Art of Seeking

I tried for a while to sell my art online- no dice.

It’s difficult to be a photographer anyway. Most of the people I know who actually studied this shit don’t even have cameras anymore, having had to sell them to pay the bills. The only reason I still have my camera is because I beat the living hell out of it until I’m the only one who can operate it (”what? Turn these thingies to focus? How do you make it not so dark? I can’t see the screen! What are these numbers?” and other remarks are common when I hand someone my bedraggled Canon Rebel XS and ask them to take a picture).

There are people who run art studios who want to display my art. Hell, I was supposed to be volunteering with the Utah County Art Board tonight before that whooshing sound started in my ears, my nose got all congested, and I got even dizzier than usual… anyway the issue has been that I can’t afford to print out my pictures. Because I can’t sell my art. Don’t you just love a catch- 22.

Then today, while I was conversing with a friend on this matter and others, it hit me. Duh, I’m married to a guy who prints t- shirts. Well, mostly t- shirts. I can order canvas and he can print my pictures onto it!

In this case, that would make my art partially his art. He doesn’t just hit a button like many screen printers do these days- everything he prints is manual. He mixes the inks to the exact colors needed, himself. He sets the right temperature for the dryer. He’s had to build special equipment to facilitate the size of some of the things he’s printed.

So…. I was doing some research online on what people think of canvas prints. Apparently, they love them, but they bitch about the prices- $50- 100 on the low end. I read a blog where many of them determined that Costco was the way to go.

Costco?! Really?? Come on, the reason you buy art isn’t just for the pretty picture, it’s for the story! When they ask, wouldn’t you rather tell your guests, “Yeah, that was a photograph taken by a deranged poet chick who wanders around in the woods by herself all the time, and hand- printed by her long- suffering husband who stayed after his ten hour shift just to do it for her.” Isn’t that a bloody better story than “Oh, I got it at Costco, so I don’t care if the kids throw ketchup at it…” ????

-sigh- People.

So, I talked to my hunny and he thinks it’s a great idea. Now all I have to do is figure out frames. I’ve got some distressed barn wood out back I want to make stuff with, so as soon as we get the bandsaw going (and the rest of the wood shop, which is in parts and pieces in the basement), I can get this show on the road! Literally!

…anyone wanna help me clean the basement…?

On their own, they do not speak.

Side by side, down and diagonal

symbols.

Named and waiting

to be grouped into something

that has meaning

some thought

some expression

some word

that is no longer just a strand of symbols

whose worth

is lost on eyes that never learned

to interpret them.

And now

There are so many meanings

so many interpretations

translations

misrepresentations

and presentations

of just

one

letter…

H.

It’s two lines drawn downward

connected by a line across in the middle.

It can mean

Hydrogen.

Heroin.

Hagalaz.

Depending only on the eyes that see it.

Eyes.

You see the word…

in your mind, whose eyes do you see?

What color are they, what shape, size…

are they smiling?

Angry, lost, anxious, or hopeful?

All of it makes me wonder.

How.

How do I know

what you want from me

when I can’t even know

what you see

when

you

look

at

me.

I woke up to the rain,

covered by the blanket I once shared with you.

The blanket I’d begged my parents to buy me when I was thirteen.

Its edges now frayed, the brown and yellow threads coming loose

The preying tiger design muted by decades of washing.

I blinked, and it was replaced by the one

that covers my bed today

its colors vibrant and trim intact.

The rain is washing the deadfall toward

the rivers and lakes

as time has washed so many memories

and taken the flesh from the leaves,

their lacy skeletons exposed and disintegrating.

But bits and pieces remain,

those things that become the soil

from whence spring’s new greenery will feed and grow.

Bits and pieces of you

the memories that confuse my time

things that were my past and are now

bits and pieces

and parts

of

me.

Want to know why I really got out of bed?

I had to write a poem.

It’s the closest I get to a superstition, I guess, thanks to the first Friday the 13th I remember.

I think I was in first or second grade. I lived in a little tourist trap called Desert Hot Springs in California. There was one traffic light in town at the cross section of the two busiest streets, Palm Drive and Hacienda. The bus that picked up me and my siblings and took us to the elementary school stopped about a mile from that intersection on a stretch of Hacienda where there where there was no stop sign, crosswalk, or crossing guard. Most of us had to cross Hacienda to get to the side of the street the bus stop was on. This bit of genius of making a bunch of little kids cross a dangerous street with no help was the brainchild of the people who planned the route to pick up the wealthier kids on the hill first, and pick us dirty scablings up on the way back.

My mom thought this was idiotic but nothing was done about her complaints, so she would walk us to the bus stop every morning. This had a twofold beneficial effect: we got across the street alive, and the biggest bully in the neighborhood left us alone (until we got on the bus).

Her name was Angie, and I was scared shitless of her. She was constantly screaming at everyone, throwing things, getting in faces and generally making the world a lot more stressful than it needed to be. I never even thought about what might be going on at home, nor did I ever entertain the thought of standing up to her. I just did my best to avoid her, and mom made that possible.

Then, one lovely morning of Friday the 13th..

Mom had a doctors appointment or something to that effect and was in a huge freaking hurry, and ended up doing something crazy she’d never done before that shocked us all- she drove us to school. This meant that there was no adult at the bus stop, and Angie ruled the day.

A shy little boy that avoided Angie with us became her primary target. I think his name was Robert, but I can’t be sure. Anyway, Angie grabbed his lunch, took his cookies out, and threw them into the street. I don’t know what possessed that kid to run after them, except that any vehicle flying down the road at 60 mph was less frightening than Angie.

He was killed instantly. The news hit the school as we got there, and of course talk of the curse of Friday the 13th was all over the place.

Finally, the geniuses who planned the bus route decided to put the bus stop on the other side of the street, so mom didn’t have to walk us anymore. I don’t know if they ever did anything to punish Angie, but while her attitude didn’t change at all, I wasn’t as afraid of her anymore for some reason. Maybe the fear of her was muted by the fact that I no longer saw her as a great big scary mean person with gnashing teeth and a loud voice who wanted to tear my legs off and have them for lunch.

She was a murderer, and she wasn’t even ten years old. Maybe she didn’t intend to kill him, but she DID kill him, in a way that suggested to me that she didn’t care whether he got hit by a car or not. Completely callous, uncaring, and never stopped being a brat even after watching that kid die right in front of her. Not that I saw. I wonder if it was a front or if she just didn’t know of any other way to be. I wonder how she really felt- if she was sad and remorseful but couldn’t express it? Somehow, instead of making her more frightening to me, her act of murder took her power away.

She was just a kid. She was just trying to scare people.

After that I pretty much ignored her, and she never bothered me. I switched schools eventually and didn’t see her again until I was 16, and we both wound up at the same school for pregnant teenage loser outcasts… er… mothers.

She actually seemed pretty calm, at first.

I hated the place… it was dull and people were bossy and annoying. I didn’t mind helping with cleanup, the babies were really cute and all that, but it was wearing me down. It got worse when one day, Angie asked me to take care of something in the kitchen for her.

I finished what I was doing and went into the kitchen- and couldn’t remember for the life of me what she’d asked me to do. Everything looked clean and orderly, and I was too embarrassed to ask her again, so I wandered around for a few minutes and gave up. It was time to go, anyway, so I went to get my things.

Angie barged into the room and started yelling at me. “You couldn’t even do ONE LITTLE THING for me?!” Then she burst into tears.

It was a spoon. There was a spoon in the sink that needed washing. I forgot to wash a fucking spoon.

After that, she snapped at me at every opportunity. Eventually I got sick of her, and the environment, and the teachers being so pompous, that I left. I left the same way I’d always done, whether I was ditching middle school or high school or detention. I just walked away and didn’t tell anyone. I walked to my old school, where I had friends. I found my friend Ian and cried on his shoulder for a bit.

But the reaction was different from the people trying to find me. They were mad, but actually more concerned. Hell, I was 6 or 7 months along at this point. They were worried about the baby and what horrible things I might be doing (drugs, sex, satanic rituals, drag racing…) to the extent that they actually just let me go back to my old school and didn’t make an issue about it.

I never saw Angie again. But I still think about her, every time another Friday the 13th rolls around.

After swearing off it for the third time, I’m back on Facebook again. Yeah, I’m inconsistent. I think most people are but just won’t admit it. However, there is a reason I can’t ditch it. A few of them, really. First of all, it’s the only real contact much of my family has with me. The ones who still like me even if they don’t necessarily agree with me, anyway. Sure they can email or whatever, but the real time of facebook and the almost- daily posts make it feel like I’m more a part of their lives. It makes it easier, like spoons make it easier to eat and make people fat and guns make it easier to kill people. (sarcastic reference/ comeback to a repost there…)

Then there’s the fact that I’m still finding people I’d lost years ago. I may have just located one of my favorite people from over 20 years ago, again. Yeah, I know. Sometimes they’re not the same people anymore. Some have turned into religious zealots, political conspiracy theorists, alcoholics, etc. But there are plenty who are still pretty decent people.

And, people I know keep dying. This last time I got on FB was because my husband asked me to. People were going nuts on Facebook again, because someone in our circle of friends had died, again. Matt had to go to work and couldn’t find out for sure himself if it was who he thought it was, so he asked me to. Indeed it was a girl he used to date some years ago, who also happened to be a good friend of mine’s best friend. No one went into great detail but it sounds like another accidental OD. So there I am on FB comforting my friends and leaving condolences.

I do have some great conversations with friends, get some valuable information from the wiser people I know, have a good laugh now and then. But fo for the most part, I’m already sick of it again.

What FB mostly does is remind me how BLOODY FUCKING IGNORANT THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION IS, including many people I actually like. Worse, they’re WILLFULLY IGNORANT. They embrace ignorance and misinformation with vehement pride, and ferociously attack any attempts to show them another perspective. I get sick of seeing people attack each other on one page, then preach about Jesus on their own page. Really tired of all these poster- like re-posts telling women how they’re supposed to look, act, behave, and feel. Disgusted by all the violence and political mayhem and seeing asses in my face all the time. Was that supposed to turn me on? Well it doesn’t, but I feel a bit more like a toilet seat, thanks a lot.

So I’m just not spending as much time on FB. I’ll check in now and then, post pictures, or whatever. See who had babies, who died, who got that awesome internship, who got arrested and is facing 5- 20, who changed religions, baptized their kid, won the lottery. But mostly, I don’t want to argue with imbeciles anymore. Especially when they’re my friends and family.

Don’t worry, I know I have my idiot moments too. But I own them. I know when to say I was wrong. Which brings me to my final and most hated aspect of Facebook communication: when I argue online, I turn into someone I’m not. It’s easier to lose it and call people names or just be mean. So, I started watching it and being nicer and avoiding the bad behavior. Guess what changed? Nothing, I just got accused of name- calling and rudeness. By someone who REFUSED to acknowledge, even though she could have easily gone back and read the whole thread, that she had made a mistake. Instead she went all out on a full- scale character assault on my ass.

Apparently I’m not the only one who finds it too easy, but am I the only one who noticed and did something about it? No fucking idea.

So, fuck facebook. And I’ll see you there.

Too many friends in tears.

Too many dead.

For the seventh time this year and the fourteenth time in two years, a tragic death has reduced my little counter- culture community to a sobbing mass of horrified people swaddled in black vintage and rainbow glitter.

I barely knew her, but my husband… well, they go back. Some close friends of mine considered her their best and their joy. I’d see her on the fringes at parties, her style was unmistakable.

They called her Rainbow Brite, and she was.

I don’t know all the details, and I wouldn’t post them if I did.

But once again, I’m off to comfort friends…

and to hope and pray that this one isn’t the next to go.

The last real school semester is over.

I’ve got a bit of work to turn in by the end of the month, but the bulk is done. All I have to do now is my capstone.

It’s like climbing a mountain.

You think you’re prepared. You look at it from a distance and think sure, I can do that.

Then you get right up to it, and you’re sure. Climb this mountain? Of course I can do it. I love mountains! The trail doesn’t look so bad, the weather’s nice..

Then you get up so far, you’re short of breath and every muscle is cramping, and you’re looking down on the smog settling over the valley and there’s a sign by the lookout point that lets you know you’ve gone about 500 feet from where you started.

WTF? Five hundred feet?? That’s IT?! Should I just walk back down??

But, you keep going anyway.

You stop thinking about how far it is, and start paying attention to the birds, the leaves, the rocks, the bugs. You start noticing changes in the wind and the position of the sun, examining the worm- cut patterns in the logs and the bands on spider’s legs. The differences between the trees at different elevations. The way the water in the creek behaves around the rocks. The expanse of the sky over an open meadow, the closeness of the forest in the evening.

And one day, you’re almost at the top. You can see the end of the tree line ahead, stark rocks and snowcaps above, close enough to feel the chill of the ice in the wind.

Somehow, it doesn’t feel like such a big mountain with respect to its difficulty to climb, but a big mountain with respect to its many moods and environments, its microcosmic and macrocosmic worlds.

And you suddenly realize that once this mountain has been climbed, and its experience embedded in your soul…

the first thing you’re going to want to do, is find another one to climb.

Waiting to stop shaking so I can drive home.

Burned out and exhausted. People keep coming to me, for help.

They tell me things. Things they want kept in confidence… and that’s why you won’t hear about them here or from me at all.

But they always want to talk to me.

So many people.

All the time.

I’m happy to listen and offer advice,

but some things are out of my league.

Some people need different kinds of help that I can’t provide. I try to point them in the right directions.

Some won’t go.

Some run toward these options, smile over their shoulders at me and thank me for my help.

I hope it all works out.

If November is the depths of the accumulation of bad memories and hard times for me, December is the effort to wash it all off.

I think I need pumice more than a wash cloth.

Some things just stick until they’re a part of me.

Some things fall away.

Like the music I can’t stand that sticks in my head, crowding out the one beautiful symphony I’m trying to remember.

The surreal art of attempting to recall the details of the things I want to keep while attempting to forget the things that hurt.

Now a guitar is playing a tune I’ve never heard, and I’m just going to relax and enjoy the intricate notes and the cheerful melody.

A cup of tea helps to take the edge off.

I think of her sitting isolated in her room

feeling her losses and listening to the endless poisonous words pointed at her.

All I can do is… very little.

People are such strange things.

In December, the lights are bright and hopeful with the promise of rebirth and renewal after the cold goes away, the optimism of knowing that the season of death cannot last but must bring the season of life.

By January, the promise is hibernating under the snow and the dead leaves of the past autumn

the lights are gone with the optimism

and the cold settles in.

Might lose this page for a bit as I need to find a new web host.

Just got myself off Facebook for the second and final time, since so many old friends have gone from cool people to hang out with, to screaming masses of bigoted hatred. I’ve never been great with communicating with people, anyway. No idea what the fuck about me is so threatening that I’ve had my character assaulted, my name attacked, my would- be future career sabotaged (twice), and have been stalked both online and off. I know I’m no perfect angel, but I have tried to be honest and, once I’d been through a few communication classes in my twenties, respectful. You know, it’s funny– people were nicer to me when I was a BITCH.

I know, maybe I should just be a bitch. But I really don’t like to be. Sometimes I’m bitchy without even noticing it. Surprise! I’m human. But mostly it’s just not in me, no matter what they say (and holy god, do they ever say).

It’s interesting on some levels. When I tell someone their comment was racist, they don’t ask me how so, they don’t explain why it might not be racist- they launch into tirades about why it’s supposedly “true.”

When I walk to class sometimes at school, I see some of my classmates look over their friend’s shoulder at me, give me a sneer, say something under their breath to their little circle, and watch them all attempt to hide their snickers and giggles. Really, guys? You don’t see that as just a teensy bit, you know, childish? And when I say something in class, and someone counters it- no matter what it is, there’s that little giggle behind people’s hands. People I once respected. Sometimes– other times, no one bothers to try to hide it.

When I was in fifth grade, I experienced the exact same bullshit, only I had a lump in my throat all the time and I was in a constant state of anxiety. These days I’ve got it down to where I only have temporary panic attacks and I only really bawl when I find a particularly beautiful musical piece or things have built up to the point that I’m a pathetic geyser of hopelessness that finally erupts. It isn’t pretty. One thing I’m relatively certain of now, though. All the times I got myself through by telling myself, this can’t last forever? All the time I spent convincing myself that when people grew up, they weren’t so mean anymore? Apparently I was very wrong. Either people don’t “grow up” and that entire concept of mentally becoming an adult is a lot of hype, or their personalities are cemented by the age of 10 and no amount of “growing up” can change it.

Personally, I think it’s the former. We’re expected to “grow up” while we foster our “inner child.” But all people really do is mimic what they see, learning by example, repeating the mistakes of distant history as well as those of their own parents because they can’t figure out that we’re not really individuals. People are collective groups of like- minded entities who behave much like cancers or viruses. Really, look into the behavior of a disease on the cellular level, and see if you can notice how group thinking behaves very similarly. Viruses invade cells that are already weak and vulnerable and turn them into machines that reproduce pestilence, very like people who attack those who are already vulnerable and make them hate themselves until they’re a living hate factory; or, conversely, talk shit to people who don’t know a goddamn thing, turning them into gossip- spewing hate machines. You can try being respectful, and I do, but I have yet to formulate the human communication version of NyQuil.

That’s right. People are a disease. Well, okay, not all of them. I think I can count maybe fifty people who probably aren’t, out of the thousands I’ve met (yes, thousands. It’s estimated that the average person meets hundreds of thousands of people over a lifetime. Far, far too many for me!). I’m glad I was at least smart enough to marry one of them, and raise three more– although if I’d known that people were perpetually stuck in a fifth grade mentality there’s no way I would have had kids and made them go through it, too.

Well folks, cool people, and viruses… I’ve got shit to do.

Fourteen years this month.

The last time he bounced my head off the living room wall. The last time he punched me in the kidneys.

The last time he told me he loved me.

He made me cookies because, as he said, he felt bad.

About the black eye. The cut on my lip.

He didn’t know about the concussion, but I don’t think he cared.

The cookies tasted like shit, and he wasn’t a bad cook.

Normally.

He was only wearing red sweat- shorts when they arrested him. They wouldn’t let me in the house until they’d taken him away.

I held onto my kids and cried.

One police report had a tone of respect.

The other had a tone that suggested I might have deserved everything I’d gotten.

.

.

Now.

Fourteen years, one week, six days, and almost eight hours later.

My husband and I were watching some show

and there he was.

Well, not HIM, but a character like him,

at least to the extent that he was holding his girlfriend up against the wall by her neck.

I flashed back. It was me again.

I can’t remember how many times I’d been right there.

Sometimes with a knife at my throat.

Sometimes with a fist in my face.

But always with my feet off the floor and his giant fucking hand

around my neck

and my head slammed against the wall.

The girl on the show had a friend.

The friend bashed the guy in the head.

I didn’t.

I didn’t have a friend, he’d pretty well isolated me from everyone.

Made sure I was far away from anyone who would have cared.

We had a roommate, he’d told him that he had stopped hitting me.

The roommate either believed him,

or didn’t care enough to stay. He left. He left me there,

alone with this psychotic toddler in the body of a thirty- something three hundred pound (more or less) man.

Of course,

I blamed myself.

Why not, so did everyone else.

They say I could have walked away…

and gone where? What would I do with the kids?

They say I must have deserved it, since I stuck around.

They don’t say much else, those who do.

I get dirty looks.

Everyone knows women are liars. They lie about this shit all the time, trying to get attention. Sympathy. Maybe I was a slut, like he told me I was, even though I never left the house. They’d believe him.

They would want to.

Justification makes everyone feel better.

Well…

maybe

not

everyone.

November, november.

Fourteen years ago.

Still can’t watch a television show without having a panic attack?

But… things are different now.

My husband is next to me. The show is over.

He smiles and gives me a kiss, tells me he wants to play his video game.

Suddenly the last fourteen years seems like a long, long journey.

I’ve climbed so many mountains, crossed so many rivers

Crossed oceans. Weathered storms I thought would last forever.

And…

suddenly there’s a change in the weather.

The clouds just drift away,

the billows in the grass slow to a pleasant, lazy movement

like people with linked arms swaying to music I can’t hear.

It’s quiet, calm…

not perfect, but content.

Not a destination, but a stop along the way with the people

who chose to stay with me along the way.

I can breathe.

I can look at the stars without wondering

which one will fall on me next.

I can stand up without the fear of being knocked back down.

I can let people touch me again.

Most of the time.

Most of the time…

November.

Sometimes I hate this fucking month.

Then he smiles

calls me beautiful

and I forget for a minute.

Or an hour.

Or more.