a few of my favorite things: fat cat tin, youth dew amber nude mini, incense, green tea kitkat, spoon rings, scarab amulet, urban decay moondust eyeshadow, poofball thing I found on the ground, chalcedony briolettes, bigass safety pin and dad’s pocket knife.
Heavy times, bead ninjas. Us sensitive artsy-fartsies are given to bouts of angst and malaise and some of us don’t think twice about sharing. I’ve thought 20 or 30 times.
So I’ve been pretty quiet. I’ve been thinking more and saying less. Ultimately, it hasn’t really gotten me anywhere. I’m no smarter, no happier, no less in a hole than I was when I didn’t think as much. I really thought, right before I started thinking harder, that thinking harder would make my life better. Maybe I’m just not very good at it. And if you look at the broader scope – not too closely, mind you – not thinking is much easier. If you stick to sports and beer and nothing else you’re better off. (And while I’m at it, I should probably replace “thinking” with “feeling”, actually.) Why bother with standards? Why bother working harder, and putting any real effort into anything or anyone? Why care? They’ll think you’re a hoity-toity bourgeois for aiming for better. But I don’t mean better things – better cars, better vacations, better houses – but something more. More isn’t something you can see and hold in your hand. It’s a feeling. You can have a funky house and an old car and have that feeling at the same time. It’s like you’re Andrew McCarthy’s character appearing to be slumming it with Molly Ringwald’s character in Pretty In Pink, but it’s exactly all you need.
Yeah. Maybe. If you’re 3/4 crazy and you really don’t give a hoot what anyone else thinks. Right? Burning questions…
a bracelet I made recently
Thing is, easy is a tricky mistress. It can steer you down the wrong path, it can entirely take over your life. If it’s too easy, too shiny, you have everything you want and all the answers are effortlessly given, you can also figure you’re not totally in charge. You’ve probably been sucked into someone else’s whirlwind, and tomorrow you’ll be debris from yesterday’s parade. With great (personal) responsibility comes great power. Yes, I did mean to say it that way. I’ll let you think about that, and I’m going to think about that too.
some rings I made recently
This is something us atheist/agnostic types struggle with. We have it a bit rough because we have so few answers and more personal responsibility. Nobody is looking out for us and pulling the strings – we are ultimately in charge. Okay, sure, we might be more inclined to suspect we’re white rat equivalents in a Gene Roddenberry’esqe hologram experiment thingee because shit’s too weird for words. Or that maybe someone put something in the water. We have no way of knowing. Does it matter? How could it possibly? We are here and we have to deal with it somehow, every day, without clear answers.
We can stay home, escape into Netflix and Fragrantica. Giggle at fluffy fakebook memes and internet cats. Drink ourselves into numbness. We can stack whatever comforts us high enough to provide a barrier between us and the others. Have ourselves 5 minute freak-outs when we know we won’t be caught with our mascara running. No matter how well we hide, we can still feel the invisible strings that bind us to the rest of humanity. But witnessing the pain of others beats the hell out of feeling your own, does it not? I’ve gotten away with it for a long, long time. I’ve eliminated some of the stacks that have been obstructing my own and I can barely deal with what I uncovered. By becoming more open, more exposed, I’ve lost my barriers, my brave mask.
even downtown oklahoma city isn’t immune to gnome bombing.
My job as an artist, if you can actually call me that, is to try, at the very least, to neutralize the negativity with a little bit of beauty and cheer. But I’m not doing my job right now. Lately all I’ve been able to manage is the bare minimum. I swore that I’d do better. But it’s been like trying to drive a car through spaghetti. It isn’t that I don’t have the brain power to come up with something new and good… it’s the hazardous spaghetti conditions within my relatively meaningless skull. I stay inside a little shelter in there and hope the spaghetti will let up so I can scrape a path out and get on with things, and maybe find a few extraordinary people who can help me, who I can help scrape their way out, too.
We’re all so big and yet so small. So powerful and so powerless all at once. If we let ourselves think about this too much, it’s maddening. Part of me understands the need to thump one’s chest and make a point, to have a cause, to exercise that power. My only cause has been survival, and finding a sliver of happiness here and there. The slivers were once larger expanses of time, which slowly dwindled to chunks, then to slivers, and now specks. I may not be a fighter, but I quietly, stubbornly stand firm. I know the bigger chunks are there. But am I ready for them? Am I too prejudiced against easy to accept real happiness that might simply be masquerading as easy?
newest acquisitions: late 1980’s Poison (sooo gooood!), Must de Cartier and Cassini
The part of me that wants everyone to just chill the hell out and be nice stands firm too. I’m a naïve Pollyanna, for sure… but one with a penchant for depth, repeatedly sticking my curious fingers into pastel marshmallow fluff that belies pitch black pools of who-knows-what. I only want to find the balance, whatever will pull me down out of the marshmallows or up out of the muck. You can’t even walk around without balance. I believe I have nearly driven myself crazy trying to find whatever will keep me sane and upright. Some people will say that’s just how life is if you bother to care at all. But be careful about caring – once you’ve cared, you can’t UNcare.
I haven’t written in months, so pardon my lengthiness while I publicly challenge myself. Alas, I feel as though I’m repeating myself (and have been for years) and going in circles. I’m obviously confused. I could have said nothing at all and accomplished the same thing. There’s only one place I know of where I don’t have to be confused, or feel, or speak, or worry. I’ll stay here and drive through the spaghetti with you.
This is what I can work up the courage to try and sell you:
tonight on etsy
Some new spins on old faves. FUN SIZE Floopy Flowers, and !BLING’ed! Glitterbombs. I’m dusting the cobwebs out of my Etsy shop tonight and putting these in there, and try to do what I feel is impossible right now: bring both you and me a sliver of happiness. It’s a small thing, but small is better than not at all.
I’ll be back later this evening with the announcement.
Thanks for reading.
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