Another stupid cold holiday season begins

As usual, the holidays stir up mixed feelings in my brain. Beyond the basics of cold, hungry, tired, or leave me alone, I often have no idea what I want or need, and it always seems worse this time of year. Is that normal? I suspect not. You probably love the holidays, am I right? All those songs, those lights, those smells emanating from frantic shoppers. What's more, I bet you go through this season knowing exactly what you want and need. The reason I claim this is because I used to know exactly what I wanted and needed. Or I thought I did. Now I know nothing, not about holiday cheer, pecan pie, or anything else.

For example, once I was positive I would have a career in the arts. Everyone around me thought so, and so did I. Now, looking back, I find I actually have had no career at all. I don't think many people who aren't in the arts can say that. Normal people go to school, get jobs that constitute careers, have families, accumulate wealth, retire, and then die. Oh, sure, they have hiccups, farts, and belches along the way in the form of divorces, deaths, illness, what have you, but those things would have happened anyway, no matter what their career, given that people are codependent frightened amygdalas most of the time. Oh, sorry, this has nothing to do with the holidays, does it? This sometimes happens. It's the end-of-year what-fresh-hell-is-this time of reflection.

My amygdala is running flat out these days, trying to get me to stop, just stop. I seem hell bent on jumping in a handbasket and setting a course straight for hell. I think I can add "as usual," because this is normal for me, this is my norm, this is my M.O. I'm regressing to my mean. I'm trying to be nice about it, but the holiday music sometimes gets under my skin. Misophonic dermatillomaniac. 

What I am trying to say? I'm saying I'm nuts. To really put paid to this season of holiday hell, I applied for a job, and this week, I had a Zoom interview. (No, it's not a Christmas sales job, although that could be a fun form of purgatory for someone who chases misery.) It's just a semi-white collar grant-funded one-year temp gig. Part of me thinks they'd be crazy not to hire me. If they do, there's a chance I might be moving to northern Arizona. However, there is an equal chance I will be moving into my car and parking it on BLM land somewhere to wait for affordable housing to catch up to the senior housing crisis. 

I'm trying to imagine how I will feel if I don't get the job. Will rejection confirm all the negative beliefs I've dragged around like a PigPen blanket all these years? Oh, woe is me, alas, alackaday, they hate me, time for some worm stew. My own private rain cloud will let loose, and I will accept it, because I rarely use an umbrella, but mainly because that is what I'm used to. I land somewhere by accident, I perch for a while, and then a strong wind (usually blown out my own butt) sends me toppling into free fall, until I fetch up on some other ledge or branch, wondering what the hell just happened.

But, holy crapolly momma moly, what if I get the job? Who will I be then? Someone whose skills are in demand? Someone chosen to be part of a team? My brain is like a piece of slimy meat that refuses to wrap around the stick. I need a new brain. I need a new persona, a new self-concept, if you will. This stupid cold season really tends to bring out my chronic malcontent. Kind of like Beauty and the Beast. No, more like Jeckyll and Hyde. Mutt and Jeff. Chip and Dale. Sonny and Cher. Bread and butter. Gay and apparel. Wait. What? 

I can write what I want here because this blog is still (more or less) anonymous and because nobody reads it anymore anyway. Or if they do, they are much too polite to bring up my latest melancholic diatribe about my attempts to live life on its own stupid terms. If I had been writing like this twenty years ago, my family and friends would have stormed me with an intervention. I'd be in rehab. Ninety in ninety, phone it in every day. 

Now, my friends and family are busy, living busy interesting lives. To be sure, some of them are probably as miserable as I am, falling down stairs and losing mothers. But others are busy going on fabulous trips to exotic places, embarking on romantic relationships, worrying about quiche and cats and husbands, oh my. None of them has time for my drama. This is healthy, this is good. Everyone has drama. They just don't barf it out in a blog. At least, not that I know of. Hm. Omigorsh, would it not be hilariously wonderful if we were all blogging anonymously? 

Meanwhile, the alarm clock in my brain is still going off once per minute, 24/7, and I'm still writing and posting a story a day on my non-anonymous blog, where I go on and on and on, simply to practice my craft. And because I said I would, and I am not a quitter. Wonder of wonders! No wonder I'm nuts. Writing a story a day is harder than showing up to write a literature review for a dissertation no one will ever read. 

Sorry to the bots, this blog is the landfill where the garbage trucks dump the crap. 

Welcome to a new season of endless cranky fun from the Hellish Handbasket. 

The path is less-traveled for a good reason

 

I'm blogging tonight because it is a task on my calendar. That is the only reason. My brain is a stinky pile of pudding. I've spent the past few hours formatting a dissertation that refuses to conform. 

It happens. Not all Word documents are built to my liking. No use complaining. It's far too late to do anything about it. The dissertation is done. The dissertator is defending in a few weeks. 

I can imagine the desperation she felt when her reviewers said, clean this thing up or you don't graduate!

Word is not a user-friendly program. I know it pretty well, but sometimes it is hard to figure out the quirks of a new template. There are a hundred styles in this thing. I picture bored academics sitting in offices drinking beer and gloating over their next creative ploy to make dissertators insane. And editors. Although I doubt if they are thinking of us. Me. No, they don't care.

They probably think they are making the formatting task easier for their dissertators. And if they knew what they were doing, I would say, right on. But it's just stupid to set a style to all caps and then assume the dissertator will figure out what to do when their page numbers suddenly appear in the Table of Contents in uppercase Roman numerals. I mean, I ask you. It's a travesty.

My brain is mush. I think there was some big game today? Did your team win? I hope you are fully recovered from whatever happened. I'd rather stay immersed in my resentment against Microsoft Word. It's easier to gripe than to see the news and be reminded that so many people around the world are suffering. 

Today as I walked along the bike path, enjoying the sun as I dodged the bikers, I thought about a crossroads moment in my young adult life. It was more than a moment, I guess. Maybe you could classify it as a three-year-long crossroads moment. I was in college (the first time around). It was around 1975 when my life forked into two distinct paths. One path headed toward the practical world of business, probably accounting (can you imagine?). The other path headed toward the mystical realm of art and creativity. It was never a real choice to me, but looking back, I wish someone had pointed out to me that I did have a choice. I didn't see it. I only saw one path, and so I took that path. 

It would not have taken a crystal ball to show me the possible outcomes of the two paths. One path would likely have led to a decent income, probably a house, a nice car, a growing bank account, and a retirement fund. In other words, wealth. The other path, the one I chose, has given me an interesting life of creativity, magical thinking, and constant struggle. 

Other crossroads presented themselves over the years. I took a few of them, in my quest to be a normal person. I went to school multiple times to reinvent myself. The editing skills I have now are a direct result of one of those detours. My detours have led me in some pointless directions, mostly because I let others persuade me it was the right choice. I wonder what sort of life I would have had if I'd ignored them, settled on one art form, and stuck to it. Painting, maybe. Or writing. I might have actually had a career. On the other hand, I wonder what my life would look like now had I chose to become an accountant. I can guess. Safe. Secure. Predictable. Now that I'm old and tired, it doesn't sound too bad.

I suppose it's not too late to look for another crossroad. As long as my brain still works, I'm probably employable somewhere. However, my best years, physically and mentally, are behind me. Barring a miracle, I fear my best earning time has come and gone. I should be living on my wealth now, and instead, I am still chasing the dream. Or it is still chasing me. 

Destined for greatness

Howdy Blogbots. I'm happy to announce, my glitchy heart keeps chugging along, dragging the rest of me with it. I guess I follow where the heart leads me—haven't I always done that, isn't that what making art is all about, following our bliss? Who knew I was supposed to take it literally. Like, my heart is pounding out the beat of my life. When it stops, I stop.

The good news (according to my cardiologist) is my heart is misfiring but not so often or so badly that there's anything to be done about it yet. The other good news is that my upcoming CT scan was postponed until after Christmas because the machine was broken. I'm over it, this whole IV needle in the arm thing, this let's shoot you full of iodine dye thing. Probably I'll be fine.

Now that I'm probably going to live a while longer, I have had the luxury of thinking about other things.

I was thinking the other day that I have paid a high premium for the privilege of eschewing a "normal" working life for a life of creativity. At each major crossroads I encountered, I said no to money and yes to creativity. I never found a road that led to both at the same time. For me, it was always one or the other. 

Oh, sure, I had jobs, as do we all. I've had many. Among my many jobs, I've been a waitress, an administrative assistant, a gardener, a bus driver, a graphic designer, a seamstress, a warehouse worker, an activities assistant in a nursing home, and a teacher. Any one of those jobs could have been a career. But nope, not for me, I was born retired, which is to say, when a career opportunity crossed my path, I ran in the opposite direction. I said no, not to be stubborn, but because I knew I was destined for something else. I could have gone into marketing or marketing research. I could have pursued a teaching career. I could have worked my way into nursing home administration. I could have been an executive secretary for some dude in a suit. Crossroads that would have most likely led to a much different life: nicer cars, maybe a house, some money in the bank, and a healthy retirement fund.

Back at those crossroads, I would have said I was destined for a life of fulfilling creativity, as a painter, most likely, or as a famous fashion illustrator or clothing designer. Now, years later, with not much road left in front of me, I can say all those refusals have produced a life of poverty and struggle. I admit, I am a little sad. I can't say I regret my choices. I would probably do it again, if I had a do-over. I chose it, it chose me, who knows? They aren't kidding when they say do what you love and you'll probably starve. 

I can't tell if I'm simply addicted to poverty or if this is just what happens to some creative people in a society that doesn't value or support creative low-income earners. I've never made the kind of art that sells, and I wasn't willing to adapt my art to suit someone else's esthetic. I guess you can say I chose this life because my brain made me do it. That makes as much sense as anything else people have diagnosed me with. I always wondered if my brain was trying to kill me, but maybe it's just life with a thousand tiny knives making a thousand tiny cuts.

I'm too old and tired to whine about it (except here, sorry). There's nothing to be done. When I find myself wading into a pity puddle, I stop and get busy writing. It beats all the alternatives.  

Stop making sense

If I could sum up my primary problem in one sentence, it would be this: I can't stop trying to make sense. Sense of my life, sense of others, sense of life in general. In other words, I keep trying to figure it all out. If I would just stop trying to make sense of everything, if I could stop trying to manage and control everything, maybe I could relax, maybe I could take things as they come. 

Do I want to relax? Thanks for asking. Apparently not, otherwise I would stop trying to make sense of everything.

The gentle yet brutal vacuum known as Swedish death cleaning appears to be sucking up the last dregs of my past. In my ongoing quest to make sense of my current so-called life, I spent part of the day purging a few more of my possessions. I persevered, even though I felt a little short of breath today. Either my heart is not pumping right or the air here in Minimal Town is growing more rarified. Am I rising in elevation as I jettison unneeded ballast, like a human hot air balloon? No wonder my inner ears are going crazy.

Today the item on the death-cleaning chopping block was my old mailbox. You might think, Carol, really? You dragged a mailbox with you all the way from Oregon? What kind of nut are you? 

Thanks for asking. I'm the kind of nut who paints mailboxes and then enjoys receiving mail in them for eighteen years and then decides when it is time to move away, that maybe there will be a place in my future life for my hand-painted mailbox. 

That kind of nut.

When I got to Tucson, it was pretty clear there was no place here in the desert for my hand-painted mailbox. Most apartments already have mailboxes. Even if I had needed a new mailbox, the colors definitely reflect a Northwest vibe—no Southwest desert colors on this thing. It's mostly orange blobs on a green-blue background, with some purple in there to make it pop, somewhat faded after eighteen years weathering Portland weather. I don't actually remember painting the mailbox, although they are definitely my colors, but I remember building the hand-painted wooden base with which I installed it on the metal railing outside my door at the Love Shack. It was a cantilevered contraption built of wood and bolts (also painted purple, orange, and greenish blue). The base kept my mailbox in an upright position until the day I dismantled it. I threw away the base and packed up the mailbox. Yes, I dragged it with me all the way from Oregon to Arizona. 

Today was the day I decided to let it go. I took a photo of the mailbox and put it into the give-away pile. 

As it turns out, there might be a place here for that mailbox after all. My housemate rescued the mailbox from the give-away box. With a stencil and a little green or blue spray paint, the number on the front can be revised to reflect the address of the Art Trailer. The Love Shack mailbox will live on.

I can't really express how happy and relieved I feel about the repurposing (I call it the resurrection) of my old mailbox. I have berated myself multiple times for bringing so many ridiculous and useless possessions with me from Oregon. Looking back, I realize I was out of my mind with panic, grief, and fear. It's no wonder I made some foolish choices. Some of the possessions have been easy to let go. The mailbox was one of the last pieces that had no purpose here, other than to remind me of what I've lost. 

I think the mailbox represents a time in my life when I had things more or less figured out. I wasn't exactly thrilled with my life in Portland, but I knew my place in it, and things made sense to me. I knew whose daughter I was. I knew whose employee I was. I had plans, and I was getting things done. 

I always knew that time of my life would eventually end. Employers go bankrupt, cats go to heaven, mold infects apartments, and old people get dementia and then die of an aneurysm. Life (and death) happen. I guess that is the only sort of sense I can derive from my experience. Life and death happen. I experience things, but I do not control them. For reasons I can't explain, it gives me hope that my old mailbox will live on after I'm gone.

Stuff piling up in the rear view mirror

I'm listening to some old Pablo Cruise on YouTube while I undertake another round of Swedish death cleaning. Today I packed up my collection of academic books into one small but heavy cardboard box. The music is making me sad. I'm remembering the 1970s. Love will find a way. Ha. Overly optimistic sentiment. I'm sad because in the 70s, I didn't know what I was capable of, good and bad. My brain was still forming. Now I look at these books on factor analysis and structural equation modeling and marvel that my brain was once capable of comprehending their content. I peaked in 2013. It's been a messy downhill slide ever since.

Lately I seem to dip in and out of jettison mode. Today this is what is on my mind. I had planned to write about my exciting adventure preparing for and undergoing an endoscopy and a colonoscopy (I got the twofer deal), but I'm over it. That is so last week. I can't find the energy to even think about it. Even though few things are funnier than having a camera rammed up one's butt, suffice it to say, I have nothing new to offer. Most of you have probably already had to suffer the indignity one or more times. All I can say is, thank God for my friend S and praise the Lord and pass the Propofol. Lying there trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, with a plastic gizmo holding my mouth open and my privates flapping in the wind, I was never so glad to exit stage right in all my life.  

So that's done. No polyps, no cancer, I got the ten year warranty, so this entire surreal experience is fast receding in the rear view mirror. I've already forgotten the week of starvation and the night spent scrolling through Instagram while parked on the toilet. It's all a hazy blur best left on the side of the road. 

Now that I'm eating food again, I have the luxury of resuming my anxiety about my heart. It keeps thumping and bumping along, but with the exception of the first few days of monitoring (during which I was starving), I actually feel pretty good. I don't have a lot of energy (iron anemia) but now that the colonoscopy is done, I can start taking the iron supplement. I hope that restores my superpowers. I am looking forward to channeling my inner Popeye. 

I'm chagrined that I still have so much to jettison. I dragged along pieces of my former lives with me when I moved to Tucson in 2021. My academic books. My art supplies. My sewing machine. Who do I think I am? A person who still knows how to do statistics? I think my editing days are over. My brain cells and my patience seems to have run out at the same time. It's time to say goodbye to the books (so much money spent on those books, argh). I will donate them to the library foundation. They were happy to receive my DVDs and music CDs. I fear their eyes will roll back in their heads when they see these obscure academic titles but who cares. With my donation, I amputate, exorcise, erase, I don't know what word to use, I release that part of me that is atrophied and useless. 

Same with the art supplies. I dismembered the three framed acrylic paintings I brought with me into their separate elements. The canvas will go out with tomorrow's trash, to start a new life in the landfill. The frames and the stretcher bars will find a home with some as-yet-to-be-discovered Freecycler, who will also be thrilled to receive an almost full pad of vintage newsprint, two (expensive) birch drawing boards, a dozen large tubes of (still good) acrylic paint, and fifty-plus artists brushes in all sizes and conditions. All the stuff I dragged with me from Portland, thinking I can't claim to be an artist without a box of art supplies. Ha. I still draw. I drew a picture today. There you see it, hot off the whatever you call lined paper in a composition notebook. I was sitting in a Zoom meeting, drawing while listening, channeling my inner curmudgeon, as is my wont.

My sewing machine will be the last to go. It's such a practical tool, unlike statistics books and art supplies. I might keep it for a while longer, at least until I decide to hit the road. Even then, I might pack it on the roof of my car, in one of those roof boxes. I might want to make car seats and curtains, who knows. With Popeyes on them. 

It's hard to let go of some of these things, not because they are intrinsically valuable but because of the parts of me they represented. I don't have those parts anymore. It's likely the statistician in me is gone for good. The artist in me has morphed into a writer-slash-illustrator or cartoonist, caricaturist? I don't know what to call myself. I'm still an artist. I'm just not a painter anymore. I had a gulp when I saw my easel go away, but ripping up my old paintings was surprisingly easy. I have photos.

So the question is, who am I now? I'm still figuring that out. My brain and body have changed. I'm no longer capable of doing some things. Maybe I can't do math anymore, or find the right words to describe what I am feeling. Maybe my writing is mundane and silly. Maybe my drawings are trivial and idiosyncratic. Maybe I only have the energy to putter slowly on a bike around the trailer park. It's okay. I can still make myself laugh with my stories. The jokes are for me. As long as I find joy in the creative process, I will keep creating. When it stops being fun, I will go do something else.

Chasing the filthy lucre

I finally did it. After two-plus years, I initiated the firing sequence (two negative Covid self-tests) and launched myself back into community. I'm (sort of) proud (but mostly shocked) to announce I mingled unmasked with a group of humans in an indoor setting for a two-hour event. I can't believe I did it, and I hope I don't regret it. 

On a mild morning this week, I drove up the winding road to an art gallery-slash-gift shop in an upscale mall in the Catalina Foothills. (Now that I've moved to the Trailer, I can claim I live Catalina Foothills adjacent. Look at me go, I've been here just over a year and already I'm a snob.) I had expected to wear my mask, as I always do in an indoor setting. However, nobody else was wearing a mask when I arrived. After seeing that, my higher reasoning faculties shut down, and I caved to peer pressure. Nobody said anything. I just folded. It is embarrassing and humbling to admit how little spine I really have. 

Maybe if I hadn't been the star of the show, I would have had more gumption. As an audience member, I'm good at hiding out in the last row. I could have quite happily hid behind my N95, no problem. However, I was at the art gallery to share with the gallery membership the knowledge and experience I've accumulated as a mentor to artists who think it would be jolly good fun to turn their art into a money-churning cash cow. In other words, I was there to give a lecture on business plans. Whoa, did you feel that breeze? That was your brain checking out for a second. I know. It happens to me too. Art and business? Wha—? 

Seems like we don't really hear of those two things being discussed in the same sentence, do we? At least, not in the real world, and by real, I mean like, actual reality, not the magical world of marketing that makes billions of dollars persuading artists they can become rich and famous without dying first. Art and business hook up in the business world, but not in the art world. MFA students aren't taught how to register as an LLC and get their marketing plans ready. Budding artists are told their art is not a commodity. It's something unique and special. In fact, to call art a product is a deadly insult to some artists. To call their art anything less than fine is fighting words. Don't you dare use the word artisan. Craftsperson. One step away from hack. 

Whatever. Artists love to hear about the joy of delivering their art to the art-hungry world. As soon as I mention the words sales tax or LLC, they all but run screaming into the night. In fact, only one person in my audience of a dozen or so wannabe artist-turned-millionaires was wearing a mask, so I could see the exact moment when their brains turned up their little cerebellar toes and said nope, not for me, I'm outa here. 

As usual, each artist in my crowd was at a different stage in their career. No way was I able to address all their needs. It's dumb to try and yet I keep trying. Isn't that the very definition of insanity? Well, no big epiphany there. Still, I did my best to be informative, pleasant, and engaging, even as they one by one got right into my personal space and breathed all over me. I didn't shake any hands and nobody touched me, I don't think, probably because I am a stinky mess, having forgotten how to groom. I've lost the art of caring about how I look. Or smell, apparently. Clearly, I've been alone and sweating in the desert for too long. But I wasn't stinky enough, apparently. They still got too damn close. 

I delivered my dog-and-pony show, and when it was over, I helped schlep the chairs back into the storage room and stack them in neat vertical piles, ready for next month's members' meeting, because my mission in life is to be useful, even if it kills me. I am not a member of this gallery, in case you are wondering, nor do I plan to be, even though as a creative knucklehead, I would fit right in. The idea of immersing myself into the bubbling angst of artists struggling to retain a shred of their creative souls as they troll the world of commerce for enough filthy lucre to pay their rent is too much for this introvert. 

Every conversation I have with artists these days starts the same way: I want to make money selling my art. After a while, I want to scream. With laughter, of course. I think I've been alone too long.

Art and the end of the world

In this isolated new world of video mentoring, I talk with artists all over the country. One of my favorite pep talk mantras is the world needs your art. I usually say this in response to their complaints that they are afraid to put their work out in the world so people can buy it. "What if no one likes it?" they say. They are afraid to set prices. Posting their art to social media is terrifying. Anything but my art! Such tender self-centeredness. As if anyone cares. 

"The world needs your art," I tell them. "We are given creative gifts to share them with others."

Of course, this is total hooey. I am implying that whatever "gifts" we are given are magically bestowed upon us by some sort of power outside of ourselves. Call it the Universe, call it Goddess, call it the Muse, the assumption is that our creative "gifts" came out of the womb with us, like our skin and bones. 

Moreover, it's our job to make our creative gifts manifest. Didn't some old dude say if we don't bring forth what is within us, what is within us will destroy us? So refreshing. Nothing gets me inspired to make art like the threat that I'll be obliterated if I don't.

Anyway, the point is, I tell artists it's their job to make art. 

I think I need to stop doing that. I'm reinforcing their delusion that their creativity is something special. It's not special. Everyone is creative. Not everyone is an "artist," if you are using a strict definition of the term, but every person alive must exercise creativity in order to stay that way. As soon as they learn how to scream, kids are masters at creative manipulation. Adults don't usually resort to screaming, but they are equally manipulative in their efforts to get their way. That sometimes takes ingenuity and innovation. In other words, creativity. So, just because you think you are an artist doesn't make you special. In that sense, everyone is an artist.

A few days ago, I realized I've committed a sin even more egregious. In encouraging artists to produce more art, I am indirectly contributing to an unsustainable pattern of production and consumption that relies on manipulation in order to function. It's a self-destructive cycle. 

Sut Jhally identified this cycle years ago in his film Advertising and the End of the World. I used to teach marketing and advertising at a career college. The marketing program was on its last legs, so usually there was no more than a handful of students in the program at any one time. Sometimes I had classes with only one student. Once every ten weeks, I rented Jhally's film from the library and showed it on a VHS player. I don't remember my students being terribly impressed. The message scared the living crap out of me.

Over the past few years, I have moved from fear to despair. It's too late to save the human species. If there is some sort of rescue coming, perhaps from space aliens or a magical melding of human consciousness into one wise mind, it will likely happen after I'm dead. (I'd love to see what American politicians do with an influx of extraterrestrials.) Meanwhile, what does it matter if millions of mediocre artists create millions of Sculpey animals, acrylic pour paintings, and plastic-bead portraits of Mickey Mouse? Who cares if our creativity ends up in landfills? Who cares if the oceans are more plastic than fish? Oh, poor whales, poor turtles. What's a few species in the big scheme of geological time? Species come and go. Nothing and nobody is special. I find it reassuring to realize the earth will remain until the sun goes pop. 

Artists, I'm doubling down. Go ahead, fill up your garage with oil paintings nobody will ever buy. Promote your crappy art on websites nobody will ever visit. Post your stuff on social media in the deluded belief that you have control over the algorithms. Who am I to rain on your parade? If it makes you happy to believe you will become rich and famous selling your insipid pour paintings, go for it. We passed the tipping point a long time ago. Choose your deck chair. 

Strategic thinking departed with the art

It's a cool 94°F outside. I'm sitting in the Bat Cave with two fans blowing and a wet tank top wrapped around my head. I really don't need the wet tank top. The fans are enough. Like many Tucsonans, I keep hoping to see some rain. Sprinkles come and go, but so far I have not seen anything but dirt spots on my windshield. The ground is never wet. I know that is going to change once this monsoon gears up for real. Right now, this wind phenomenon is  revving it's motor, testing its ability to suck water out of the Gulf and dump it on this desert. 

This is the strangest place. Well, strange to me, compared to the other two places I've lived. After a year here, I still haven't figured it out. Everything here seems so precarious. Maybe it's because I still haven't found a direction. Maybe I should get a job. 

How do people cope with the uncertainty of life? Is everyone going around saying prayers under their face masks like I am? No, because hardly anyone is wearing a face mask anymore. I was at the pharmacy yesterday to pick up yet another drug for my hypertension, and I counted barely a handful of people wearing masks. The people inside the pharmacy cage aren't wearing masks. They have glass windows between them and me. It must be nice to have the illusion of feeling safe. I've decided not to care. I will not succumb to peer pressure. My fear of getting COVID far outweighs my concern about what people think of me. 

I'm trying to peer inside my head to discern what might be changing. That isn't possible, I know. You can't see inside your brain using your brain. I want to find the place where I've misplaced the thoughts that sum up my life and help me make sense of things. I know those thoughts are here somewhere, because I'm a strategic thinker. According to the Strengthsfinder, four of my top five strengths are strategic. I don't remember what the fifth one was. At least, I used to be a strategic thinker, before I tucked that ability into a box somewhere and then forgot where I stored it. Thinking strategically is now a memory, sort of like the memory of doing handstands or step aerobics. That is what I'm missing now, that ability to assimilate and summarize all the events of my life and the world into a single cohesive equation or directive that will let me know, finally, here is what it all means and here is what to do about it. 

Meanwhile, since the strategic thinking skill seems to have deserted me for the time being, I have been exploring another skill, one I never had to develop because the boss driver in me always knew where the bus was headed. What do I call this new skill? I guess, being in the here and now. It's a new thing for me. Now I'm pulling off at every scenic rest stop, metaphorically speaking, to sniff some stupid flower or watch another dumb sunset.

In the moment! Who knew it could be so confoundingly unsettling? 

There is a lag between the question and answer now, when I look inside my head. Well, I never used to have to ask the question, did I? I always knew who I was and what I was doing. So sure I knew. Now, I know so little. 

I mentor many artists, as I've mentioned, mostly about marketing their art. In the thick of our conversations, I am fully immersed and present. I enjoy the brainstorming process, and I am pretty sure I'm being helpful. After the conversation is over, however, I return to my flatline state. When they send a follow-up email, updating me on their progress, to me, it's like the conversations never happened. I have to review my notes to remember what we said. I think it's because I really don't care much. Should I care more? After descending into the messy emotional bog of interacting with artists who think the world owes them a living, it takes all my energy to dig myself out after we end the video call. Oh, they don't say it like that, but I recognize my fellow kindred spirits. 

 

If artists ran the world

I thought I could make some money being creative. Not so fast. 

I spent the week whining to myself about how hard it is for U.S. artists to legally sell their work. I'm not wrong. It’s true, many administrative hurdles block artists from starting small businesses, but maybe my whining is overly dramatic. Other entrepreneurial wannabes have to stumble over the same hurdles. Just about anyone who wants to start a small business in the U.S. has to do a few things if they are going to operate above the radar, and when I say “radar” I mean the IRS radar. The IRS thinks you are running a business if you have at least $400 in net profit when you file your annual tax return. Sell a couple paintings, lead a couple workshops, and there you go, bam, you might owe somebody some taxes.

And don’t get me started about the confounding world of sales taxes. The topic irks me so much that I’ve cut off my hair, literally whacked it back to an inch, so I am not tempted to yank it out by the roots. I’ve even toyed with the idea of moving back to Oregon, which has no sales tax, just to avoid the whole headachy mess of charging sales tax.

I'm freaking out on behalf of all U.S. artists. It's my way of being of service. You're welcome. It’s not like I sell my art. I’m not even making art these days, at least, nothing anyone can put their finger on. Earlier this year, I was selling some 99-cent templates to dissertators on my website, until I realized, hey, I should probably be charging sales tax to customers who live in Arizona. Considering the likely number of Arizona-based dissertators (few, I'm guessing), the odds that I would owe more than a dollar are slim to none, but rather than find out the hard way, I now give the templates away for free. I do not want to rouse the wrath of the State of Arizona. In any case, I never collected mailing addresses, so I have no idea where my buyers live. 

All that got me thinking about what artists must go through to be sales-tax compliant. If they sell any tangible art at all, and if they live in a state that has sales tax, then the artist is supposed to collect sales tax from buyers in their state and remit it to the state. I’m not even going to mention the regulations affecting artists who sell digital art remotely into other states. Let’s just keep it simple.

Forty-five of the fifty U.S. states have a state-level sales tax. If you live in one of those states, and sell art to buyers who live in or visit that state, then you should be collecting sales taxes.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Until you factor in the artist’s brain.

Think about what artists are being asked to do. To collect sales tax from buyers means artists must keep track of sales and money. What are the odds of that happening? Artists don’t use Quickbooks. They don’t even use Excel. Artists use napkins and sticky notes, notebook paper, and handmade journals with cats on the covers. Ask artists to produce an income statement or a balance sheet and their eyes will roll back in their heads as if someone had asked them to do math. Right.

Second, to remit those funds to the State means artists must register with their State (unless they live in one of the five states with no state sales tax). One look at the web form would make most artists run screaming into the night. It won’t take long for them to realize if they register to collect sales tax, they will need to apply for a business license. Then it’s one slippery misstep toward opening a business bank account, hiring an accountant, and discovering they owe income taxes. The next thing they know, all the joy and creativity they derived from their artmaking is gone, and now they are running a business. Bummer.

Third, the artists must remit the funds to the State. Dream on. All the artists I know will be using those sales tax funds (supposedly held in trust for the State) to pay their rent and buy their Frappuccinos. This is how I got into debt. Back in the 1980s, I found out too late, from the accountant I hired too late, that I should have been collecting sales tax on the clothing I made and remitting it quarterly to the State of California. Darn it, now you tell me.

Fast forward to now. I could have registered with Arizona. But I know the limitations of my artist brain. I balked after I found out the terrifying fact that even if I had no sales, I still must report to the State or be fined $100. That means $100 in fines for each missed sales report. It's like checking in with a probation officer. No check in, uh-oh, warrant for your arrest. In the face of financial terror, my brain goes gunnysack. Art becomes a burden, and all outcomes favor the State. 

Lawmakers don’t get it. They think artists will prepare business plans, hire lawyers and accountants, install and learn Quickbooks and Taxjar, and file their tax reports with the State on time. As if! Maybe on another planet in a galaxy far far away, where artists are the lawmakers and lawmakers are the whiners. What would a world run by artists look like?

My artist brain is not the brightest crayon in the box but it knows when the system is rigged against it. If you are one of those rare artists whose left brain works as well as your right brain, apologies for lumping you in the crayon box with me and all the other ratty, worn-down crayons. I hope you will run for office. I would definitely vote for you.

We gotta have art

The reward for being willing to work for nothing (also known as service or volunteering) is the opportunity to do more work for nothing. Few are called to this level of self-flagellation. Most people volunteer once a year dishing up spuds at a soup kitchen. Maybe they sell wrapping paper for their daughter's scout troop. These smart givers have figured out how to maintain their sense of selves when giving by engaging in some carefully controlled giving. They manage the time, place, duration, and level of emotional involvement. They live to serve another day.

Me, when I jump off the cliff into the great pit of service, I don't hold back. I go all in. Whenever I see that finger of service pointing my way, I almost always say yes. Even when I don't want to show up, I do. Because that is what I have learned is required of me to survive in my own skin. I am no longer a quitter. Well, hardly ever. When I first got vertigo, I quit on a service commitment. I was capsized by the rocking water in my head, not much good for anything for a while.

The vertigo still bubbles up from time to time, but it no longer swamps me. Now, I show up for my service commitments. I show up for meetings, I show up for phone calls, I show up for my mother.

Now I'm showing up for a new volunteer commitment. I'm in the process of being inducted (onboarded, waterboarded, whatever they call it) into a service organization. A request went around by email for someone to co-chair the workshop committee. Prodded by the finger of service, I raised my hand. Most of the work for 2020 has been done, it appears, by the massively overachieving and micromanaging “acting” workshop chair. Probably they just need an ignorant snoid to show up, check names off the list, and make sure nobody inadvertently unplugs the projector when run they their chair over the extension cord. That snoid could be me.

The hardest part of the snoid job is getting to the location in downtown Portland. Parking is exorbitant and scarce. Public transit is slow and expensive. Volunteering means clients pay nothing for service; however, volunteering shouldn't require the volunteer to fork out great sums of time and money. Just saying. Not up to me.

Speaking of trying to help others, at the invitation of one of the artists who took my art and business class at the community college, yesterday I visited an artists' workshop in Northeast Portland. Well, it was really an old concrete brick garage with a massive wood stove flaming against the back wall, uncomfortably close to shelves of tarps and other possibly flammable materials. I tried not to notice.

Three artists from my class had kept in touch. Apparently, taking my class had inspired them to support each others' marketing efforts. I felt a little frisson of pride, completely unearned.

Just inside the big open garage door, I chatted with two artisans I had not met before. The first was a young woman who sat behind a display of hand-pinched clay pots adorned with grotesque cartoonish faces (not unlike some of my grotesque cartoonish faces). I admired them and asked what people typically used them for.

“Rubberbands,” she said. “Paper clips. My Mom has them all over her house.” Yay, moms. We gotta love moms.

“Where are you selling them?” I asked.

“Well, nowhere, yet.”

The second artist new to me was a long-haired scruffy man named Tim who sat at a power machine sewing leather tags on pieces of pillow ticking for a custom order of bags. I admired his hand-dyed, one-of-a-kind backpacks stacked on a big table behind him. Ever the marketing critic, I gave Tim my signature eye-roll when he was unable to produce a business card: In lieu of a card, he gave me one of the tags he sews into his packs. Today I visited his website: clean design, perhaps a little too clean. Lots of nice photos but no verbiage to romance me into paying $114 for a clay-colored book bag.

Next, I stopped to chat with Cherise, an artist who I vaguely remembered from my class earlier this year. She stood next to a colorful display of hand-made cards encased in clear plastic wrappers, arranged in a little twirly rack on a table. Next to the rack were a few small paintings set on easels. I liked her images.

“How are your marketing efforts going?” I asked.

“If you had a class to help people post their art on their website, I would totally take it,” she said, looking embarrassed. Hmmm, I thought. An unfilled need. Could I fill it?

Today, I looked up her website, a drag-and-drop Go-Daddy affair that looked good to me. She had a page of digital art that people could buy, download, and print. I don't know what she was complaining about. Looked like she had it handled. Maybe she was having tech-swamp brain, like I often do. It's the inability of my brain to recall technical skills I previously learned, even the day before. She may have forgotten she knew what she knew. Or maybe she enlisted a niece to create the shopping page. I need more information.

Next to Cherise, was a card table showing a sparse collection of handmade embroidered patches and ... well, bigger patches, or maybe they were wall hangings? Heidi, the artist who invited me to the show, huddled under a laprobe behind the table. Heidi is an embroidery artist, I guess you could say. She takes tiny pieces of denim, embellishes them with microscopic cross stitches, attaches a minuscule fabric tag with her name on it, and safety pins a dinky price tag to the corner: $85. Yipes. She also had a dish of about twenty denim embroidered buttons for $35 each. I mean, buttons that you pin on your lapel, not buttons that go through buttonholes.

My eyesight is pretty bad, especially for closeup work, so I had to lift up my glasses to appreciate the fine detail. Even up close, though, I don't think I fully grasped the appeal. Now, if she had turned one of those miniature denim masterpieces into a huge wall tapestry or a rug . . . well, I guess I like my art over-sized. And functional. The way I like my brain. But I digress.

The third artist from my class was Marge. Marge works with wood. She does custom decks and fences in her outdoor life. Indoors, she builds wooden boxes on legs or wheels to hold things of various sizes, including stringed instruments.

“Is this where the magic happens?” I asked, patting the beat-up workbench shoved against the wall under a window and thinking, wow, this is really primitive. The lack of space and paucity of tools possibly explained why her work could best be described as rustic. I was reminded of the day many years ago when I showed my attempt to sew a leather outfit (turquoise lamb suede) to a professional seamstress who used to sew couture for Galiano. I'll never forget the look of withering pity she bestowed upon me as I wrapped up my amateurish effort and slunk out the door. I took a vow not to do that to anyone. I admired Marge's photos and patted her boxes.

I don't know if any of the artists sold anything but they didn't get any money from me. I'm in downsize mode. Cognitive dissonance kicks in when I imagine the hordes of artists around the world cranking out art that few people will see or buy. How is all this production helping the planet? But we can't tell artists not to create. That would be saying, dancers, stop dancing; singers, stop singing. Fish gotta swim. Artists gotta create. And we need art, even if we are running out of places to put it.

The Chronic Malcontent attempts to teach artists not to hate business

As an artist and marketer, I have a foot in both art and business. Sometimes I feel like the anti-Christ of marketing, but still, with a Ph.D. in marketing, I have a lot of book knowledge, not to mention valuable personal experience making marketing mistakes and a sincere desire to be of service, all of which qualify me to act as an interpreter for struggling artists who want to bring their art into the world.

Yesterday I led six adult students through the horrific intersection of art and business, also known as the Art & Business class. Art and business is like oil and water to artists. (What is it about artists that makes us want to hurl at the thought of mixing art and money?)

Seven people were registered for the class. The table arrangement accommodated eight in a horseshoe shape. My homemade comb-bound workbooks were placed in front of each chair. Pens were scattered around. Table tents of white card stock were folded at each seat, waiting for students to print their names.

I never know who will sign up for six hours of this rare form of hell. As usual, the group of so-called artists was a mixed bag. The first to arrive was an older gentleman, maybe a few years older than me (I just turned 63), with wispy white hair and glasses. The next to arrive was a younger woman with olive skin and lovely black-framed glasses. I greeted them both.

In the ensuing silence, they perused their workbooks while I stared out the window, starting to sweat as the clock ticked toward the start time. At three minutes to ten, I poked my head out the door and saw two young women sitting on a bench across the hall. They ignored me. At ten o'clock exactly, they strolled into the classroom and sat next to one another at the table nearest the door, chattering in a foreign language.

A minute after ten, I moved to my first PowerPoint slide and began my introduction. About ten sentences later, the door opened and a handsome bearded man in a knit cap entered, followed by a blonde woman wearing some sort of poncho-like garment. They took seats opposite the two young ladies. The tables were almost full. I welcomed the newcomers and finished up my introduction.

“Now it's your turn to talk,” I said. “Please introduce yourself and tell us what kind of art you make. And then please tell me what you hope to learn in this class today, so I can write it on the board.” I parked myself at the whiteboard, blue pen poised.

The woman in the poncho introduced herself as Jackie. “I'm not an artist,” she said. She motioned with her head toward the young man next to her. “I'm here to learn how to support Miller.” She efficiently opened her laptop and got ready to take notes. “I want to learn more about marketing.” I wrote marketing on the whiteboard.

I looked at Miller, who sort of folded in on himself, covering his face with his hand. “I hate anything to do with business,” he groaned dramatically. “That's why I brought my partner.”

“What kind of art do you make?” I asked politely.

“I paint. With oils. On paper. It's archival paper from France. It comes in rolls. It's perfectly legit, you can look it up. You know what I mean?” He rubbed his face with his hand and squirmed in his chair. I thought, what is up with this guy.

“What do you hope to get from this class today?” I asked.

He groaned and bent over like he was going to be sick. “I don't know!” he moaned. “How to make people buy my stuff?” I wrote how to make people buy my stuff on the board. For veracity, I like to use the students' actual words whenever I do the needs assessment.

Next up was the older guy, Dan. He sat up straight and introduced himself. “I'm retired. I like to draw figures. I try to get the most emotion into the fewest lines.”

“What do you hope to get from today's class?”

“Some tips on marketing, I guess,” he replied. “I'm not sure.” I wrote tips on marketing on the whiteboard.

Next to him sat the woman with the black glasses. “My name is Betty. I have my own studio,” she said nervously. “I used to teach art to children but I stopped doing that a couple years ago. Now I want to make signs. I need to make some money. I'm hoping to . . . I don't know what to focus on. I've got so many ideas, I don't know what to do.”

“I can relate to that,” I reassured her. “What do you hope to learn today?”

“I'm not sure, I don't know what I need. Help with marketing, I guess. I don't know.” I wrote marketing on the board.

I looked at the young woman to Betty's right and smiled encouragingly, noting her curly brown hair, perfect eyebrows, and flawless makeup. She smiled back.

“My name is Tina,” she said with an accent I couldn't place. “I am a cosmetic tattoist.”

“Tattoo artist?” I said. I pictured body tattoos.

“Cosmetic tattoos?” Dan clarified. “Like when people need . . . ?”

“Eyebrows,” Tina said.

“What would you like to get from this class today, Tina?” I asked.

“I'm not sure, marketing, maybe?”

The last person in the class was a young woman with long brown hair and glasses.

“I'm not an artist,” she said. “My son is in high school. He likes to draw.”

“So, you are here to get some information for your son?”

She nodded. “He wants to go to an art school in California, I don't know the name, very expensive. I want to help him make a good choice.”

On the whiteboard I wrote help loved one make a good choice.

And away we went. When I've recuperated, I'll tell you more.

Put a frame on it and call it art

I have spent most of my life trying to define art. Before you scoff, I challenge you to define art. Go on, try it, I dare you. Is it beauty to you? Is it something that evokes an emotional response? Is it line, shape, color, composition? Is it materials, texture, dimension? Is it sound, movement, light, the absence of light? Do you need any of those things to call something art?

What would you say if you drove around a curve and saw an entire mountain wrapped in orange silk? What if you heard someone singing opera in a subway station? What if you heard of someone who shot himself in the arm in front of an audience? Are those things art?

Does it have to be old to be art? If so, how old? Can it be two seconds old and be art? Do you have to be able to hold it in your hand or hang it on a wall or put it on a pedestal? Does it have to look like something you recognize, such as a man's face, a rearing horse, a naked woman? Is it art if you listen to it from the bleacher seats in a huge stadium with sixty-thousand screaming fans instead of on a vinyl record in your living room? Is it art if it self-destructs ten minutes after you bought it for a million dollars?

See what I mean? It's not that easy to define art. Art is what you say it is. What you say is art might be different from what I say is art.

I have my personal definition of art. Art is what I want to make. What is not art is what other people want me to make. For example, if you say, Hey, Carol, I really like your drawings. Can you draw me a cartoon of my mother riding a unicorn that I can print on a t-shirt to give her for her birthday? Or, maybe, Hey, Carol, you write funny stories. Maybe you should write a story about a specific topic for a magazine. You might even get paid.

I could say yes to both scenarios, but they would be jobs, not art. I'm not against jobs, but at my age, I'm just not that interested. I have chased money with my half-baked art ideas many times in my life and ended up poor and dissatisfied. Now when I make art, I may end up poor, but I am never dissatisfied. Some artists have a clear alignment between the art they make and the art the market wants. I envy them. They are the lucky ones. I have not yet been that lucky.

I'm tired, not thinking clearly. Summer came and went; I blinked and missed it. Tomorrow is the final day of September. The early onset of fall has prompted me to revive my rice-filled foot warmer. My next chore is to put plastic on the inside of all my east-facing windows. It's time to batten down the S.A.D. hatches with the therapeutic light box. The vertigo is ramping up as the temperature drops. I can't quit now, just because the days are growing shorter. My mother still needs me. Here we go into the dark tunnel, going to hell in a hand-basket.

Those who can't . . . teach

I spent almost ten years teaching business and general education courses to reluctant, resistant, and recalcitrant adult learners, many of whom attended school only for the student loan money they lived on. I used my time as a teacher to learn the craft and earn the advanced degree I now regret pursuing. Teaching was fun. I relished the challenge of organizing my approach to communicate material that most students would briefly absorb then promptly forget. I strove to create handouts, worksheets, templates, rubrics, guidebooks, cartoons, board games, dice games, role-play games, whatever it took to jam information into their heads that would stick long enough for them to pass the finals and graduate. It wasn't easy. Students often slept in class. They texted and played Farmville. They cheated on tests. They ignored me. They didn't read the textbook or do the practice exams. Many of my blog posts from 2012 and 2013 are stories of my angst and frustration with students.

It's happened again. I am now officially a teacher. Recently I taught two sessions of a day-long class for artists who want to learn some business skills. This time the format was continuing education, which meant no tests, no lectures, no jamming and cramming, no grading. This time, my students were artists.

Artists are the greatest. I love artists, probably more than I love art. Art is great, but once it's on the wall, it is done, it's over. Artists carry an endearing combination of creative confidence and urgent desperation. They make art with faith and trust in their ability to enter the zone, the flow. They know exactly what that zone is and regally assume their right to enter it. However, when it comes to bringing their art into the world, to show it, to sell it, to price it, it's like half their brain has gone missing. They are lobotomized by the prospect of applying business tools to their creative lives. They can't find the balance between creating art and marketing art. It makes them insane, timid, angry, anxious, resentful, all in the course of one discussion about whether we should make the art we want and then find a market for it, or whether we should seek a market and then produce art for that market. Yowza!

The day was long, split in two by a leisurely lunch hour. The students were attentive and eager, until we reached the point in the discussion about including financial statements in the business plan. Then they all entered their own private hell. I know this from the student feedback forms I collected at the end of the class. What is it about artists and business? Oil and water is trite but apt.

At one point in the pricing discussion, after much debate about how to price a painting, one older woman said, “What about that thing that artists bring, our creativity, shouldn't that be added in, shouldn't we get something for that?”

“Because we're so special and unique, you mean?”

“Well, yes.”

“If you can convince your buyer of that, then yes,” I said. “If people want what you are selling and can afford it, they will pay for it. Your job is to persuade them that your painting is worth that extra premium.”

“Well, what if they don't want to pay for that special extra thing, the . . . muse?”

“Then you don't sell the painting.”

“But shouldn't they understand that artists are different from . . . I don't know, ditch diggers?”

“Do you mean, buyers should give you something extra just because you are an artist?”

I could see other people nodding. I could feel myself nodding. The story of my life.

“Boy, wouldn't that be great? To be recognized for our creativity and compensated for it?” I sighed. “Art buyers might buy your painting because they think you are special. But mainly they are concerned with their own needs and wants. How will that painting make them feel? How will having one of your paintings boost their self-esteem? You need to convince them that your work is worth whatever price you are charging.”

I could see they were still dissatisfied. Some part of their artistic souls still thought they should have what they want, when they want it. They didn't want to do any work to get it, beyond making the art. Making the art should be adequate. They thought recognition, wealth, and fame should be theirs by divine right, apparently, simply because they were the artist and the buyer was not.

Finding the balance between the practical brain and the creative brain is the quest of the serious artist. We know we have to play by certain rules to bring our art into the world—that is why these artists enrolled in my class. But they still couldn't help complaining about the unfairness of having to think about things like marketing and selling, financial statements and business licenses.

Oh poor us, poor artists, woe is us, alas, alackaday. For those of us who haven't figured it out, it's easy to retreat to the hothouse and wait for someone else to administer the fertilizer, preferably in the form of big checks with no restrictions. And for those of us who still haven't figured it and who have all but given up, there's always teaching.

The Chronic Malcontent stumbles down memory lane

 As I grind my teeth and wait for a chat rep from the phone company to magically fix my billing issue, I thought I could use the time to catch up on my blog. Most evenings, when my brain is mush and I can't think, I work on my scanning projects. I'm scanning old documents, photos, letters, and artwork in a unique form of Swedish death cleaning. I'm not Swedish, nor am I dying, but preparing for the end of one life and (I hope) the beginning of another seems appealing to me as I get older.

I've been scanning letters. My letters. My mother (may she not live forever) saved every letter I wrote to her from the time I left home to the time I returned, twenty years later. When she embarked upon her own death cleaning (without the death part), she gave me back all those letters, two heavy shoe boxes stuffed with envelopes. Hundreds of pages. I couldn't throw them away without peeking at some of the things I wrote when I was twenty years old. Behold the slow-moving train wreck of my youth. Once you look, it's hard to look away.

I scanned one box over the past week, wrestling the dusty pages out of dirty envelopes, many addressed to "Mommy," from "Kidlet." I guess I was a very immature twenty-year-old. I don't remember much, to be honest. My memory works in Polaroid snapshots, not Sony Betamax. I recall moments, images, a dress, a song. How they connect I have no idea. Reading snippets of the letters from my earlier self helped me remember events I'd long forgotten.

Back then, everything was art. The letters, the envelopes, the scrawling calligraphic marks on the page. I drew pictures of clothes I designed and made at fashion school. It was 1978. Disco, leggings, spike heels, permed hair. Los Angeles was the place to be for a wannabe fashion designer. The voice coming through the letters was that of a child, a naive, foolish, optimistic child who was willing to live life on the edge—because what a creative life it was.

Like a child, I complained about everything. I was in a constant snit about something someone had done or failed to do. Until I read my own words, I didn't remember any of these snits . . . or most of the people. As I read, the places I lived, the people I knew started to resurface in my memory. The apartment on Romaine, where I lived in 1978 when I got hired at the department store. The apartment on Orange, where I lived in 1979 when I got fired from the department store. My month as a Dupar's waitress. Enrolling in fashion school. Working late hours doing paste-up for California Apparel News. Sleeping on the bus. Leaving fashion school after one year.

In 1980, I sent home photos of me with my friends, prancing around in tight-legged vinyl jumpsuits with shoulders the size of small turkeys, hennaed hair spiked half a foot above our heads. We showed our designs in fashion shows. We thought any moment, we would become famous. We thought people would be banging on our door in droves, demanding amazing costumes they couldn't sit down in.

The second box contains letters from the mid-1980s. I haven't started scanning those letters yet. I believe I was somewhat calmer then, perhaps more realistic. I was no longer making bizarre artfashion costumes that left the wearer drenched in sweat and unable to pee without wardrobe assistance. I'd lost my enthusiasm for fashion. By then I'd sold my soul to the custom sewing business and enslaved myself to making other people's designs and altering their stinky clothes. I myself was the worst-dressed person in L.A. To this day, I hate to sew.

Something corrosive happened to my soul when I became mired in a money-losing business doing something I despised. My good friend said, "It's never too soon to stop doing what you hate and start doing what you love." Even though I haven't quite managed to live up to that creed, I still think it is the best advice I've ever received.

I'm not the manic wackjob I used to be. I said I don't want to burden the world with more paintings, and that is true for now. One thing I can do, though, is write, and those letters are a vast hoard of rich and energetic descriptions from a life I barely remember, a life that might be fun to write about and read about. Maybe she, me, the young naive maniac with a passion for fashion will find her way onto the pages of some story, a book, a memoir, who knows.

It's almost enough to know that once, I had passion for something. Misguided, maybe, but I was a believer. I believed in my art, as only the young and innocent can do, before they find out it's hard to earn money making art. Life is real, rent is due, and we can't live on apples and cheese quesadillas. Money and art don't mix in my world, they never have, but that doesn't mean I won't figure it out someday.

Still making art? Fear no art. Art is for everyone.

One of life's perplexing questions, right up there with why men spit, is how every day, I somehow manage to get a blob of toothpaste on my shirt. I can't figure it out. I never notice when it happens. I only notice it when I'm in a social setting. I happen to look down and see a circle of dried white stuff and think to myself, dang it, it happened again. Is this one of the signs of aging? I don't need a toothpaste blob to tell me I'm getting older.

Speaking of feeling old, this week I received an email from an old friend. I met Mary (not her real name) when I was seventeen years old working as the reservation-taker at a popular dinner restaurant. The restaurant had an Irish musical theme; Mary was of Irish descent and loved to sing bawdy Irish drinking songs. She was several years older than I, with much more life experience (a failed marriage, a small child). For some reason, Mary took a shine to me and decided she would support my budding career as a painter by buying two of my paintings.

Forty-four years, we are still friends, although I moved away, she went to work for a bank, and we lost touch. However, over the years, Mary managed to accumulate a storage attic full of junk, some of which was art I had made in the 1970s when I still believed I could make a career of making art. Mary believed in me whenever my enthusiasm flagged. We spent many hours in my parents' basement building picture frames to nail around my brightly colored impasto acrylic-covered canvases with the intention of selling the paintings at the Saturday Market, a gathering of craftspeople and artists displaying their wares under tents and awnings haphazardly erected in an open parking lot, come rain or shine. I rewarded Mary's devotion to my art with art, which she apparently stored in her attic.

Her email message last week was something like this: It's been too long, let's get together, I have some of your art to share with you. Yes, she used the words "share with you." Immediately I recognized the code for Please come take your stuff back. I replied affirmatively, we set a time, and I drove over to her house in northeast Portland, expecting to take back the two paintings she paid $50.00 for back in 1974.

I walked into a chaotic scene. Her living room looked like a thrift store. Every surface held junk. The couch was obscured by artwork of various sizes and shapes, not all of which was mine, I was relieved to see. Mary gestured at a stack of paintings I had not seen since high school and early college.

“I had no idea you had so much of my artwork!” I exclaimed, thinking to myself, do I owe her forty years' worth of storage fees?

“I'd like to keep these two,” she said, pointing out two small painterly paintings, one of a stream coming down a hillside and the other of a beat-up wagon in an overgrown field. I pondered both pictures, not remembering either one. Certainly I had no recollection of painting them, but my signature was on both, so there is reality for you.

“Keep what you want,” I replied generously, thinking to myself, will all this crap fit in the trunk of my car? I saw some drawings I'd done while in fashion school (yes, I went one year to fashion school, you would never know by looking at me). “Just let me take some photos of them.”

I used my fancy new smartphone to take photos of the two little paintings. Then I gathered up an armload of the paintings and drawings she no longer wanted and hauled it all out to my car.

Was I ever so naive that I believed I could make a life for myself as a painter? Apparently so. I was in art school, everyone I knew was a painter, so I painted. We all painted, constantly. That first year of art school I produced scores of paintings. Most of them are lost to history. Maybe they hang on walls in houses somewhere. Maybe they clutter up attics and basements. I don't know. I wish now I had not been so prolific. At night I dream of the paintings stored in my own basement (well, my landlord's basement), the cast-offs of my mother and now my friend Mary. I wonder, how do people get rid of art? I don't mean, how do they haul the junk to the dump? I mean, how can they bring themselves to part with art that others have made? I don't mean crafts that disintegrate into plaster dust or knick-knacks made of construction paper and pipe cleaners. I mean authentic art, made by authentic artists seeking to express themselves through visual media. I have art from people I knew in college, people I knew in Los Angeles. Would I call them and ask them to take their work back, I don't want it anymore? No, never, not in a million years.

But now, after downsizing my mother into assisted living, I know that we don't take anything with us. Nothing last forever, not people, not stuff, not art. Art used to be made of organic materials; art used to decay. Modern humans make too much stuff, and none of it decays. There is no room for all this stuff. My old paintings are junk now, trash, stuff nobody wants. And because the paintings are largely made of acrylic paint, they will never decay, they will never turn to compost to help grow the next garden. I thought I was making art, but what I really made was pollution.

Never again, people.

The Chronic Malcontent resists

Winter came late to Portland this year. As I wait for the snow to melt (again), I crank up the bass on my old New Order CD so I don't have to listen to my neighbor's stereo reverberating through the bones of the Love Shack. While the cat hunkers down under the couch, I fish for cat hair between the keys on my keyboard with the sticky edge of a yellow sticky note. I guess I'm a bit stir-crazy.

I finished a couple editing jobs yesterday. After I submitted the second job, I immediately started cleaning. I vacuumed my two rooms and the hallway, I washed cat blankets, I swept up cat litter, I cleaned the mold growing along the edges of the tub, I scrubbed the toilet. I recycled a foot-high pile of reports I will never read again. I even started a new batch of wheat grass for the cat. When I finally stopped for dinner, I felt righteously deserving of something special. Mmm, waffles.

Later I fell asleep on the couch in a carb-induced haze with the murmur of angry town hall voices in the background. I dreamed of buying a decrepit hovel in Italy for $1.00. Growing beets and broccoli. Washing in creek water. I'm ready to drag up on this town. Any town. Anywhere where people congregate and spit hatred at each other. I want out of the tribe. I want to belong to no tribe.

Speaking of tribes, my sister and I Skype weekly. (I like my sister, so for her I will make an exception and let her into my tribe. Or maybe I should beg her to let me into her tribe, she's way cooler than I am.) My sister travels to Europe almost every year. These days she's in Munich, nine hours ahead of Portland. Her day winds down as mine begins.

We usually discuss our progress on our current research and writing projects. I have a long backlog of ideas, some half-started, many of them suggested by my sister. She's a dynamo when it comes to brainstorming writing projects. Today she suggested I write an illustrated memoir about our mother. When she said it, my heart skipped a little, possibly because my heart is old, but more likely because the thought of writing such a book crowds too close to my heart. Mom disintegrates daily into a stranger.

I was born to write and illustrate books. I've known this since I was nine. The thought of actually fulfilling my destiny terrifies me. The financial logistics of living my purpose are baffling. I don't know how to live in the world of money. After we ended our call, I went back into frenetic cleaning mode. I'm trying to ignore the images in my mind. I can see them so clearly I want to weep. The book is practically written. All I need are some drawings. And the ending.

It's almost spring . . . time for a little networking!

I've hunkered in my cave long enough. It's almost spring. Time to do a little networking! If you've read any of my blog posts from 2015, you know I think networking is highly overrated. Especially when the facilitators hand you a “Networking Bingo” card with stupid questions like, Find someone who wasn't born in Oregon, and Find someone who was! But tonight I was ready to get out of the house, so I waited on the corner in the freezing rain for twenty minutes for a bus to take me downtown to a networking event.

The event was billed as a speed mentoring event, a chance for entrepreneurs to meet some so-called experts to pick their brains about marketing, strategy, finance, and legal issues. What could be more fun? Thirty entrepreneurs in a new age concrete and wood conference room, milling around trying to avoid eye contact with each other. Ho hum. So been there done that. But I was ready! Let me at that Bingo card!

I was easily the oldest person in the room. I guess I should start getting used to that. The upside to being old, though, is that I don't care what people think about me anymore. I can say anything to anyone. I'll never see them again. And few of these people were likely to be in my target market, so la la la.

The six mentors had to take us two at a time; each entrepreneur was supposed to get fifteen minutes of one-on-one time. Oh boy!

My first two sessions were with marketing experts, a couple of smart, confident women I could have talked with for a long time over coffee. They both valiantly gave me what they could before the bell rang and it was time to move on to the next table.

Actually, my first session lasted only about ten minutes, because my partner hogged the time. I mean, hogged the time. She even came back and gave the mentor a swatch of her unique (and pungent) geranium aroma-therapy oil. I tried not to be resentful.

My third session was with a “strategist,” Josh, a young man with a diffident air. No one else had signed up for that time slot, so I sat alone as I handed him a postcard for my recently published book. He asked me some polite questions, trying to get a feel for my business direction.

I was just drawing a breath to begin waxing poetic about my dream of establishing a small publishing empire when a young woman sat down in the chair next to me and heaved an enormous sigh. My session partner had arrived.

Josh's eyes left me and settled on her. We both stared. She was dressed in a rumpled vintage get up that I might have worn when I was in my twenties, back when I cared how I looked. Her skin was smooth, her lips were red, her eyes were shadowed, her hair was fluffy and pulled up into some kind of shape. She looked messy but real, coy but accessible, and within seconds, I was pretty sure I had her figured out.

“Well, let's let that percolate,” Josh said vaguely, setting my postcard aside. To the newcomer, he said, “Hi, what brings you here?”

“I had a business. Gardening. With my boyfriend. He signed me up, and then he left me. Now I have this business, mostly contract work for walls and walkways, and I don't have insurance, and I don't know what I'm doing,” she said breathlessly, eyelashes fluttering. Her lips were mesmerizing, I had to admit. Josh was certainly mesmerized. The temperature between them ratcheted up a peg. I sat back in my chair and watched.

Her name was something like Nora, and she was on the prowl for attention. Josh was bored and ready to comply. Nora described her business in a self-deprecating way, casting sidelong glances at Josh, and occasionally at me, because I was there, after all. Nobody could deny that I was there, watching. Finally, she ran down, and Josh seemed speechless. Without thinking first, I asked, “What could go wrong?”

“What?”

“What could go wrong? If you don't have insurance...?”

“Yeah, good question,” Josh said.

Nora said a few things, I said some things (devil's advocate is my best role), and Josh pretended to agree. As I listened to Nora talk about her landscaping business, I could tell her heart wasn't fully in it. I know what that feels like, and I've seen it many times in my former students, who were struggling to get associate's degrees in fields they didn't care about.

“It seems like you aren't really into this business,” I said respectfully. “What would you rather be doing?”

Nora took a deep breath. A smile lit up her face. She sat up straight in her chair and waved both arms. I thought, wow, this will be good.

“I want to build a huge garden, twenty acres, with a sauna hut in the middle, in the hills outside of [some town I didn't recognize] in Massachusetts!”

Then she slumped. “But I love my clients!” she moaned. “Their gardens are my babies. The vines and flowers . . . I can't leave my babies.”

“They won't love your gardens the way you do,” I said unsympathetically. “They'll forget to trim those vines and let them grow all over their houses . . .  You'll never get away. Your clients will drain you dry if you let them.”

Nora made a pouty face. I thought, whoops, maybe that was a bit harsh, so I smiled disingenuously to ease the sting. I used to be afraid of young women like Nora, I realized. Looking into her vapid, self-centered eyes, I realized, she doesn't want to be in business. She just wants attention. Then I realized that I was actually talking about myself, about my editing clients draining me dry, and suddenly I couldn't breathe.

I said to Nora gently, “Think about where you want to be in five years, ten years... Don't wait until you are old like me to pursue your dream.”

Josh said, “I know what it's like to detour away from doing what you love.” I thought, hey, something is going on with him, too. I turned my earnest gaze his way and asked, “What detour did you take? What would you rather be doing?”

“I play the upright bass in a jazz band,” he said sheepishly. “I like doing this business thing, but . . .”

“It's hard to make money doing music,” I said. He nodded.

“I have a family to take care of. But I'd really just like to be shredding my bass.” We all sat quietly for a moment, pondering detours and shredded basses. Then Josh shook himself and turned to me. “What about you, what's your dream?”

I reflected for a split second and said, “I'm closer now to my perfect life than I've ever been before. Writing, publishing, making art. It's what I've wanted to do since I was nine years old. And now I'm doing it.”

A few minutes later, the bell chimed, and it was time to move on to the next table.

Put a frame on it and call it art

In honor of the end of summer, I took an extra long walk tonight, hiking around the north and south reservoirs four times. That equals 2.24 miles, but who is counting. As I walked along, I felt my left cheek twitching. My face cheek that is, although other cheeks have been known to twitch from time to time. My left cheek has been twitching for a month or two now. I'm pretty sure it's a sign of stress, but then I didn't need an extra sign to know I'm ready to spontaneously combust.


The sun was descending over the west hills as I strode along the path, being passed by old men on bikes, old ladies walking, and mothers walking with little kids. A snappy breeze gave my baseball cap a bit of a lift. I noticed the paddling of eight ducks had moved from Mt. Tabor Park's south reservoir to the north reservoir, not sure why. Uptown water, I guess. These are your historic reservoirs! No longer Portland's drinking water, thanks to the EPA.

I brought my digital camera with me tonight. It's an old dinosaur of a silver box, sluggish shutter, feeble focus... it seems to prefer three dimensional objects. Old posts, rocks, sewer gratings. Those are the photos that look the most interesting when I get them downloaded to my computer. The images of faraway downtown Portland are hazy, gray, and flat. I don't know much about photography, but I'm pretty sure if I had a better camera, I could take really good pictures.

It doesn't matter, though. Because I know the secret to making art. Whatever you have—photo, crayon drawing, pen-and-ink sketch, finger painting—whatever it is, all you have to do is put a frame around it. Whatever it is, if you are wondering if it could possibly be art, but you aren't quite sure, I tell you, just frame it! Framing any two-dimensional object automatically elevates it to the status of art. Take it from me. I used to be an artist. I know what I'm talking about.

Hey, ask anybody, if you don't want to take my word for it. I know, you don't even know me. Talk to one of your artistic friends, I'm sure you have a few lurking in nearby lofts and basements. If you can get them to take a break from making art, show them two pictures, one framed and one unframed. Ask them to point to the one that is art. I'm sure they will pick the one in the frame every time.

The nice thing is, it doesn't even have to be a fancy frame. Any crappy frame will do, even one that your niece made out of cardboard and dry macaroni. Even a frame of seashells. Hey, I once made a frame of red hot tamale candies! I kid you not. I glued the hot tamales on a box frame, painted them glorious jewel colors, and sprayed the thing with clear lacquer. What a shining thing of beauty. I actually forget what was surrounded by this wondrous frame, but it was art, let me assure you. The frame hung on my wall near the ceiling for years. I would show you a picture of the frame but last year the ants found the red tamales and started hauling bits of candy into the molding around the ceiling. That was the end of that frame. The ant trail remains, embedded in the off-white paint. If I could figure out how to put a frame on that ant trail, I bet I could call it art.

The world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket, as usual. Maybe we are falling toward hell a little faster these days, it's hard to tell. It might just be the stinky election season making me feel like life is spinning out of control faster than usual. Probably not. It's hard to have perspective sometimes. I try to imagine what the 2010s would look like from the 1940s and I think, well, probably it's about the same in some ways, better in others. Don't let me complain about never winning anything! I breathe a sigh of relief every day when I realize I won the white American lottery.

Up close, my mother continues to disintegrate in slow motion, one molecule, one day at a time. I haven't quite figured out yet that I can't stop it, hence the cheek twitch and the persistent vertigo. I'm taking time out from editing a boring dissertation to write this blog post. From 30,000 meters up, it's all good, right? And then we die. From an altitude of 30 centimeters, it's an endless grind of pushing pebbles up a tiny hill. I'm trying to put a frame on my experience, thinking I can elevate the status of my life to art. Is it working? Hmmm. I don't think so. Wait, let me get out my glue and pasta shells! Where's my glitter?

You know it's hot when the cat sleeps in the tub

During the spring, winter, and fall, I often try to remember how it feels to swelter in 90°+ heat. I never can. I know for my friends in Arizona, 90° is practically sweater weather. We aren't used to it so much, here in Stumptown. This year is unusual. June was a record breaker: nine days over 90, 21 days over 80, and 25 consecutive days with no rain. We joke around here that summer starts July 5: not this year. Summer arrived early and brought the fire season with it. The fireworks show at Fort Vancouver just about burned down the fort! WTF, you guys in The Couv!

I'm hunkered in front of the computer, waiting for the sun to stop scorching my front windows: To pass the time, I poured cold water on my head. The cat is dozing stoically in the bathtub. I wonder what he would do if I turned on the cold water. Yowwww!

This heat has slowed me down a bit. So has my new pedestrian lifestyle. I'm still managing to maneuver around, though, more or less. On Thursday I hopped on the #15 bus to join Bravadita in the Pearl District in NW Portland for the monthly First Thursday gallery walk. We met first at Powell's Books in 90°+ heat and sat in the AC for a while, talking, postponing the moment when we would enter the furnace outside to find our first gallery. Finally, we could postpone no longer. Water bottles in hand, we plunged into the heat.

Did you know sweaty feet and sandal leather combine to make blisters? Argh. I hobbled gamely from gallery to gallery, looking for something, I'm not sure what. Inspiration? A place to sit down? Affirmation that I'm still an artist? Huh. I don't see my art hanging on any walls except the Love Shack's. We were swinging with the young and hip crowd, wandering from painting to photograph. I took surreptitious photos of Bravadita when I thought she was ignoring me.

Sometimes I wonder where my acrylic paints are (what box, buried in what closet). I wonder if the ultramarine blue is moldy, or if the cadmium red is crusty and desiccated. I wonder where my good paintbrushes are (what drawer, what box). I wonder what it would be like to paint something. Anything. And then I think, where would I put it when it's finished? Every inch of wall space is covered with shelves or art.

I remember in art class years ago, we had an assignment to paint on a 11 x 14 panel, photograph the image, and paint a new image over the old image, over and over. I painted about 50 images in the space of several hours. I still have the slides somewhere (what box, what drawer). I could repeat that assignment again. Paint, photograph, and repaint, over and over. In a year, I would have one painting and 365 photographs of paintings that existed for one day. Oh, art, how transient thou art.

I'm running out of food. The heat wave has conspired to keep me housebound. Walking in this heat is not healthy, and I'm not a morning person. I won't starve, no worries. I don't feel like eating much in this heat, anyway. If I get really hungry, I can always order online and get stuff delivered. In a few more days, the heat will break, we'll be back to our usual cloudy damp gray skies, and I'll try once again to remember what it felt like to be sweltering in my cave.