taking care

 

my best ideas come when i'm least expecting it, usually when i'm driving or drifting off to sleep or doing something so entirely consuming i can't stop a minute to make note of it.  it's hard to hang on to those ideas, they seem to drift out of sight like dandelion seeds in the wind.  but sometimes they stick around, sometimes they grow on me.  these days, i carry a calendar around as an insurance policy. each day has a set of empty lines and each idea gets marked down so i don't lose track of it.  i go back often, retrieve seeds of ideas, put them together, they develop into paintings or projects or lists that get me from here to there. it seems to work, making my somewhat hodge-podge of a professional life more productive than it's ever been.

 even still, i have my moments.  today, i found myself trying to do too many things at once, remember too many things at once.  i opened my trusty notebook while driving windy old chuckanut, struggled one-handed to find a pencil in the bottom of my bottom-less bag.  the radio was blarin and i was rockin out, singing along, in an anthemic "TAKIN CARE OF BUSINESS, EVERY DAY!"  do you ever find that when you try to do too much at once, you get nothing done at all, or worse yet, you fuck shit up because you're in a hurry?  it happens.  but as mr. ben franklin said himself: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  stop it,  i had to say to myself.  slow the fuck down.  concentrate on one thing at a time.

i remember you

i remember it well.  meeting james was like meeting a wild animal face to face.  he was of the untamed sort, a free-thinking kind of fella, going about life in his own way, distinctly.   perfect for a girl like me, having grown up mostly protected and sheltered in a suburban kind of way, i was looking for someone outside of the box of normalcy, distinctly.   i was looking for an adventure, and i knew i had found it.  james, well, he was full of surprises, full of stories and ideas.  he lived in the moment, moment to moment, and was the first man i had ever met who was entirely self-employed, lived the way he wanted to live, by his own set of rules.  he was different.

james had holes in his jeans, holes in the elbows of his sweaters, holes in the floor and windows of his house where the air came through.  he wasn't afraid.  the edge of his hat was threadbare and worn, the color obscured by the years of "environment" it had collected.  james didn't give a fuck what people thought.  he had the biggest bluest eyes i had ever seen, full of fire and ferocity.  and i knew: i didn't have a chance.

on one of our first hangouts, james gave me the smallest cd i had ever seen, decorated with a tiny star in sharpie marker.  the cd held two songs, both of which he had written and recorded himself, alone in a yurt on an island i hadn't yet been to.  i listened, and listened again.  the music moved me in the way that only some music does.  and i knew: i didn't have a chance.

certain music, well it just becomes the soundtrack of your life.  those days, i listened to a lot of screeching weasel, rentals, the anniversary and misfits on my walk up the hill to school.  i never wore socks, always wore short pants so you could see my ankles.  i had bleach blond hair that was four inches long, wore studded belts, tried to be rock and roll before i knew what that meant.  i listened to elliott smith and the pixies while painting some of my first paintings.  and ten years ago, james played me neutral milk hotel. from then on, i couldn't get enough.   it was our soundtrack.

 last night, seeing jeff mangum in the flesh, hearing him play those songs i knew by heart, it all came flooding back. 

simplicity

*

i'm starting to figure it out.  how to live right, that is.  or rather, how to take care of business.  and how not to drive myself crazy with minutia.  it's not so complicated, but somehow, it's always eluded me.  here, i'll give you an example:  

i was tired of washing dishes.  we don't have a dishwasher, we do it all by hand.  it seemed to me that every day they piled up: in the sink, on the counter, everywhere.  especially silverware. and no matter how hard i tried to stay on top of it, it was like a plague.  the pile would grow and grow.  in a tiny kitchen, this just doesn't work.  so i started to observe my own behavior.  what i found was: every morning, when i went to use a fork to mix the cat food, i grabbed it from the drawer and then tossed it in the sink.  so i thought to myself:  lets get to the root of this problem.  i went through every cupboard and drawer, and filled a big box with give-aways.  things i didn't need.  things that were redundant.  i kept a small set of silverware in the drawer, four forks, four spoons and four knives, and hid some extras away, just  in case of company.  and now, suddenly, it's much easier to do the dishes.  

in short, this lesson can be applied to many areas of life.

1) simplify.

2) repeat as necessary.

coffee colored

*

it rained all day.  the water collected in the low spots in the yard and the ducks mucked around in it like they do.   i felt at home in the rain, quieted by the rain, thankful for the rain to douse last nights inaugural campfire.  i walked the dogs by the river, just me and my coffee, the river mimicking the color of my coffee with almond milk, the way it is when the water collects mud and silt on its way down down down the hills.  the grass is tall enough now that the water sneaks up, wicks into my rolled up jeans and somehow down into my boots.  i don't mind, no.  neither do the dogs, soaked the bone.  they were happy to be wrestling,  skirting and darting in the grass, little daredevils, the grass tall enough to hide their bodies, one tackle and tumble after another.   i wore the raincoat and the mud boots, my northwest washington uniform, but took the hood off so i could hear the sound of water hitting the ground and the rivers surface.  i always notice how people flinch and contort their faces in the rain, as if they don't like the rain.  i don't do that. i like the rain.  i was born here.  i belong here.  it just makes sense.

day of rest

*

by the time five o'clock sunday rolls around, i am darn ready to close the store and get outside.  after working my retail shifts, smiling my special "only for customers" smile, so much so that i fear my face might get stuck that way, i am pretty eager to get back to my sunshine and shovel, my dirt, my weeding and turning of new garden beds, to get my hands black in the mud.  by sunday at five, i am ready for the tourists to go home, to stop peeking over my fence, ready for them to give me my town back, and for the busy streets full of shiny black expensive cars and gurgling harley davidsons to be empty again, so i can walk my dogs down the center line, in a yes i live here, thank you sort of way.  yeah, sure, i depend on tourism.  but that dependency is a double-edged sword.  sometimes it's hard not to resent the situation, feeling like an monkey at a zoo begging for a measly peanut from passerby.  thankfully, sunday always brings monday, the quietest day, a day of rest. 

the road home

*

there is something breathtaking about the way the dandelions glow, sun shining, in a fat stripe along both sides of farm to market road, something that makes it so hard to believe the dandelion is considered a weed.  sure, it's hard to make them "go away" entirely.  their root systems dig deeply into the most barren landscapes, making the dandelion a bit of a renegade, a survivor, popping up again and again, seemingly strengthened by every futile attempt to dig it up and weaken its spirit, sneakily breaking off at the root to leave just a bit behind.  

  it's one of the first flowers to bloom around here, and a much needed burst of yellow among the drab washed out greys of winter.  i've seen many a honey bee collecting pollen from those blooms, and it makes me wonder why i ever pull them out in the first place.  we as humans are illogical like that, i suppose.  someone decided one day that the dandelion was a pest to their immaculate lawn of uninterrupted velvet green, and from that day forward, billions upon billions of dollars have gone into chemical potions designed to decimate the dandelions.  for what reason? some sort of manifest destiny, some lofty ideal of perfection.  but to me, the dandelion epitomizes perfection.  i always think to myself, when the world goes to shit, when shit hits the fan, it's the dandelions, the thistles and the morning glory, the rats and crows and seagulls, the pests and underdogs of nature that will make it through alive.

the future

*

the puppies are learning.  potty-training, sitting, laying down, and staying.  the word no in deep booming voice.  what good boy means.  and they can almost fetch.  during a sunny day in the backyard, i throw a chunk of a stick.  they will run for it, clumsily, enthusiastically pick it up, it fills up their entire mouth.  they bring it halfway to me, then get distracted by the other's antics, dropping the stick entirely to chew on their brothers ear or hind leg.

sometimes i am like that puppy, getting halfway to the finish line of some project before dropping it entirely to pursue something else.  

having puppies has taught me many things, but one thing for sure:  set lots of goals,  but set small goals.  set attainable goals, write them down.  cross them off, one at a time.  and most of all, slow down, for all good things come in time, with patience.  and some day, a long long time from now, you will look back on it all thinking how it went by in just the blink of an eye.