osho

“suffering is not holding you.

you are holding suffering.

when you become good at the art of letting suffering go, then you come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you.

you’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible.

the truth is that existance wants your life to be a festival.”

– osho

nearby

you know how sometimes nothing is really wrong, but nothing is really right, and you know you’re supposed to be figuring out the answer to one of those really big life questions, and sometimes, you come up with an answer, but it’s realllly hard to get yourself out of that rut you were in and implement the changes you figured out  and while you’re halfassedly trying to to fool yourself into believing that backward step you took, could, in the right light be construed as a baby step forward, you have a new revelation, and that one totally makes everything else make sense, but, it happens while you’re driving and, you couldn’twrite it down or tell anyone, and now it’s like a dream – peripherally, you catch a glimpse of it, but you can’t get a full handed grasp, and you know it was the answer – maybe the answer to everything, and you want it back….

avoid much?

pink & orange

I so did not want to do what really needed to be done today.  I have huge issues with pr type stuff.  Something about it feels bragadocious and boastful.  I know that it really isn’t, and no one is ever going to know about this war project if I don’t get out and tell them, but it’s really hard.

Somehow when I speak to people about it, it ends up back at me and “what an awe inspiring idea”  I had, and it feels too much about me, and it’s not supposed to be about me.  The whole rest of my life is selfishly about me.

Instead of whining, I’ll post some photos of someone elses charity project that I maniacally worked on instead of my own.

another project improv block

project improv block

nobody else asked either

stream of concsiousness

enter at your own risk

so, here’s the story. another blogger wrote about some trouble in their relationship. it’s a strange relationship and has been so for as long as i’ve been reading. all of a sudden last week things got to such a point that that my friend left. unable to find a motel room and sleeping in the car. this is indeed the saddest chapter yet in this saga. I couldn’t comment and wish my friend well because i was really struggling with what to say. something inside me felt like this was big. i realize this morning that what was niggling me, was the fact that none of the other commenters mentioned this either, and had the gender roles been reversed it might have been a constant concern. no one asked if he was safe. not just in the get in out of the car somewhere with four walls shelter safe, but, safe from physical, emotional and verbal abuse in your relationship. we wouldn’t hesitate to ask a woman, why do we step around the issue for a man? having worked at a shelter for battered women i know the importance of asking this uncomfortable question. i also know that women are abusers as well as victims. and abusive women can be as charming and friendly and unsuspecting as their male counterparts. gender differences in our society still expect us to “protect” our womenfolk, so asking if a woman is safe is seen as kind and caring. but asking a man if he is safe from the woman he loves, could be seen as emasculating and not the same kind of caring as asking a woman. arrgh! this is why i couldn’t leave a comment. it’s a book. and obviously i have some of my own unresolved issues floating in the mix, and he doesn’t need to deal with my shit on top of his. so what does a “friend” do? my first response to reading that a female friend left her partner and was sleeping in the car would have been to quietly ask if she was safe, and hope to god that when she told me she was, it was true. i owe him the same respect don’t i?

Front Page News!!

It was a busy week when I couldn’t get into the blog.  I have lots to share.

A #1….  I got a job!!  In my field!!!  It’s only part- time, but it’s a foot in the door.  I start Monday morning as a Para Professional in an Early Childhood Special Education classroom.  The school is only 10 blocks from my house, so I get to walk and be good to the environment and myself.

I’m really excited about this.  As far as jobs go, working at the abortion clinic was the job that has given me the greatest sense of pride and the only times I’ve really felt patriotic about something.  Truly standing up for what I believe in the face of extreme opposition felt right.

But my job as Children’s Services Coordinator gave me a longer lasting feeling of having really done something worthwhile.  I am anxious to do meaningful work again.

It seems wrong that the more soul sucking a job was, the more stability it provided me.  My last job paid me well enough.  I don’t require a lot, so, it was fine.  But I never went home feeling like I had accomplished anything.  Like I’d solved a problem, made a difference. Now I’ll be doing something that truly adds value to the world and will struggle to make rent and pay my bills.

If I have to choose between filling soul and my pocket book, my soul’s gonna win this time.

Paranoid Sunflower

This is a piece that is most unlike the rest of my work. It was made after 9/11, during the anthrax scare. At the time, I worked in the mailing department of my company, and was absolutely terrified of anthrax. I know it was ridiculous. I knew it then.  But I just couldn’t shake it.

I had worked at an abortion clinic that actually had been bombed, (it was a small bomb and caused very little damage, but still…) and infiltrated by protesters, none of which caused me excessive anxiety. I was certainly more threatened in my tenure at the clinic than I was handling a few postal totes everyday.

Perhaps it was  easier to control my anxiety at the clinic because I knew I was working for something I really feel strongly about.  Control of my body is my right, and my responsibility.

My job at the clinic was always one of my favorite jobs.  Interesting, and challenging work, standing up for something I believe in.

Today is the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.  It saddens me that we are still having to fight so hard to maintain what should be a fundamental right for women.  We don’t offer honest sex education to our children,  some pharmacists think it’s ok to deny morning after meds, and in some cases birth control to women.  More stuff I will never understand.

Women are strong and intelligent beings who deserve the right to control our own destinies as we see fit.

Frost

It’s freakishly cold here today. 17 below last I checked. It has put some gorgeous frost on all of my windows. I find myself moving from room to room, following the sun so I can be hypnotized by all the little prisms.

I wish I was a better photographer. I could share some of this. You’ll just have to trust me.

PFD

I have strong vein of , “waste not want not” running in me. Combined with the attitude of, “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” I tend toward a smidgen of packrat. I can’t get rid of something if I can see a potential in it.

I don’t live in a maze of newspapers, but, it wise to give me a head’s up if you want to stop by. That way I can clear a project out of a chair so you have a spot to sit in.

Sometimes I forget about things I’ve squirreled away and get to be surprised by a pleasant find. Yesterday I found a few pieces of PFD (Prepared For Dying) in my fabric stash. I’ve been saving yellow onion skins for quite a while and am going to combine these this afternoon. I can’t wait to see what happens!

help

random notes on fears

i’ve never been good with allowing people to help me in any way.  i am stubborn and independent from a genetic basis, but, also maybe part of this overwhelming fear / loathing/dislike of needing help or just folks wanting to be nice and me being unable to let them has a little bit to do with the time in the hospital.  I start to feel trapped and smothered and unable when people attempt to help me.  It was just recently that i forced myself to accept small tokens of kindness as signs of friendship and love. the way they were intended.

how they helped me in the hospital was by setting my leg in the only way they knew how. and it worked.  it’s just, that i had to be trapped and strapped to that bed for 3.5 weeks and trapped in a body cast for 4 more months. if anything in my brain  references that help  whenever someone wants to help me or be kind well then, it’s no wonder i want to run.

it plays into my fear of authority as well.    i was 5. there wasn’t going to be help coming from any peers.  They were going to be adults.  I can stand back now and know that their intention wasn’t to scare the living shit out of me.  It was 1970 and  bedside manner was not a strong suit for my family dr.  nor his colleagues.  I have vivid memories of them on rounds rearranging my legs in their traction.  I’m crying and screaming, and they’re telling me this  is going to help me.  and i can’t protect myself in any way. I’m strapped to the bed across my chest, and my legs are in the air attached to the ceiling.  As an adult, i can acknowledge the difficulty of their task, but, why couldn’t they acknowledge they were hurting me? even if it was the only way to correct the situation?  5 year olds get it.  tell me you’re sorry that this is going to hurt so much, but, there’s no way around it.  they would never have had so little respect for an adult with my injury.

sometimes i get really down on myself for allowing these things to still be an issue. ( this whole broken leg business physically lasted about 6 months. at age 5 that’s 20% of my life.  That would be like expecting myself to ignore 8.5 years of my life today.) but lately i’m learning to  acknowledge that this is where my stuff comes from.  burying it doesn’t really solve anything.   I’m still going to have fear around authority figures, but, maybe I’ll be able to take a step back now and recognize that it’s an old fear I don’t need anymore.

Brilliant Failure?

As an art student, I didn’t take too kindly to critique sessions. I was still awfully thin – skinned, and I’m not sure I could find my self esteem if you’d given me a map with an X on it. So, in a critique of a color theory assignment that had a “recipe” to essentially follow, and on my third attempt I still hadn’t accomplished the desired outcome, I took great offense at my professor’s critique that I had created a, “Brilliant Failure.” I couldn’t hear the, “Brilliant.” What I heard was, “No one has ever failed in such a monumental way.” I did not return to art classes the next semester.

Part of the issue was my hyper-sensitivity, and part of it was I wasn’t working in “my” medium. There was nothing for fiber studies in the art department then except for perhaps a seminar on weaving. Part too, was the fact that I was student who was supposed to make mistakes so I could learn from them. I really don’t like making mistakes.

A few years later I had that prof again in a combo class about art and music. Brainstorming with a group, I was explaining one of my off the wall ideas, when he interrupted the football player who was dismissing my idea, to say hold on she knows what she’s doing. The light bulb shone – Finally I understood “brilliant failure.” He had meant, in that long ago critique, that even though the results of my attempt to follow that color recipe didn’t necessarily work as they should have, the results were still brilliant.

The quilt at the top of this post is another of my brilliant failures. From the pile of fabrics I started out with, I never would have guessed I’d get such a mushy indistinctly patterned quilt. As far as a color recipe goes I should have been spot on- a secondary triad (orange- green- purple) with a couple of analogous accents, a few lights and darks for contrast. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased, and surprised. I also wouldn’t necessarily have thought I could make something that glowed, and actually radiates perceived heat. ( the photo is dark, so you have to trust me on that.)

That is one of the things I enjoy so much about this medium. Surprises at every turn.