super steve's a tom waits...

This guy takes his balloon animals seriously. And they last for weeks. He says it's because he's learned how to handle the ballons gently. And that penguin he's holding, it's brilliant. We see him at random spots in downtown Portland, and he's usually at the Saturday Farmer's Market on the PSU campus. He's Super Steve, he's a balloon artist, and he's a tom waits.

i don't know...

Okay. I'm at odds. I want to post a picture of the dog pancakes I made for Addie last weekend. I want to talk about the beauty of the simple things. But people all over the country are watching their worlds crash down. I'm especially worried about folks in Michigan .

My father grew up in Oklahoma during the depression. He was born in 1924 and so was a kid when the stock market crashed. All my life he downright refused to talk about his childhood. When I was six he told me he was born at the age 21 and I pondered that. Was he a man-sized baby or a baby-sized man? Could he talk immediately? Did he come out of his mother's stomach wearing a suit and shoes?

Of course I now understand that he meant his life really began at 21. That there were things about his childhood he wanted to escape. He never really talked about what those things were.

There is one thing he told me about his childhood. "When I was growing up I used to eat beans out of a can." He said it as a reprimand one night when I was crying and complaining about some middle class high school injustice -- I wasn't allowed out or, worse, wasn't allowed to drive the car. It was one short sentence but it said a lot. Disgust, regret, anger, sadness, distance-- but those are just guesses. I was left with the feeling that I would never really know what that sentence meant to him. That it was more powerful than I could ever understand. That it deserved respect.

And now, for the first time in my life, I think we could have another great depression. It is completely plausible that thousands and thousands of families could be left with no working parents, no income, and no place to live. And how long has it taken for the economy to tank? A couple of months? How in the hell did this happen?

I have some friends who, from time to time, have explained to me some theories developed by Rudolf Steiner. He had a lot of interesting, curious things to say about the world. Explanations that he believed were revealed to him from the spirit world. I don't know about that. Some of his theories stick with me, albeit probably poorly grasped and half-assedly retained. One is the theory that humans are evolving back toward a higher consciousness. That somewhere along the way we lost our connection with the spirit world. Maybe this financial downturn is a step in our evolution as humans. Maybe we'll finally move away from the "to be a good American you need to spend more" mentality. Maybe people will stop caring who Paris Hilton is dating and why Heff broke up with his girlfriends (I'm not there yet, I want to know…) Maybe this grassroots movement of home crafting, knitting, canning, making musical instruments from household objects, maybe this is gonna hit the mainstream. Maybe life is gonna get simpler.

My dad worked hard his whole life. He socked money away and, when he died, left it for his kids. He’s the reason I don’t have one of those screwy loans. He’s the reason I have a car that works and a good education. He’s the reason I can wake up groggy, but smiling, and make dog pancakes for my kid. He’s the reason I have the leisure to ponder the beauty of simple things.

she's a tom waits

Okay. So I'm a little bit behind on my promised and much anticipated (thanks for reading, Nealla!) first installment on "Who's a Tom Waits?" I don't know Elsa Mora but her paper cuts blow me away. There is a deep kindness and heart in her postings and her artwork. Dang it. She's rocking the world in her own particular way. Hat's off to that! Check it out...

who's a tom waits?

When RT and I moved in together (about 8 years ago or so) Rollie’s dog Angie came to live with us. She was a sweet mutt, somewhat wolf-like in appearance. She was an old dog when she came in to my life and I like to think that I put a sparkle back in to her twilight years. We walked our street twice a day, all the way down to the cider mill and back. She got lots of treats and lots of gentle talk.

RT had a game he played with her. It was called “Who’s a fawn?” Basically he’d ask her that, “Who’s a fawn?” while he touched her little gold eyebrows. Then he’d say “You’re a fawn.” You have to imagine his voice – not quite baby talk but tender and sweet with a little bit of goobie-goo thrown in. And you have to imagine her sweet face, happy for the attention but nonplussed. (I love the word nonplussed. An emotional word with a mathematical feel.)

So in honor of Angie, I’m launching the “Who’s a Tom Waits?” portion of my blog. It’s to be asked in the same tone. Sweet. With Goobie-goo.

As for why Tom Waits. Tom Waits has become my symbol of an artist who is an individual, artists who make art that no one else in the world can make. Artists who are fearless (or overcome their fears) to make honest art of true vision. (Not, necessarily, that the vision is truthful – although to me it seems that it usually is – but more in that the vision is true. Narrow and specific. True like a bicycle wheel.)

Really, I don’t need to explain Tom Waits to you. If you don’t know him, just listen and you’ll probably get it. The songs he writes, his voice, his arrangements, they are a particular view of the world. They’ve got intelligence, they’ve got balls and they’ve got heart (heart -- profoundly important.) They are art. They relieve people’s suffering. They impart joy. And they give me hope, for me and for my world.

And so soon I’ll launch my “Who’s a Tom Waits?”

I guess I should also say that I think we’re all Tom Waits’ (Pronounced “Waitses”) We’ve all got our own particular way of looking at the world. We’ve all got the goods inside to translate our world into art (whether it’s a nicely made sandwich, a straight yellow line painted on the highway, or a high falutin’ painting) that can affect other people, affect the world. And life is just the journey we take to find, or maybe a better word is uncover, what has been inside us all along.

How’s that for some goobie goo?

I can’t bring myself to write a blog entry. I sift through the ideas in my head, I’ve got plenty, but none of them seem good enough, inspiring enough. Or is it just that it seems like too much work and I’m tired? Or is it that I’m predicting defeat. That is, thinking of a first sentence and then, scared of not coming up with a second, just deciding that it’s no use. Or am I just lazy?

It really just came to me. Honesty. Just now as I whinged away. It’s an issue of space. I don’t feel like I have the space in my head. Work is taking up a lot right now…Life in the cube. Toss in some worry. And the life-in-vibrant-colors activity of raising a toddler.

In an ideal world writing -- doing -- wouldn't be dependant on mood, on energy, on my little tiny feelings. I've spent a lot of time fretting over my consistency, or lack there of, of production. Because lack of product can equal lack of value. And lack of value equals waste of time. And waste of time puts me that much farther from what I want. Who I think I am.

So this minute, right now, that cheesy song pops in my mind. "Turn, Turn, Turn." I hated that song as a kid. I don't like the refrain. "Turn, turn, turn." It's sort of spooky. Turn, Turn, Turn. I can say I've been doing a lot of thinking. Turn, turn, turn. So that's something.

in defense of self help books...

Well, I really should just come out with it. I'm trying to generate money with my mind. Or, to be more specific, my perception of reality. It's a long story, one that can be explained in this book.

I'm a book person, and it's never been a big leap to self-helpy books. Maybe I should be ashamed, embarassed, for having a long list of self-helpy books under my belt. (Saying "self help-y" seems to take the edge off, somehow.) Only one, this one, actually brought me to tears and was banned from the house. (I broke down when thinking I'd never even manage to develop the first habit, let alone the other six...) I've read a bunch of them ranging from a book that encouraged me to view my negative thoughts as gremlins to the ever-eye-roll-eliciting "The Artist's Way". And, you know what? If any one approaches me with a new way of thinking or looking at the world, well, I'll listen to that too. Anyways. There. I've outed myself as an occasional self help book reader.

So I'm trying to generate money with my mind. Not all the time. I'm not sitting around obsessing about it. But I'm putting some energy in to it. About as much energy as it takes to keep my teeth clean.

About a week after I started I recieved a $50.00 check in the mail from someone with whom I have not spoken in, probably 10 years. (It's not a long story, but I won't tell it anyway.) I immediately decided not to cash the check, because it seemed weird. This person was, more or less, paying me for doing something any decent person would've done. But then a friend pointed out that I'd been working on generating money. And to say no to it, once generated, made zero sense. And that made a lot of sense. A tremendous amount of sense.

So started saying yes to a lot of things, recently, that I would usually say no to. Stupid things. Silly things. Like "Want a candy bar?" or "Can I do that for you?" And it's interesting. Because life gets a little easier when you start taking people up on their offers. And then I found out about this website. It's a blog by a woman who is asking for something every day for 365 days. I like that. I like it a lot. I'm gonna ride the offer train for a while. Then I'm gonna start asking.

isn't it just that way

Doesn't it just make sense that I start a blog, send everyone to it, and then get overwhelmed by work and life and don't have any time to update it? It's that dark shadow that comes after you make a decision, take a risk, step toward something you want. I've seen it so often, it's almost like an old friend. Obstacles. They are a sign that good is just around the corner.

So I wanted to say that. And I wanted to make a quick plug for the butt end of bread. So neglected, so underloved, so....abandoned. Everyone, or just anyone who wants to, should go out of their way to eat the butt end of their bread loaf today. Pick it first. Make it feel special.