Tag Archives: social media

Jun28

I Really Hate the Fighting.

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Sounds so strange doesn’t it? To feel so strongly about negativity so much that it creates “hate” in my heart.

I wear a kyanite pendant. It’s a beautiful teal-blue crystal that suspends from a thread of gold wire from a leather necklace. My niece gave it to me for Christmas last year. It rests on my chest, just at my sternum.

The kyanite is supposed to repel negativity. It’s supposed to help me speak my truth. It’s supposed to balance my 5th chakra, the throat chakra which is concerned with matters of veracity and voice. I have worn it since it was given to me. Almost six months now. I don’t know if it’s working because I still yell at soccer games and I still argue with my kids. I still have opinions and I still feel hungover after expressing them.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I feel a profound sense of unease about the world and I think it’s because everyone is fighting. Myself included~~, I guess~~.

I just want people to get along.

But see things my way.

Isn’t that funny?

But that’s not how life works.

Speaking of life and all its zigs and zags and the fact that change is the only constant… A yoga student gave me a bracelet about 2 weeks ago, it’s a lovely Alex + Ani wire bangle with a big charm and then these three little guys which also dangle. The entire bracelet is made of recycled metals and infused with positive energy. The charm on it is called “The Path of Life.”

Emblematic of life’s zenith and nadir moments, the PATH OF LIFE is representative of an infinite number of possibilities and expressions of love. Illustrating life’s twists, turns, and unexpected winds, wear the PATH OF LIFE Charm to proudly celebrate your own willingness to travel towards life’s fruitful moments.

She touched my heart when she gave me the gift. She is a beautiful soul and has so much to look forward to in her ongoing years and the fact that she’s entrusted me with her wellbeing has been the most humbling gift of all. I get that women my age-ish want to take better care of themselves and become more calm in this crazy world, but the fact that this kid keeps coming back… it’s so affirming.

She’s one of those pre turn-of-the-century babies. She is like a daughter or a niece to me. If I didn’t adore and love her so much I wouldn’t care as much as I do for her. I hear the bangle more than I see it and its elegant ampersands and infinity symbols remind me to chill. The charm scrapes across my keyboard as I type, or skitters across the counter as I clean, or dances across the placemats as I reach for the salt at my table, or clink-clinks as I put up my hair, go into downward dog and generally exist. Today when I was in the hot tub, I watched it swish like a fishtail as I glided my hand beneath the surface where it’s warm, noise is muted, the world is softer and floating is assured.

I think of her and her world — mine is 47, hers is so much newer, although she is an old soul and she is here to teach me. The charm on the bracelet couldn’t be more timely. It is reminding me to be willing to travel toward “fruitful moments.” In this context, fruitful means:

productive, constructive, useful, of use, worthwhile, helpful, beneficial, valuable, rewarding, profitable, advantageous, gainful, successful, effective, effectual, well spent. ANTONYMS futile.

“Well spent.” Yes. That’s a wonderful goal. So I will do my best. I also want to be more like Tom:

this isn’t my art. i can’t remember whose it is. but i can’t claim it. i just want to be more like Tom.

The world is changing around us.

This student is more like Tom. She is pretty fearless. She has a very open mind about things, sometimes she is strident in her expression. I am open-minded also, but I have learned to be less strident — only recently though, and as long as I’m not on a soccer sideline. On soccer sidelines I’m more like Tom.

I think about that: “open mind.” Because I’m open minded, I’m almost obsessed these days with the concept of “two sides to a very thin coin” and that the “line between my opinion and your opinion” is very thin. Because somewhere, despite the openness, there has to be a limit or a finite end to the open-mindedness… right? Because that’s the mortal aspect of being open-minded, we can’t concern ourselves with everything because then we’ll be overwhelmed, but if we care about nothing, then we’re alone.

I am learning.

Thinness of the coin. Faintness. Vapor. Mirrors. Carl Jung reminds us (paraphrasing): What we don’t dig about others gives us an insight into ourselves… I used to think that meant I had to change. But I don’t think that’s what Jung is saying. He’s just saying, “pay attention” from which I derive: that person is your mirror. If you don’t like her shoes, what makes you so perfect?

I think of America. This gorgeous and screwed-up place. It looks so calm and beautiful from way out in space. We have mountains. We have shorelines. We have forests. We have rivers. We have deserts. We have open skies and crowded cities. We have so much — just in the way of geography, that surely the country, just within its natural boundaries, is big enough for us all.

Our collective birthday is coming up. We are very young, this nation, and we’ve really screwed up along the way, but we’ve also done some amazing things despite our relative age. This will be our 239th (I had to use the calculator) birthday.

We are a nation born of controversy and rebellion and fight.

Maybe this is just who we are –as a nation, as a collective national ego– and I’m the one who’s wrong.

All I know is that it doesn’t feel right to fight so much, and that if I were to live my life as intuitively conscious as possible, I would slow down, cool my jets and try to listen to what my body / energy / stress is telling me and stop trying to win.

So I’m creating a list of things I’m going to try to do consciously for the next year. And maybe just one of them I can do with consistency.

Find something admirable about someone I don’t like.
Be grateful for my health — I don’t mean just say, “thanks, lungs, you rock.” But to think about what my lungs do, and to let consciously them work and actively hear the sound of my own breath. Put my hand on my heart and feel it beat for ten whole beats. Place my hands on my eyes and thank them for working… ears for hearing…
Slow down around anxious people and just let them be.
Stop.
Listen.
Spend a half an hour outside each day, even if it’s raining or horrid out.
Make dinner from a cookbook once a week and don’t be chafed if the kids won’t eat it.
Appreciate my mother’s memory. The older I get and the more challenging my most important job (mom) gets, I really need to give her past some slack. She is gone from me now, but of late, I get a lot of her struggles. She may have done some irrational stuff, but she was a product of her environment too. I think of her a lot, and that’s impossible to control. She just pops in … like her crazy phone call timing — she would call at The Very Time I Couldn’t Possibly Be More Busy: 5:50-6:30 — and I need to let her pop in. I would love to hear her voice (in a non -terrifying and -creepy way).

I watched The Road again last night. I am going to read it again shortly (as soon as I finish my encore consumption of Atonement, which will be tonight). My husband wanted to see it — he never got to see the last 10 minutes, and I was only happy to oblige. The story is about catastrophe and survival and inhuman conflicts we simply don’t want to ever experience.

I heard a stream of refrains in my head from the past month in America, “Leave me alone.” “This world is crazy.” “People need to shut up.” “People need to leave each other alone.” “Don’t touch the colors in my Crunchberries.” “Mind your own business.” “We are all doomed.” “Why is there so much anger?”

As I watched “The Road” I saw and felt the desolation depicted in every single frame of that film, and recalled it internally in each syllable of McCarthy’s mastery, “The child is my warrant and he is the word of God. And if he isn’t, then God never spoke” that I started to get a little nervous.

I started to remember what it’s like to be driving on a road for several hours when no one else is there.

I started to remember what it felt like to be in a mall with no one else around.

I started to remember how it feels to get what you wish for.

I started to worry about anger and its cousin, fear. If left unattended, they can create wars. And war, as depicted in Atonement, is a horrible thing that NO ONE in my generation, save for the brave service men and service women who have served in war, can possibly comprehend. We think the wreckage after terror attacks is bad… We have no clue. War is what anger, fear, intolerance, hate, greed and ignorance create.

I have realized that I think America seems to have a case of “no one kicks my brother but me,” because when 9/11 happened, skin color, creed, lifestyle, gender, education, affinity for country music (snort), didn’t matter. We were banded together. It’s not that I want another tragedy, but I don’t like that it takes horror to get us to figure out what’s important. Peace is important.
Sure, hate the fighting, it’s a waste of energy though. Instead, love the people. Let them sing —

My nation ’tis of thee…

Sweet land of Liberty

Of thee I sing

Land where my fathers died

Land of the pilgrims’ pride

From ev’ry mountainside

Let freedom ring!

I wanted to include further verses because I love the song, but I went to wikipedia for the rest of it and discovered verses added for George Washington’s birthday, and then one for abolition and then I just gave up, because … fighting.

I look at my headline (because it’s right there to keep me on track no matter how often I deviate).

like a mirror of a mirror…

And I’m okay with it. I really do hate the fighting. It gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach. It makes me feel parched and unsteady. It reminds me of how confused I would feel when discord would happen in my childhood and I just wanted it to stop.

And the fighting will go on, because people are afraid. And I guess I will fight too, because I don’t like the fighting. I fear what happens when people don’t fight for their rights. We have anything but democracy.

This is the greatest country in the world. I love everything about it. It’s not going to hell — I don’t believe in hell. Hell is already here: in the fighting. Hell is a manmade construct. Just like shame, and guilt, and control… it’s so much easier without the fighting.

Just everyone be cool.

Learn from your friends, and from the people you disagree with: they are your best teachers. Look beyond the headlines, even mine, to learn more. The best thing I can say about the sadness of the murders in Charleston is that I’ve learned so much more about U.S. history and the history of slavery, not just America’s. The maltreatment of other humans is really upsetting to me, and it’s still going on in human sex trafficking. I would like to think that if there’s one thing we can all get behind, its the effort to end exploitation, kidnapping, drugging, theft, and murders of children and adults around the world. But I am out of gas at the moment; that’s a fight for another day.

I also recognize that I’ve been too focused on the dialogues of late and despite my discussions (authentic) that I’m cool with all the hyperbole, I am sensing now that I’ve personalized a lot of what I’ve read and heard and witnessed and that some of it really scares me — I am fearful of people and their irrationality about topics which really don’t affect them in a truly carbon-based, one-breath-at-a-time way. I don’t think I’m alone in this. It is extremely delicate ground when Americans feel their personal liberties are being trampled and it provokes more thinking and more imagining to me of that very thin two-sided coin and I think that’s why I’m writing so much these days; I am unsettled.

So I think I’m going into hiding for the next week and I’ll read a lot and watch videos about teaching yoga and how to be more centered in an off-kilter world, and I’ll send harmony out to the world because I think people are afraid of instability. We need to give ourselves permission to have off days, and to be unbalanced at times, because no one is 100% sure of anything unless they lived it, and even then there will be fearful people who refuse to believe it.

And speaking of balancing: above all, be OK with yourself when your opinion changes. That’s growth. That’s a good thing.

Love to all.

Thank you.

Jun6

And Then There Were #Haters

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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I hope this is my last blog post / comment on the Caitlin (neé Bruce) Jenner situation.

Of course there are haters. We do not live in a utopian world: judgementalism and fear have done an excellent job of setting up a premise and creating a platform from which to spout vitriol and puke deep self-loathing and fears, cloaked in hate.

Think about it this way: if you felt good about yourself, felt secure about your prospects, felt happy or content with your life, and felt as though you’ve done everything you can to create a positive environment for yourself (so, ultimately, you’ve done away with all greed, envy, reactivity and shame; and now, you fart rainbows and butterflies) and others, then why would you hate on anyone who decides to do whatever that person wants to its own body?

You wouldn’t.

You’d say, “not for me, but more power to you.”

Not, “the world is a mess and what has happened to us?”

I’ve got news for you: people have been cross dressing, with intention and fear for their lives, for millennia. Has it ever hurt you, o hater, before? Has the cross dresser or transgender or whomever shown up at your senate confirmation hearing for installation as the most balanced, articulate, and rational hater on Earth and said,

“NO NO NO!!! GOOD SENATORS AND STATESMEN! DO NOT PASS THIS INDIVIDUAL AS NOMINATED! HE HAS FEAR IN HIS HEART AND I AM HERE TO PROVE IT! STRIP HIM OF HIS MANHOOD! SHOW HIM HOW DAAAAAAAAANGEERRRRRRROUS I AM TO HIM…. I WILL THWART HIS EVERY EFFORT TO BUY GASOLINE FOR HIS CAR, OR AMMUNITION FOR HIS GUN, OR MATCHES FOR HIS CIGARETTES, OR BEER FOR HIS MAN ‘FRIDGE … BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I DO… BECAUSE I AM DAAAAAAAAAANGEERRRROUS… boooowhoooohaaaahahaaaahaaaa…”

Get over y’damnselves. Look in the mirror.

I will say it again: I care about the kids in this situation. I care about the kids in all situations where the adults have let fear and apathy and narcissism run themselves freakin’ rampant. Where those adults lose all control of themselves and their grounding. Where the adults lie, and hide, and obfuscate, and deny, and deflect, and project, and displace all their OWN self-shit on to their kids. Where the kids are left holding the bag for the adult who is really, truly, deeply, still a child deep, deep, deep inside. Bruce Jenner hid his truth from his children.

I’m not just talking about the transgender feelings, I’m talking about his PLANS to have surgeries. That tactical and strategic side to all of this. The dude was a freakin’ world-class athlete: he KNOWS all about strategy and execution. It’s like when my dad asks me to find out things for him: he’s an investigative journalist for crying’ out loud…

Bruce never told them. He planned it all along; logistics for this takes months to line up. Months, perhaps years of psychotherapy has to be experienced and assessed before one gets the medical clearance to begin looking into procedures. Bruce hid his truth and only when asked — the kids HAD TO ASK THE RIGHT WORDS IN THE RIGHT WAY — did he pout, look down, and while fiddling with his shirt, say in a very non-sportscaster voice, “mmmm, yeah.”

Much as like how a kid would admit to hitting a baseball into a neighbor’s window.

“But you should’ve seen the hit! It was aMAZing, Mom…”

Bruce has been acting on id impulse for a very long time. See me. Watch me. Listen to me. See me. SEEEEEEEEE MEEEEEEEEE!

Where the adult is acting ONLY ON ID, where the id is in control.

When the id is in control, it’s dessert all the time. Except for you. Just me. That’s my teddy bear. Get your own. Your teddy bear is ugly. I don’t want to watch that show, idiots like that show. I want to watch this. Now. No, now. NOW.

Ids are freakin’ tenacious and selfish motherfuckers. (Sorry.) And ids can rationalize anything. Count on it.

So in my estimation, we have ids running the media and ids hating on others.

The haters have to hate, lest they sit with themselves. It’s all about projection, peeps. They feel so alone.

What gets me the most in this, is the people out there who are FREAKING out and saying that Bruce has become a woman.

No.

I don’t care if Bruce had his genitalia removed, enhanced, fucked with … there is NOTHING that will turn Caitlin (neé Bruce) into a “woman.”

It’s too late for that. There is and never was a uterus. There are no ovaries. There are no eggs. There were no periods. There were no breast sprouts. There was no breast growth (and that pain! OY!). The hips didn’t widen and curve. There were no stretch marks. There were no girls at school who were shitty to him and slut-shaming and date-rape. There was no ambivalence about growing INTO a woman, no flood of questions about “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME????” There were no pregnancy scares or losses. The hormones were never there natively. It’s simply not possible. And Caitlin’s body is 65 years old. So… menopause!! Bruce missed all the windows.

Maybe it’s semantics.

“Female…”? Same point as two paragraphs above.

But… guess what?

None of this matters! How much of what you do is because you are male or female? Really? In the entire existence of your day, do you drink your coffee in a manly way? What about when you scratch your butt or go for your car keys, do you feel especially gender-identified?

Hmmm, Chet. That wasn’t quite manly enough just now, when you pressed the key fob to unlock your Lincoln. It didn’t feel right to our focus group. Let’s try that again. From the doorway, as you step out into the sunlight. Think, ‘How would John Wayne do this?’

But, y’know keep that façade, that shit up, because, really, that’s what matters. It matters HOW you order your grande Americano.

Sally… ? It is Sally, right? Hon, we need to do this again. You didn’t flush the toilet femininely enough. It’s causing all sorts of confusion for us. We need you to go back in, pee, and when you flush, think, ‘How would Joan of Mad Men, not Arc, do this?’

It matters HOW you sit at the steering wheel or periscope because that defines your sexuality. It does. And people are watching. They are. Just now. Yup.

Female. Male. Woman. Man. Metrosexual. Lumber-sexual. Foxy. Hawt.

Gah. These are all “words” and “brands” and “identifiers” we all have created as a construct in order to assign place, and rank, and meaning to our lives. I happen to dig them. I am a word person. But I don’t use them as weapons.

That’s easy for you to say, Molly. Your kids are ____ and ____ and you’re all set.

Well, no. It’s not like that. And you can bet your ass that if one of them came home and said to me, “Mom, I want to be a woman…” I’d likely flip out. The fact is, though, that I would say to him what I said above: no ovaries, no female. It’s not happening, authentically, for you. You can play dress-up and do the façade thing all you want, but biologically and energetically, well, it’s going to be very challenging. Hell, I don’t know what being a woman is. This shit just happens. I don’t know if I’m “doing” it right.

I maintain my position in the first post I wrote about this: Caitlin is Caitlin. And what the hell does it change in your personal life? Nothing. Unless you’re Caitlin, or Caitlin’s (neé Bruce) children. And even to them, it’s their own versions of affect.

Thank God, we are all different versions of each other. I can’t experience what you’re experiencing and you can’t have mine — even if we experience the same thing at the same time, we PROCESS it differently. We might have the same shoe size, but the shoes will fit us differently. And no shoe is the same. I don’t care what you say: they’re not. There is a bubble in the sole of one whereas there is none in the other. A fiber on one is not the same on the other.

THAT’S HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.

Take comfort in that. (Sorry, China.)

When this story broke, and I saw all the comments flying around, especially the flip and glib ones, I said to my oldest son, “Don’t look now, America, but you’re about to go existential on yourselves… Welcome to the rabbit hole, strap in…”

Haters ‘gonna hate. Let ’em. They need to be seen too. They feel left out. Just don’t give a toot.

Take a deep breath, and sigh it out.

rest.

Take another one, deeper this time… sigh it out.

rest.

And repeat a third time…. BIG SIGH.

Let that crap go. It’s not yours. None of this has anything to do with you.

The world is not ending over this. Maybe it’s just starting! Ha! Ever thought of that? There are so many other situations which desperately need our enthusiasm and energy: cancer, racism, terrorism, world hunger, bad haircuts….

You still have to pay your taxes and make dinner and do the dishes… life goes on. With or with out you, life goes on.

Yup. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Thank you.

Apr30

Are You Responsible? Or Are You a Jerk?

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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Years ago, I caught up with a friend who was evolving after a personal crisis and decided to join a 12-step program. He had been in the program for about six months and was sharing with me, as we walked off a soccer field, his journey toward self-discovery, self-confidence and self-pride.

We talked about “responsibility” and how when he was abusing his vice, he’d also abused the notion, and how he’d cast off and cut loose his accountability for most of what a conscientious person does not slough off.

I said, “You mean, like picking up your kids from camp on time? You mean, like not littering? You mean, like … ”

He said, “Ha. That’s stuff that I always do because people are watching: external gratification, ego-based living — doing the right thing not because it was right, but because I wanted to be seen doing it: I was all about appearances, having all the answers, being considered one of the reliable people; people considered me a common ‘go to’ person. Top seller in my company! Scratch golfer. The stuff I’m talking about now, is about internal gratification, conscience-based living: being responsible when no one else is looking. When no one cares. I didn’t have a conscience before. That’s why I thought I was above it all … that’s why I had to get help.”

We walked some more. He talked some more. I was curious to know, however, how fine is the line between “conscience-based” living and flat-out martyrdom. “It is a fine line,” he said. “I see martyrdom as making sure everyone knows you suffered while doing the right thing… doing the right thing should never make you feel bad; you feel good when you do the right thing… martyrdom can be a close ego trap.”

That made sense to me.

He continued, “Shopping carts. I never used to put them back. Sure, one was available whenever I needed it and it was in the corral when I went to get one, but I never put one back. I deluded myself into believing that what I was doing: leaving a cart in the middle of the parking lot or on a grassy median, was creating a job for some poor schmuck who needed a work-incentive program. That’s how arrogant and disconnected I was.”

The sun was high above us after the game, his kids and mine were sighing, moaning and hissing from their seats in the cars because they wanted to get their rightful post-game Slurpees. I was engrossed though.

“I’ll get you a donut too!” I promised them, “Just a few more minutes!” I begged.

My friend elaborated, sweat running down his temple. I used to think, “Where would the prison work programs be without me and my cigarette butts on the curbside? That was how I rationalized it. Other people in the program would say, ‘I left the dog poop there, the grass will grow better…’ we knew deep down we were full of crap. But I can’t tell you … I feel so much better now, just for taking back my shopping cart, it’s hard to explain. It’s like I have credibility now, real credibility. I don’t need to rationalize anymore,” he said.

Just blame someone else.

Anyone can rationalize anything. “Look what you made me do!” Have you ever heard that one?

Anyone can choose to look the other way. “Anyone can choose to do nothing, because even doing nothing, even not choosing is a choice,” said my sagacious 10-year-old the other day.

do you do this? are you one of those assholes? source: fhotd64476.yuku.com

What about when you do the wrong thing? And you KNOW it’s wrong! And you KNOW it’s indecent and unethical and completely unacceptable — for example taking or sanctioning a photograph of a unique-looking person, or of a minor, without their knowledge just because the technology exists. Do you rationalize it? Do you say you have a good reason? What could possibly BE that reason?!

At a local elementary school, there’s a upper-grader who goes into the restroom at school and snaps photos of classmates and then extorts the kids into doing whatever this person asks under threat of sharing the image on social media.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL! Where are these kids learning this stuff? Where are the parents?! Since when is it OK to EVER record an full-on image of another person without their awareness or permission?

What about when you practice “Do as I say, not as I do?” Do you think that’s ok too? Do you run red lights or roll through stop signs but expect your spouse or kid to do the right thing?

When you point at other people, three fingers are pointing back at you.

What about when you know something is amiss, but you lie to yourself and you project your inability to sit with the discomfort of the truth, on to innocent people? That’s how many addictions and aberrant anti-social and sociopathic behaviors can begin: people rationalize and believe, with all their might (even though at first they say they don’t) that they are above the law or the code of moral correctness. That they are separate. They they are special.

“She looked at me wrong.”

And it morphs tragically into a drive-by or school shooting. No communication is necessary for these folks; they just go ahead and do what they want because they have just cause: “work incentive program”; “she’s mean to me”; “no one saw me…”; “I saw my mom do it once … “; or my personal favorite: “it’s always been that way, it’s tradition…”

Are you one of those people? Are children around when you do this crap?

Can you even admit it? And if you do, can you sit with the uncomfortable truth, the yucky, sticky and gross feelings that I would hope would come up (because that means you do have a conscience) with the choices you make and the swath of destruction, confusion, embarrassment and woe in your wake?

I’ve met people like this. I’ve bobbed in their seas of denial, ~~half-~~disgusted with myself for continuing to hang on to them, despite my Spirit telling me to get away, to seek the light, to do the right thing — for myself — and to evolve.

I’ve held on because I put them first. I’ve held on because I feared that my life would somehow be less-than without them. I’ve held on because they made me feel like I needed them and that they needed me … I will never know. I’ve moved on. Their antics of delusion and harsh, foul projection of blame and accountability onto other people have finally snapped me to my senses; as though I’ve been t-boned or rear-ended.

My friend and that conversation flew into my head last week as I was walking back to my car from returning my shopping cart. Actually, I think of that conversation every time I put away my cart. “Even if you’re in a rush — ya gotta put the cart away,” I remember him saying.

How’s he doing? I don’t know if he’s still in the 12-step program; I sure hope he’s OK. He never contacted me to atone for any of his failings while I was involved in his life and was hurt by his abuse and witnessed his faults. I wish him the best. I hope he does this from now on:

clean up your conscience. put your cart away. www.ripoffreport.com

clean up your conscience. put your cart away.
source: http://www.ripoffreport.com

Do you put your “cart” (read: do the right thing) away or are you one of those people who thinks you don’t need to?

Right your ship.

Thank you.

May1

Transcendental Frienditation

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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What happens when you combine a love of featherfish with an artist who makes killa collages with a poem lauding the microwave and a family of five?

You get Transcendental Frienditation, and the gift of this friendship, now spanning between Northern Virginia and a little town in New Mexico has reached new heights.

I adore as you may know, the lovely and talented Lillian Connelly. The poem I wrote last week about the microwave, I wrote on the fly (as I do most of my posts; sadly, this one is sort of planned). While she liked that one enough and we had fun with it, it was the next post, the one about the featherfish that caught her eye; so much, that she fell in love with the featherfish as evidenced by many back and forth tweets on Twitter about them.

And that’s how we got started. Here is Lillian’s post about her adventure via Twitter and how she and I are collaborating: How My Ideas Grew Two Sizes That Day.

I planned to go all by myself the following Sunday morning to the Eastern Market in D.C. It’s insane to get out of the house with the kids for a planned event; a spontaneous one: fugedaboudit. When I thought I was sneaking down the stairs, I saw my husband on his computer. That was fine. Then I saw Thing 2. Thing 2 likes shopping and going places, so I knew he’d be game. That’s ok. But I really wanted to be there hassle-free: out and about, in the sun, eating a crepe without having to deal with “idonwanna” and “letsdothisinstead” coming from the back seats.

The truth is, I love my team and as much as I wanted to be alone, I really wanted them to see the fantastic experience that lies only 25 minutes away.

My thoughts and plans of leaving at 9:30 in the morning were dashed like a skiff exploding on the rocky bluffs of Ireland when Thing 1 decided he wanted to come too. That meant Thing 3 simply could not stay home alone. Despite his assertions that he would be fine alone for several hours in our house, we made him accompany us. It was on this day that his fever returned and that the amoxicillin he’d recently been prescribed stopped working on his strep throat. He was an absolute pleasure to be around.

But what started out as a solo venture, ended up becoming one of the most fantastic days my family has had together in a long time.

Upon arrival, the first order of business was to stop and get some featherfish for Lillian. Imagine my shock and awe, when we encountered this:

featherfish, featherbears, featherbirds, featherowls, feathergoats, bullfeathers…

I simply could not decide. I mean, what if she had a preference for the tortoises or the rams? So I called her, at likely 8am her time on a Sunday (you know, late) and left her a message that she did not listen to until Monday. It’s ok. I chose the fish, and I’m sure she’ll write about them. But in the meantime, she has been working on my homage collage, and I’ll let her show that to you.

So while we were purchasing the featherfish, my husband started talking to FeatherMitch, the maker of the featherthings. And um, let’s just say they got along well. “He is my long-lost brother!” Mitch said, about my husband. “You never know!” he said:

Mr. Grass Oil and FeatherMitch, long-lost brothers. Mitch has a zen that makes my own husband’s mellow ways seem like my zen, which is to say: no zen. (that little creature in front of Mitch is a featherladybug)

We spent about half an hour with featherMitch and he told us his story. I will sum it up: his grandfather left China during the revolution with nothing. He was not allowed to take his sheep or his money or his food or his clothes with him. He could only take his roll-up mattress and almost no money; China got everything. He wanted to go to Thailand. He met his eventual wife in Thailand, she too was a Chinese refugee. He stayed there and they raised a family, Mitch’s father. He married and Mitch was born. He said that his grandfather wanted to die in China, he wanted to die where he was born, but he wanted all his money to stay in Thailand. The story is a little sketchy and I have a feeling my husband will return many times to iron out the details because he has told me he has a fondness for Mitch (and honestly, who can’t?).

When Mitch was finishing his story, he looked at my oldest son. “What you want to do when you go to college?” he asked. My son stammered a little, kicked a rock, smiled, wasn’t quite ready to answer the question. Mitch had asked it so deliberately. I answered, “He likes engineering, and he loves science and math.”

“You be a doctor. Medical engineer. My daughter, I have two: one is at Columbia, getting her PhD, all she does is call me for money; and the other is at Berkeley. I don’t want them to call me anymore,” he said with no irony. “It’s expensive to live in New York, she calls me for money all the time. I tell her, ‘stop learning, get a job!’ but she’s my daughter. So I send her money.”

“You learn technology, but stay away from Facebook, iPads. Study instead. China wants you to stay on Facebook. All of us, it wants us to be all ‘waaaah waaaah woooaah…’ like zombies on the computers. That’s the only way it will win. Stay away from that. Go outside, exercise, meet people, read science and literature. Artists. Keep doing things, stay away from online talking. China will win and we will all lose,” he said very sharply and lovingly to all my sons.

“I joke with my mom that we should all learn Chinese because we will be speaking it one day when China buys the United States…” Thing 1 said.

“This is no joke.” Mitch said. “Mandarin. You and your children will speak Mandarin if we don’t get away from the iPhones and the Facebook. China loves that we love our phones. They make them and we forget we are alive when we use them.”

He was so correct. My heart sank. Here is a man who knows what China is capable of. We left him for other kiosks, but we planned to say good-bye before we left.

After featherMitch, we went to see a glass artist make pendants and watched his glass blowing demonstration:

Thing 3 was entranced. He and this artist talked so much about the pendant and heat and compared it all to the sun’s heat.

Then after that, we met another artist, Shumba Masani, who makes “canimals”: giraffes and other animals out of aluminum cans. Thing 3 saved his yoo-hoo can for him; he planned to make a turtle out of it. This artist’s works have been in the Smithsonian. He made a 6′ tall giraffe and sold it for $1,000.

This is Masani’s interview on YouTube, he’s amazing and he just sort of stumbled into his art. His lesson is important, so check it out:

I bought this little rhino from him for $20. It’s made from a can of olive oil -infused hairspray:

I suppose $20 is steep, but I’m thrilled because as Thing 3 said, I get to have an original piece of art from an artist whose other works sit in a museum. What I was most thrilled with was that my kids met him and talked to him and saw that all things are possible as long as you try and never give up.

After Masani, I found a second-hand leather backpack purse. Fully lined, “Fossil” brand and it was as soft as butter. At this kiosk, it was originally $35, but that price was scratched out and the new price was $25. I just had $23 on me. “That’ll do.” said the vendor.

“I love that it’s already got scratches on it and that it’s broken in.” I said. “It’s like a car: once you get that first ding in the door, no matter how painful it is, it’s still a car. It’s just less than perfect now. The pressure’s off to keep it pristine. Are you sure? Just twenty-three? Really?”

“Sure. Man, I like your style,” he said. “I wish more people were like you.”

I inspected the bag; it was fine inside: clean, no smells, intact. I love a bargain and I love a broken-in, butter-soft, leather backpack purse even more.

Yesterday, Thing 3 called me from school. He wasn’t feeling well. The amoxicillin had not done its job. We needed to go back to the doctor’s. While we were waiting, I opened my new backpack purse to put away my insurance cards and I looked over and saw this:

It looked like it was talking to me.

So we were having more fun in the exam room and Thing 3 asked me to take this picture:

“It said, ‘Gryffindor!’ mom, like the sorting hat from Harry Potter, but it’s a sorting bag.”

I have a sorting hat puppet. As far as I’m concerned, you can love Harry and Hermione and Ron and all those people all you want, but when I saw that sorting hat, I was sold. No one else mattered, ‘cept McGonegal. No one messes with Maggie Smith.

Lillian and I are going to embark on more homage collages; or collages with poems and make a calendar of them all for people to buy. It’s all because of the featherfish (that post is about living in the now) and the fact that I was stalled on what to make for dinner one night. The takeaway from all this is that friendship is everywhere and the gift we’ve given to each other is one of new ideas and possibilities for our work; something that will take the writer’s blech for me and give her new things to play with. But the gift she gave to me and my family is permanent and lasting and it’s those little things: taking a leap of faith on a friend and loving what comes of it, that makes it all the richer. So do it: get to know someone and collaborate.

The featherfish were packed up in a box by featherMitch waiting by my front door Monday. Taking them to the post office was also a gift, I stood in line with some of the funniest people and shared stories with them and the very clever man behind the counter. Who knew one set of featherfish could bring me this much joy?

all ready to go to new mexico!

Lillian should get them today. I can’t wait to hear from her when she opens the box. She’s so great. As it turns out, her grandmother lives near me. When she comes to visit her, we are SO going to meet featherMitch. It’ll be a reunion of people who’ve never met.

Thank you.