Raven and Sparrow

Pet of the Week

  Dot da da Taa! Drumroll please! I'd like to introduce you to Sunny, Pet of the Week. This is an honor that only the extremely available can hope to achieve. Every week the advertising booklet published by my employer includes a photo of someone's pet. Sometimes people bring their dogs or cats or other more unusual animals in to have their picture taken, or just bring in photos they already have. We feature these pictures as Pet of the Week. Occasionally the pet well runs a little dry and my colleague Joe (who lays out the rag) starts begging for input. Here is my attempt to keep up the quality of Pet of the Week. Pretty cute, huh? Sunny is a Welsh corgi, the tailless kind. She is eleven and a half, but keeping pretty spry and playful. Corgis are regular dogs, just low riders. They are complete characters and very cheerful company. Check out Alicia's blog for a totally corgi-ful entry I really enjoyed.

Transitional blue

I am about to leave Home Depot. This week I received a job offer from a local printer and today I decided to make the change. You would think I would feel joyful, but so far I just feel blank. The new job pays less and offers fewer benefits, but the hours are regular: weekdays from 8:30 to 5:30 with weekends off. What a concept. (Tomorrow at Home Depot I am scheduled for 1:00 to 10:00 and the day after for 8:00 to 5:00.) Also, it is much closer to home, so I won't lose so much time traveling, or spend so much on gas. I will be doing graphic design and general dogsbody type work. It will be a chance to sharpen my skills on the big graphics programs like In Design and Photoshop. 

This afternoon as I was making this decision I got such a horrible headache behind my eyes. I rarely get this particular sort of headache, so I wondered if it had to do with the job. I focussed on it for a while, and like the answer in the eight ball, up from the depths rolled the thought that my eyes didn't want to work in the print shop because it is ugly. It is in what used to be a bank, built in the sixties, which was an eyesore to start with. Now it is worn and shabby on the outside, and absolutely crammed with presses and paper on the inside. Everything is grubby. I have been in several print shops, and the smaller ones were all like this, so I guess it is just the result of working with lots of paper and ink. When I realized what the problem was, I decided I could live with it, but that I have to make a point of looking at or making something beautiful as often as I can. With that resolution, my headache went away.

Tomorrow I will give my notice at Home Depot. I won't miss the soulless corporation or the horrible hours, but I will miss my friends.

Silver

Gray is my color. That sounds glum, but I don't find gray depressing in general. I think it is subtle and delicate on its own, and a powerful modifier and foil for other colors. I love the way grays can carry hints of every other color and still be gray. I love the elegance of gray suede and pearls, the dignity of gray pinstriped wool, the liveliness of gray hair, the gleam of silver. It is sober, sensible, elusive and mysterious. Brighter, clearer hues are even more so next to gray. It is the color of fog and cloud and stormy water, always carrying illumination around its edges. It does not demand attention but usually rewards it.

Great grays: my old cat's fur, the color of a rocky beach, dove feathers, lamb's ears, weathered wood, my friend's eyes, wool socks, my best pants, an unrighteous world.

Julia Shows the Way

I found this book in my local bookstore more than a year ago, and have read it over and over since then. Its by a twenty-nine year old woman who promises to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, and then blogs about it. Julie Powell's writing is very funny and she portrays her family and friends as the complicated human beings they undoubtedly are. Some of the best parts are when she extrapolates little vignettes from the life and letters of Julia Child. They are totally made up, but a wonderful description of the version of Julia that Julie carries in her head and considers a mentor, even though she has never actually met her. The essence of Julia that Julie shares in her book strikes right through my heart every time:

               "Julia taught me that what it takes to find your way in the world. It's not what I thought it was. I  thought it was all about - I don't know, confidence or will or luck. Those are some good things to have, no question. But  there's something else, something that these things grow out of.

               It's joy.

               I know, I know - it's truly an obnoxious word, isn't it? Even typing it makes me cringe. I think of either Christmas cards or sixty something New Agey women in floppy purple hats. And yet it's the best word I can think of for the heady, nearly violent satisfaction to be found in the text of Julia's first book. I read her instructions for making bechamel sauce, and what comes through is that here is a woman who has found her way."

Finding my way has been a lifelong effort for me, and I never get tired of stories about how other people find theirs. In another part of her book, Julie talks about going down the rabbit hole, and that image has always evoked the "way" to me. (Do you think Lewis Carroll invented the image in Alice in Wonderland, or just made use of an archetype we all carry?) Discovering the meaning of one's own life means diving down beneath the surface and allowing previously unsuspected predilections and feelings to carry the day. You have to discover your own oddness, and allow it to take over. And, my experience shows me that you have to do it again and again, because the original "way" , although never false, is only the first step.

My first big dive came when I went back to get a BFA in design. I did it because I was so unhappy with the kind of jobs I held after graduating the first time with a BA in history. They were all office jobs of overarching boredom in insurance or manufacturing. I saw no future for myself there and spent all of my time reading home decorating magazines. Making the leap to interior design as a possible career was really scary because I didn't have any background in art, but I knew within a month of enrolling in our local art school that I had finally found where I was supposed to be. I loved school, every bit of it, even though it took another four full-time years to get through it and I changed to graphic design on the way. Actually, school was way more fun and exciting than work once I graduated and started to freelance. I still think wistfully of the challenges, competition and satisfaction afforded by my education in art. The whole experience, starting with the decision to go, was like the sun pouring through a gap in the clouds, illuminating the path that was mine.

Long time, no blog

Sorry to be so long away. In November I finally succumbed to the voice in my head that said nothing I did mattered and no one gave a rat's ass anyway. I would blame it on the deadening effect of working at Home Depot, but I have always been susceptible to those kinds of feelings and it was only a matter of time before they got me, as they have many times in the past. One of the ways I know how important something is deep in my heart is if it persists through a doubt cloud like this. The turning point this time came when I found a pile of cotton tablecloths I had begun long ago when I thought I could make enough to sell. I bought a bunch of fabric, refined three designs, and went to the extreme trouble of transferring the designs onto the cloth (hours on my hands and knees). It was just then that I reached my limit with chemical dyes. I dyed two of my designs and they were ugly. I had just discovered natural dye extracts, but didn't know how to use them with wax, so I set the marked cloth aside and began my trudge up the steep learning curve of a new dye process. On that march I switched to linen as a better substrate for natural dyes and my cotton tablecloths languished in a box. Opening that box these seven years later showed me a path through my sadness. I could at least salvage the work I had already done and make something to give away to my friends; this time with natural dyes, and many fewer expectations. I got my wax pot out, and my tjanting tools and began to wax. Just the process of doing that: the slow bob between wax pot and cloth, the smell of the hot wax, and the sense of accomplishment as the design took shape, reminded me how much I need to do this, and how happy it makes me. So, I am back.

Dresden, I hardly knew ye

Every morning when I enter my still new kitchen I admire the way this German butter dish looks on my counter. It is glass and stainless steel, very sleek and European to my eye, maybe because I bought it in Europe. Saint Mike and I are not very well travelled but we have been a few places, including Dresden, Germany. It was his last trip for Intel, to a super-computing conference there, and he asked me to go along. He had to spend all three days in the convention center talking to people, while I walked around and went to museums and cafes and shops. It was sort of lonely, because I wanted to share my impressions with someone, but quite intense. I found Dresden to be both charming and disturbing. As I'm sure everyone remembers, Allied firebombing at the end of WWII reduced it to rubble, and then it was part of East Germany until the wall fell and Germany was re-united. Before the bombing it was a very culturally rich city; a showcase of Baroque architecture, and the home of the Meissen porcelain works, the first European manufacturer to crack the Chinese formula for porcelain. Now all of its most important Baroque buildings have been restored, so the old city center looks (so I read) like it used to do, but with strange anomalies.

Turning even one block away from the restored center, I encountered smart, cool shops like the one that sold my butter dish, or crumbled ruins of houses with trees growing out of them, or squat, dull buildings with murals of glorious workers painted on the sides. Recent history collides and co-exists with older memories on every street in Dresden.

The place is packed with tourists. Buses roll in every morning filled with people, and they are all German.  I encountered remarkably few foreigners on my walks. I only heard other languages when I was in the hotel among the super-computing people. There is a performance every night at the opera house, and all the restored churches take turns giving organ recitals in the morning. The  used-to-be palaces are museums now, showing amazing art, porcelain, clocks and scientific instruments, armor, and the treasury of Auguste the Strong, Elector of Saxony, which has recently been returned by the Soviet Union (they "borrowed" it after the war). In every museum gift shop there are books or pictures of the collection, of course, but also of the complete devastation that the museum has recovered from. One doesn't have to be looking for them to see black and white photos of smoking human remains.

Across the Elbe River the bombing wasn't so severe, so most of those buildings are original, and occupied by regular Dresdeners. The "New Town" (it was new in the eighteenth century) is shabby, with the air of incipient gentrification. Beautiful, expensive shops sit next to deserted, crumbling Communist era apartments covered with graffiti. There are lots of less exalted shops as well, some with a hippie-ish, artistic on a shoe-string kind of ambiance. Once I looked through an arched doorway in a beautiful, traditional old building and glimpsed another world. The whole center of the block was hollow, with paths and little shops and whimsical wall decorations open to the sky. It was a delightful, slightly surreal encounter. I found a store sellling hand-made textiles and was dyeing to ask about them, but the proprietor only spoke German, so we didn't get too far.  I was reminded that in three days I wasn't even scratching the surface of Dresden.

Another shopping experience was surprisingly nostalgic. I went into a very nice department store with six or seven stories that reminded me strongly of the old Frederick and Nelson store in downtown Seattle. The impression was cemented when I found a fabric and notions department carrying fine textiles for dressmaking. I can't remember when the department stores closed their fabric sections, but I remember going to Frederick's and fingering the soft woolens and silks, much nicer than anything our hometown Penney's had.

I could go on at length, and would love to talk more about Dresden with someone who has been there. In the meantime, I have my butter dish and the memories I was very lucky to have been able to form.

Autumn is for apple

I really like to bake pies, and in the autumn, of course, its time for apple. Usually I try to bake an apple pie to celebrate the first day of fall, but this year I was way too busy feeling sorry for myself to make the time. Yesterday I got over it long enough to peel some apples and find my pastry blender, ending up with three crazy pies, as I named them until I found out they are called galettes. Regular two-crust pies are too big for Saint Mike and I to eat, although I confess I do, so I have taken to folding up whatever filling I have made in one crust and making several odd, rough pies, some of which can be given away to our neighbors. I cook them on cookie sheets and dust them with powdered sugar. I think they are very satisfying to eat, and even to look at sometimes, although the beauty of a finely edged two crust pie is hard to beat.

I learned from my mother that pie-making is a hard, frustrating, ticklish business. I found more than one of her piecrusts in the garbage, and her swearing she would never bother again. I helped many times to patch the fragmented dough that didn't quite make it from rolling board to pie plate. You would think that would have put me off baking them myself, but pie is my favorite dessert and so I took it as a challenge and learned to do it. I do find that making and rolling pie crust needs my complete attention, which is probably why my mother had trouble; she was always trying to do two things at once. Now over the anxiety of pie-making, I can't think of anything more comforting and nostalgic than the ritual movements of rolling out, peeling and crimping or anything more delicious than the smell of a pie in the oven.

Clearing the way

I spent some time this weekend playing with my new chestnut-dyed pique tablecloth and various other things I had sitting around. It felt good to exercise my eye for color and shape, even if most of the results were disappointing. I have been so sad about the apparent course of my creative life that I haven't had the energy to combine and fiddle, which I used to love to do. I think the pain I am feeling is part of a necessary re-alignment which will result in a new, improved plan, but right now I can't see what that plan might be. All of my old ideas and hopes have been exposed as folly and I suppose I have to grieve for their loss, and the view of myself as someone who could pull them off.

In the meantime, I have been reading Jane Brocket's book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity. I heard about it from Alicia, and sent for it immediately. I haven't finished it yet, since I save it for a treat during my lunch hours, but I am so enjoying her fresh view of the gentle arts, as she calls them, and her lovely writing. I especially appreciate her change in attitude about the humble, ordinary pursuits she describes. I keep thinking that all I need to do is change my perspective somehow, like Jane, and my way will be clear. Its like I just need to turn my head a little bit and I will see it, because its been there all the time. 

Shook foil

I have not been posting much lately because I want to spare you the whine that surfaces anytime I stop to assess my activities and my life. I have been seriously self-reflective before and especially since the Home Depot axe fell upon my creative efforts, but I have yet to see the way forward. However, even on the grayest days I have so much to be thankful for. Beauty leaps out like "shining from shook foil" as Gerard Manley Hopkins says, accosting me unexpectedly from this source or that. I know that I want to do something that fosters and reveals beauty in everyday life.

What's wrong with me?

I have been working at Home Depot for ninety days now, and my health insurance benefits have finally begun. That is what drove me to work, and it does feel good to have accomplished that much. I have learned enough about the store and its wares to help at least some people and that is the part of working I like best. I also like most of the people I work with, although it took a long time to get to know them. Now I understand why, as I watch people come and go, often with no word of introduction or goodbye. Home Depot prides itself on its culture and has a list of eight core values that they paint on the walls and plaster on all of the employee literature, but my experience has shown that they are mostly just words. Creating shareholder value is the only really important thing. The store is profitable, but employee hours are cut to make it more so. This leaves the remaining people, who face the hordes of angry customers without the time or knowledge to help, feeling unappreciated and used. You would think that profits would fall, and they do. Then people are hired again, but someone looks at the numbers and decides that more money could be made with fewer people, and the cycle starts again. None of these decisions are made locally; the management of the store has very little power and lots of responsibility, and they sometimes take their frustrations out on those below them.  The workers, at least this worker, feel like work units rather than valued employees.

I think this is the inevitable outcome for giant publicly owned companies. The person or people who founded them became successful because they cared about the business they were creating, and it showed in their product. People sensed the value of what they were offering and propelled them into ever larger markets, until the company became big enough to be a product itself, in the eyes of the financiers. When a big company goes public it becomes beholden to its shareholders, but a strong leader can still chart the course.  As soon as the leader is gone though, the company moves on through sheer institutional size, but profit (money for the shareholders) is the only reason it exists. There is nothing wrong with profit, coupled with other values, but profit alone has no soul. I think Home Depot has lost its soul.

I think I may be losing my soul as well. Despite my determination to keep up with my dyeing and tables, I have fallen into lethargy. Walking the concrete floors of Home Depot saps my energy completely, so when I get home I do nothing. The kuba cloth lays rumpled and dusty on the work table, untouched for two months, and napkins still wait for a quick pot of some color, any color to be brewed. My days off disappear either to exhaustion or family obligations. I entertain, but I don't set tables. I wish I knew what's wrong with me. I see people all around me juggling children and jobs and still finding time to make things, why can't I?  I resolve to try harder.