Dream interpretation

In my memory he is walking, Astaire-like, up and down my dorm's stairwell, singing, "I'll build a stairway to paradise."  It echoes strongly, and I am entranced.   I love singing in stairwells. 

He was a student in a required freshman class, and I was the TA.  He left after that semester, but it was long enough to create a friendship that lasted for close to 15 years.  Through those years, we corresponded, I visited him in Oneonta, NY, once, and he visited me in Portland, Oregon, twice.  He disappeared on Oahu shortly after that second visit, and has never been found.  I corresponded with his family, contributed to the memory book, and disposed of the car he had left in Seattle.

And I've never forgotten him.

*******************************

 



He was always prickly, always challenging, always creating.  I remember I was always asking to see his work, and he would send it to me at intervals.  Sometimes it was writing, sometimes other things:  like the meringue from his kitchen and the squash from his garden.  He was supremely fit, very comfortable with using his body the way he wanted to, regardless of time and place.  Once, he told me, he was stretching out on the dance floor of a bar and was informed, "We don't do that here."  He laughed, but I could tell he really didn't get what the problem was.  It was a resignation to the incomprehensible foibles of the masses, not humor.  While he could be light-hearted, it always came as a surprise.  It was as though he could only access that part of himself under extreme circumstances.  The rest of the time he was acting from memory:  ah, yes, this is what it's like to laugh.  And this is clearly a situation where laughter is called for, so, I'll laugh.

But he wasn't feeling it.

********************************

 



We were driving to the family home on the Neversink, where his sister would later drown while rafting.  He taught me a canon he had "written," with words from Song of Solomon.  It was a droning atonal sort of song.  "Until the day break, and the shadows flee, I will get me to the mount of myrrh and hill of frankinsense.  Until the day break, and the shadows flee, Turn, love, young hart, on the mount of spices."  I learned it quickly, and we sang it together.  I don't think I'll ever sing it with anyone else.

Music and rhythm were part of his soul, but he never learned to read or write it.  Once, on that last visit, he was washing dishes, and he began tapping the sides of the metal sink.  It was sufficiently percussive for him to continue and expand into resonant hand-slapping drum beats.  My cousin picked up some chopsticks and created a snare drum set on the tall wooden salt and pepper shakers and the metal stove top.  I drummed on the counter with my fingertips.  T provided foot percussion as she began dancing, and we all followed suit, twirling and drumming.

*****************************

 



The demands he put on himself and others created beauty, but also hurt.  He had a hot intense gaze and an intense conversational style.  He didn't suffer fools gladly, but he was well versed in polite behavior, like bringing hostess gifts and sending thank you notes.  He had no patience for feelings or for sugar coating his thoughts, especially with those he loved.  Example:   We had visited a friend of his and were figuring out sleeping arrangements, and he had said, "I want to sleep with you."  The next morning, they were swinging in the hammock together.  She was clearly enamored, he was laughing joyously.  Later I commented on their relationship and he said, "She's just a friend.  I'm not interested in her otherwise, she's repulsive!" 

I began crying.  I didn't know how to process a friendship that could be so hot and so cold.  Maybe I wondered what mean things he was saying about me.  He was confused:  what had he said to make me cry?  I couldn't explain.

 ***************************

 

A few mornings ago, I woke up from an extremely vivid dream.  In that dream, he had turned up here in Albuquerque.  I was excited and happy, but confused.  "Have you told your family?"  no.  "Can I tell A in Portland?"  no.  "Where have you been?"  no answer.

 

He wanted to show me a house he'd found, and we silently walked 4 blocks to it.  There were trees and Portland-style landscaping.  It was huge and old, with hard wood floors.  It had a formal dining room,  kitchen with marble counters and gas stove, a living area with fireplace, and several bedrooms or office/den rooms.  It was all on one level, filled with antiques, books, and art.  It was a craftsmen style home, not an adobe. We had a moment cuddling on one of the beds, and I agreed that it would be a great place to rent.  Then a whole crew of 20-somethings appeared.  One of them was the owner, and we had tea and talked about my love of dishes.  She wanted to rent to me, for sure, but apparently she also wanted to rent to the others.  There were 23 people, and the house had become larger.  But the monthly rent was $50K.  Even divided by 23, it was unaffordable.

 

He had disappeared, while I was talking with the owner.  I was confused and overwhelmed.  Spotting a skinny door in the corner, I slunk over and discovered a steep narrow stair, going up.  I shut the door behind me and climbed, emerging from the dark stairwell into two large open rooms, with skylights and walls of windows.  There was no furniture, other than a reading nook with a comfy chair, but paintings filled the limited wall-space. It was a Portland house for sure, but the view through the glass was Albuquerque, with the wide ever-changing skies and adobe architecture.  I felt open and free and at home.  I spread out my arms and twirled. 

 

And woke up.

 

What did it mean?  I'd spent the day before researching an elusive article about teaching in Hawaii, which he did when he was going to grad school.  And it's where he disappeared.  Is that what brought him into my dream?   Surely not:  the real Hawaii connection is my friend L's family.

 

I am looking at the possibility of finding a new home and a new job and a housemate, and I'm not sure if I want to be in Portland or Albuquerque or Hawaii.  So, perhaps the dream reflects that.  After all, the process of selling the Portland house is almost complete, so that particular house is not in my future, nor was it in my dream. 

 

Yet, house dreams are more about the personal interior, not the actual house, right?  So...I'm seeking. Seeking home, seeking community.  And lord knows, seeking was what he did best.   Maybe he's there to guide me.  Or does he represent the authentic me, who will never settle for mediocrity, who wants to do it all?

 

Or, do I just miss him?

 

A long vivid dream:
Tim reappeared and we found
A great house to rent.

More Nostalgia, Tree Man division

My friend J wrote to chastise me for not writing about Tree Man in my previous post.  I told her that it was up to her to document that particular trip down memory lane, because she had the most interactions with him.  Also, he wasn't a problem patron, he was a volunteer.  And most of the volunteers I worked with were absolutely lovely people.  He was the anomaly.

He was in his late 30's I believe.  He wore jeans and flannel shirts and had long unkempt mousy-brown hair, parted in the middle, hanging down in a fuzzy, straggly mass.  He had a pitted, pale face, and looked a little like he'd lived in his parent's basement since his teens.

Actually, it turns out it was his brother's basement.  And he was volunteering because he had no work history.  According to J, his income from the previous 10 years was through sales of marijuana.  You gain a lot of interesting experience, of course, but I can see the difficulty of explaining the work gap, not to mention codifying the skills on the resume or job application

Entrepreneurial Sales, Agricultural.    Self-employed.  1979-1989

• Business skills 
• Able to organize and schedule shipments
• Able to keep financial records, set up payment plans, make change
• People skills 
• Able to inspire trust and confidence through maintaining confidentiality and providing a quality product.  
• Able to grow a business.  
• Reason for leaving:  competition and government regulations.  Desire for a more stable job.

Anyway, he was volunteering for the library to gain some skills and job references that would look credible on a resume.  His job was checking in the huge book drop, which was also one of J's jobs, so he spent a fair amount of time chatting her up. To be fair, she's very good at chatting with just about anyone, so he may have just succumbed to her conversational charms.

He worked for a few months and then stopped showing up.  I asked the Volunteer Coordinator about him, as I didn't have a phone number.  I'll always treasure her answer.  After saying that he was a bit sketchy, was living with his brother and had no job history or obvious skills, she said, "He's the type we can use, so I referred him to you."  Really?

We never did get him back, nor did we want to, but shortly thereafter J ran into him on the Johnson Creek bike trail.  It's a heavily wooded trail, a swath of creek land that cuts through the SE Portland residential area and later links up with other trails.  It is fairly heavily used, but because of the trees it feels lonely and isolated. She said he was just sort of hanging out, and told her that he'd been kicked out of his house.  She asked where he was living and he said, "Found a tree."  Totally creeped out, she hopped back on her bike and pedaled away.

So, he was an interesting character.  But he wasn't a problem, per se. And, as I said earlier, most of the volunteers were lovely people.  Many were students, looking for the community service credit.  For several years we had a mother/daughter team:  the mom was a teacher, the daughter a high school student.  Both were intelligent and creative, and writing a reference for the daughter was one of the biggest pleasures I've had.  (She was awesome, so the reference was just a little bit of icing.)

My dear friend B was a volunteer before she was hired by the system and then moved on to become an electrician.  Another woman was from Sierra Leone:  she was an elegant and beautiful black woman with a luscious and exotic French accent.  Later I ran into her and she loaned me her Pema Chodron CDs.  I believe she is living in Canada now.

While not all volunteers were as exceptional as they were,  most are pretty interesting people.  The reasons for volunteering are as varied as the people themselves, and only a small percentage have obvious mental issues, far fewer than the percentage of problem patrons.  At one point I was supervising close to 40 volunteers, and it was one of the easy and rewarding parts of my job.

I think I'd have to say the most rewarding volunteer experience was with the highly functioning autistic kid from the nearby high school.  He was doing a work study sort of program (I worked with a lot of interns, too), and he spent most of the school year shelving and shelf-reading for school credit instead of pay.  He was very quiet, tall and good looking.  He looked at you intently with round shining eyes out of an expressionless face, and he was detail-oriented and an excellent worker.  After graduation, he got a job at the convention center, which was a pretty cool gig for any young man.  Lots of great shows and games take place there.  He came in to the library to show me his badge and thank me for the reference and the work experience, and I almost cried.  He was so proud.

I don't think he'll end up living in a tree.

A half century of "shoulds"

Two weeks ago I posted a whiny blog, which I thought better of the next day.  It's safely in my draft folder, and my apologies to anyone who saw it before I tidied away.  But that doesn't mean I'm not still feeling whiny.  I miss having a regular companion, and I don't feel like I've replaced the job of caring for D with any worthwhile activities.  As I whimpered in my weekly therapy session, I'm not living a productive life.

She asked, in her contemplative therapist voice, "and what would that look like?"

I was stumped.

I muttered something about my creative friends, and she pointed to my knitting.  Well, no, that's not creative or productive, that's just keeping my hands busy. "Uh Huh," she said noncommittally.  I said, I should be doing more, losing weight, focusing, connecting, taking care of business.  "Why?"  Because....I SHOULD!

Therapists are irritating sometimes.

However, it turns out it's not the goals she's taking exception to, but the "negative self-talk."  Is there anything that cannot be phrased more positively, without the S word?   Well, what about cleaning the house, not living in squalor?  "Why not?"  Because....I don't like it.  Okay, I get it.  Not "I should," but "I want to," or "I choose to."

Semantics, I say.  Not really, she counters.  It's the difference between putting yourself down and making a conscious choice.  So, here's the challenge.  Is there anything that is a legitimate "should?"  And if not, how do I put aside a lifetime of framing my life in terms of negativity and other's expectations?  Is it possible to eradicate a half-century of "shoulds?"

And Should I?

Nostalgia, or May You Live in Interesting Times

A few weeks ago I handled my first solo security incident in this library system.  Normally the security guard deals, but on this occasion I didn't think to call him.  The experience evoked a not-so-wistful nostalgia.  You see, in my previous life, I was the Queen of Incident Reports.  For every run-in there was a report, and I dealt with a lot of Problem Patrons.  My reports were detailed and professional (no terms like "stench-ridden scumbag" for example.)  I was never good at estimating height and weight and I could rarely remember what the person actually looked like, but the description of the actual incident was always spot on.

One of my colleagues had a similar problem: she'd sit at the reference desk poring over a text book written for wannabe security officers. I remember it was full of facial outlines:  heart-shaped, triangular, square....only even more detailed than that, with varieties of facial hair, eye shapes, ears, etc.  I've looked at face-types to figure out haircuts and necklines, but law enforcement ID's are a whole nother ball of wax.  I glanced through the rest of the book, but it clearly called for a level of observation that will forever elude me.  Sherlock Holmes I ain't.

I am, however, excellent at laying down the law consistently and telling people, "I'm sorry you've chosen to leave."  Sadly, I forgot that phraseology the other day, reverting to the rhetoric I once used for the Kids From Hell.  They were a group of tweens who lived across the street from the library.  It was a blended family;  the father was a long-distance truck driver, the mother worked in a store, and the kids were left in charge of the 10-year-old.  This was apparently legal, per CSD, but it certainly wasn't effective.  They would descend upon us at intervals throughout the day.  Books were not on their agenda.  I remember once they snitched post-its from the desk and papered the branch with them, creating a scavenger hunt.  Sam, the oldest boy, was mouthy and a bully, but I had a soft spot for him:  he was so bored and so lonely. And he had some good points.  For instance, he used to help our elderly volunteer R with her yard.  And, I remember seeing him once with his father:  he was beaming and clearly looking for attention and approval.  He was a different kid.

However, I did not have the time or expertise to be the de facto babysitter, and other patrons were under attack from the noise and chaos.  I placed numerous calls with CSD and with the mother, trying to get someone to take responsibility for them.  But in the final analysis it was up to me:  "Okay, you're outta here!  I don't care who did it, you're all outta here.  We'll see you tomorrow."

And that's what I said the other day.  A group of 6 tweens and teens had been roaming the library for 2 hours and were finally bunched up around two computers, laughing and talking so I could hear them at the desk.  I went up to them, pointed out the computer sign that said "1 person per computer" and asked the standees to separate and leave the area, as they were being disruptive to other customers.  They plopped in the comfy chairs nearby, and as I walked away one of them said, "Bitch."

I don't take that from anyone.  Or, this case, 6 anyones.

But that's such small potatoes, compared to the Problem Patrons in my past.  There was The Crawler, who used to literally crawl around the perimeter of the building, looking at the books on the bottom shelves, grunting and mumbling.  He took a swing at me once when I asked him to keep his voice down.  This was in the days when "exclusions" were rare and we didn't have the triplicate form with numbered rules.  Usually staff were expected to suck it up, and often they were not-so-subtly suspected of inciting the incident.  Or at least, not de-escalating properly.  I can't recall if he was excluded.  I know he shouted "leave me alone!" and staggered out of the building.

In those innocent days, the Dictionary Man used to stand at the huge Webster's dictionary on the table by the circulation desk, leering over the book at the desk staff.  He was short, with oily grizzled hair curled at the neck and swept across the brow, and dark thick arched eyebrows, perfect for peering under.  He must have been in his fifties.  He was considered creepy but harmless until he approached some young girls and asked them "how they'd like to be buried."  I told him he'd need to leave for the day and he launched into a mumbling tirade, only part of which I could understand, "Why don't you move to Boise, Idaho?"  My current massage therapist is moving there, and before I wrote this I was trying to figure out why I was so horror-struck at the thought:  reportedly it's a nice town in a beautiful mountain-ringed area.  But if the Dictionary Man thinks it's a bad place, it must be.

He was excluded, but his mother got him dispensation.

Not all the troubled souls got excluded.  Chris, an autistic young man about my 10 years my junior, used to come striding it 5 minutes to closing to pull out the Encyclopedia Britannica (for some reason Compton's and Americana left him cold.)  I'd approach to let him know we were closing and he would jump and stammer, pointing at the clock.  Later, however, he stopped being scared of me and came in earlier in the day to call plangent greetings from the door.  Hi, K!  Hi Chris.  How are you?  Fine Chris.  It's a nice day!  Yes it is.  Several years later I transferred to another branch, only to discover that he'd become a regular there.  He was delighted to see me.

And there was the male cross-dresser who claimed to be a federal agent and handed us a purple construction paper ID cards demanding that we issue his library card in that (female) name.  Eventually we caved, because she got so agitated, and because she was clearly not going to try to get multiple cards under various pseudonyms.  She used to photocopy documents and then write on them with ball-point pens, hard enough to gouge the tables beneath. We had to talk to her about that.  The local police kept an eye on her because she was so strong and once when she was agitated she pulled the doors off a local church.  But, I felt that she was actually using the library in a meaningful way, and I didn't want her to lose that resource.

Len (AKA Gary) and Sven were another matter.  They were brothers (we think) who lived under the bushes in Laurelhurst Park,  This put them on the main crosstown bus line to 3 busy libraries, one of them mine.  They had numerous aliases, and they logged into computers at each library, jumping on abandoned logins, stealing login IDs, borrowing other people's cards.  And when they were on the computer, they were looking at porn.  If you confronted them about the identity theft, they got belligerent, both physically and verbally.  One of my colleagues dreamed of going to the Park some fine night with a baseball bat.  Each of the branches maintained a dossier on these gents:  this was before the days of the intranet wall of shame, where you could scan pix and security logs for excluded individuals and get them for trespassing.

Angry Carpenter Guy limited his visits to the library that had quiet rooms.  He would hop into empty rooms without signing in, in order to extend his quiet room time.  And he would hover over the signup sheet, waiting for the 10-minute grace period to expire so he could sneak in.  His moniker came from the fact that his face was in a perpetual scowl, and he wore carpenter jeans and plaid shirts and tough boots.  His hair was long and lank and mousy brown, sometimes straggling down his shoulders, sometimes tied back.  His blue eyes were deep set and intense.  You really didn't want to mess with him.

Several years later, I was subbing at a library in another county and looked up to see him glaring at the study room sign-up sheet.  I called my ex-colleagues and asked if they had driven him out.  No, he was patronizing both establishments.

Of course, we were not supposed to use these nicknames, but they were irresistible.  I figured, as long as the incident logs used formal names, we were fine.

Chloe did not have a nickname.  Her idiosyncrasies were too diverse to limit to one name.  She was known at many branches.  She was reportedly an ex-Rockette (or maybe that was a staff joke?), and knew Clark Gable.  I can't remember whom she was related to.  Queen Elizabeth II?  The Rothschilds?  She was tiny, with bunned white hair, thin orange-white old skin, Tammy Fay Baker eyeliner, and excellently cut suits with frilly blouses.  Her genealogical research was heavily skewed to pictures, which she printed out and cut and filed away.  (I shudder to recall her reaction when we stopped offering color printouts.)  Normally she approached with a smile and a little-girl voice.  With the male staff she was positively flirtatious, but when she was unhappy her darkly lined eyelids would slant downward, her mouth would pout, and her gaze would go steely.  The voice remained little-girl, with an incongruous angry rasp.

These were regulars, but they were not the reason I became the Queen of Incident Reports.  It was the almost daily run-ins with less colorful characters that gave me the expertise.  The branch I worked at from 2003-2009 was near the Max line and on the outskirts of a very busy business strip.  The homeless folks lived in the bushes by the line and hopped the Max around the city.  Regular security incidents followed the line.

My branch had the usual porn watchers.   Other than child porn, it was considered protected speech unless the watcher engaged in other behavior:  like the teen who brought in his own lotion and proceeded to masturbate at the computer station.   (When he was excluded for 6 months, he said, "I'll go to the Clackamas County library.)

So, porn was not the issue, although we spent a lot of time replacing privacy screens and relocating shocked patrons.  It was the other behavior: shooting up in the bathroom and stealing DVDs to support the meth habit.  Leaving the dog tied up at the bike rack by the door, ignoring his barking and lunging at people who approached.  Cutting toenails while waiting for the computer.  Shouting on the cell phone and then shouting at staff who intervened.  Having "an odor associated with you."  The nearby high school was the breeding ground for several reports, because they'd bring their school fights down the street to the library.  We had the vice principal on speed dial.  Once a fight spilled into the staff workroom.  L, a tall scarecrow figure, channeled a cop and barked "Take it outside!" while the rest of the staff were frozen deer in the headlights.

I don't miss those days one little bit, although it's nice to know I haven't lost my skills.

Fragile

10/4/13.....I wrote this some time ago, posted it for an evening, decided it was too whiny, and took it down.  Today, after writing about my next steps in this weird journey of mine, I decided to glance through old posts. It was sort of an attempt to see just how I got to this place.  Now, this post gives the context better than any of the others.  I've been spiraling for years, it seems.  It appears that it's time to stop spinning and just be for awhile.  Be a musician.  Be a friend.  Be a caregiver.  Be lazy.  Be broke.  Be there.

Here's the context............................

Last night I attended a performance of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, one of their four Albuquerque run-outs.  It was excellent:  the auditorium acoustics were exceptional, and the players were simultaneously physical and sensitive.  And they played Brahms, which always works for me.  My companion is a fellow violinist, and she knew everyone in the audience it seemed, except for the woman with the intrusive perfume, sitting next to me.  She also had the chutzpah to spot 2 other seats, 3 rows ahead of us, and make plans to shift us there:  at intermission we moved to a place where I could breathe.  At the end, we were both jazzed and dazed by the performances.  We parted ways, promising to get together soon for duets and future concerts.  The future was enticing, full of promise.

It was also the first day in months that I was not exhausted at 2 pm, yawning at 3, and barely able to keep my eyes open at 4.  In fact, I was energized by L's visit the night before, and happy in my life.  I was re-applying myself to the search for a new job in a new place, and I was also figuring out how to continue to connect to the good things in my life here.

So, what happened over night?  When the alarm woke me at 6:45 am, I was prepared to start my routine.  Check out the e-mail and facebook, stretch, walk, shower, make coffee and toast, go to work, pick out the books for the daycare visit.  I read for a bit and then put away the ipad, poised to rise.  And then I realized:  all I wanted to do was sleep.  I didn't feel disgust for the job, I didn't feel stressed or want to avoid anyone or anything, but I didn't want to go in.  With very little pondering, I called in sick, asked J to call the daycare and cancel for me, and I went back to bed.

Except, I couldn't sleep.

So, I've been puttering all day.  Make bed, put away L's air mattress, rearrange the space, wash dishes, drink coffee.  The computer cord doesn't work, so I fuss about getting it replaced.  I finish a book. I notice that the cord started magically working on its own, and I call off the replacement and start editing pix and finishing up my blacksmith blog.  I hear from my realtor:  another roadblock to selling the house.  I talk to the lawyer.  T stops by with a DQ blizzard and keeps me company for a bit.  He leaves and I start reading another book and editing some more pix.

And....I don't want to do anything.  I feel twitchy and at loose ends.  I want to call in sick again, not because I'm physically sick, but because I'm sick of my scheduled, repetitive life.  Yet, I don't have anything better to replace it with, look at how I've spent today.  90 percent of success is showing up.  So I keep showing up.  I keep doing what I'm paid to do, people are generally okay with what I do, how I do it, who I am.  Why am I seriously considering not showing up?

I have managed that for years, and I'm like Jane Eyre, "I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me at least a new servitude!"

T would say I'm tempting the bored angels again.  What is the point of a new servitude in a new place? I have a reasonably well-paying job, I'm living within my means,  I like New Mexico, I have friends, acquaintances, activities worth doing.  I've had enough change in that last few years to last a lifetime.  A new job is just a distraction from the real issue:  I don't like who I am.  I won't go into the self-hating litany (why give voice to it?), but it's there, nattering monotonously.

I turn on music to silence the thoughts while I continue to edit pix from my iPhone.  Listening to "Fragile," I think about D.  He sang it at our wedding, while I sang "My ship." Now I think, what odd choices those were.  It's almost like a foreshadowing of the collapse of our marriage. I sang that all the jewels in the world meant nothing without my own true love.  Dave sang that we (and our love?) are fragile.  And here I am, without my love, without a lover, without the beauty and joy.  Fragile.

People I saw in Portland talked about how strong and healthy and happy I seemed.  I wish it were true.  I'm so tired of this game face.

If I had a hammer

A few months back, I met a gent on OKCupid who, among other interesting things, claimed to be a blacksmith. Having an interest in all arts, especially practical ones, I got in touch. Turns out, his life has been too busy in the last few years to take advantage of his forges, acetylene torches, tongs, and other accoutrements of the art. I can sympathize: it's been over 10 years since I've been in a darkroom, but I still plan to get back into it, someday. But I was a tad bit disappointed: I'd had visions of apprenticing myself, or at the very least, learning how to make a tiny hook and watching in awe as he swung his mighty hammer, blacksmith muscles bulging, soot wiped across his brow. Or something like that.

So when he asked if I wanted to attend a blacksmith convention near Santa Fe, I was on it. Within 24 hours I had my Saturday liberated and was planning what to bring to the campsite. As it happened, the truck was broken so we didn't camp, but everything else was beyond my expectations. We got up at 5 am so we could make it in plenty of time for the 9 am start. The entire event took place in the enormous workshop of Christopher Thompson, a blacksmith of international renown and 25 years of experience. He apparently started out as a sculptor, and his working method still has a free form style, even though his work has to pay attention to carpenter's rules (measure twice, cut once.) He makes staircases and railings and furniture, all of which needs to fit into space or match up.

Before the demos began, I wandered around the shop, marveling at the tools and the shapes. The other 30-odd people were part of the blacksmith community, and they were drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups and talking to each other and looking at the examples of the work that were scattered about the shop and in the grounds. I was more interested in the textures and mystery: what is THIS used for? And why does he need so much of THAT?



In the course of his demo, he showed us some custom lamp fixtures, made to mimic an old design. However, his design had to pay attention to modern situations: for example, he had to design a way for a single person to be able to one-handedly change the lightbulb. The old design was for candles, I think: at any rate, it took an army of servants to care for the lighting. I actually missed some of his explanation, because I was mesmerized by his hands.

He held them stiffly, hanging at the end of his arms. They looked like the tools they are, strong at grasping and holding, with enormous knuckles. I kept trying to capture them with my little Iphone camera, but they were constantly in motion, gesturing, holding things up, cupping the air to describe a form. Several other photographers were probably luckier: they crouched at the front of the group or stood on tables, finding the perfect angle to deploy real cameras with macro lenses.

The equipment included a 500 pound Chambers power hammer. The process goes something like this: Heat the metal in one of the forges, bring it to the hammer. Turn it on, and there's an immense bellows noise and smell of hot oil. The moving upper part of the machine is released with a foot lever and slams down steadily on the stick of glowing metal. Standing with his back in a bow, levering leg extended, the blacksmith holds on to the end, sometimes with a gloved hand, sometimes with tongs, moving the stick back and forth in a rhythm with the pounding hammer. SLAM. SLAM. SLAM. The noise is deafening, the stick glows various shades of red, from bright yellow-red to dull blood red, fading to grey. The hammer flattens, makes ridges, the blacksmith turns and twists the metal, creating a long organic shape. Back to the forge to heat up, back to the hammer. What is he making?

Then, as that project cools for the next step, his assistant begins winding a thick coil around a form, slowly winching a glowing heated 2-inch tube of metal out of the fire. He leans on the long lever which turns the form which takes up the glowing metal. As the coil became longer, it begins to buckle, and they have to hammer it down. This gives the metal that was out of the direct fire time to cool down so it can't coil, and then they have to put more people on the lever while another person gets out the acetylene torch.



After it's completed, they start a process of removing the coil from the form. They stand on a large table, with the audience ringed below. The coil is positioned over a wide metal open container, big enough to hold the form. One end of the coil rests on the lip of the container, one person holding it in place with a tong. Two more people rain blows upon the form. But, it doesn't budge. They try various solutions, some involving torches, some involving oil which produces a billowing smoke. I truly can't recall what finally worked!

Once free of the form, the coil is again heated. Standing on either end, the blacksmiths grip the ends of the coil and puuuuulllllll. The result is an elongated open coil, to be used in a sculpture. How, he's not sure: he's going to live with it awhile.

It was organized chaos. They didn't explain what they were doing or where they were going with it: it was blacksmith drama, slowly unfolding until the final product lay on the floor.

Then we had potluck lunch, a nice mix of salads, fruits, salsa and tortillas.

It was hot, and we sat in the patio, outside the old adobe building which housed the official gallery in a series of small rooms. The grounds surrounding the gallery and the workshop were dotted with sculptures, tall and short, 

and off to the far side were the pieces of several more Chambers hammers, rusting in the tall grasses. We later found a 10-year-old hole, dug to hold the enormous 2000-pound hammer which had been brought up from a naval base in CA. (The man there had said, "what would you ever do with a hammer that small?")



After lunch, another blacksmith, this one from Switzerland, demonstrated on a small scale the techniques he used to create large memorial sculptures.




But first he started with the classic candle holder, using the 500-pound hammer. He created a long pointed shaft, then a flattened bowl, with a hole in the end, twisting and turning and morphing until the pointed end was tucked into the hole, creating the handle for round plate. He and his assistant wove a dance, one holding while the other pounded, both alternating hammer strokes. The movements were elegant and precise. You could almost hear music behind it.

His hands were fascinating too.

It was a long day, full of heat and noise. By the end, I was perched on an anvil, resting my tired feet, and N was sleeping in the air-conditioned car. But it wasn't until the end that I was aware how exhausted I was. How can one get exhausted standing around watching other people work? Overstimulated, overawed, surfeited with new images and concepts, that's how.

Two phrases stuck with me:

• "Old craftsmen do not use the Internet."
• "I try to find a form behind the words."

Yes.

Gonna snip that man right outta my hair

Last month I spent 10 days in Oregon.  I was totally overbooked and over stimulated, and by the time I returned, I was ready for a vacation.

The main event was the Viola da Gamba Society of America conclave.  I attended this 3 years ago, at the same place, Forest Grove.  I had not remembered most of the teachings, but the memory of the event was green.  How often does one get to immerse oneself in something, surrounded by like-minded people?  Not since college have I spent my days in such kindred company, occupied with soul and mind enhancing activities just because I was interested in them.  So much of my time is spent on maintenance and work for pay.  I prefer work for play.

Unfortunately, I was also there to clear my soon-to-be-sold house of the boxes of STUFF that D and I left behind over a year ago.  He had presumably retrieved his possessions but there were boxes and boxes of books, CDs, clothing, dishes, craft supplies, memorabilia, art, letters, business papers, photos.  Not to mention several pieces of Grandma S's furniture and an immigrant truck:  wooden with a simple reddish rosemaling of a horse on the inner lid and "Kari D.J. Qvitness, 1861" inscribed in swirly gold letters on the side.  She died of a heart attack in her 20's, and her trunk used to hold the baby clothes of my older brother, born and died a year before me.  Now it holds other memories, the photographs and letters from my early 20s with a smattering of more recent papers tossed in on top.

The conclave went Sunday-Saturday, which left me with the preceding Saturday and the following Sunday-Tuesday to see friends, go to the beach, check out the Cracked Pots show, sort through possessions, take them to Good Will or the post office, and get my hair cut.  Needless to say, something had to give.  That something was the boxes of papers and photographs, most of which are currently languishing in my aunt's garage.  All but one box of books was left to go to thrift stores.  The CD's are with S, being slowly ripped into MP3 files and then given to other friends.  The art and dishes are in another friend's basement.  Some furniture is with a friend, some with my aunt.  Clothes were the only thing totally taken care of:  they have been mailed to Albuquerque or dropped off at Goodwill.

I will have to wait for another visit to complete the job, not to mention see the friends who were unable to meet my scheduling restrictions.

I thought of just tossing the letters and photos.  It seems I have saved every card, letter, note, and picture.  And what I didn't save, my Mom and Dad did.  When I opened the box filled with bluebooks and papers from college days, I flung back my head and moaned, "WHY?????!!!"  And yet....I didn't put them into the recycling with the 10-year-old bills and flyers from journeys. (I did toss the grade cards going back to 1st grade.)

V says I need to keep them for future family historians who will want to fill in the blanks of the family story.  "Who was that crazy woman who took off for the west coast and flitted hither and yon?  What was she thinking when she got married at age 47?  How did she live?"  While I'm not sure I agree with her,  I know that I need to go through them for myself.  Just the few hours I spent glancing at envelopes brought memories and feelings wavering to the surface.  S wrote to me for years, it seems, before he disappeared from my life.  My friend M's brother sent me flowers after his visit...ah yes, I remember walking with him, how he slowly stripped off my glove so we could hold hands, skin on skin.

In previous years, I sorted the letters by sender:  B's in one envelope, coming from Champaigne, IL, from Connecticut, from Springfield, IL.  L's came from IL, TX, HI.  The trajectory of their lives entwined with my inertia.  Once I reached Portland, I never left, except to travel.  And now those memories are boxed up, disorganized, like so many of my thoughts and feelings.  I want to open them up before I start the next phase.

Meanwhile, I saw my friends, sang the Taverner Missa, re-resolved to rent a gamba and learn to play it well, to find a good singing group, to stay in better touch with JMR, my super-talented, super-gentle, super-troubled musician friend.  And, I got the last of the dyed hair cut off.  Karena Chop-Chop and I got caught up while she snipped and snipped, gradually winnowing down to the natural grey/brown/white, careful to not bald me.  She said, "I'm cutting D away."  When she was finished, my head felt light, with loose curls clustered all around.  It's an old-lady cut, in a way, and I feel like it shows to excess my fat and aged neck.  However, that is a voice that I need to learn to silence.

When we left, K waved from the door and said, "I'm going to sweep up D and throw him in the garbage."  Now that's a voice worth listening to.