frantic frustration

The opportunity to have a roundtable brainstorm/discussion with various other nonprofit workers today was a little bit mindblowing. I spend much of my professional time thinking about things that have little relevance to my current position and much relevance to my devoted volunteer activities. I think a lot about how frustrating the world is, how I am having an impossibly hard time thinking about how to put my talents to work, thinking about how my favorite thing to do is make connections and then see things happen via those connections. I truly think that is my FAVORITE thing to do.

I’ve been brainstorming a way to bring it all together: my love of the arts, my wish for artists to be able to thrive and make a living, my love for my deeply flawed community, my love for this silly city I find myself devoted to, a way to make the disparate but deeply similar activities I do come together holistically…I am looking toward some very contemporary models: Etsy, Shunpike, um, I can’t think of others.

I wish I had a mentor, I wish someone other than me could help me think strategically about this, I wish I was more dedicated and could find a way to just sit down and be strategic on my own. I wish I wasn’t scared to just jump off the cliff. Apparently I don’t trust myself.

the fat and the ashes

It is a fat Tuesday, sun spilling through glass, birds fighting and somersaulting and caterwauling in the surrounding trees of my sedate urban forest. I am grinding my creative ability into dust and wishing for gods. I am answered by flowering quince and Professor Longhair and count myself lucky. It is not my custom to greet the spring with joy but this year, as I see age in my hair, on my hips, in old sprains that resist healing, I smile with the sun and the sudden shock of crocuses and snow drops. For the first time, this emergence means something new to me.

Until the fall, I had spent my conscious moments building my life, my family, my loves, and my home, making them strong and safe. I worked and worked at a deep and prideful labor and my eyes were bright. But then the dark months were heralded by dark events, by attack and dismay and grief and, try as I might to deny it as I snatch at my fleeting past self, I know I am harshly changed.

She came legion as summer faded, a swarming, quiet, utter invading plague. She pressed upon my world, flanked by a waiting, wanton darkness, and then she sank, spreading infection. She shared the end with me and with sure, relentless hands she stole my love and my work, bearing it away to a place where I had never, until now, thought to go.

I do not want to scar or heal or cover the emptiness I hold. My friends are dead but all we built together remains with me. It clings precariously to the living wounds of the new void and craves homage.

Now arrives this infant spring and the rolling world cradles its brilliant new flowers, its riotous birds, and a frantic, frolicking three-legged puppy. These vital glowing lives do not shield or distract me from the aching gaps in my fractured family - instead they circle this place where once my loved ones stood and danced and laughed and built just as industriously as I had.

So now I begin a new work: I construct my rite of spring looking to flowers, dogs, mud, clouds, and birds to find my way to befriend the dead. I search for my way to live in death.

What should Katy do with her "talents"?

I am good at a few things and one of the things I am good at and actually like doing is thinking about how small organizations I like can find funding, thrive, innovate, and continue sharing their offerings with the community.

What I would like to do is this “thing” full time. That, and develop a new kind of dating service called “Date My Friend” that would be a hybrid of internet dating and community building.

Both of these concepts are hard for me to articulate in a concrete way and I think what I need is help but if I start reaching out for real help, I would need a lot of processing time and then would have to quit my job and figure out how to fund these endeavors. And then I would have more ideas and it would be even harder to manage. A big part of me finds it difficult to see how large organizations can survive (and by survive I mean find sustainability/prosperity) OR how small, entrepreneurial ventures can either. My distrust of any kind of business sustainability is tied up completely in the fantasy of capitalism and of the international belief system built on the eternal feasibility of debt. I know expecting a level of safety is too much to ask.

Why is being a grown up and trying to make a difference in my community so freaking hard? And how do I survive without money but in an urban setting? And why did I forget to develop a marketable skill? And why did the world decide to make economic survival so difficult now?

The world, the future

I have become increasingly frustrated and agitated since the fall (as well as depressed and angsty, as is widely evidenced in this droopy blog). I have a lot of concerns about my professional/community contributions and options, am really feeling like my efforts and passion are misplaced and confused, and am striving to make sense of the craziness.

I have a lot of loves in this town and what I really wish I could be doing is attending to them, full time. I wish I had the ability to work for and contribute on various levels to a whole bunch of things. Let me see if I can list some.

- Tacoma Contemporary
I'm a board member for TaCo and I love the work but feel like we're just under our mark. Well, ok, not "just under," more like, desperately dog paddling to keep our noses water-free. We have so many good ideas, we have such a cool space, we feature such fantastic artists but there is so much more we could be doing and we're tired and pulled in too many directions, since we have "real jobs" getting in the way.

- Hilltop Artists
Maybe I'm just a huge fan of Kit Evans, the organization's executive director, but I just love the work Hilltop Artists does. I love the hot shop at Jason Lee Middle School, I love seeing the kids creating fantastic art, learning a craft, and gaining confidence. I think it's great and a very clear source for community connectivity and expression. I wish I could do more there.

- MLK Ballet
I think MLK Ballet has all the potential in the world. They teach ballet for free and they present the daring, compelling and thoughtful MOVE performance series that I think is one of the more exciting events in town. And they have no website, no consistent management (that I can see), and no outreach.

- McCarver Elementary
After tutoring at McCarver for a short time, I fell in love with the school: with the commitment you could see on the faces of the teachers and administrators, and with the inarticulated, deep appreciation the children felt for the school as their haven. You could see it in their expressions, in their rapt faces in class, in their gamboling on the playground. It is a good school surrounded by a neighborhood that is deeply invested in it.

- Exit 133
This website means a lot to Tacoma and I feel like the mastermind is stretched thin and needs help. Unfortunately I do not think he can afford it. This is all just conjecture but, I tend to get frustrated with the content, the lack of quality in the writing and the lack of real news. I need a little more; I wish there was a way I could get it there.

- Tacoma Food Co-op
The Co-op drives me crazy. It doesn't even exist and it drives me crazy. TFC: your board is too big, your committees seem to not know how to prepare to run a grocery store, and the hype is dying. Let's get to work!

- Tacoma Is For Lovers
I wish there was a way to make Tacoma Is For Lovers a legitimate undertaking. I'm not sure how to do such a thing at all. I love Jennifer Adams and I would love to see her vision take wing.

- Shunpike
I think this organization is phenomenal and a phenomenon. I am so excited for them to be in Tacoma and I wish I could figure out a way to spend more time working with them.

- Vegans and Vegetarians in Tacoma
Where are you? Why do we only have one restaurant? Why won't anyone make us food? What are you afraid of, Tacoma?

So. What to do? Should I just freelance? Should I build a portfolio of projects for all the people and friends I love and then just do it full-time? What should I do?

Slogging through the season

So, it has been a really tough fall/winter and I am still putting in a lot of conscious effort to avoid truly engaging with my grief, my injuries, my support network, my talents, and really most other aspects of my existence that could encourage healing.

I spent a lot of time surrounded by love and comfort this holiday season and I am sure it helped on some level but for the most part, my pervading compulsions want me to spend significant time motionless and alone. This all sounds way worse than I think it is. I've been really busy and although I just had a pseudo vacation, I spent the majority of it nursing a sprained ankle and feeling intensely unproductive which is really the only time I feel guilty.

A nearly relatable thought/tangent: I have been successful in transforming certain chores into compulsions that control my ability to relax/enjoy(for example: I can't sit down and watch tv if the living room floor isn't swept, the throw blankets and pillows are not in their place, netflix dvds are not stacked neatly, etc.; and, I can't cook if the kitchen is a wreck)but when incapacitated, it just made the living situation hugely irritating as I was unable to compulsively tidy. These compulsions are a self fulfilling blessing and curse: because of them, selected areas of my living quarters are not a complete wreck; because of them I can successfully distract myself from greater, more important work (writing, Tacoma Contemporary, friends, family, community efforts).

Moving on to additional, mildly relatable thoughts: having experienced a lot of forced change, I have been torn to grab the momentum and continue changing or to somehow capture and hoard some stasis (which I know is basically impossible), and I think I have been definitely attempting both simultaneously. I guess I just have to keep it up since the conflicting movements, the progressive and the depressive, seem to be forcing me to think.

It is really hard for me to process loss and this was something that never occurred to me to expect (which I guess is silly). I'm such a control freak and manipulator that I don't think I ever considered that relationships could be ripped from me by forces completely out of my control. And now I have all these stupid dreams where I lose and/or break things; and in real life I accidentally lose and/or break/ruin things all the time. Grief and loss are embarrassing for me. I've been made a fool, clumsy, and out of control. What a mean universe!

I can't wait to be able to walk comfortably again. I need my thinking time: "All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." - Friedrich Nietzsche

current, depressive thoughts

The dark came quick this year. Janice died, the flowers died, the leaves fell and the sun toddled away. Now I wander, trekking through quiet, dirty neighborhoods in the dusk and in the dawn and I don’t think about my dead and hurt and distant friends. Instead I insulate with information that puts no demands on my current personal experience. It pours into my head through green headphones, baptizing me in distraction. I am very alone and when suddenly, I do not feel alone, I feel hysterical. The love of the living makes me feel too mortal and I can’t deal with it. I can’t talk about Janice, I can’t think longer than that length of time it takes the slender stabbing pain to run me through whenever she comes to mind. I feel the blade slide in and out and then I think about something else; anything else. Like the holidays, like cat shit, like finding a new job, like growing my hair out, like planning every second of my week, like shopping, like cookies.

And this, my favorite time of the year is bearing down on me and a big part of me dreads it. I can’t cry anymore because all crying does is make my eyes itch. This is not a situation where catharsis can be applied. I have no means to process the end of my favorite friendship, of my favorite friend, and I don’t understand mourning because with every part of me, I feel that mourning is a skill, an ability, and I have no teacher, no talent for it, and no help.

What do you do when you’ve met death? When she’s crept inside and sunk in her teeth and curled up to gnaw? What happens when you can point to the decay? When you don’t simply move about in your day-to-day, feeling distinctly mortal but not able to distinguish whether it will be a car or a cliff or a tumor or a gun that will do you in, but instead, you know and recognize your end? What happens when you know at least that, but you still can’t and won’t know anything?

All I know is that no matter how I think about it, I get tangled in and embarrassed by my thoughts; my small, paltry language falters and collapses into whining when I think on how it’s all so unfair and tragic and incomprehensible. I think about death and think about how wrong I am about death. I can’t collapse the perspective I cling to, the perspective that reasons with my guts and tells me that I’m wrong as my every instinct screams that death is evil, that it’s cheating us of all we love and all we are. I know it’s like saying the same thing about birth. How can I hate one and be delighted at the other when it happens to every single thing, every human, every Thing. Everything ends.

Death, the promise fulfilled; death defining life; death defining the beginning, middle and end; death, the contrast; death, the oath keeper; death, the end of potential, the beginning of the absolute unknowable. And I rage, just as I am supposed to, as a mortal, at the dying of the light.

Shouldn’t I know, as I wrestle, instead of wrestling, shouldn’t I know and be comforted by the fact that the one who is being taken from me has built a life that would impact me in such way? Would impact so many? A person who’s life could be defined by joy and compassion and love and kindness and beauty? It is a life defined by depth and intelligence and talent and family and love and empathy and really, could someone ask to be blessed by more?

And how can I be so selfish to make so much of this experience about myself when she is the one leaving? How do you facilitate a beautiful, graceful, love-filled exit and not be creepy/shitty/self-serving about it? I suppose the best choice would be action—channeling the sorrow and panic into good works but when it is only one whose impact is so profound, not everyone can always be doing things. Sometimes you can only sit or run quietly or loudly with your thoughts.

Perhaps sorrow for the looming utter absence of a human of great quality is allowable. Maybe it is just acceptable to be sad to lose someone so precious.