into 3 pieces and stretch them over frames. That would be cute and pass it onto my niece, Ayda.

In better news, here is something I did finish. Another blast from the past.
I thought about this and collected film strips for this for 4 years before I finally DID the lampshade. Sure it took a long time to conceive but I think it's one of my first actual finished products. Its been a learning process. I never had anyone to teach me how to start a project and finish it. Sometimes I still get overwhelmed by the process of taking the first step, having breaks in the middle and then accomplishing my goal. I think I also get caught up on the goal looking EXACTLY like what I had hoped, but little by little I am letting go of that. What goes up must come down, so hopefully things will come back to Earth soon and I'll be able to stand upright instead of feeling like a human cherry suspended in the gelatin of life. Oh! I also just realized I have this pre-concieved notion of Life Always Being Chaos! I'm going to leave that one in outer space so I can have a nice, quiet existence of making stuff and being happy.

let everything die.

Well, I wrote a poem today which is good. I mean, its good I wrote but I don't know how I feel about the poem. Its nice to feel like writing again though. I've been writing up a storm for a few days. Creation is destruction, so it seems.

_
_

I guess what is strange is that my affections haven’t changed
You said I rejected you
But the trick is a two-way street
What I can’t give, that big thing, you want from me
What I want from you is too small, so small you’d rather have nothing.
So I’m not washing my dishes, no really… more than usual.
There’s a bad smell in my house -
old pizza, litterbox, dirty laundry, stale air.
I’m not watering the plants because they’re angry,
reminding me how they prefer to talk to you. I might
Let everything die.
Let everything die.

I miss you, that hasn’t changed.
But the God-part of me knows I’m choosing new
My feelings got turned off like underwater at night, nothing
And I have to swim upward but not toward
Just swim for my life
Drowning in despair, hopelessness, misdirection
I’ve been swimming to save someone
Rescuing the nearest victim
Time to save myself before I
Let everything die.
Let everything die.

I would hold you while you cried
If you would let me be a comfort, the greatest gift
A driftwood soul, but I understand near is not near enough
When you want to swallow me whole.
We can’t lifeboat each other into forever,
Eventually I will turn the faucet on
Face the grit that clings to saucers and coffeemugs.
You will tire of ignoring me and send out a reluctant ‘hello’
Which I should not misread as a beginning
My heart choking on the knowledge that you would rather
Let everything die.
Let everything die.

2012, the end.

So I have been making quite a bit of art lately. Starting with my triptych of goals for the year.

So far so good. Its mid-February and I'm meditating more, stretching more & keeping my house plants alive.

Here's my new altar. I took all the stagnant books off of it, moved it and rearranged things. I was trying to do a thematic levels thing but I think it got away from me a little bit.

unsmush

People at work are driving me a little batty. Everyone is coming up to me and saying I heard you’re leaving for Trader Joe’s! NO, FOOLS! I AM A WORD ARTIST NOT A DESK JOCKEY!


I’m leaving to get on with my creative life, to create the life I want to live. I’m leaving for the freedom to persue dreams, I leaving because this air-conditioned, beige cubicle is murdering my muse! I went back into my original Nashville-move journal last night and it was full of gems, poetry, beautiful thoughts, story ideas, creativity.

Now my journals read like laundry lists. “I am so sad and bored and stuffed up” blah blah blah. It is possible for a place to stifle a person but only if that person allows it to. And I have allowed this place to smush me. I officially unsmush myself.


Sure, I’m working at a grocery store part-time. A grocery store I love, that treats people right and provided free benefits and good options for good workers. I am learning to work at work again, to find my motivation, to be among the living while being paid essentially what I am paid here.

but I am also putting my art into the world, I am starting an etsy, I am performing a rock opera, I am freelance writing, I am poet mentoring, I am LIVING and I don’t need a big Daddy corporation to take care of me. The world is changing, work is changing and America has become a service-oriented culture. what service can I provide my community, my friends, my neighbors? Well I am surely not providing it here at a Christian publishing house. I am a creative free-spirited silly outspoken authentic artist and until I own that and live that I will be miserable and I will only bring those around me down. I am living for myself and for the betterment of the people around me.

Love to everyone and every living thing.

Throwing myself

Leap and the net will appear.
Does this work? We’ll see, I suppose. I am trying to put my 2 weeks notice in at work. But my current supervisor (only of the past few months when my boss left for Atlanta) is never in his office. Monday, he was out all day “waiting for the contractor” who never showed up. Yesterday he was out for a dental appointment. Today, it’s a different contractor issue and 10 am and he’s still not in. BLARGH!

But I have gotten a part-time job with Trader Joe’s (free benefits, yo!) and I’ll have the freedom to do workshops with Youth Speaks Nashville. My first workshop was with middle-schoolers on Monday. Inspiring kids to love and be creative with language on a regular basis is heaven to me. I felt absolutely magical afterwards. The writing exercise I gave them was so fun to read.

I am thinking of doing some personal archeology, taking it on as a project, with interviews and everything. After the writing group last year about ‘firsts’ I’ve really been interested in writing a memoir. I don’t know if anyone would want to read it but I’m of the ilk that if you need to write something you should rather than writing for an audience. I had a wicked crazy childhood, no sense in letting that story be forgotten.

Success Terror Alert!

I meant to post more in August. I HAVE NOT BEEN WRITING MUCH. And this is a travesty. I felt empty inside, devoid of purpose. What is wrong with me? I KNOW I need to write to feel lively and part of the Universe but still I don’t find the time.

Can I be melodramatic for a moment, please? Yes? Ok - Work is KILLING me right now. KILLING ME. STAB TO THE EYE. Everyone is gone. Everyone that is cool awesome lovely has either been let go or let themselves go to a new job. Yay. Good for you. I hate it here. Ok, not everyone but ALMOST everyone.

Kat and I are working on a rock opera together and its going well. I am having trouble getting into it, feeling like a part of it because I’ve been avoiding doing the work. Listening to the music in the order I put it in, feeling the storyline, moving within the art. Why have I been avoiding it? FEAR OF SUCCESS. Totally immobilizing and terrifying fear of success. Scarier than Public Speaking and Death. In fact, I love public speaking and within the past 24 hours have actually wished for death but you know what goes bump in the night? You know what terrifies me beyond all recognition? *shivers*


The thought of succeeding and moving forward.
Must. Defeat. Success. Wait…what? No. Must Defeat Fear. (paralyzed)

Do you remember freeze tag from when you were a kid? I wish I were playing freeze tag with God (The Universe, Great Spirit, whatever you wanna call it) and God would just unfreeze me and I could run like the wind to my most productive and successful existance.

dragonfly unsettled

Today I went up to the roof to talk on the phone. On the roof a dragonfly was flitting around a rooftop puddle. Winding from back to front, back and forth, never landing anywhere. I’ve been looking for the messages in life lately and I love to see them in animals as noted in my last post.

Dragonfly medicine beckons you to seek out the parts of your habits which need changing.

Dragonflies are a better metaphor for me than a monkey-mind. I think of monkeys as diligent, balanced and relaxed. So maybe its the words I've been telling myself. I've said don't have a monkey mind but I thought that wouldn't be a terrible thing. What I need to avoid is dragonfly habits.

I am like a dragonfly, flitting from one thing to the next, never landing for long on one thing and never resting. This is the habit I want to change.

Blue Jay fights a Bobcat

blah.

I’ve been riding a desk for 8 years. Maybe more, I’ve kind of blocked it out. There is now no denying that currently: This is My Career. Wow, what a scary thought. How does one shake oneself out of ruts like this?

Sometimes I’m not totally honest with myself and that contributes to these terrible ruts. Here is one example. I love the concept of totem animals. I believe the way you figure out your totem animal is to listen to yourself about which animals you are drawn to, which ones hold special meaning in your life and/or the ones that show up all the time either in life or dreams.

So for years I’ve thought my only totem is a bobcat/lynx.


Lynx people…have a tendency to be a know-it-all. It's important for all (including Lynx people) to realize that they do have the answers and the knowledge, it just might be hidden under the trappings of the ego or the desires of our emotional existence. Those with Lynx medicine are good at keeping secrets hidden, they are also excellent at giving advice to those who need to know when it is time for a secret to be revealed.

Bobcat people can see what is hidden -- and this ability
can make some people uncomfortable around a Bobcat person.


Bobcats…tend to feel resentful at having had to learn tough lessons on their own, and usually feel isolated. They are young with old souls.


But Snake and Blue Jay have been calling to me lately and when I looked up Blue Jay I recognized myself immediately. Bobcat may be my life totem and my guiding spirit but I have gotten sidetracked and I need this loud, obnoxious blue crow to pull me out of the muck.




“If Blue Jay is your totem, you may have tremendous abilities and potential, but you must learn not to be scattered and neglect to develop your abilities to their fullest. Blue Jay people can become dabblers – a little bit of knowledge about many things but master of none. Develop your gifts and you will have unlimited potential.”

A boisterous and bold blue jay lives in my backyard. It struts on the carport and flies at the windows startling the cats. It leaves me gifts of amazing blue-striped feathers and Sunday, a special gift of a half-blue opalescent half-gray dull one that woke me up to my own blindness. Thank you, Blue Jay.

Nail----->head

Ever heard of free will astrology? These are silly flighty fancy horoscopes which too often (for me) hit the nail on the head. I check it about once a month to avoid these kinds of reality checks. This week I did and here's the zinger: It's an excellent time for you to give more of your passion to fewer causes.

Wow.

and

Duh.

I have too many hobbies and I like ALL OF THEM but I have to stop. I am never going to accomplish ANYTHING that I want to accomplish if I don't stop having a monkey mind.

My brain flits from thing to thing, researching, exploring, investigating in an endless quest for ____ - WHAT? What the hell am I gathering all this information for? For someone? For Jeopardy? For all these books I am "going to" write but have no credentials for? Am I so nervous of appearing stupid that I am constantly gathering useless snippets of info on EVERYTHING so I never falter for one second in not having some semblance of an answer to everything? Am I truely facinated by the world and many aspects of it? The truth is probably some bastard child of these last two.

What I realized while reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" is that the people who are really really GOOD at something have been doing it A LOT for A LONG TIME. 10,ooo hours to be exact. They are experts. And since I can't go back and DO something for 10K hours (except I have probably read that much and I am pretty damn good at that) I have to start to really group my shots.

What are the areas in my life where I want to excel? What do I feel passionate enough about to begin working on it for a theoretical 10K hour marathon? I am calling more focus into my life starting right this moment. I want to be an expert (if only to myself).

Darrel, the IRS super

Yesterday I had my taxes done at the IRS. If you make >$49,000 per year, the IRS has to prepare your taxes for you. Even though this often takes an hour or more (wait time), I love the security of knowing the IRS prepared my taxes and cannot audit me or otherwise say they were done incorrectly. They did it.

I walked in about 2pm, there are over a dozen people waiting but the man at the counter says “whatchu got?” and takes all my tax papers. He has tightly curled black hair and red-brown skin with (oh, my favorite) dark brown freckles. Very dark brown, like little chocolate buttons. Probably in his early forties, dressed like a jazz musician from the 30’s, slightly taller than me, soft brown eyes.
“You just walked in here?” he asked. It seemed as if I was over-prepared.
“Yeah.” I say and he doesn’t give me a number to wait (although most of the people in the room have these). Slightly concerned that I have no number, I trusted my gut which was telling me this guy liked me and wanted to help.

After about twenty minutes, he calls me up with a few others to go to another room where someone is preparing taxes. He keeps calling me by my first name and has a very tender demeanor. I wait in this other room for about 45 minutes.

“Julia! Are you still here!?” He says when he sees me. I’ve been doodling. “Oh you’re an artist! Look at that.” What a sweet kind man, when the tax preparer has some problems itemizing my mortgage stuff, he comes over to help, he laughs at my secret-unclaimed-beach-house joke. She calls him Darrel. He tells her I am an artist and asks (in earnest) to see my doodle again. Thank you Darrel, the sunshine on my Tuesday tax ick.

The Crazy

Last night while lying in my vat of usual insomnia, I remembered the time when I worked for a brain-damaged psychologist. I was fresh from dropping out of college, confused, broke, living with my “best friend” Buzz who had convinced me I was a helpless idiot, dating a boy. It was a rough time and here was a seemingly together gentleman taking a chance on me. He gave me a job, paid me way more than I was accustomed to and helped me develop a skill set that helped me survive. Sure, he'd had an aneurism rupture and part of his brain removed, but he seemed ok.

But as I remembered the crazy things the good doctor made me do all in the name of the 9-5, I wished that I had kept a blog back then or a daily journal entry or something about the jist of what Crazy task I'd been given each day. As boring as it would’ve been to do, it would be nice to have a record of those things. And because I was so shut down at the time, the record would have been hilariously matter-of-fact. (example: Today I went through all E---'s possessions. These were shipped to me after he jumped off the Golden Gate bridge subsequently ending his 34-year existance. My task is to pick out the "pertinent items" for Dr.- to look over when he gets back. Having never met or even spoken to E--- I am not completely sure what the pertinent items are.)

But then when you’re enmeshed in The Crazy, its hard to see it for what it is. I probably wouldn't have known exactly what was Crazy and what was just work since I was so Crazy myself.

Starlings

Starlings are an accident in America, one man’s obsessive love of Shakespeare has overtaken the entire continent. Those of us who love songbirds and the wonderful colors and twitter of our indigenous birds know the bane that starlings can be. They clean out a birdfeeder in an hour, flocking and pecking and tossing seeds. The swarm stomps our delicate grass shoots to flat green paint splatter on the muddy ground.

As a lover of all living things, I’m shocked at my idea of buying a BB gun but there it is. I want to shoot the little bastards. I’m tired of this! I think they kicked my woodpecker out of her tree! They have this evil way of letting woodpeckers make a hole to live in and then flocking them into giving it up! Isn’t that awful? They deserve a good buckshot. Ugh. I say that but the first time I hit one, and it fluttered awfully to the ground, the self-loathing would be unbearable. Anyone know how to convince these greedy bastards to move on?

My neighbors are putting in a Purple Martin house and I fear it will be overtaken by starlings then I'll have a family of them next door. I want my woodpecker back! I love her cute little red-mohawk and infernal pecking at the birch in the front yard.