My Peeps

Cashier EKL painted cardboard signs, and I rounded up some staff, volunteers, and customers to pose for a "Vote 4 Us" post on FB/IG. Today (Weds. 2/26, before midnight) is the last chance for us to get voted into the final round for Best Thrift Store, hosted by the local free paper, www.citypages.com/vote.
I'm on the far end, right.

"I like you... just the way you are. Stuff and all."

The power of the sentence "I like you, just the way you are" is that it comes to a full stop.
Period. No ifs, ands, or buts.

If anything at all comes after, such as "stuff and all", it's implied
"Even though you have this problem..." 

That's my Lenten goal, to say or just to think "I like you, just the way you are"  every day. 

It's easy to say to Marz and bink. Even though of course we sometimes hit bumps, I do like and love them just the way they are. 

It's much harder to address it in any way to others.
Yesterday I tried it on a couple annoying bus riders. I could think the words, but I couldn't fully feel they were true...

Still, I LOVE the sentence:
 it liberates the sayer (or thinker), me, from having to weigh and judge other people.
It's like having a flat-fee arrangement:
you don't have to measure out and weight and calculate the price of everything.
Default to a general “best possible attitude”. 

It's all free! Take what you need.

(Or, at my Book's, all paperbacks are 99 cents. Saves so much time and needless frettery.)

Also, I love being on the receiving end.

I was thinking about this because I went to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.
I wept through it.
It's about a journalist with a father who selfishly and cruelly left the family when the journalist was young and the mother was dying.
Mine is a different story, but I related to the dad pain.

I didn't grow up watching Mr Rogers. I don't know much about him, but I love his simple messages. Besides "you are likeable":
it's OK to feel sad and mad, as well as glad; 
let's learn what to do when we feel bad (so we don't hurt ourselves and others).

Some people have told me they don't like Mr Rogers, but I haven't been able to figure out why.
I can see his slow pace can be annoying, but more than that, 
I wonder if it's threatening to hear someone offer such simple but such DIFFICULT things to do... and maybe to accept?

Does it make us feel bad?

In fact, I did feel bad for a couple days after watching the movie--sadnesses and longings had been stirred up, and feelings of insufficiency too.
Most of all, I felt a longing to be emotionally vulnerable, but I HATE being emotionally vulnerable.
It makes me want to .... Build a Wall!

I blame Mr Rogers for making me feel that way.
Ha.

(What would have happened if our US president had learned Mr Rogers's messages? Would he be less likely to hurt himself and others?)

I sat with my discomfort, and I decided it slots right into my stated desire at New Year's to be less reactionary.
I mean, I feel uncomfortable being vulnerable, and much more comfortable pushing people and emotions away, or building a wall to keep them out.

Oh.
I added the "Stuff and All" clause because I'm reading this fascinating book,
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee, Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

I'm only on the second chapter, but I'm so fascinated.
Besides the specifics, it's another of those "brain science and human behavior" topics that interest me.
Could be about almost any topic, though this one is close to me:
It relates to my job of course, working with stuff, 
and I know lots of people who have hoarding tendencies--(pretty normal in a materialistic society that churns out stuff)––or a few who are, rarer, full-blown compulsive hoarders.

And all my artist friends have tons of stuff for transformation—
another kind of relationship to stuff. 

I'd even just been wondering, after I visited the rich people in their house full of beautiful stuff, about the difference between hoarding and collecting.
There are psychological differences, but there are also big class differences in our attitudes toward stuff.
I love this stuff!

Diorama Sky

I mentioned that my friend Jeff S had known the painting on the cover of Goodbye to All That. 

Jeff is an architectural photographer (correct term?). That is, he takes fab photos of buildings. And other things! 

I met him when he worked with bink at the U of I Art & Architecture Library on the Chicago Circle campus--a concrete campus that I used to hate but now think looks like a fabulous Star Trek set... even if you do (did) get dripped on walking under the elevated walkways.

You can see Jeff's photos on his Flickr, Diorama Sky:

www.flickr.com/photos/diorama_sky

I grabbed these two photos that were sitting next to one another, though knowing Jeff, I doubt it was serendipity--I bet he thought carefully about how they would look juxtaposed. 

(Right, Jeff?)

LEFT: "Look Out", An interior detail of OMA/LMN's Seattle Public Library Central Library (2004), Seattle, WA

RIGHT: "Climbers", An exterior detail of the First National Bank Building (1931), Oklahoma City, OK

Sing out!

I'm pleased and proud––and a bit surprised––that this morning I managed to twine two strands of the SVDP cause to put on social media:
delight in material things + the social mission to build a more just world.

(Delight in material things implicitly includes environmentalism: 
to be good stewards of things, we re-imagine ("reduce, reuse, recycle")  them. Sometimes I say that explicitly too--so really there are three strands to braid together...) 

Yesterday, Monday, I'd photographed this donated embroidered dish towel to post today, not even realizing it's precinct caucuses tonight. (We have a presidential primary for the first time this year too––next Tuesday––so this year the caucuses don't choose the presidential candidate.)
What I posted on IG:

It truly is the official policy of the Society of SVDP to encourage everyone to advocate for a more just world, including voting in political elections.

I never want to state anything on the SVDP social media that is my personal opinion alone, so I researched my statement and linked to a source, SVDP's "Voice of the Poor" Guide:

Mission Statement–– National Voice of the Poor Committee

The Voice of the Poor Committee’s mission is to uphold Catholic social teaching by researching, validating, documenting, advocating, and promulgating issues related to the condition of the poor and disenfranchised.
(This is done in the vision of St. Vincent de Paul and Blessed Frederic Ozanam to help Vincentians live their faith and grow spiritually by acting knowledgeably and credibly as a unified body.) 

Thank you for answering my question.

I love when blog friends provide answers!
Thank you, Jeff S., for telling me that the cover of Goodbye to All That is the painting The Menin Road, (1919) by Paul Nash.

(Like the Spencer painting from WWI I'd posted, you can see it in close up at the Imperial War Museum site.)

And Michael confirmed that the ending of The Bookshop looks to the future, which the book does not.
Still, I, the reader, can't help but know the future did get better in the real world (if not in the story world) because the author, Penelope Fitzgerald, based The Bookshop on her own experience, and she went on to write the book.

"Imagination is a skill. You can get better at it."

This beautiful, warm afternoon ("warm" in MN = 40º F/ 4.4ºC)  was the first time ever that I went for a walk with headphones in (my iPhone's earbuds).

It was fab:
I listened to the 50-min. episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, "Secret Friends: Tapping Into The Power Of Imagination", in which one of the researchers said, "Imagination is a skill."

It's one of the best and closest-to-home episodes yet of this podcast about brain science & human behavior that I'm generally fascinated by. It's about the power of our imaginations to create/call up/contact friendly voices, whether they're the voices of dolls or God or pop stars. (The episode doesn't talk about schizophrenia or unfriendly audio-hallucinations along those lines.)

It starts with a woman who in her troubled school years heard the voice of Cher, who she'd learned has dyslexia (really):

Megan had dyslexia, and "Cher" offered encouragement when she struggled to read in school.
"The one thing I always remembered her saying to me is, 'If you think you are dumb, then you think I am dumb, and I am not dumb.' And then she would tell me to 'go back to reading' or 'go back to trying to write something.'"

Here I am with the dog, who hates having his photo taken and turns away, even if I cluck at him...

Oh--you can also see I have new glasses. ^ 
I'd been tired of the square, black plastic ones I've worn for almost nine years, but I find it so hard to choose new frames, I put off getting new ones.
Then the other day my plastic ones dropped (for the nth time) and the bridge snapped.
I like these new ones OK--glad to have the dark frames gone anyway.

bink had left the link to this Hidden Brain episode in the comments to my post "Fearful & Wonderful", where I was trying to talk about how religion works even if it's not factually true.

But does religion work, Steve asked, even if practitioners KNOW it's not real, they way books and movies and some placebos are effective even when we know they're not "real"?

It seems, yes. 
I think of the 12 Steps program.  
I went to OA (Overeaters Anonymous) off and on in my younger years, so I can talk about the steps from personal experience, though I never fully "worked the steps".  

AA and other 12-Step programs are not exactly a religion, but pretty close:
participants are encouraged to acknowledge they are powerless over their (our) addictions (food, drugs, dysfunctional relationships, whatever), and to turn them over to "God, as we understand God".

If you don't believe in any such thing as a god, then you're encouraged to consciously develop some sort of belief in some sort of "Higher Power" (H.P.)--to just choose anything that is outside of your conscious mind, the one that insists it can recover from addiction on its own without this stupid group, thank you very much. 

Your H.P. could even be your subconscious mind, or the communal wisdom of the group, or a toy, or anything.

Penny Cooper would make a great H.P., and in fact sometimes I do consult her on things I'm unsure of.
Like, I might ask her, "Should I take the dog for a walk?"

She reasonably weighs all factors (outside temperature, etc.). 
If it's too cold, she'd say to stay inside. She'd take my mood into account too, but might encourage me to take the dog for a walk even if I don't want to.

Obviously I know that Penny Cooper is me, but it helps me to imagine her as a dispassionate dispenser of advice

Anyway, I never really got into a 12-Step HP, but I think that step of the program is a good thing, and I know the 12 Steps can be effective: 
 I know people who credit it with saving their lives. 
(Plus, it's free! I'm distrustful of spiritual teachers/groups who charge money.)

So, yeah, it can work to believe in an imaginary thing, even if we know we're making it up. 

It's funny though. Even as I write that Penny Cooper is me, I can hear her saying indignantly, 
"I am not! I'm me!"😀

Fluster

"It took less than it should have done to fluster Florence, but at least she had the good fortune to care deeply about something."

--The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald

That's a little bit a description of me. 

Penny Cooper's in the book too, in a description of the little girl, Christine, who helps the too-easily flustered Florence in her bookshop:

"At the age of ten and a half she knew, for perhaps the last time in her life, exactly how everything should be done."

Penny Cooper, perpetually at the age of eight and a half*, will always know exactly how everything should be done.  Or, so she thinks.
In this case, I concur with her:
"It is not correct to change the ending of a book because it's sad."

Penny Cooper did not read The Bookshop--it's short, but it's a grown ups' book.
I did.
It's ... hm, hm, hm... what?
It provides the weird satisfaction (and even enjoyment) of reading about something unpleasant that is beautifully written, like Lolita, a book that figures in this book.

"I don't like this story, but it's sooooo good!"

It's a story of humiliation and defeat:
Florence Green, a widow in her late–middle-age, risks everything to open a bookshop in an English provincial town in 1959. She is undermined by the petty-minded lady of the county abetted by a young man too lazy to care--"What seemed delicacy in him was usually a way of avoiding trouble". Even little Christine is not well done by.

How ever did they make a movie of this? I wondered. The book has a wry humor and the pleasure of its sentences; unless it was imaginatively re-visioned (like the film of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by painter Julian Schnabel), a movie of it would retain only its bleakness.

I watched the trailer, and it seems they made it a sort of love story (it's not), with a hopeful ending (very much not). 

[Michael of OCA--You saw it, and advised me against it. Am I right it has a hopeful ending?]

 "Ample charm," a reviewer says.

Ample charm?
The book is like a small and quiet version of Lord of the Flies.

"She blinded herself, in short, by pretending for a while that human beings are not divided into exterminators and exterminatees... [Her will-power] was at such a low ebb that it no longer gave her the instructions for survival."

I often use my bookshop as a library--borrowing books and returning them when I'm done. This one's so good, I'm keeping it.

_____________

* I used to say Penny Cooper was eight, but now I realize she is and has always been eight and a half.

Book Covers: incl. "Goodbye to All That"

A few cool old paperbacks donated to the thrift store...

 Cover by Ben Shahn ^

Who did the cover art to Goodbye to All That? (I read the book ages ago and don't remember it.)
It looks like Stanely Spencer, but I can't find that it is, or who it is otherwise either. Reminds me of the good visuals in the recent movie 1917.

Here's a WWI painting by Spencer: Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing-Station at Smol, Macedonia, 1916 (1919), based on Spencer’s work in the RAMC’s Field Ambulance 

[See close-ups at London's Imperial War Museum]

I looked up the address inside the copy of  Goodbye to All That and I know it! Or, anyway, I've walked past it:
Gloucester Gate [at London's Parks & Gardens site] is alongside Regents Park. I wonder if it was run-down when M. A. Norman lived in a basement flat there...

When I first (early-1990s) stayed in an old hotel within walking distance of Regents Park (near the British Museum--a long walk, but doable), the area was well-worn, but it's way gentrified now.  The hotel, The Crichton, used to be a cheap dive, now it's a spendy boutique hotel. 

I'd like to, but I'm not sure if I'll ever go to London again, or where I'd stay affordably if I did...

Side-by-Side Book's

More books I set up at work...

Snobbery

The weekend starts now (Friday night), and I am so ready for it. Due to one thing and another, I haven't had two days off in a row in three weeks.

This was a funny week, with a lot of slightly unusual things going on. Mostly nice or at least interesting things, but I'm excited to have a couple days with nothing to do but clean my room.

I'm happy to say, I interviewed for and got the cat & house–sitting gig for all of June. I'll be staying in a Victorian house owned by a couple of opera fans. Full of fun stuff, like a theatrical storehouse, opulently decorated with things like a pair of jade elephants standing on a little marble-topped table, supporting on their backs bowls of blue Venetian glass orbs...

It can be jarring to be around ostentatious wealth after the poverty I see at my job. The thrift store is in a poor, dirty, crowded neighborhood, near the epicenter of the opioid crisis. 
This is a wealthy city with decent social services, so I don't see people literally starving to death or dragging mutilated limbs or anything that horrifying, but as American poverty goes, it's bad enough. 

There are lots of lively, friendly things going on too, alongside the tragic and the ugly, and I often have fun at work. But it's a constant reminder that a lot of people don't get a fair chance, born into crippling deprivation and traumatizing surroundings.

Sometimes, but not always, I judge rich people harshly and unfairly. It's an emotional reaction (attaching my resentment at social injustice to individuals who blatantly benefit from it--I mean, there's no way you could be so rich if a lot of other people weren't doing  grunt work for minimum wage), and I work to let go of it: 

Everyone has their own story. And I'm no saint.
Of course class differences matter, but I want to judge people as themselves. If you're a jerk, you're a jerk. Or not.

In this case...
The woman of the couple was open and warm, so that was no problem, but the man was a blatant snob, telling me, for instance, that he doesn't like to go to a certain place because it's "full of hoi polloi".
 
I'm still shocked--naively, I guess--when people are outright and shamelessly narrow minded like that. He appeared to be steeped through and through with this attitude, and I couldn't even think of what to say to indicate disagreement.
I suppose I could have stormed out (for all the good that would have done), but . . . I want to stay in their house! The girlettes will have a ball exploring all the nooks and crannies, and swinging from the crystal chandeliers.

No, and in fact, I played the class card myself, commenting, for instance, on a framed etching by the grand piano, "Ah, yes... Mahler." Ha! It's like I was in some bad stage play.
"A house sitter comes to stay..."

(Mahler! Do people really like Mahler after the age of... say, twenty four? Forgive me if you love Mahler. I just mean, he's awfully emo--perfect for the angst of youth. I loved him when I was a sad teenager.)

I feel my mother in myself at times like that, showing off. She could be a culture snob, and she taught me how to tell crystal from glass. I like knowing stuff like that, but the silver content of your spoons doesn't say anything about the content of your character.

While the couple were interviewing me, sounds of house cleaning came from upstairs.
"The cleaners are here."

As I was getting ready to leave, I was putting on my coat by the front door, and one of the cleaners came down the stairs.
No introduction was offered, just a comment, "The cleaners come every two weeks."

So I introduced myself. 
"Hi! I'm going to be house sitting in June, so I'll probably see you then. I'm Fresca."

The cleaner, a woman, seemed shocked to be addressed, or maybe just shy, but she told me her name. 
Can you take a stab at what her name was?
If you were casting a totally predictable movie, you'd give her this name.

I asked both bink and Mz to guess, and they did, hesitantly--but correctly. 
I'll put the answer in the comments.

Then, an entirely different story:
I was going to send a PDF to the St Paul store for them to print and distribute (a flier asking people to vote for us as Best Thrift Store). I asked Big Boss who I should send it to over there, and he said their manager is on vacation, so I shouldn't bother sending it at all
BECAUSE NO ONE THERE KNOWS HOW TO USE THE COMPUTER.

OMG. 

Poverty is so much more than financial. It's all about, do you have choices? Do you have access to information? Do you know how to find resources so you can even start to learn to do things you want (or need) to do?

Also, it's about do you have the power to help other people???
Does it even occur to you?

It's a terrible impoverishment, being so used to deprivation, it becomes normal, and you don't even think about trying to help others. 
Big Boss never seems to think in terms of training employees, for instance.

That's what can be so crushing about spending time with wealthy people who spendtheir money on elaborate window treatments. Why don't they use their power to help people?
Beyond a certain level, do more baubles really add to your happiness and enjoyment? Or is it actually another kind of deprivation?
(What's the difference between a hoarder and a collector?)

I don't know. Maybe this couple does use their money and power to help people. Maybe they're paying for their house cleaner's kid to take ballet classes or something.

I don't know.
And that's not the most important thing. I can't do anything about what they're doing or not doing. 
The most important thing is, what am I doing?

Stuffie Selfies

This morning I see that the toys got into my camera-phone last night.

Bed Bear's arms are too short for selfies...)

Someone with longer arms followed his lead.

  .   .   .   Wait! Who is this I see?

Unexpected

I. Unexpected Face

A face appeared in the old family blanket I've been darning (off and on) for three winters now. If I'd realized that would happen, I wouldn't have used a contrasting pink yarn. 
At first I disliked the face so much, I thought about cutting it out and darning it again. What a pain that would be, and with so many other holes to fill. I decided to live with it.

The other day I glanced at it and for the first time I saw... a bear! with ears going up. Now I love it.

The blanket still has lots of little holes in the center, but the tattered edges are repaired well enough for daily use again. Here it is on my bed.

II. Unexpected Space

After almost six months here, I've still not fully unpacked or set up my room. It's not bothering me. I like feeling ... what?
Certainly I love feeling lighter, more on my toes, after 17 years living in one place.
More mobile...

The possibility of three (!) house-sitting gigs recently fell into my lap. Two of them are month-long, so I'd get lots of time alone this summer, if they come to pass. All three popped up shortly after I decided to stay here and work on asking for what I need--especially for quiet time alone.

That's been going better than I'd hoped! 
Not only does HouseMate agree, she supports it.
[Update: she never did really grant my request for quiet time alone, unless I was in my room with the door shut.]

For instance, the evening I came home after meeting the troubled young woman at work (who gave me the red card with psalms on it), I told HouseMate, 
"I'm not going to sleep, I'm just going to my room to lie in the dark."

"I get it!" she said.

So, that's great. And I do feel at home in my room, even though I've done little to set it up.

Right now I'm sitting kitty-corner from  the bed on my orange office chair, at my little fold-down music desk.

Well, here, I'll take a picture of it . . . unfolded laundry and all. 

Oh, and you can see I got a painted silk, four-panel folding screen at the store. (Chinese, I think.) It's a bit worn--you can see it's been used; that's part of  its beauty. 
$22, because my store's like that:
IKEA flies out of there at top dollar––I paid $45 for a flimsy chest of drawers that only cost $120 new––while antiques just sit there, even priced rock bottom. (The music desk was $35.)

Like me, most people don't want the big old heavy wood pieces, even though they'll be standing strong long after my IKEA dresser has fallen apart.

Stories Work

Thinking about the power of religion that I'm seeing at work, I remembered this, one of my favorite episodes of Hidden Brain podcast:
"All the World's a Stage—Including the Doctor's Office"  
npr.org/2019/04/29/718227789/all-the-worlds-a-stage-including-the-doctor-s-office

It's about medical placebos, and fascinating studies that show placebos work a surprisingly high percentage of times, 
. . . even when the patient knows they're sugar pills.

Here's a Guardian article (2010) about the same thing:
"Placebo effect works even if patients know they're getting a sham drug").
And placebos are not all equal--an article in Psychology Today points out that, for instance, capsules are more effective than tablets.

That's how I understand what I'm seeing, how religion works to save people's lives--powerful medicine doesn't have to be "real" to be effective. 

Not so surprising, when I stop to think about it. Secular books and movies have changed my life too, after all.

Obviously this can be manipulated for ill as well as for good. Politics!

Fearful and Wonderful

A troubled young woman came into the store yesterday, saying she felt dizzy. Could she have some water? 

I took her into the break room, sat her down, and made her a cup of tea. We have random tea bags in the cupboards and I found a Honey & Lavender Stress Relief blend.

She kept nodding out out--freezing for a few seconds in mid-motion. I had never seen that before in real life, and I was grateful I had Narcan in my bag nearby.
I stayed in the break room and worked on my computer till she felt better, and luckily it didn't come to me needing to administer the anti-opioid.

She clearly had a million needs, well beyond what we could supply, but I got her a suitcase on wheels, a sleeping bag, some warm socks, and a box of cookies.

Mr Linens said, "You've given her enough," and then he helped me find her a portable pop-up tent.
"She's using you," he said, and added, ". . .but she's a child of God too."

Before she left, the young woman reached into her bag and dug out this card she gave me in thanks.

It reads:

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
You are loved.
You are enough.
You are not alone.
The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
Psalm 9: 9-10

A volunteer who read it said, "That's Psalm 139, she got the number wrong," and he went on to tell me he'd been an addict and one night in prison, God had come to him.

"Just out of the blue?" I asked.

"No," he said, "I was looking for him."


That night when I showed Mz, she said, "This is a jumble of psalms and self-help sayings."

So I looked it up, and yeah, that first line, "You are fearfully and wonderfully made," is Psalm 139:14, and the last line is correctly attributed, Psalm 9:9-10.
The others are fridge-magnet sayings.

I've changed my mind about religion, working at the thrift store.
I was never anti-religion. I put religious organizations in the same category as other social institutions, like political office: 
prone to all the abuses humans perpetrate on one another (and ourselves). Also possible avenues of grace and goodness.
I still see it that way.

The other day, the new cashier [NC] asked if I was religious.
She lets people know she has a PhD, and I guessed by her tone that the answer she was looking for was "no".

I said no, because that is true;
but I added that I consider myself a cultural Catholic and respect the good work so many Catholics do in social justice, fueled by their faith. "The stories mean a lot to me," I said.

NC started to lecture me about how the Catholic Church owns billions of dollars, etc.
"You're preaching to the choir," I said.

I do not need informing of the historical and current atrocities of the Catholic Church. But I myself would not preach against the Church like that, with the attitude that if we got rid of religious organizations, we would get rid of abuse.
If only!

Of course we should shine a spotlight on this and all organizations.
I am always saying, "More checks and balances!!!"

What's changed isn't that. 
I've mostly had an intellectual (literary, artistic, philosophical, socio-political, historical) take on the concept of God, even when I was in the Catholic Church myself.
I see it differently now, after knowing, up close and personal, people who tell me (and I can see its truth) that God saved their lives and continues to guide them.
And seeing people I wish that would happen to, 
like this girl who could easily die on the streets if she doesn't get some sort of salvation.

I don't believe in God in the same the way these folks I meet through work do, as if God were a person, but that doesn't matter.
I do see there is a power source that we can tap into--call it neurological bootstrapping, or a metaphysical force like gravity, or a Higher Power, or anything you like. 

I see people who have nothing, nothing, nothing at all, calling on that in the form of a personal God, and it working. 
And I see them offering it to other people.
NOT harping, not preaching and lecturing, but simply holding out this hope, for free. 
"This could help."

The change I feel is something like the difference between seeing an animal in a zoo vs holding something alive, its heart beating in your hand.

Sometimes things fall together instead of falling apart

When I'm on a roll at work, like I was on Wednesday, I sometimes resent that the store closes at 6 p.m., forcing me to go home.
After I've had a day off, (yesterday, Thursday), however, sometimes I don't want to face the chaos again, as I will do today, Friday.

I'm going to go into work a little late this morning, anyway, and blog a bit here about what's been going on for the past ten days. They've been intense.

I. Leaping Before Listening

To begin with, last week I almost rented an apartment of my own. 

A studio came open in my friend Julia's building--a beautiful old (1920s) brick building. It was expensive, or, . . . well, market rate, but that's expensive after 18 years of paying "friend rate" rent–– $500/month for everything, including laundry and wifi––(that's how I can afford to work part-time on minimum wage); 
and rents in this town are objectively expensive too: 
$845/month + some utilities for this one-big-room with mini-kitchen studio.

The attraction of living alone was so strong, I applied for it. I even put down a deposit. 
I only backed out because the NOISE was worse than the rent--the apartment overlooked one of the busiest streets in town. When I went back to look at it at rush hour, the traffic roared like a train.

The experience was a bit traumatic. I lost my deposit (what a racket rental-property owners run!) and the manager gave me a hard time (ridiculous!) about backing out.

This all forced me to see I've been a bit of a chicken--I've avoided talking with HouseMate about what I want/need, living here––mostly, more quiet time alone.

II. Sometimes People Listen

I hate (am afraid of) conflict;
I hate (dread) making requests that might be unwelcome; 
I don't like asking for help, etc.
But what are the options? Resentfulness that arises from a feeling of powerlessness. That's worse than facing my fears!

So I did.I thought HM might feel rebuffed if I asked for time alone, but when I brought it up, she was receptive and helpful.

When I came back from Duluth, I said I was overwhelmed with social input. The trip was great, but due to how hard it was to get around in wintertime along Lake Superior, Mz and I spent hardly any time apart. 
At home, I'm either at work, which is zooey, or out with friends in public, or at home with a roommate after 17 years of (mostly) living alone. (And I rarely have the place to myself for more than a few hours.)

As soon as I said all this, instead of being reactive, HM came up with a great idea:
"Let's do a check-in in the evenings," she said, "and you can say if you just want to be quiet."

Well.
That was easy.

The other thing was--the classic issue between people who live together--house cleaning. It was HM who brought it up a couple days after we'd talked about time alone:
She said she felt guilty that I do more cleaning that she does. (True.)

So we talked about how to divvy up the chores.
Wonderfully, and sort of weirdly, she likes washing the dishes (finds it calming, she said), which I dislike,
while I actually kind of like cleaning the bathroom, which she hates. (I think there's something satisfying about restoring order and cleanliness there, even if it's an illusion--but then, why doesn't that satisfaction come from doing the dishes too?)

The ease of this was . . . almost a let down. 
You know how that goes? 
You get all puffed up with the hot air of fear, and then the solution is so chill, so lacking in resistance, you end up feeling like a deflated balloon.
What was all that fear about?

It's rooted (I'd say) in personal history--not just mine, but the people's around me, all my life. I don't think most of us learned how to identify what we want and need, much less ask for it in trust that we would be listened to with calm respect.

That's not just paranoia: that ("the lack of being listened to with calm respect") has frequently been my experience.
And I know it's been HM's too (even more than mine), and she and I have had a little friction about some household stuff, so, yeah, I was afraid to try to bring up potentially touchy topics. (Personal space and cleanliness can be hot spots, eh?) 

I don't know... 
I guess the timing was right, for some reason, and the whole thing was open and friendly. Kudos to both of us!

Whew.
It could be a model for the future: "Remember that time everything came together effortlessly?"

III. Don't Over-Promise

Maybe I'm in a slipstream of ease--but it's not just accidental. I'm pleased that I have (eventually) acted differently than I might have in the past, like sending my sister a present instead of taking offense at her brushing me off.

One of the most helpful things I've learned in life is,
 Don't over-promise.

It's like George Washington's brilliant advice about war:

Don't get into one.

Once you're in one, he said, it's almost impossible to get out except by going ahead. You can't hardly back out.

Or, if you can back out, it's expensive (emotionally, or financially) to back out of something you've jumped into, as I just experienced with losing the deposit I'd too hastily put down on an apartment that I hadn't thoroughly checked out, an opportunity I'd jumped at because I wanted to avoid the difficulty of negotiations with another person.

But I'm proud to say that this week I avoided getting overly involved with the good idea of a new cashier at work (a different one, a woman). 
A couple days ago, she brought up the idea of the store applying for grants. I told her it was a terrific idea, but I'd tried to get it going last year and became so frustrated, I'd given it up.

She has experience with grant writing, which I don't, and she said she'd like to try again.
"Great!" I said. "I'd be happy to talk to you about it."

That evening, she emailed me, "Yes! Let's do it!"

I wrote back that I don't want to do (and not coincidentally am not good at) committees and project management and all that side of business, so I couldn't commit to "doing it", but I would, I repeated, be happy to talk further about it.

We'll see if she gets further than I did (which was pretty much nowhere at all).

And now, off to work!

Sweet Heart

Many things I'm thinking about, but for the moment, here are some of this week's pictures on the IG I do for the store.

 TOP ROW, L to R:

1. That book cover of Bacchae (about divine madness, etc.) is maybe my favorite ever. (Elvis was arrested for a scuffle at a gas station--charges were dropped.)

2. Hand-painted copy of Victorian holy card: sacred heart with text reading "Sweet Heart of Jesus Be My Love". I posted this today, Valentine's Day.

3. Me in the donations area, holding up what I think is a pajamas case. Handmade of corduroy, it opens in the back like a pillow case.

BOTTOM ROW, L to R:

4. Speckled glaze, covered dish by Monterey Pottery of California, mid-century, with 1970s? daisy napkins.

5. Must be theater week--another play, Amphitryon 38, with an Eiffel Tower martini glass.

6. Wool sweater from the store, mended by Happify Design (my friend Julia).

Red Books

I faced red books forward around the BOOK's for Valentine's Day.

"It's Alright to Be Uncomfortable"

That's what came to me as I stood on a boulder on the shore of Lake Superior, north of Duluth, watching a bird dive into the icy water.

"It's alright to be uncomfortable."

My life has changed a lot in the last couple years: 
I moved this year, and I started at the thrift store two years ago (this month). 
I've sometimes felt panicked at the discomforts that come with change (not to mention the ones that come anyway).

Moving, I felt homeless; 
living with a housemate, I've felt socially overstimulated.

At work, I've felt angry and frustrated with some (mis)management, and despairing at the poverty and injustice I see.

Friends and family have been difficult for me sometimes--imagine that!

On top of that, I've been unhappy with some of the ways I've reacted--too quick to take the bait, too ready to jump to judgement.

However, I'm also proud of and take hope from a bunch of times I've not bitten the hook, times I've sidestepped the hole, and times I've remembered that the way out of a rattan finger trap is to MOVE TOWARD the tension. 

Last week I got into a kerfuffle on email with my sister that ended with her doing a flounce: 
"If you want to talk, contact me." *mic drop*

My usual reaction is to think, Well, I don't want to talk. I'm fine with going six months before I see you again.

But this time I thought, OMG, how childish we are being. We are going to be dancing this dance when we're ninety years old if we don't do something different.

So I paid $25 overnight shipment to mail her a red hair doll. (She has one, and she wanted another to give to a friend.) She just lives across town.

She sent me an email titled Love at First Sight, with a photo of the two dolls.

So, I do feel that sometimes it's okay to "lose", rather than retreating to the comfort of Being in the Right.
Like with the rattan finger trap, it can be liberating not to resist discomfort.

Rock climing along Chester Creek

Penny Cooper and B84 rock climbing along Chester Creek, in Duluth. It was very snowy, but the trail was groomed.

B84 (top, wearing socks) is the newest girlette. She came in the original Madeline box, sealed. She'd been in the box TWENTY years, so she is super eager to do all the things. 

She keeps saying, "I was in a box." 

She seems well adjusted otherwise, except she doesn't ever want to take off her socks.

(There's also a photo on this path from 2018: Crossing Chester Creek, the original three girlettes in warm weather.)

Seventy dollars for four books?!?

Yesterday I went to Duluth's newish (2018?) indie bookseller, Zenith Bookstore. I wanted to support the store, but it's a bit hard that this pile of four books cost $70.

Prices at my thrift store bookstore are .99 for paperback and 1.99 for hardback, so this pile would have cost $4.96 (+ tax). We almost never get recent books donated though, so two of these won't come through for a good while yet.

I'd blogged (in June '19) about reading an interview with Ocean Vuong and being impressed with this line from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous:

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.”

On Earth is still in hardback, and the hold line at the library is 443 on 82 copies, so buying it made sense.
(If you want to borrow it when I'm done, let me know.)
 
I hadn't heard of the Librarian of Auschwitz--have you? A YA novel translated from Spanish in 2017, it's based on a real girl being the custodian of a few books smuggled into Auschwitz. 

I wasn't sure about buying it until I read the line, "We have eight books and six living books." I've just read Fahrenheit 451, which comes up with the same solution to the banning of books––people memorizing texts––so I  wanted to read more about that really happening.

Penelope Fitzgerald's The Human Voice, about working for the BBC during WWII, is one of my favorite books. I haven't gotten into the other books by her that I've tried, but why haven't I ever tried The Bookstore?
Now I will.

Migration Literature (2019) is a gift for HouseMate, who teaches free classes to people preparing to take the test to become US citizens.

Hand Me Another

Hands are hard to draw--they can twist and turn in so many ways, they often look wrong. 

They're hard to write, too. I don't know why writers don't leave them alone, like artists who tuck hands in pockets. 

Here's another example, from a novel I browsed at the Airbnb, The Girl He Used to Know, by Tracey Garvis Graves (2019). The writing is bad from the start, but writers seem to rise to their very worst when describing actions involving hands.

"Hey," he said when he caught up to me. "You forgot your book."
He thrust out his hand and I spotted my dog-eared copy of Sense and Sensibility nestled in his large palm.

Just try and draw that.

In Duluth

You can rent cross-country skis at the the Hartley Nature Center, but the girlettes preferred to stay on foot.

A jaunt was deemed sufficient, and all soon returned to the sunny rocking chairs inside the center.

L to R: Bud Duquette, B84, Penny Cooper, Racer, and Eeble

Road Trip Reads

I can't leave home without a pile of books. Here on the table at the airbnb.
And later today we are going to Zenith Books, Duluth's indie bookstore.

Heading North

Unpremeditated road trip up to Lake Superior with Mz!

You can see Duluth's Lift Bridge through the fence:

L to R: Penny Cooper, B84, and Bud Duquette

The girlettes were happy on the dashboard until we got to Duluth and turned down a STEEP hill running straight into to Lake Superior.
"Not a good time for the brakes to go out," Mz said, and Penny Cooper fell over.

Penny Cooper was lecturing half the night on the importance of road safety.  
"I should have been given a seat belt."

On the way home, she's sitting in the back.

Haircut

When the days get longer, I feel it's spring, even though temperatures have been in the teens. Time to lighten up! That means a shearing...

Before and after:

I am a "cool old thing"... and so is that geometric dish, from Red Wing Pottery: "Prismatique" by industrial designer Belle Kogan, in the 1930s.