Don't Even Say It

 I'm not going to say that I'm back.  Nope. I'm not even going to say that.  This blog, that I cherished for so many years, is limping along at best now and I recognize that.  I'd probably be better off just printing it out for my archive and closing it down. But I just can't do it. 

Back when I was doing the original Scrawlspace, it was almost a religious thing for me.  All day I'd be looking at my experience with an eye to the blog:  how I could spin things, what stood out as relatable or interesting.  I'd like to start looking at my world that way again. 

Working in city government does not have the same cache as working for a nationally recognized museum, to say the least. I'm no longer able to shore up any sagging parts of my self image with a glamorous job. Two years into this position and it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere else any time soon. Job hunting in your 50s is a whole different ball of wax. Especially as a woman, I think. I don't even get return emails on jobs I would definitely have at least gotten an interview for ten years ago. I've interviewed for jobs that never even called me back afterward. I think they take one look at me and see a woman ten years from retirement. Someone who is probably technologically behind and may need to be paid more than someone just out of school.  At least, that's what I've told myself when I've applied for jobs and not heard a response. 

So:  without my "career" to give me a sense of importance and usefulness, I look around for something else to sprinkle a little sunshine on my daily life. And blogging was one of those things. It's just about being motivated to keep my eyes open for some sense of wonder every day. 

My latest sense of wonder is not a new one. It's one I experience every year at this time. It's monarch butterflies.  

We raised three sets of caterpillars to raise in the Mayor's office this summer.  First there was a black swallowtail:  a green, black, and yellow monarch lookalike that made a strange greeny-brown chrysalis like a broken bit of twig that hung from a silken sling from a stick for 14 days before "eclosing" (that's the official term I learned for "emerging as a butterfly.")  as a gorgeous swallowtail.  

Then there were the two pipevine swallowtails, which look like giant, creepy centipedes with their fat black bodies and red spines.  These are really twisty, active caterpillars that go on a day-long walkabout right before they pupate. I spent a lot of the day before the first one pupated plucking the traveling 'pillar off my desktop, my computer screen, the edge of my keyboard, out of my pencil cup, etc., and putting it back into the punch bowl we were keeping them in.  Finally I stapled it, punchbowl and all, into a mesh recycling bag for the night so it couldn't wander off and get lost.  In the morning we discovered its brown, spiky chrysalis that looked like a crumpled brown leaf.  The next day the second pillar went walkabout, and in the morning that one had formed a similar chrysalis, clinging to the glass wall of the punchbowl. 

This one emerged (excuse me, eclosed) as a gorgeous, glossy blue-black butterfly with irridescent blue hind wings. Breathtaking in the sunlight. 

The second one, however, has yet to emerge.  Turns out, some pipevine swallowtails overwinter in their pupal stage.  And some remain dormant for much longer:  a year, three years, five years, even SEVEN YEARS.  So this guy could be hanging with us for quite some time.  They say you can simply refrigerate the pupa through the cold months and then bring it back out again in the spring to see if it will eclose.  I imagine the Mayor's office staff dragging this little brown capsule out of the employee kitchen fridge every April for the next seven years...

Our latest caterpillar, however, is a monarch, the Queen of autumn butterflies. This little cutie, in its striped pajamas and adorable black antennae, recently pupated into this beautiful, delicate jewel of a chrysalis:  a jade and gold marvel that looks as if it belongs on a Christmas tree.  

What on earth can be the evolutionary advantage of such a gorgeous chrysalis?  That looks like actual gold on there.  How can this be?  Sure, it's sort of camouflaged if left in a green, leafy spot.  But a lot of things are getting pretty brown around now, so it has the potential to stand out: the opposite of what evolutionary common sense says it should do. To say nothing of all that bling. It's one of those things that shows you how sometimes nature just likes to dress up for no reason at all.  Beauty for its own sake. 

I believe this generation of monarchs: those that emerge this late in the fall, are among the ones who make their mind-blowing migration to Mexico for the winter. That place:  Michoacan, in the Sierra Madre mountains, is one of the places at the top of my bucket list to visit someday.  That and the little pub in the little town in Ireland where Shane MacGowan of the Pogues goes to drink. 

When I Grow Up...

I'm coming back to blogging.

I realize I've said that more than once in the past few years.

I have to say, I was "blogging" before it was "blogging": back in the day when it was "online journaling" and you had to build your own website and join a web circle. It seemed more real then.  Seems like the genre now is all full of people trying to get a book deal for their "mommy blog" or their DIY blog or their lifestyle blog showing how much more beautifully they live than you.

I don't live more beautifully than you.

My home is plagued with roving bands of dog-hair dustballs. My blinds and shelves are filmed in dust. There's liquid lettuce in my crisper drawers. My lawn is mostly dirt.  My clothes are a random, ill-assorted collection of items from thrift stores given to me by my thrift-junky Bosnian neighbor, items purchased retail at least 15 years ago, things given to me by my mom when she lost a bunch of weight, and a few things I got from Stitch Fix back when I could afford such luxuries.

It's been a rough year.

In January I lost my job, and I went six months before I found a new one that came close to matching the salary I'd made before. In the meantime I did a lot of crafting (I had this idea I'd set up an Etsy site and sell mosaics), a lot of writing (I was going to become a freelance writer), a little editing (also freelance... hated it), and then a lot of working retail for $9.50 an hour at JoAnn crafts and fabric. This last I found both exhausting and rewarding, though it was very awkward when someone from my "previous life" as a salaried professional would come in and see me in my green apron, stocking shelves, cutting fabric, or standing at the cash register. I could see the dismay and dare I say pity in their eyes. But there was something enjoyable about the work It was so immediate and task-oriented. I especially liked working in the loading dock, receiving freight then opening boxes and sorting the new merchandise into plastic bins to go out on the floor. It triggered what seems to be a deep-seated need for classification and organization in me.

You wouldn't know this by looking at my home, I warn you.

Then in July I got another "real" job: a full-time position working for city government, managing the website. It's not quite as far as you can get from editing, but it's definitely in a different neighborhood.

I like the people I work with, and when there's plenty of work, I do enjoy what I do. But there are down times that lead to boredom and inertia:  my old arch-nemesis. It will definitely do for now... but not forever.

So, here I am, at age 52, back to wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up.

Ghosts of Friendships Past

Okay, I said I was taking up the blog again, but it's been 9 months since I said that.  But here I am again. Like a bad penny, right?  Or a business card. You can never throw those things away, but then when you need to find a specific one... it's never findable.

Today I'm posting about dreams. I've been keeping a record of my dreams since I was about 13.  Not ALL of them, of course, that would be tedious.  (Actually, probably any record of my dreams is tedious, but I do it anyway.)  I like to watch for themes.  I used to dream about houses all the time:  I was inheriting a wonderful old house, or I was living in a ramshackle house, or I discovered a whole new wing of my house with rooms after rooms after rooms.  In one I was living in an old strip mall. Now that I own my very own house (yes, we did close and it's mine all mine now), I don't dream about houses as much.  But I've been dreaming about old friends and old jobs.

Last night it was about old friends AND old jobs.  I often dream about my time working at the Arts Institute, perhaps because it was such an all-encompassing job.  I spent literally six weeks working 15-hour days every fall and three weeks working around the clock every summer, plus all the months leading up to both those programs, hiring faculty, ordering supplies, and overseeing the move of all that stuff to the site.  It's been almost 20 years since I had that job, yet I still dream about it: either that I've been asked to come back, or that I'm suddenly back in the job and trying to figure out how things are run.

I dreamed that I met certain people who were my friends at the Institute, and discovered that they didn't actually like me. In fact, they reviled me. And I was heartbroken.  And then I was angry.  And I thought about doing something really dastardly. But then when I was handed some responsibility for the organization (moving parts of a sculpture from point a to point b, if I recall),  I dutifully did what I was supposed to do, even though I was thinking of all the things I could do:  pushing the stuff down the stairs or something. But I didn't. I just swallowed my pride, moved the stuff I needed to move, and the slipped out the door.

This reminded me of how I felt when I was there.  I was good at my job, but I never belonged there. I was never part of that social strata, if you will.  Art is always surrounded by money. And I didn't come from money or the social set who had it. No matter what I did, or how good I was, I would never wear the right clothes or eat at the right restaurants or know the right people or value the right things to make me belong there. It didn't matter what I could do. It only mattered who I was. Or what I was, perhaps.  And though I had what I thought were real friends then, I knew that if they were having a dinner party, I wouldn't be invited.  I just wasn't the right sort of person.

It preyed on me for a while, but I came to deal with it. And one of the things that helped was when I applied for a leadership position there and didn't get it. I knew it was, in large part, because of this class thing.  And I was hurt.  But my friend came to me and she said "Linda: you are a wonderful person. You're not like anyone else I know. Everyone who meets you loves you, you affect people's lives. Don't worry about what those people at the Arts Institute think.  you shouldn't try to be like them. Just be you."

Of course, she was one of the ones who wasn't inviting me to dinner parties. But I still considered her a friend. I think now that in a different way, she also struggled with that gap between worlds.  She came from the upper crust: the right clothes and wines, the right social circles, the right social graces.  She could visit my world, and I could visit hers, but neither of us belonged there.  She married money.  I changed jobs and went my merry way and that was the end of the friendship.  But what she said did help, at the time. And I believe she was sincere. I think she was telling me it was okay for me not to belong there.

I think all my life I've been looking for that niche where I truly do belong. I have found a few places I like, places I'd like to belong,  places I nearly belong, places I belong for a while and then don't anymore... but never a full fit. Maybe that's my niche: nearly belonging.

This morning, after that dream, I thought about these things. Seems I'm always trying to figure out what I should do to perfectly suit or embrace or express who I am. I think I'm seeking some sort of consistency. As if anyone was consistent.