Super Callus Fragile Mystic Existential Doses

 I am thankful to say we have faired well through this latest round of fires...

I had completely lost my shit multiple times in absolute fear, triggered by my past evacuation experience. There have been multiple fires since the Palisades and Eaton fires that created a complete hell-scape for so so so many people. Erasing their homes, security and sense of identity.

I have never been a real organized person; I thrive in chaotic environments it seems. I like to have a lot to look at, be surrounded by and feel enrobed in. This makes for a cozy environment, a creative looking home and wild artmaking. Many times needing to protect the finished works from myself because I have created a huge mess making it. Storing it out of the way while I clear the clutter that created it.

I have been the final stop for the families photographs, a century of them! I hold the responsibility of caring for them and that responsibility has recently created a heavy burden. With each evacuation, I have grabbed them and have often forgotten my own wedding photo, or some other precious item. To help me work through the constant onslaught of sadness, fear and grief  from the fires and the election I started scanning all the images. I can share them with my cousins and niblings. That way I would not be the only one to hold them and there will be other locations to view them/save them. 

These photographs are some of my most precious memories with my grandmother and great Aunt, as they were the ones who made most the albums. Using the photos, or snaps as they called them, as a sort of trophy of times spent. They would have gotten on the social media bandwagon had it been around when they were younger. My grandmother printed everything, wrote the name of the people in them and until the prints were dated by the photo developers, she dated many of them and glued them into albums. Spending days scanning them is like spending times with my grandmother again, It turned into an emotional, sacred and bittersweet experience, as I was scanning the 100's of photos I started wondering if I was the only one who these images really mattered to. Does anyone else really care about them? Will these memories die with me?

Last week I went to a dinner with fellow women artists, hosted in a home of a ceramic artist. One of the attending artists lives in Los Angeles and spoke about her experience during the first days of the fires...recounting how on the second morning she went outside to assess the smoke and the sky turned dark and it began to rain pages from books! She said they were recipes, songs, hand written pages falling from the sky...these pages had traveled 10+ miles and were falling in her front yard. 

I had read an article that more artworks had been lost in these two fires than ever before. The loss of artwork is monumental and has left many artists without homes, studios and their life's works both in process and finished gone forever.

 I can only imagine it from what I had experienced but I can not imagine the profound sadness, fear and emptiness that the fleeing created in each unique experience. The loss of generational wealth, memories, personal space, HOME...I can empathize, but I am reminded it will last for generations.

Animal support

Help a Seed Library

Artist Aid

We sat with each other, talking about our fears, concerns, shock and how to move forward from this point. All of us shared ways we disassociate when things get to be too much. At one point, I suggested we take a group photo with my instant camera. All agreed and after balancing the camera on many different surfaces and makeshift tripods, I was able to get a group photo. I mentioned the silliness was like being in a slumber party and that made all the ladies giggle with memories of time gone by. A photo was captured of me, bending in half to try and see through the viewfinder for one of the photos.

It was called the "human tripod"

Between the fires, staying off social media for a week to regain some sense of calm to focus, I came up for air just in time for the ICE raids today in my town! I know the next 100 days will just be shock after shock in an effort to make us all apathetic and so burnt out we don't respond anymore...but it is not going to happen. I know others that feel the same and it is in those people who I set my light to.

Although I am super callused and done with a lot of things

I am still fragile but also believe in magic

even amongst all the back to back existential crises

Shifting mindscape

 The new year has arrived and with it all the stress and terror about what these next few years will unfold and release. So many unknowns and fears and realities. 

It is like one thing after another, so surreal and so hard to really wrap my brain around...

I read somewhere during quarantine that the human brain wasn't designed/built to handle this many stressful events. I try and say that to myself when I am faced with a 4foot thick wall of stress and anxiousness and fear. 

"I am not going to be able to manage all this into a neat orderly situation that I can fix"

I have found my time out in public is feeling more feral. I don't reach out to talk to people unprompted anymore. I purposely don't make eye contact with people, especially men; and when engaged I stare strait into their eyes with a "don't fuck with me, I don't trust you" energy.

I am feeling so many feelings and not quite sure how to process them anymore.

I fear I am not preparing "right" for all these new unknowable's, and unimaginable scenarios. I have stocked up on a few women's healthcare supplies, just in case. Our little bit of savings are being managed by professionals, I have asked my doctor about my medicines and if the medical system changed...he assured me that the medicine I am taking or would change to is currently manufactured and readily available. (not totally convinced but I can't manage everything) I think my glasses are next on the list to upgrade before too late here. I am trying to secure me, as being a woman in the US now has some potential real changes. It is hard to imagine this...like beyond unreal.

And right on cue, Mother Nature shows us all that nothing is okay and has started some of the largest and most horrible fires that my state has seen in a while. Soooo sooo much loss.

My fire app is sending notices every hour it seems, new fires are everywhere.

I sit here and wonder, stare and dissociate.

*****

In an effort to flip my mind in a new way and not cement those neuropathways...

I made an impulsive decision last week to buy tickets to a small circus that was visiting our town. I drove by the tent for a couple weeks on my way to predawn yoga, the lights of the tent glowed in such a magical way. I had The Barren make a detour one night so I could try and take a couple pinhole photos. Then Friday last week while I sat in the car at 5:45 in the morning, I bought tickets to see the show. I splurged and got the VIP tickets so we could sit as close as possible. Thankfully DH knew I was trying to self soothe and went along with me with zero hesitation. As I stepped out of the car it was like I let go of all my sadness, and forced myself to just embrace my childhood glee. I cheered loudly at the preshow performances and just about burst into tears with joy as I walked past the ring leader standing on a box playing the song from Amelie on the accordion, at the entrance into the tent.

It was an old style Italian circus; there were dropped juggling pins, kids freaking out, a horse that stood its ground and a single clown who ended up sitting on my lap! Simply put, it was charming and well worth the time.

My face hurt from smiling and my muscles behind my ears clenched from so must laughing. The jokes were corny and predictable but I didn't care. I had taken off my airs when I left the car and thought, this is what a moment of joy feels like, embrace it.

It was magic and I was thankful I had that little voice tell me to do it.

My world has shifted for sure, it has radically changed me and the way I see the once amazing world that surrounded me. I am grateful that I wake up each day, and I continue to choose to fight the urge to go with the flow. I work everyday with maintaining my calm and processing unaccounted for things and situations. It is sometimes a real struggle.

I am thankful I have a home, a loving partner and a couple friends.

I am thankful that my body continues to show up for me and my family both chosen and blood related is relatively healthy.

I don't know how I could have raised a kind little person through these times...I fear I might not have been able to show up for them in the best way.

I guess I need to just start small again, and just keep showing up for myself

I hope that all of you can keep doing that too.