11/3/10: A plastic jack-o-lantern-shaped bag...

...two blindingly white lacy bras.

Garth's theory when items like this (the bras) show up is that a guy has brought them.  No, said guy hasn't decided to give up cross dressing.  Garth's theory is that there has been a break-up.  Some woman spent enough nights and mornings with some guy that she had left a few of her under-things at his place.  And then he decided - or she decided - he was done.  No more contact, a clean break.  What to do with the under-things?  Bring them to the Free Bench, of course. 

Garth always suggests these theories with sadness, as if he knew the people and liked them as a couple and is sad they couldn't make a go of it.  I like this about Garth, though I rib him about it, too.  I am more cynical about relationships, or just less romantic.  Or maybe practical.  Those bras represent a bit of an investment - probably 35 or 40 bucks apiece easily.  Who'd casually leave something like that at some guy's place to be cast off onto our Bench? 

But I haven't found another theory that I like especially.  Garth's probably right.  It's all about relationships, isn't it?

 

11/2/10: A long strand of metallic blue Mardi Gras beads...

...a small houseplant in a blue ceramic planter, four books of the Jacqueline Susann ilk, a paper sack full of chewy dog or cat toys, a portable sandwich griller.
 
The sack full of animal toys makes me think of the Steve Martin sketch that has stood the test of time - the one where he talks about how his cat has been staying up watching late-night TV and ordering mountains of cat toys: "Hundreds of dollars worth!  And I can't return them because they have spit all over them..."

I am of mixed minds about the sandwich griller.  On the one hand, it's the sort of thing I'd have to find more surface area for - something that is in short supply in our household.  On the other hand, there is something spiffy about specialized kitchen items.  I remember when my friend, Chris, got the Cadillac of nutmeg graters for his birthday.  We spent many moments cooing about its perfection and specificity.  First, it was smallish and curved in a particular way so as to make it less likely that the person doing the grating would grate their knuckles in addition to the nutmeg.  Secondly, it was fitted into a container with a shaker top, the better to catch the grated nutmeg and shake it into your warm milk.  It was the first time I'd seen what a whole nutmeg looked like.

11/1/10: Nothing new on the Bench

...unless you count the manager of the apartments next door.  She is a rather rectangular woman with brittle-y dark hair.  I only ever see her when she's smoking, but that's because the apartments are non-smoking housing and so to smoke she must come outside.  She is at our Bench because it is pouring out, likely hard enough to put out a lit cigarette (you recall the Bench has an awning).

The food from yesterday remains.  I expect it will be a hard sell, being partially used amounts of not very interesting foods.  Maybe I'll grab the vinegar, throw it in with some laundry.  Is it possible for vinegar to be rendered unusable?

I am unhappy that our election day bespoils Day of the Dead.  We will not take a picnic lunch to any cemetarys, but we will think of what we might bring if we did.  This makes me think of my grandmothers in particular: my maternal grandmother, for whom I'd bring one egg over easy, buttered toast and a cup of coffee; my paternal grandmother, who was so good at making food that others loved that I'm not even sure what her favorites were.

"until we die we will remember every/ single thing, recall every word, love every/ loss."  -A.R. Ammons

10/31/10: A container of salt...

...half bottle of apple cider vinegar, box of whole wheat bread crumbs, small pair of chunky saddle shoes.

The shoes are great.  Kami loves them so much they might not come off of her feet for a few days.  They are a welcome addition to her Halloween costume, which is something like "black and white with big hair."

The food implies a recipe, food purchased for a specific purpose, useless once the item was made.  It makes me think of mock apple pie, made from Ritz crackers.  I always wanted to try that, but was simultaneously afraid of trying it.  It would have seemed wrong somehow if it had actually tasted like an apple pie.  It would have made me think harder about what exactly is in Ritz crackers.  This, of course, says something about me - that I think there are things it is better for me not to know.

10/28/10: A pair of grey sweats...

...a small opened box of C & H Pure Cane Sugar, a pair of flip-flops, a pair of canvas sneakers, an old (circa 1950's if I had to guess) Mr. Vibrator in its original box.

(Not going near that last item.)

The last day I was home sick, I had the energy to putter around the house and bring a few things of ours out to the Bench (all of them are gone today except the flip-flops - an old pair of Kami's which I think came off the Bench a year or more ago).  As I was laying things out, a young woman walking her dog stopped next to me.  "Do you live here?" 

I said, yes, that usually the items on the Bench weren't from us, contrary to what she was seeing at this precise moment.  She said, "I know.  I got a new jacket here last week.  I was trying it on - it was in great shape - and this guy came up and said, 'Hey, I just left that here.  Does it fit?'  It did, and I got to thank him for it.  I come by every other week or so."

I asked her name - Erin - and her dog's name - Leroy.  Her dog was black Labrador-ish: the Platonic ideal of a dog.  I liked how glad she was that she could actually thank the person responsible for her new jacket.

***

Many thanks to all the healing thoughts and well-wishes sent my way.  They worked; I am healed.

10/19/10: A tomato red women's long-sleeved t-shirt...

The shirt is a bit odd.  The v-neck on it is so low it's practically belly-button-exposing (makes me think of the sort of 70's pantsuits favored by Elvis and James Brown - who ever thought those were hot?).  Obviously it's meant to be worn over a tank top or something like that, but I've never seen anything quite like it.

Those 70's pant suits made me think of watching Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, which was something I only watched during the wee hours of baby sitting the year I was fourteen.  (Come to think of it, I once saw Aretha Franklin wearing one of those pantsuits on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert.  Not her best look.)  We lived in New York on a cul-de-sac, and every house besides ours was occupied by small children and their parents.  My sister, Gretchen, and I had as much babysitting as we wanted.  And these folks paid well.  They were all about having their swinging 70's parties, which meant someone else had to watch their kids.  And they stayed out late.  I don't know how they did it.  I remember on New Year's Eve watching Jerry Lewis' Muscular Dystrophy Telethon until 3:30 a.m. before the parents returned and I could go home and sleep.  There was nothing else on TV but Jerry Lewis.  Torturous.  Thank god I was getting paid $3 an hour.

That house, the Telethon house, was done all in white and gold.  It had a white and gold princess phone.  There were plastic coverings on the white and gold living room furniture, and a vinyl walkway throughout the house atop their white shag carpet.  It was not an especially relaxing babysitting gig.  Then there was the (scandalous!) divorced mom who left for me a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, and bowls and bowls of assorted candies to snack on.  There was a toddler who had the most out-y belly button I'd ever seen.  His parents were nice, though it was in doing yard work for them that my brother got the most horrific case of poison sumac ever. 

Then there was the baby who was only a week or so old.  His mom was the recently divorced sister of one of the cul-de-sac moms.  That was my first solo experience around a baby so small.  I'd been told to leave the baby in the crib, but he cried and seemed so lonely.  Eventually, I snuggled him up next to me on top of the covers of the king-sized bed in the master bedroom - where the TV was.  There was something so grounding about just letting my body soothe this little guy.  His mom - a long-haired, skinny woman probably in her late 20's - looked shell shocked, looked more like she could use several days' sleep rather than the crazy, drunken party she attended. 

That baby is probably out there somewhere now, a 35-year-old man.  I hope he found his way okay.  He made a pretty good start, able to get an inexperienced teenager to offer him the comfort he needed.

10/17/10: A large chartreuse plant pot...

...several brightly-colored many-layered tissue paper flowers.

These tissue paper flowers link two particular memories for me.  Ever since our mothers met when my mother was the Den Mother for my brother's and Jeff Blank's Weblos (pre-Boy Scout) troop, the Blank family had us over each year for one night of Chanukah, and for Passover.  The Chanukah when I was ten, I received a kit for making tissue paper flowers.  I was captivated by the process as well as the end product, and I made nearly every flower in the kit that night, and then enjoyed finding people to give my flowers to.

The following year, we lived in Scotland.  My mom took the modern dance scene in St. Andrews by storm, and one of her devotees was a British-educated woman named Zorina.  That spring, Zorina was going to some street fair-type thing in another town, and somehow it was agreed that I'd go with her.  I was encouraged to figure out something to sell, and I hit upon the idea of making tissue paper flowers.

I wish I could finish off this memory in story-like fashion, like, I took the tissue paper flower scene by storm, or, it rained and all my flowers disintegrated.  But all I remember was sitting at Zorina's table beside cobblestone streets.  It was a long day, rather uneventful, but the sun shone all day.  The air was crisp and clear.  Sitting with this new family friend and my flowers brought back a dark December night with the Blanks - two worlds brought together in me.

10/16/10: Many things have come and gone today...

...a skirt sweater set, a striped shirt, a TV with built-in VCR, a pair of black pants, a lovely navy blue shirt.  They came, they went.

I am struck by the fact that it is a Saturday night, and here I sit, musing.  (Garth has taken the kids - with my brother-in-law as stand-in for me (thank you, Banks!) - to their school's Harvest Festival.  I begged off, having had an "off" day all day.)  I have never been plagued by Saturday nights, for which I am grateful.  I have known people for whom the dateless Saturday night was interpreted as a judgment from on high about their loveability.  Do not be mistaken: I have had my share of anguished concerns about my loveability - I think the 20's are all about that.  Those times have just not been especially tied to Saturday nights.

I'm not sure how I escaped.  When I was still quite young and impressionable (11), I found these books at the Sharon Public Library by a woman named Rosamund du Jardin (a nom de plume, do you think?).  She wrote 17 young adult novels (The Tobey & Midge Heydon series, and The Pam & Penny Howard series: The lovely twins! So different - and so alike! What boy gets which twin?) which seemed to largely be about navigating the treacherous water of going steady, which meant you'd always have a Saturday night date, but it implied you were "serious" about someone.  Reading these books in 1972, it was clear that Midge, Penny and the gang lived in a different world than I did, and mine had some flexibility that theirs might have benefited from. 

So, instead of celebrating the harvest (unless it counts that I'm here making apple butter) and instead of seeing the haunted house that Kami helped work on (she assured me it wasn't very scary), I am sitting by an open window with the cool fall air wafting in, hearing bikers and walkers talking quietly with each other as they pass by - and enjoying my Saturday night.

 

10/15/10: A worn pair of black clogs...

...an equally worn, patched pair of Carhardt jeans.

The jeans made me think about the different things I did to jeans as a teen-ager, since brand new jeans weren't quite the way I wanted them to be.  First, it was embroidery: flowers, butterflies and peace symbols on the back pockets.  Later, I'd ball the jeans up in a bucket of diluted bleach to get a mottled look and a softer material.  Later still, I'd tear out the side seam and put in a panel from a pair of old jeans to widen the leg from the hip down.  I was thinking of these adjustments - some of them rather involved - as one example of how teens try to make something their own.  And that got me to thinking about teens in general and that time of life.

When I tell people that Kami is 12, I invariably get some reaction like, "Oh, you'll be in for it soon."  These ominous warnings are about Kami as representative of a soon-to-be emerging teen, not Kami the person she is right now; but I wonder how it might be different to have a teen-ager in the house if one feels interested in this time of life and feels it holds something valuable - rather than that it's a time to dread?  How might I be with it differently if I think of adolescence as a treasure map where there will be clues, and it's my job to figure those out on behalf of my kid because that's what I signed up for by having one?

There is undeniably something about adolescence where we can see more easily into the inconsistencies of the world, where we can more readily recognize our own passions.  Think back for yourself.  What did you Know then?  Is there a way to see the outrage, the moodiness, the anger, the sorrow, the joy as a sign pointing a teen toward themselves, and that it's the adult's job to notice this for them when they can't think of it themselves? 

Of course, parents do this intuitively all the time.  I think of my mom, recognizing my outrage at a clogged stream and reminding me that I could organize a clean-up, and a couple years later taking me to the Yorktown Museum so I could make soap and dip candles.  I think of my dad, handing me books: "You might find this interesting."  Books on writing and feminism.  There were those times where I'd feel like I was going to just jump out of my skin, and then my mom and I would drive to Albany to see a movie, or my dad would suggest I take the car around the Reservoir.

I want to stay awake for this, alert to the signposts.

10/13/10: A nondescript blue knit hat that someone has cut a hole in at the crown - for a ponytail?

33 Chilean miners, trapped in a mine since August 5, now being brought back to the surface.  I heard the story as I biked to work today.  The young reporter who described the scene this morning was hoarse and energetic.  I imagined her along with everyone else cheering as each miner came into view, witnessing rebirths throughout the night. 

I biked along in this sunny, snappy fall morning, and I thought about the final miner, the person who has to wait alone while his last co-workers goes up and the transport comes back down for him.  Now that, I thought, is a story someone should write.

Here I sit.  I have just sent Jaime up, have heard the last sounds of him and the machine that carries him.  He is looking up, up toward the light.  I am looking, too, but he will see it before I do.  I have imagined this moment, and it is both worse and better than I have imagined.  Something in my belly loosens, as if I am trying to fill the space with myself - just myself.  The darkness - and beyond it, the stone - presses back upon me.  Who will win, I wonder?  But stone moves slowly, whereas I move quickly.  I will be above this stony warren in less time than it took me to sit and eat dinner each night at home, less time than it took me to bathe my children when they were young. 
The older I have gotten, the less tolerant I have become of being underground.  I will likely never willingly enter a cave again.  To be a miner would be kind of torture, like Winston in 1984 being set upon by rats when he felt he could have endured anything but rats.  Yet somehow these men - through necessity - have found a way to be underground every day.  We endure a great many things out of necessity.  I am happy for them, for their families.  And still I wonder about that one who will be last.  Someone has to be last.

 

10/11/12: A cross-stitch pattern...

...several large templates for making your own crossword puzzles, a stuffed elephant.

The elephant is a very cartoon-like stuffed animal, with poochy jowls and tiny tusks.  Maybe a little like the elephants in Disney's The Jungle Book.

I saw that movie when it first came out.  I was eight years old (which would make the year 1969), and it was maybe the third or fourth movie I'd seen in my life.  We went because my mother had flown back to Oregon from Massachusetts to help her mother care for her stepfather, who'd just had heart by-pass surgery.  She was gone for two weeks, which felt like an eternity to all of us.  I don't think she'd been away from me for so long except when my two younger siblings had been born.  (Come to think of it, a movie was involved with one of those mother-absences, too.  We lived in Sweden when my sister, Kjerstin, was born.  It was 1966, and my dad took us kids to see The Sound of Music in Stockholm.  That was my first ever movie.)  My dad, I think, felt badly for all of us when we were bereft of my mother, and he was prone to do especially nice things when she was absent - to help us all feel better.  I hope it helped him.  It certainly was an interesting distraction for me.

And then there's elephants.  I have a Thing about them.  I can't think of an animal less suited to being made into a goofy stuffed animal.  They symbolize for me the Wild Otherness of creatures.  When I was nine, we went with our beloved friends, Tom and Kathy, and saw the Ringling Bros. and Barnum Bailey Circus in Madison Square Garden.  The drill in those days was to first go behind the big top and see all the animals that would later dazzle us with their feats and costumes.  Seeing elephants in shackles had a wrong-ness to it that leveled me. 

I want to pay more attention to those moments when they happen.  There is something good about knowing what strikes us deeply.

10/11/10: Today, I put out several things

Yesterday, our friend, Karen, asked how it was that we could keep ourselves from taking a bunch of stuff from the Bench for ourselves. First, I gestured to our overly-packed house, implying something like, "Where would we put more stuff?" I also said something about how, when I take an item for myself, I try and put something else out on the Bench. This is true, but Garth's answer was also true: "Katrina is a better person than I am." Oops! I meant his other answer: "We do take stuff off the bench." Remember that ivory-colored tablecloth from awhile back? Well, it hung around for days, and then finally I realized it would be perfect for a curtain Luken wants in his room. I'll just cut it above the rip and hang it up.

There is another answer to Karen's question, too: most of this stuff is not especially desirable - and thus, not hard to resist. In fact, I have thought a number of times that most of the things sound better when I write about them than they are in reality. This is a curious phenomenon. I generally describe what seems relevant about a Bench item, and sometimes that means not describing other qualities, like dinginess, or cracks.

I also think something happens when my attention is focused on an item. When someone takes the time to focus on something by writing about it or taking a picture of it or telling a story about it, it implies some worth. There is a dark side to this. Popular culture is all about turning our attention toward things that aren't necessarily of worth; the attention is there simply because someone wants you to buy something.

But, at its best, I think art uses this focus phenomenon in an illuminating way. It invites us into the artist's way of seeing, it says, "I find this beautiful," and asks us to find beauty in, too - though we might not have been inclined to do so previously. I like exercising my mind that way. There's something spiritual about it - like having someone speak compassionately about a person we're irritated with, and so inviting us to create a more complete, tender picture of that person.

10/10/10: Tibetan prayer flags

My Buddhist monk brother, Reverend Hugh, spent a number of years up in the forests of northern California at a place called the Hermitage.  It was affiliated with the Abbey where he became a monk. He is visiting right now from England and brought some items for the Free Bench, including the Tibetan prayer flags - which used to hang at the Hermitage.  I decided they should festoon the Free Bench itself.  I like the color they have added.  I like that they are connected to his time at the Hermitage.  I like the idea of them sending out prayers each time they are caught by the air and set to waving.  It makes me want to give more thought to the prayers so I'll know what prayers we're sending out into the world.

A couple years ago, I got some prayer flags to give to our whole family for the Winter Solstice.  They were bright, beautiful flags with images of dancing children from around the world on each panel. Someone else liked the flags, too.  On two different occasions, they came up our front steps and cut away the panels they liked the most.  Five of the eight in total.  They brought scissors with them, intending to bring the dancing children they coveted back to their space.  

I have wanted things that much in my day, have even taken some of them when I was much younger.  It is a complicated sort of wanting, and it is never really satisfied.  

Having those five panels taken was a bit demoralizing.  Not just for the obvious reasons, but also because it somehow underscored the fact that no one else in my family had been particularly captivated by the prayer flags.  Reflecting on that now, it indicates the way that I can want something, but only allow myself to see it if I believe it's "for the family."  It is still difficult for me to recognize the things that I want just for myself, and to have it be enough that I want it, even when others might not.  To get more clear on my wants would be cleaner than convincing myself that others will like this, too(even when there's been no indication they will), and then feeling disappointed when they don't especially.  And then I spare them and myself - my disappointment as well. 

10/09/10: A small, long-sleeved blue women's shirt...

...a salmon-colored women's tank top, a very large green men's golf shirt, a handful of Concord grapes.

A few days back, three smallish silver-plated dishes with lids appeared - the sort that come out for black olives and cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving tables.  Shortly thereafter, all but one disappeared, though the lid went missing for the one that remained.  Yesterday morning, there were the grapes.  My brain does not generally expect food to appear on the Bench (though it does occasionally), and so my mind kept trying to make the grapes into something else: large marbles, weird eyeball gag gifts.  Finally, I realized what they were.

Food on the Bench is a tricky thing.  Last week, a bag of bagels appeared, as did an opened and partially used gallon of water.  I like that people want to feed others.  As I've said, we have our share of neighborhood living-on-the-edge folk who likely don't get enough to eat.  It seems to me that, these days, only the most desperate would take a risk on food found on the Bench, though.  I am not conversant in that kind of hunger, where I am driven to consume something of unknown origin, perhaps wondering if it will make me sick, all the while eating it anyway.

10/07/10: More large pants keep showing up...

...in one's and two's.  Some of them are quite nice: tweedy.  My friend, Tom W., thought the initial appearance of many large pants last week suggested a death.  Which actually I had thought of, too.  But I'd spent the day before talking to a young woman whose husband had died of leukemia two weeks earlier about how she thought she should give his clothes away but couldn't quite bring herself to do it.  So I didn't write about the death explanation for the pants.  I think I was feeling tired of death.

What a privilege: to be tired of death, and so able to choose to set thought of it aside for awhile.

Tom was right.  That appearance of a pile of clothes at once could be due to a death.  So how to explain this slow trickle?  My earlier idea - weight loss - doesn't expalin the slow trickle very well either.  Clothing can be so imbued with who we are.  How would it come about that we would discard them, streadily over time?

K--- and S----- are in the living room listening to Joan Jett's version of the Doors' "Love Me Two Times."  G---- and L---- are doing the dishes together, listening to David Bowie's "Space Oddity."  L---- just asked, "Who's Judy Garland?"  I am between it all, hearing both songs, my brain tuning in to one and then the other.  This is a privilege, too.

10/06/10: A little girl's dress, black velvet top, flowered skirt...

...a white ceramic bowl with a cobalt blue stripe around the brim, something that I think is a piece of exercise equipment: a circle of black, flat metal with two cushioned parts opposite each other that are perhaps hand grips?  Now that thing I could make art out of.

One of the themes I deeply appreciated in the workshop I attended last Saturday was the idea that we each live with a foot in daily life and a foot in the life of our deep self.  That is, there are the things we need to attend to to move the life we've chosen along: getting the kids to school, paying the bills, getting the car serviced, what have you.  Then there are the things that serve our deeper life, the parts of ourselves that we feel called to express, our abiding passions.  If we accept that this is so, then we forever try to attend to both because both are happening all the time.  Sometimes we achieve a sort of balance.  More times, we favor one over the other given the demands of the moment.  

This morning, I was rather cranky.  I think it's how I feel when I am yanked out of the world of deep self (where I have been enjoying myself) and plunked firmly into mundane life.  We at the Goulash (as we refer to ourselves) household are smack in the middle of one more bedroom switcheroo.  As G---- put it, everyone moved one space counter-clockwise.  There is something about moving that is so very basic.  It involves lifting and putting down, sorting and packing, setting up and making right.

At this moment, I appreciate that my crankiness simply came from feeling the absence of the deep self in doing the basic work that was in front of me.  But I think that's a mistake in my perception.  When I talk about being plunked into the mundane, I was using the word with its negative connotation, using it in the sense of "ordinary" with ordinary not being especially attractive or vital.  But mundane also means "of the earth," and I can't imagine a more soothing balm for my deep self (while it does the deeds of daily life) than things of the earth.

10/04/10: One Dell computer monitor..

...with a note attached that says, "I may not work, but take me and make art out of me."

Hmm. I want to say - without resentment - that this is someone's trash dressed up as a silk purse.  Or maybe they were hopeful, "This is broken but surely this expensive thing that uses enormous resources could still be used for something."  That is our dilemma these days, isn't it - because we make too many disposable things that have nowhere to be disposed of?  Still, I'm pretty sure I don't want art to be what happens with things that we can't figure out what else to do with.  Badly put, but you get my meaning.  

If I take pictures of the Free Bench, does that make it art?  
Do I first have to arrange the offerings to make it art?  
Is that what I am doing here: arranging the offerings of the Free Bench?  
Is it only art if I have an MFA?  
Is art what something needs to be to be readable, to be read?

Dunno.

10/03/10: A torn ivory white tablecloth...

...a lace-edged navy blue tank top, a brown furry vest, and brown and tan diagonally striped windbreaker.

I drove up to Vashon Island, WA on Friday to attend a Saturday workshop.  I have this habit when I drive the freeway to look over whenever someone is passing me, just to acknowledge them.  Sometimes, I smile.

Not long into the drive up, I looked over at someone passing me, and he flipped me off.  I hadn't cut him off or slowed him down.  The only thing I can figure is that he didn't like some of our bumper stickers: maybe Darth W. Bush or Impeach Bush or the like.

For several miles, I wrestled with what to do with this occurrence.  When it happened, a sort of shock went through me.  I am the sort of person who first wonders what I did to draw this sort of reaction; then I find some outrage in me, though I also feel somewhat fearful of a person who would do such a thing.  None of these reactions felt right or comfortable.

About ten minutes later, I pulled into a rest area.  On my way to the restroom, I noticed two men in their early 60's who'd clearly stopped for a cigarette and to stretch their legs.  They had close-cropped hair and were dressed in clean jeans and wind breakers.  As I came back to my car, the two men approached me.  "Those are quite the stickers," the bespectacled one said.  "There's no question who you are for"  (here, I think he referred to the no less than four bumper stickers we have for Steve Novick, a good college friend of mine who ran for the Senate a couple years back).  I explained to them about Novick.  Turns out they were from Canada, were a couple, were driving back up to Canada from Palm Springs (who comes from Canada to Palm Springs in early October?!), thought Americans were a little wacky, especially about the health care situation.

All of this happened as I drove to Vashon Island and listened to Eckhart Tolle's The New Earth on CD in the car.  So here is what I think: when the guy flipped me off, he was treating me like the Other.  My discomfort came from feeling invited to polarize the two of us.  In his view, he was right and I was offensively wrong.  In such a dynamic, to make myself feel better, I had to make him outrageous and wrong for behaving the way he did and make myself wronged and, thus, right.  Yet I wanted us both to belong.  Those two men reminded me I did belong.  We see you and we're okay with what we see.  Somehow, this reminder that I was not cast out settled me enough to see that I just didn't like the dynamic the other guy set up by flipping me off.  It felt better to feel badly that he saw the world that way, but to realize it had nothing really to do with me.

The workshop was about becoming more of who we are.  I am someone who can get derailed by worrying how others see me.  When I'm on my tracks, I love people; I want us all to belong.  I want to remember that more.

10/01/10: About thirty skirt and trouser hangers...

...many assorted button-down and turtle-neck shirts, black women's pumps, two baskets, a leopard print fleece blanket with sleeves in it.

When I saw this pile of stuff, I decided to hang the shirts up on the hangers because I have this idea that that is more appealing to people.  As I sorted, our neighbor, S----, came over to sit in the sun on the bench with his morning coffee and cigarette.  He lives in the apartments and so doesn't have his own place to sun himself from.  He is a great person, a minister's kid (except he's a grownup now), and works for BARK, our fabulous grassroots organization whose mission is to save Mt. Hood.  Anyway, ----t helped me sort and hang a little, which meant that then there was actually space for him to set himself down with his stimulants.

As soon as I send this, I am traveling three and a half hours northeast to Vashon Island in Washington state to attend a workshop tomorrow.  I am not taking my laptop, so will not be Musing for a couple days.  I am taking my journals, a couple books, and some stationery.  The thought of being able to hang out in my own brain for this length of time is delicious to me.  I am renewed by it already, just out of anticipation.

9/30/10: Coma by Robin Cook...

...black women's t-shirt with a skull and a rose on it, large swatch of yellow cloth, a top that looks like it used to be a sundress only the owner didn't like the sleeves or the dress part and took her scissors to it.

Didn't Coma come out around the same time as Carrie by Steven King?  I was fourteen when Carrie came out, and my best friend at the time, Julie L., had just read it and loved it.  I generally did judge these sorts of books by their covers and would not have ever picked it up if someone I liked hadn't recommended it to me.  But recommend it she did.  Those were the days when I also felt honor bound to finish any book I started.  So there I sat, reading a book I never would have chosen right through to the end.  Carrie exceeded my expectations.  I was in a cold sweat by page five, and that never let up.  

I had been gripped by a book before. I remember reading Oliver Twist at age 11, sitting in our house in Scotland, and at the part where Bill Sykes jumps off the roof and hangs himself, I realized it had grown dark outside and in the room I was in, and that I couldn't see into the corners anymore.  It was a chilling moment.  But I happily opened books by Dickens thereafter.  

Carrie finished Steven King off for me.  Was it the relentless teen-aged tormenting?  Was it the idea that people could be so cruel that they'd save up a bunch of pig's blood to dump on some misfit's head?  Was it the savage revenge that took hold of Carrie herself?  Or was it the idea that some guy actually enjoyed filling his own brain with this stuff enough that he wanted to write a book about it?

And since I'm on a rant, what's with skulls and roses?