The Joys of Guerrilla Knitting

Last fall, I took a fiber arts class. I’ll have more to say on that because it was part of my quest for a new life, but we had to do some research. I did mine on Guerrilla Knitting – knitters cover things in the urban environment by going out and Yarn Bombing them. The class loved the idea, said I should get one going.

Okay, I knew how to do that. I can do outreach. I can get the word out far and wide through all sorts of unorthodox channels. I can make something happen. It’s what I do.

So I arranged for us to Yarn Bomb the trees in front of the Museum, give them sweaters for the winter. The Urban Foresters gave their endorsement.

Then I had to learn how to knit. Only knit. I didn’t even progress to purl, but all this was a New Thing, just what I was looking for. We held Knit-Ins. I learned how to make stripes, how to knit with two balls of yarn at the same time, how to mix colors. With fat, bulky yarn and big fat needles, projects just zoom along; it’s very gratifying. While I was watching my never-ending DVDs, I could knit and knit. Before spiralizing, I was a Knitting Fool.

Knitters came out of the woodwork! Knitters were posting gorgeous photos on our Facebook page. They were knitting stars, flowers, words; they were well beyond stripes. Pioneer Home, Senior Center, Native Hospital – sweaters were coming in from all over. Balls and balls of yarn were donated. (Only later did I realize this was really thinly-disguised de-cluttering: knitters accumulate massive yarn stashes. They have to move some out before they can justify getting more. And if it’s going for a good cause, well hallelujah!)

Experienced knitters were teaching little knitters. TV stations were calling. Photographers were interested. Radio. We were going to be a First Friday happening: come and attach the sweaters to the trees. No experience necessary. Be part of public art.

Temperatures fell and fell. Uh, oh. Who would want to attach sweaters to trees and risk frostbite? But the day dawned and it was sunny … and windy and freezing. Out we went to the Museum with bags and bags of knitted pieces.

And people came! People who wanted to put theirs up. People who hadn’t knitted but who wanted to be part of it all. People on their lunch hour. People with kids. Kids hiding behind trees. People with cameras. People taking breaks to warm their hands and attach more. It was the happiest day of my whole year! It was everyone’s happy day! (Listen to me on TV) 

What was it? Was it the beauty in an unexpected place? (Look at the photos.) I think so much of our experience of art is as a spectator, and here we were all participants. We could all Do Art!

Jealous? Sorry you missed out on this? Now you have your chance: another big event is happening, and you can Yarn Bomb a whole street. Come out First Friday, September 4 to the big block party on D Street at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 5-10 pm. Be part of public art! (I won’t be there; I’m on a postponed vacation.)

Yes, there is a Third Third moral to this story, but for now, it was merely the highest high spot in a year of muddle. The highest high spot. So what did I do with that little bit of insight? Or what didn’t I do?

De-cluttering in High Gear

I wrote an article for Alaska Magazine once about Alaska’s history going to garage sales, recycling centers, or the dump. People who were part of our history got old, maybe moved Outside, maybe died. Oblivious kids just trashed it.

We know how easily that happens. When we moved my mother out of the house we all lived in for fifty years, we started out with great plans: give the office supplies to elementary schools, give the tools to vocational education, give the original Ms. magazines to a women’s studies program. But after uncovering the 400th pencil, the 200th matchbook, and an attic full of packing sponge – packing sponge? – it just started … getting tossed.

And didn’t we all say: “I’m going to make sure my kids don’t have to deal with all my crap!”

This is the Difficulty Scale for De-cluttering, from easiest to hardest (a first draft):

1. Other person’s stuff – Easiest!


2. Broken stuff you finally believe you won’t get around to fixing


3. Stuff you will never ever use again and don’t want to be reminded about, it’s in the way, AND you have identified the perfect recipient who thinks it’s treasure


4. Stuff already in storage and you come across it and it’s been unacknowledged and undiscovered for so long it has retreated from your consciousness AND you have identified the perfect recipient who thinks it’s treasure


5. #2 and #3 above with no perfect recipient but if you donate it to a nonprofit’s garage sale, maybe it can turn into treasure for them


6. Stuff of sentimental value. This can be anything from your past and you think you might like to look over it and remember it fondly some day. You imagine sitting in a comfortable chair, maybe a cozy fire, and you’re sifting through a box of memorabilia and grandchildren are oohing and aahing about how interesting it all is.


   
   Dream on.



7. Stuff that might come in handy some day. Ugh, my personal struggle.

Back when I wrote that article for Alaska Magazine, I urged people to make contact with the Museum or the Library to see if their stuff had value and to arrange in advance where it would end up. Let’s see, that was about 20 years ago.

These things take time….

So I called the Library and today Arlene from Archives came and took cartons of stuff from my house.

It started out easy enough: empty my Daily News columns from the file cabinet. But this is the thing about de-cluttering: once you get on a roll, it’s infectious! I gathered the files from the plays I wrote, the short stories, the essays, the book reviews. The CDs of interviews. The audio files from my radio show. And the stuff they didn’t want? Hey, I’d already said goodbye to it; it could go in recycling now.

Every now and then, I’d think, “But what if I want to look back on this?” or “What if I want to share it with Sophie?” or “What if someone asks me for some information about it?”

Philosophical Considerations: Do I think all I am is my past? How much of my present and future need to refer to that past?

Actual Considerations: Just get this shit out of my house!

Into the Light

If you guessed #3 yesterday, you win. It is easy to get depressed when you don’t know what you’re doing with your life.

So after moping a lot, finding a ton of faults in Tim, noticing every time I wasn’t included in a social event, and sagging deeper and deeper, I decided I was clinically depressed. I went to a therapist, Linda.

She had me artistically illustrate what gave me pleasure.

Drawing this gave me no pleasure. Only DVDs gave me pleasure. Lots of DVDs. A constant supply of DVDs from the library.

Let me tell you about Golden Moments. Golden Moments are when the universe lets you know that you are in the right place at the right time and all is good with you and the world. I can still close my eyes and picture the time I looked out my doorway and my friends were playing pick-up football on the green and one shouted, “Hey, B-squared, come out and play!” The sun was shining. All was good with the world.

Golden Moments happen when I’m in my living room, and my eyes survey the whole scene of what makes our home, and all is right with the world.

Intellectually, I could say, “There is always a period of restlessness and turmoil until it reaches critical mass and a creative period surfaces. Just wait for it.” Instead, I huddled with that restlessness and turmoil in my living room and couldn’t move with the paralysis of my unknown future. No Golden Moments there.

And Linda used that word, that elusive but oh-so-enthralling word:

Yes, that’s right! That’s it! That’s what I want. How could I bring joy back into my life? Not with me sitting here whining.

That’s when Linda told me about “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” (See this blog post.) In college, friends would call that a P.G.I.O – Penetrating Glimpse into the Obvious – but I took it to heart. I also visited my sister and we took a road trip to Burlington, Vermont. Burlington appears on every list of “good places to retire” so if you’re thinking relocation might solve your problems, it was a reconnaissance trip, too.

Burlington failed, but the trip succeeded. By crossing relocation-to-Burlington off my list, I had taken action. (Yes, it worked that way.)

Then I started this blog, happily sitting in my nice new room. Writing but using my hands to paint. And one day I sat in the living room, surveyed the scene, and felt comfort wash over me. And I thought maybe this is my Third Third. Maybe this is not a detour on where I’m supposed to be; maybe it is where I’m supposed to be, detour or not.

I have spent a lifetime whirling through the turbulence of my emotions, the bedlam of choices to be made, the ups and downs of events and tides. Arrhythmia was the rhythm of my life. I’ve collided with life.

This new thing, is this the wisdom of the Third Third?

Gasp.

Is this unemployment?

Groups of friends meet every week – during the day because they’re not working – and they call themselves “retired.” I’m not working, but I call myself unemployed. And even that’s not accurate because I have contract “gigs,” but mostly it means I don’t go to the same place on a regular basis, get a regular paycheck from there, and have a boss. But if you’re a certain age, people assume you’re retired.

But I think I’ll eventually get A Job so by my definition, that means I’m unemployed.

I don’t do unemployment so well. Which is odd because I unemploy myself regularly. About every five years or so, after pouring myself into the venture of the moment, I start feeling restless. I’ve taken whatever I’ve done to new heights (yeah, I think so), but when it turns into “oh, it’s April, in April we do this” and “time to gear up for October,” I start fading.

In San Francisco, running the street and subway operation of the Muni was a 24/7 job before we even had the expression 24/7. When that wore thin, I had this big dream of working internationally and was hired to run the Melbourne transit system. So I quit my S.F. job. But the visa process was so long, I was unemployed for longer than I would have liked. Ultimately, I abandoned Plan A and came to Alaska to People Mover.

In San Francisco, when you don’t have a job, you feel like you have to say to people

I felt like one day I’d look in the mirror and there’d be no reflection. Even though I took classes and got a certificate in Graphic Design, even though I was heavy into major political matters, I felt valueless.

So I wasn’t going to let a job define me again.

This is how my employment cycle works: I have a great 5-7 years. I try new things, make things happen. There are glory years of accomplishment and satisfaction, meaningful work and workplace camaraderie. Then I fade and quit. Then something else emerges.

Yeah, emerges. I look around, something captures my interest, I explore it. Eventually, I’ll talk to someone, tell them how I can fix something or make something happen for them or their organization, and a job emerges that I fill. This is a very happy process that has taken me from buses to theater companies to newspapers to leadership to early childhood.

But something went awry this time. As I looked around, I’d find a potential interest and … nah. What about this? Nah, same old, same old. Ho-hum. Ugh, no way. My whole self winced at the thought of most jobs in my field. I don’t want to sit at a computer. I want to use my hands! I taught workshops for contractors: maybe I’d like to be a tile guy. I thought I’d like to be a check-out person at the library, talking to people about their books. Maybe I would prune trees and fix all the poorly pruned trees I see around town.

I didn’t want to do what I’m very good at; I wanted to try something I’d never done before.

There are several ways to interpret this:

1. Oh, you’re so eager to explore and try new things. How exciting!


2. If you don’t figure out what you want to do soon, you will be part of the “long-term unemployed” and you’re 60 now and you’ve read all those articles about how no one wants to hire old people.


3. You sound really depressed. Nothing interests you. What’s wrong with your whole life?

You get two guesses.

The Hourglass

Just thinking how days turn into months and years.

A Room of My Own

For all the time we’ve lived in this house – 25+ years – my office has been a small room downstairs, off the laundry room. That’s where my drafting table, desk, and table sat. There’s a big window onto the back yard.

That’s where I wrote my newspaper columns, filed my papers, and scheduled radio recordings. That’s where I did calligraphy, kept my bookshelves, and stored my office and art supplies.

And every time I went down to it, I felt like I was walking down, down, down into a dungeon. Tim would turn the heat on early; didn’t help. It could be toasty down there, but it was still a dungeon. It was light and I had beautiful art on the walls, but it was still a dungeon.

When Sophie was five, we moved her to the neighboring guest room downstairs: a double-sized room with space for her “stations”: dress-up area, reading area, monkey bars across the ceiling. That made my downstairs dungeon a more pleasant place; I had company. I even set up the table in my room as her craft table to finish a project.

But it was still a dungeon. Eventually, a junk room. I’d just throw stuff in there because all I needed really was a little hole to get to the computer.

Five months ago, I decided Sophie-the-adult was no longer thinking of this place as home. So I moved in. I took over her desk, moved out her bed. Moved in my desk and drafting table – with no junk on them so they could actually be used for drawing and painting!

I even took Sophie’s tiny tea set collection in the display case and moved it piece by piece to my old room. I had to take photos of each shelf to make sure I placed them just so.

What I have now: three windows that look in three different directions; the computer, the printer, and the scanner all in the same room; a place to write and then casually walk over to the tables where I can paint.

I come down here when it’s dark, when the sun is shining, when it’s early, when it’s late. I come down here at three in the morning. I come down here because simply walking in the room stimulates my creative juices. I come down here when I have too many ideas upstairs and I have to start working on them … downstairs.

I am a conscientious shopper: I check Consumer Reports, I get references, I research and research. Except when buying a house: for that, the clincher is walking in the door and if it feels right and comfortable and welcoming, I know it’s right. Our house home is all that and more for me … except for that little room that was my office (but now which makes a perfectly pleasant guest room).

I love my new room! I love how it makes me feel. I can’t really empirically describe why, but it feels right and comfortable and welcoming. If in my Third Third I want to feel at home in my life and skin, then it’s only reasonable to feel at home in my room.

Best advice I ever got:

A hum is when your decision feels just right, when the choice you’re making matches with the whole universe. It’s a hum through your whole being.

A snag, on the other hand, is a kink. A stumble. A rough spot in the smoothness. You can try to ignore snags, try to pretend you didn’t notice them, but really, you KNOW. You know it’s not right. Period. A wise person taught me to listen to my hums and snags when making choices. They don’t lie.

My new room is a hum. My old room was a snag I should have listened to years ago.

The Third Third is a time to act on old, lingering snags and find the hum.

Wearing Purple

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.”

This is what happens when you take the Jenny Joseph poem too literally, which I have done for most of my life, previous thirds included:

In Yiddish, this is called a schtunk. It is my normal attire. It consists of a slogan T-shirt and an odd pair of Bermuda shorts that are made of some fabric that stretches out a lot. At least now I wear a belt. I used to put my hands in the pockets and the pants would slide down. I roll up the legs under the illusion that makes them seem more fashionable, and this whole get-up is what I wear when I need to be more “formal” than regular shorts. My daughter tells me I can’t wear socks-that-show with shorts, but sometimes I disregard that fashion advice.

When I was in college and wore only overalls for a long period, I used to think I was a pleasant surprise for a boyfriend: schtunk transforms into beautiful naked woman.

And recently I looked at myself and thought,

Who am I kidding?

Even the slogan T-shirts have gotten boring: 50% of them are Mayor’s Midnight Sun Half-Marathon T-shirts. I have drawers full of T-shirts. Some of them are actually the right size with an appealing cut, but I wear them even when they’re too big or shapeless. After all, how many can I relegate to the sleeping shirt drawer? I once described them in archaeological layers based on the era of acquisition.

So I marched myself off to J.C. Penney (armed with my $10 off for a purchase of $10 or more coupon – free money!). Miraculously, I actually found, tried on, and bought three shirts. Practically a Ralph Lauren makeover! Now I am vowing not to appear in public in a slogan T-shirt again (except if I’m camping, orienteering, being athletic, or doing messy, dirty work). I am going into my Third Third … attractive!

I am going right to those drawers and toss the ugly shapeless ones. Will I really need 15 of them in case I’m painting? Would I really paint for 15 days without doing laundry?

Choke.

Watch this space to see if I actually do it. (I mean, why do I need to dress up to take garden pots in for recycling?)