The Absurd Is Always With Us

As a Girl Scout leader for more years that she wished, my mother sometimes sought inspiration for troop projects from sources other than her own imagination. One such aid was a magazine called "Pack O' Fun" and her subscription seemed to run for years. I know it was still arriving when I was a teenager and she had long-since abdicated her woven-newspaper mats and paper bag puppets duties to a woman we all knew was a real Girl Scout leader, someone who could construct shelter in the wilderness, glare us into having mayonnaise on our sandwichs even though it made us gag, and remain unflappable when cornered by a flash flood or forest fire.

When I find myself in situations that feel like one of the infrequent funny episodes of THE X-FILES, I can draw a line of the bizarre back to "Pack O' Fun" and the issue, must have been March, which suggested leprechaun sacks of gold as party favors...made from used tea bags glamoured up with spray paint and glitter. I was and have been happy and willing to recycle and find creative uses for discards but this went too far. Forever after, any family party plans included at least a mention of "Pack O' Fun" and that particular extreme of thrift.

Which brings me to my point - the fact that identifying the absurd is a skill handier than knowing how to spot poison oak. We all find ourselves, some much more often than others, in circumstances when the bubble in our personal level tips steeply to one end. This presents different choices, but the only one I can think of is laughing. Maybe not in the moment, maybe not on the spot, but certainly inside where our most wise and philosphical self has just noticed we've been swallowed whole by someone's vast, lunatic episode, disguised as normal behavior and rational thought. I willingly own that a used tea bag party favor rates pretty far down the list of human folly but it is a simple, clear example.

There was the landlord whose ad I called about as we were preparing to move, nearly 7 years ago. Our rented house had been sold and, having experienced one harrowing fire-and-evacuation scenario, we'd been thinking for some time of moving into the flatlands. When I called about the rental I said we were still twitchy at the sound of helicopters and sirens and thought life outside the red flag zone would be more peaceful. "Yes," said the landlord, "but how do you feel about snakes?" Turns out his property was even further up the mountain than our present location and, by his innocent-seeming yet telling question, we knew this was not the place for us. My son and I imagined a patio landscaped like a serpent amphitheater or the writhing ground beneath Indiana Jones as he dropped in to discover the Lost Ark. And we shuddered. Some are reptile people, some are not. Now any time we are presented with a hard sell of something that holds zero appeal, we ask each other, "How do you feel about snakes?"

During that same search, we found a pleasant-seeming cottage - on a flat street - with a large back yard, ringed by avocado trees which surrounded a raised square cement platform roughly half again the size of the house which we decided must be a landing pad for the mother ship. As the realtor had simply given us the keys and sent us out to look on our own, there was no one to ask but sometimes weirdness just shrieks to let you know it's there.

The absurd dwells among us and the sooner we can recognize its sundry disguises, the quicker we can get to stepping on down the street or remembering that we left the iron on or the kettle boiling and need to get home, get off the phone or call for back-up. Some of us are magnets for the bizarre. My father was one, thanks to his daily newspaper column which led readers to believe, perhaps not incorrectly, that he was a kindred spirit in their diverse searches for whatever Truth Is Out There. My mind remains open about things which we truly cannot explain but I'm very clear about snakes as houseguests and can still spot a used tea bag, gilded or not, across a crowded room.

Running on empty

Our political process matters to me. Voting is essential. I have had strong feelings about candidates since my grandparents used their wide, wrap-around porch as the neighborhood polling place. I think I have now grown too old to survive another presidential campaign that lasts as long as this one. Trying to take in, as we count the days, not only what bombards us in the way of election news, but also financial woes, guesses and massive uncertainty and, here in Los Angeles, the threat and reality of fires, I have become depleted. I am not alone.

In my mind I see a guage, vertical like an old thermometer in a metal frame which advertises either soda pop (yes, THAT old) or a very successful garage. The mercury (for the sake of this illustration) has reached the top, past all the lines and numbers. Which might make one think "full" but the kind of full that so many of us are confronting really amounts to empty. We have no more room to take in anything other than gentleness, laughter, good news and rest. In conversations with a number of friends, I find that we all require greater amounts of sleep than normal. I would not be unhappy to wake up in spring and learn that I'd been transformed into a hibernating creature. My muscles and joints ache, my head feels like sponge cake that for reasons unfathomable has been left sitting in a bowl of milk. It cannot hold a thought or produce innovation.

Under the best of circumstances it is a task to find a path through life, come to recognize what we know to be our own personal truth and stand with that information, regardless of the situation. We need our energy, our rest, our clarity. I have come to feel that intentional chaos surrounds us, put there for the purpose of keeping us from the quiet in which we are able to find our way. Some years ago I recognized an uncommon virtue which I call "a capacity for stillness." In this stillness I find whatever wisdom I can access and what resonates within me as my truth. In chaos I become confused.

From now until Nov. 4 and, I can only trust, days beyond that, I have to remember that quiet is my ally and my source of renewal. Noise, news and uproar cause me to lose my bearings and my strength, I am Dorothy in the field of poppies, deflected from my purpose. None of us can function adequately in the midst of constant stress - and this doesn't even take into account all the personal crises with which we are faced, the ones that have to be processed and addressed.

I was led to stillness by losing my health which, ironically, was the result of running on empty for too long. I have come to know it as a great gift and become impatient with myself when I allow it to be interrupted by someone else whose hair seems to be on fire, but, in fact, is not. So I sleep and rest, draw and color, have calm conversations where laughter is the goal and focus simply on where next to set my foot. The tank begins to fill.

Lyndon Street Neighbors

A short update on the stair walking - 17 out of 19 days, and off to climb when I've finished typing. A day of fatigue after the show on Sept. 28 and one day of 103 degree temperature caused me to allow myself a little slack. I cannot say if it was my best idea, but it was what I could manage and I am back.

What I have found - there is a precedent, so I shouldn't be surprised - as I wobble down and up the stairs, probably creating an alarming image of unsteadiness, which is not really true for while there is wobble there is also steadiness, is the number of neighbors who have asked if they could help me, did I need a hand. In each case I've said that this is practice I have to do but so appreciated their kindness, the fact that they asked. On that first day, one neighbor was just waiting at the top of the steps and helped me manage that last increment.

Nearly two years ago my son was acutely ill and his recovery took months, during which time our building manager and many of our neighbors helped carry packages up the stairs (it was Christmas), helped me bring groceries from the car - my mobility was greater in those days - and took trash to the bin. Our apartment is built around a courtyard and kindness poured from both floors, every door. Younger tenants simply came and took the grocery bags, and our manager told me just to leave anything that needed to be trown out on the balcony where he would see it as he made his evening rounds. I thanked each for every act of kindness and eventually posted a collective letter of appreciation by the mailboxes. I don't know what I would have done without them.

Today I received e-mail which spoke of our currently uncertain times and how we have strength we may have forgotten, the strength of being there for each other. I am grateful to live among people who notice, who pay attention, who act, who care. While none of them may ever read this, it gives me the opportunity to say thank you all over again and to re-examine the difference that can be made by a single hand extended in kindness and support.

You can go home again

On Sept. 28 I returned to my home stamping store, Stamp Your Heart Out in Claremont, CA, to demo a new collection, The Un-Usual Suspects. My timeline may be off, but I think the last time I did a demo there was around 1998 or 1999. Sunday's pencil coloring was scheduled to run for two hours and when it was over, I wished I'd signed up to be there at least all afternoon, probably all day. Not that there would be a day's worth of coloring tips to share, but if there was an ebb and flow of viewers, repeating the same information for each new group would have been a pleasure.

It was a day so filled with the most yummy goodness that I can hardly process it and I thank everyone who attended, Joan Bunte who invited me and who offered the hospitable welcome that SYHO regulars have come to know and appreciate. I thank the staff, those who were working, those who showed up in support. Familiar names and faces from classes and demos long, long ago. That I was there at all is the result of support from so many friends and family members and the good fortune which came my way when Stampington wanted to take an odd bouquet of characters and share them with the world.

Going home again, in the very best sense, is how the day felt, as though many missing elements had been found and restored and I could only wonder at the state of body and mind that caused me to let them slip away. It may not be home in any precise definition, but I believe we can find a place and a piece of ourselves, familiar as a childhood lunchbox turning up at a swap meet, where we can be comfortable, welcome, happy and grateful.

From such seemingly ordinary and unimportant acts as drawing and coloring on envelopes - busy-hands, quiet-mind - a life, a passion, a calling have emerged. It is a life I share with people who bring their dreams out into the open, people for whom half-measures are unknown, people who are sometimes willing, as my cousin would say, to let their freak flags fly (and long may we wave), people authentic and kind, endearingly unique, people who have never really lost sight of home for they carry it - and everything that matters - in their hearts.

My then-adolescent sister had a book she read over and over, "The Luckiest Girl." If they need an updated version, I have a suggestion about whom to call.

Let's do this again...soon.

Let me direct your attention

Because I could not possibly state it any better, I shall refer you to
http://lisahoffman.typepad.com

and her newest posting about the Un-Usual Suspects and a demo I'll be doing on Sept. 28 in Claremont, CA at Stamp Your Heart Out. Lisa offers links to the store, to me and to Stampington for anyone interested in ordering. Thank you, Lisa, for such a generous showcase. Anyone in the vicinity, please stop by. It would be wonderful to meet you and have you get to know Joan Bunte and her colorful, creative shop.

STREET TEAM CRUSADE #23-CLEAN YOUR PLATE

Making way for something new often demands moving (I used the term intentionally) outside the familiar or comfortable. I live on the second floor of a two-story apartment building, up (and down) 16 very steep steps. I have arthritic knees and I spent the summer drawing, coloring, staring, drooling, reading and not going out much. I did not practice my stair walking. I am having to come up with a whole new plan.

Approach tried and rejected: wake up, shower, dink around with e-mail or the newspaper or phone calls, then suit up for The Stairs, by which time I am tired and unfocused, sometimes totally intimidated by how far down the courtyard looks, and how high the second-floor walkway will seem from the courtyard.

New approach: a baseball cap to hide hair that could frighten the neighbors, getting suited up and ready to march as soon as the leaving-for-work traffic has thinned out. In more disciplined times, I learned to avoid the stairs during the high school lunch period; I am slow, a truly generous description, and hungry teenagers have not a minute to waste or wait. Always polite, I knew they felt that anything under the speed limit should be off the road. A carefully selected window of time, after rush hour, before midday heat. I am wobbly and wish I were more brave, strong, young, fit and never, ever procrastinated. But in this moment, I am and I do those things.

The Clean-Your-Plate connection. For me it requires becoming very clear about what matters most. If I had one wish and that wish would be greater strength, endurance and agility, there is my answer. First things first. If I find that I am tired after doing other tasks of dubious virtue before I exercise, I am not putting the top item at the top of the day. For me this assignment is plain, hard work and a baseball cap with simple, comfortable clothes makes it somewhat easier. Shower after the exercise? What a notion. There was a recent day when we had an earthquake, luckily far enough away to do no damage in our town but the thought of having to scramble down those stairs in an emergency...it seemed that rolling me down them like a log would be easier and hurt less.

This may seem like a foolish, completely self-induced problem to the young, the fit and the never-put-off-until-tomorrow crowd. We all have our demons and the holes into which our good sense falls from time to time. Over the years I have had numerous well-meaning friends who, on a vast list of my obvious shortcomings have started sentences with, "...but couldn't you just..." If I could, I would. I can't imagine any of us choosing to feel so insufficient intentionally. I really believe we each do the best we can. When that best becomes better, we do it that way.

I have to own neglecting something vital. By staying occupied creating art and stories, I tried to embezzle myself a little slack, ascribing virtues to what I had done and shrugging my shoulders at the things I had not. And now important dates are looming for which I want to reach my car, drive off to see people and do things. I missed one significant event because I had not prepared and felt heartbroken for it. I hope to take inspiration from your stories and carry your determination with me as I make those downward steps, asking mercy from whatever protectors look out for imperfect joints. And imperfection in general.

Thursday morning P.S. I took my words to heart and did 12 of the 16 steps, the top, last one with a neighbor's assistance. Yesterday I barely managed 3. When I posted my entry yesterday I felt terribly exposed. Today I feel encouraged.

Skills

What is more desirable than skills or mad skills which would be the hyperactivated version of an ordinary, utility-grade skill? A friend's recent e-mail about being adrift in a sea of downsizing and the question of where to go, how to market one's self and the very real doubt about whether the job you are trying so hard to win is one you could even imagine getting up in the morning and going to, reminded me of a favorite quote (paraphrased and unattributed), which says, "Not everything that counts in life can be counted."

Quite a few years ago, a shift in circumstances turned my life from one of end-to-end activity - family, job, volunteer work, freelancing, 12-step meetings, workshops, interning - to one of simply being. In that state of being, I realized that I had what I call a capacity for stillness. I can spend time with myself without distraction and have discovered that useful information, perhaps it is guidance, comes to me in this state. It is, for me, an essential skill, yet how likely is it that we'll find it on a list of desirable qualifications for any job? Unless you know of a place that is hiring contemplatives.

Is it our skills, learned processes for accomplishing tasks, or our essential nature that we need to recognize as the gift we bring to any situation? Yes, I wish I'd gone to trade school and learned how to repair cars. Yes, I would like to be brilliant with a computer, rather than occasionally lucky. Yes, I'm glad I learned to type when I was an adolescent, glad I had the experience of learning something about video taping and editing, back in the old analog days, glad I learned to drive a car, glad that once upon a time I could edit a story while reading it backward in metal type. Skills matter. But so do the odd, unclassifiable, arcane and quirky talents we bring with us. Think of us all as "...strange visitors from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." A soaring imagination, a gift for remembering the smallest bit of information, a (some might call) peculiar sense of humor, being able to know how ingredients will taste when combined in a recipe, intuition, a capacity for stillness.

In honor of all who, at this moment, are looking for a job, a better job, or to discover their life's calling, regardless of age, I offer this: bring the best of you, your authentic self, the desires of your heart, and the knowledge that no test or interview is a measure of who you are, never has been, never will be. Celebrate all your mad skills.