Change is coming

I miss my stuff. Almost all my possessions are ensconced in a 5' x 5' storage unit over by the mall. The cubicle is 8 feet tall, otherwise no way could I have stacked my shelves, bins, and boxes into that small of a footprint. I marvel at how many possessions I still have, given all the moving and downsizing I have done in the past three or so years. Swedish death cleaning may be a thing, but in my case, it has not resulted in total cleaning . . . or death, I might add, so there's that.

Speaking of death, I'm feeling transparent these days, uprooted, barely clinging to something I don't recognize anymore. I just want to get away from everything, but of course, that is not possible, because as we know, wherever we go, there we are. However, I can live with myself in my own brain. What I cannot live with for long is the clamoring of well-meaning people who think they can save me. Or the criticisms of confounded people who can't understand why this is happening to me, given how white and well-educated I am. Or the judgments of fearful people who subconsciously realize their lives are one wildfire or flood or divorce away from being in the same predicament. 

I can live with my own fears, but I can't manage the fears and criticisms of others. 

Meanwhile, my dear friend from college is sinking fast into some terrible form of dementia. I don't know what the diagnosis is, but who cares what it is called when it's obvious her brain cells are exiting stage right, like rats from a sinking ship. Folding, perforating, evaporating, no idea what is happening in that head, but it is total disaster. Nothing is firing right in her brain anymore. It's utterly terrifying to witness. I could hardly sleep last night, and I'm not the one experiencing the inexorable disintegration of my executive functions. It's one thing when it happens to your 90-year-old mother. It's another thing entirely when it happens to your same-age friend. Death is staring her in the face, and she can't even find the words to express her despair. 

I'd rather have cancer, to be honest, than dementia. I can only pray to the gods of young drug addicts at the U of A campus that there will be a handful of fentanyl tabs left for me when it's time to go to the great art school in the sky. And that I remember what they are for and why I should quickly take them, before someone else does. I do not want to go gently into that big state-run memory care tenement, where I will be ignored by underpaid medical assistants and abandoned by distant family to overloaded social workers. I'm pretty sure there will be no internet. I mean, I ask you! No internet. If that happens, if I have a brain cell left in my head to make a decision, I will make a run for it, somehow, I will find a last shred of freedom. I'm not ashamed to be a silver alert. 

It's monsoon in southern AZ. It sucks, but no more than any other season here. I feel so out of place. I thought I would love this place . . . warm, dry, what's not to love? I used to chase the sun. In Portland, even as a kid, I would perk up whenever the sun came out. Clouds were my enemy. I craved blue skies. In Los Angeles, the sun was a gentle presence, filtered by fog and smog. Skies were pale robin's egg blue, like a fine china teacup. Not so in the desert. When the sky is blue, the sun is my enemy. Clouds are my shelter, even when winds are whipping up the dust and I'm dodging rain drops. I'd rather be struck by lightning than let the sun touch my skin.

The first monsoon was exciting. So energetic and raw, who knew! The novelty quickly wore off. If you've seen one spectacular desert sunset, you've truly seen them all. I have grown to hate this place. And this place hates me right back. No matter how many knuckles they have, or how gnarled their fingers, all the cactuses on all the hillsides everywhere I go have their middle fingers raised. Every last cactus in this dirty, noisy, unholy town is flipping me off. I ask you, have you ever been so aggressively dismissed by nature? I know. It seems impossible, and yet, everywhere I go, there they are, these angry bitter saguaros, telling me, You don't like it here? Go back to where you came from, gringa blanca. 

I don't want to go back to where I came from, but I know I can't stay here. I seem to have a habit of moving first and regretting later. Maybe this time I will try a new strategy. Maybe this time I will look first before I leap. Regret might follow, but at least I can say I tried my best to keep my eyes open. 

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.