Change

 

Looking out my window I see bursts of bright color: crimson red, golden yellow, purple and brown. The color change is beautiful. The crisp, cool air is refreshing. Fall is here. But I’ll admit, it’s never been my favorite season. 

Maybe it’s the weather going from warm to cold? Maybe it’s the echos of all those ‘back to school’ years? Maybe after all the beautiful colored leaves, the trees become stark skeletons? Maybe what’s really bothering me this Fall isn’t about Fall at all. 

Changing colors. 

I don’t like all the craziness swirling around us in this country. Red states vs Blue States. People being arrested for having an opinion someone else doesn’t like. People  beaten up for the color of their skin. And the women’s rights I fought for decades ago, being degraded and denied. 

These are not changes I want to see. This is not what I voted for. And I suspect we will find out that it’s not what the majority voted for either. Until then, I try to do what I can to help those in need, support what I want and believe in for everyone. 

Creative change.  

One way I can make positive changes in my community is with my hook. I’ve been busy crocheting Christmas Stockings for my neighborhood women and children center. They asked for 40 and I’m on number 31 now. My goal is to get them the stockings before Thanksgiving, or sooner. Finger’s crossed!

This weekend I joined knitters and crocheters in downtown Portland for the first ‘Knit In’. Put together by a group called ‘Common Cause’ it was a way to show our support for the rights of all people here in Portland and beyond. Despite the pouring down rain, the tents were filled with like-minded men and women coming together with yarn-in-hand to support freedom for all. 

Color experiments. 

Another new experience for me this week was taking an online class with artist, Jill Badonsky. It was a fun, interactive experience. I played along with others mixing watercolors and using gel pens to create fun, silly Autumn themed art. 

I used to paint all the time. But that was pushed aside for throwing and handbuilding clay cups, bowls and vases. Lately, I’ve been doing more sculpture and taking a more ‘painterly’ approach with clay. Experimenting with relief and color is a fun and challenging change. 

Change is life

Even if I’m not ready

The seasons change 

And so must I

Time to see the good falling all around me

 

Let’s pull the weeds and flower.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. I usually write almost everyday in my journal or notes. But lately, all I’ve been doing is sitting and scrolling and staring at the unbelievable insanity out there. 

When it got to be too much, I started cleaning. I’ve dusted and vacuumed and washed from top to bottom. Window blinds, ceiling fans, inside cupboards and closets, chairs and couches. I washed throws and blankets and pillows and curtains. Then I looked outside and started pulling weeds. Tall weeds. Small weeds. Itsy bitsy weeds that I would normally ignore because I hate weeding. Out with it all. 

The dirt and weeds had to go. So the flowers could grow. 

Hmm. Perhaps there’s a metaphor here? 

With all those evil, stupid bullies in Washington, it feels like time has slipped backwards. I thought as a woman who fought for my rights once, I was done. 

Nope. Obviously, there’s more to do. 

What are we learning here? That bullies win? That greed wins? That stupid wins?

I know it looks like that but I think there’s more to it. Perhaps, we’re using the wrong tools. We’re using the understanding, logical, problem solving, let’s get along tools. When we need to use the heavy duty, no you don’t tools to clean it all out. 

Anyone else doing what these bullies have done, would be arrested and in jail by now. Where are our judges? Our Congress? Our Senate? Our Generals? 

I wonder. 

Where is the nation that I know and love? The people who help people? The elected ones who promoted education, health, safety and jobs for all? Equality for everyone. No one left behind. Everyone allowed to flower and grow. 

I don’t understand the anger of the right, thinking they’re right. Or the Greed Gang who want it all for themselves. Because when no one is left out, even them, everyone moves forward together. Maybe I’m naive but it seems to me to be a pretty simple way to go. You go your way, I’ll go mine. Choice is still there for everyone.

That’s the word: choice. 

What do you need?

What do you want?

If you don’t like something, fine. That’s your choice. 

But you don’t get the right to choose for me.  

Let’s all make our own choices, 

And learn to pull the weeds, so we can flower and grow together. 

 

Out of the Darkness comes Light.

As I sit here, tucked under a cozy throw,  watching my granddaughter slumber in sweet peacefulness, I wish and want and hope. 

I wish for her to live a life in a world different from the one I have lived in. A world where all people are safe and respected in body, mind and soul. A country where everyone understands that everyone has the right to live free from abuse of any kind.

I want her wonderful, brilliant mind to be embraced, encouraged and utilized. A system of education and work where her talents and dreams are seen as not just valid but invaluable. A place where work and health and life are an integrated whole for everyone. 

I hope she will never know the pain of abuse. I hope she will be seen and heard and encouraged not to just do well, but accomplish more than anyone else before her. I hope she will have the power to choose her own path, her own life, her own love based on her own guidance system with the support of a good education, healthcare and economic system that values people over product and bottom lines. 

Enough now. There’s been enough darkness. 

While she sleeps peacefully on this cozy afternoon, I read the news and shiver, not from the cold but from the darkness growing across our nation. 

I’ve lived in a very different kind of world. (Yes, #metoo) A place where power meant pain. Physical punishment was not only accepted but encouraged. Where on Fridays, the nuns would use a belt on the week’s worst child and broadcast it over the school public address system. Where little girls were to be quiet, sit still and listen more than talk.

Graduating at the height of the feminist movement, I thought now, everything will change. Finally, women will have power over their own body, mind and life. Finally, there will be no more abuse or pain or inequity. I worked and got paid more than my mother did, but there was no big change. Yet, I was encouraged by even those small steps forward. 

Forward or Backward?

It seems with every news story, we are moving backward instead. Why? I’ve been asking and asking myself that question over and over in a desperate attempt to figure out how we are now where we are in this country. 

I thought, when I was 20, that the world was changing for women in a good way. Twenty years later, I prayed that the world would finally change for my daughter in a much better way. Now, I look at my granddaughter’s sweet, sleeping face and I see that the world hasn’t changed very much at all. 

And I’m angry. No. I’m pissed. This was totally unacceptable then and even more so now.  

Here is the truth: Those patriarchal men know their time of power and evil is ending. That is what these men really fear. 

Now it’s time. Our time to see beyond this darkness. It is our time to step into the light. 

And create a different kind of world. 

Look to the horizon:

The sky is dark and the stars blink bright. 

Softy, the celestial night lights dim as the world slowly turns from night to day.

The deep black sea turns grey as light pink dabs the clouds and blue fades up. 

Birds silent in the dark, begin to speak up and the first boat jets across the waves. 

Good morning, world. 

A new day has begun.

Thoughts of the Week.

While I don't usually know what I'm going to write about until I sit down to write, I usually have a concept, an idea, a theme. But this week, it's just not there, so I've decided to just jot down a few free flowing thoughts.

On Home. 

Home is a place, a state of mind, and a soul destination where, hopefully, your breath rises and falls and sighs. I know my physical home is my comfort zone. My studio is my sacred space. But I'm learning that my body is my home, too. While I take care of my house, work in my studio and feed and exercise my body, I have for years, taken my body for granted. 

I've had a few wake up calls along the way to remind me to take better care of the body in which I reside. But I admit to seeing my body as a vehicle I use to get where I want to go instead of a place where I can truly live. 

I wonder what it would feel like to stop driving my body and sit inside it instead. 

On Creating. 

As one of my children's very young friends said, "You're always making something over here. Why is that?"  Very good question for which I had no answer. I don't even remember what I was making then that caused her to ask the question. 

I do know, I like to make things. My earliest memories are of making an entire town out of mud and sticks in my backyard. Grabbing my brother's pencils and writing before I knew how to write a word. And using my mother's red lipstick to draw on the dining room wall.

I still like to make things and write things. Does that make me an artist? A writer? I don't know.  And I wonder, does it really matter? Do I need the title as some form of validation? Or does society need to classify what I do and why. 

All I know is in the end, the little girl's words are true: I am always making something over here.

On Freedom.

Creative freedom is on my mind this week. As an artist many would think that I have all the creative freedom in the world but I've learned that freedom has a price. Making art and selling it means smacking up against juries, art galleries and consumers who want specific colors, shapes, and types of work. 

I didn't realize that working in clay would put me in a creative box: potter vs artist. I saw them as the same, but they're not. Potters specialize in producing large bodies of identical, functional pieces. Ceramic artists usually produce work that is sculptural, figurative, which may or may not be functional. 

I like to make both. I love making and using my vases and mugs as much as I love making masks. But over the last few years, I've been told by other artists, "Oh, I gave up producing functional work because I just couldn't compete with the potters." By a gallery, "We only want your functional work, in certain colors." 

It's a bit mind boggling to open myself up to creating both functional and sculptural work in an effort to offer more to the world only to have people putting labels on my creative freedom.