Trailer Park Karma

Taking After My Grandma, the Artistic Hothead

My mama's mama was a whiz with needle and thread and sticks and yarn and anything else you can use to make textile art. She hand-made virtually everything my mother (her adored only child) wore all the way through Rice University and maybe beyond. When there were three little girl grandchildren to dress up, she did right by us, too. In between clothing us, Grace made myriad other spectacular afghans (isn't it funny how everyone calls them "throws" now?), seat and pillow covers, table doilies... if it could be constructed outta thread or yarn, she could make it.

 

Of course, as a kid, I was pretty unimpressed. When you grow up around someone who's doing something fabulous, you take it for granted. That's just what (Fill in The Blank with Your Favorite Social Role) does; don't they all?

 

But I was fascinated by this: Why the heck didn't she sell that stuff?

 

I asked her, a couple of times I think, because I didn't get it. Pretty sure I asked my mom, too. Still didn't get it. The answer was something about simply enjoying the activity of creating stuff and being perfectly content with doing so for friends and loved ones. There was never an ounce of hesitant reflection on her part either. She wasn't faking it. Selling this beautiful stuff she made wouldn't have done a single thing for her and her life, let alone for the folks on whom she bestowed the beauties.

 

That kinda thinkin' just doesn't fly today. If I had a nickel for every time someone, anyone -- people I know and people I don't know -- told me that I should be making money offa everything I do... well, I wouldn't have to keep doing it.

 

So, now I get it, where my grandmother was coming from: When you stumble upon or even carefully cultivate something that brings you so much enjoyment and satisfaction, it matters not a whit if you're paid to do it. But there's even more to it than that. And it's a point that's harder to pin down. But I'll try.

 

I'm one of those apparently rare folks who actually gets to do what I wanted to do once I grew up. I know how lucky I am and acknowledge it regularly. So I've witnessed firsthand the juxtaposition of loving what I do and needing to earn a living. I've (sorta) figured out how to mash it all together and come up with ways to bring income in and still experience joy. I've been asked by tons of people how I got to this point. I'm not a very good mentor, and it ain't because I'm selfish or hoarding what I know. In fact, I tell them the little things I've done (and to me, they really are small acts that I figure anyone would do in my shoes) to be able to write for a living. I also fully apprise them of what "making a living" means to me, and therein lies the rub:

 

It's not what I do. It's not the big bucks I stash in the bank. It's my attitude and thoughts that bring about emotions in me that I enjoy experiencing. 

 

It's that simple. 

 

It's not that I couldn't use the additional income. Heck, my grandmother worked all of her life, too, either as a hospital volunteer or in some office somewhere pushing paper. It's not that I'm walking around every day filled to the brim with gleeful joy. In fact, I get my incredibly short temper from Grace. We're both hotheads. Well, she was -- fact is she died when I was a teenager from -- well, this is tacky, but it's what I say to lighten it up a bit -- her head exploding. It's a family tradition. If y'all ever see blood runnin' outta my ear, say goodbye, quick.

 

And speaking of exploding heads (my mom nearly went that way, too, but some super fantastic brain surgeons plugged the hole up fast), I'm under the impression that running around frantically is a good way to nudge those kindsa experiences into manifesting. And there's no better word to use when describing the amount and type of activity one must engage in to sell, sell, sell -- even if the product's pretty great -- than "frantic".

 

So, before you get to joining the hip crowd and telling me I should do this or that with what I write -- remember, it's only a matter of time before I, too, will be gone. If there's one thing I'm clear on, it's that THAT is a fact, and no amount of income will ever change it.

 

I don't think I exactly hit the needle with the thimble (har har) in explainin'. I probably won't ever be able to explain to most folks why I'm good with living the way I do. Thing is, it doesn't matter at all, to me. 

 

But now, all of you know about my superbly textilian artistic grandmother, and believe me, she never woulda believed that strangers in the ether would hear about her. So that's pretty fantastic. And maybe now you understand why I'm not jumping at the chance to boost my blood pressure so I can constantly churn out stuff to sell.

 

 

Bored? Grow Some Corn. Write a Blog. Paint Your Toes. Just Don't Whine About It.

I don't understand the concept of boredom. I mean, I remember whining about being "booooorrred!!" as a kid. (My poor mom.) And I think there were moments when I was a young adult and still trying to figure out how to fit the verb P.A.R.T.A.Y. into every paragraph of my life story, and coming up short on some weekends... and then later on, how it dawned on me that the words "weekend", "Friday", and "Saturday" did not necessarily equate to P.A.R.T.A.Y... and in between those ages, there was some sort of resignation to the idea that being a responsible adult might necessarily equate to occasional boredom.

But I can't imagine complaining now about boredom. And it ain't cuz I figured out how to P.A.R.T.A.Y. every day, either. 

I say, if you're bored, you're not trying very hard.

I think my life's no different than anyone who whines about being bored. The difference is that if by tiny chance I'm lucky enough to glimpse a few minutes filled with Nothing To Do, I relish and roll around in that bad boy until I'm practically perspiring from the excitement of doing nothing. 

What started this meaningless thread this morning? I'll tell ya. Friend of mine, a truly nice woman and lovely wordsmith, offered up that the corn growing in my asphalt driveway is an expression of Mother Nature's reclamation. I liked that thought a lot. Told her so. Then I thought, "Hey, I should show off my corn plant to the world!" So I grabbed The Editor's camera and shot this:

And then I thought, "Hey! It's been a week since I posted something on Trailer Park -- maybe I could toss this photo up there and call it done for now!"

Which brings me to this: If you experience periods of boredom in your life story, if it seems like the days drag by and the weeks linger too long, start a blog. Most blog readers won't follow along if too much time passes in between posts, so you'd better promise yourself that you'll post something weekly or thereabouts. Then you'll have a constant nagging reminder in your brain that this place on the Internet is sitting there, waiting for you, quietly, hoping for you to come along and update it...

That, or you could try holding down 3 to 6 jobs at a time, like me.

Whatever you do, remember: If you're bored and not likin' it now, you'll wish like heck for boredom somewhere down the line. Enjoy!
 

What Hurricanes Might Put Asunder, Composting Can Heal

The last time I did some serious gardening was with H1 back in the day. I was all of 22 whopping years old and farming a little half acre in the burbs with three formerly feral cats, our fancy purebred white German shepherd puppy, and a smelly brown mutt that I picked up offa the freeway shoulder. Gardening's how I learned to sit for long periods in a camp squat. I'd set off under the blazing sun in my bikini without a clue about which green shoots were weeds and which might be the sprouts we wanted. Grubs grossed me out. I remember sweating buckets, slapping sparrow-sized mosquitoes, and, later, watching helplessly through the kitchen window as first a freakishly windy thunderstorm and then Hurricane Alicia spun our pine trees like al dente spaghetti, laying low and drowning our corn and every shorter plant. I think we wound up salvaging a few white squash. H1 and I split up six months later. Just sayin’.

Gardening, as lots of you know, provides some pretty handy metaphors for living. Watching all my hours of profuse perspiration result in a few squash and a big mess to plow under was enough to satisfy my young green thumb for about 20-something years. Oh, I fell into growing violets for awhile, but there's no sweat, sunburn, or bugs that go with all those little pots. Of course, it took me many more years to get out of the habit of collecting and resurrecting half-dead dogs and cats, but they give so much more back to your heart than tomatoes and zucchini. To me, nurturing is nurturing, whether it's living things that have two feet, four paws, or are stuck in the ground.

And if there's one thing I know, it's that you gotta take care of something other than yourself to have a whole life.

But there are as many ways to nurture as there are creatures. And it can get damned confusing at times when different ideas are called to make magic in the dirt side by side.

The Editor and I, much to the chagrin of nuestros vecinos, are farming our plot in the barrio. We're the only WASP types for blocks, and the folks around here who've been quietly and dutifully maintaining their tidy second-generation American urban homesteads for 20 and 30 years are a bit... perplexed. At least, I hope that's the extent of their mindset as they watch us do weird things to our yard. Consternation, maybe?

And as expected, The Editor and I do things differently. I never cease being amazed at how he and I jell so well on some ways of being, but then cross paths at a roadbump elsewhere. But we're just like anyone else that way. The only thing you can do is make room for each other.Well, you could squash each other, too, but that's not very nice. Besides, I've tried. It doesn't work.

The first big difference between us: our internal clocks. He's a night owl, I'm a morning lark. That's no longer a point of contention -- we just do shift work. He farms under light of the moon and the awful blue-white buzz of the motion-sensored lamp on the vacant house next door. Many is the dawn when I awake to find new, oddly shaped mounds of dirt here and another curving pathway between the billowing grass there. I drag the doubled-up hose that The Ed hooked up for me out from the only water spigot that doesn't flow hot water and into the front where we've got a little heart-shaped bed going.

And we've taken each other's advice on things like which tool is best for which job, and we're pretty gung ho on the same kinds of plants that go into our dirt. And we are both in love with our compost. But we differ on the how-to.


In short, The Ed and I look at the process through different filters. My take is that he's more into manipulating the components than I am. My tendency has always been to lay back and watch things go wild. The compost is a good example: I've always just tossed compostables into my previous yards to watch what comes up, while Mr. Biologist likes using collection devices and particular tools to engage in regular methods by which he introduces additional components into the teeming goo.

There's nothing inherently wrong in either version, but we're at conflicting extremes. So the other day, I came up with a way of seeing that satisfies my urge to fix it (because it really ain't broken).


We both have the same goal: We want to nurture growing things. We like life, a lot. We want it to continue and flourish and replicate. The Editor likes facilitating all this flourishing by putting his hands in the mix; I like to imagine that left to their own devices, things will do what they need to do. We're both right. Neither one of us is wrong. But each of us could do with a little flexing of our nurturing muscles a bit more toward the middle.

Besides, as mentioned, we really love our compost.

So here we are in a Swamp City barrio, plugging our plot with volunteers and orphans and loaners from loved ones, scrapping our food into stinky tea to feed our growing charges, toiling in the earth both morning and night. I'm trying to figure out when it's okay to intervene and just how much tinkering is life-giving. I think The Ed's pondering the occasional stand-back-and-watch-mindfully approach now and then. And I hope the neighbors are cherishing our valuable lesson in patience.