personal story for SOF

Spring. official: calm and gray in the morning, then windy and crazy, within ten minutes bright sun, then next hour a blast of rain, and two hours later, sun that stays. boys is shorts, skaters in helmets, ants in my pants.

I'd like to share with you a someting. I have written before about a favorite radio broadcast: Speaking of Faith- I had an extended meltdown a year after coming to portland, and one thing that pulled me out of it was listening to podcasts of this program, usually while walking brick after brick into the backyard for the kiln. they have recently created a spin-off project that incorporates the voices of listeners, and asked for people to share on the topic of how the recession has effected our lives. so this is mine:

"I am again compelled to thank all of you on the team for continuing to create such a vibrant space for challenging dialog. The broadcast in particular that moved me this time was in December with Parker Palmer, who spoke with such calm about his experience of depression a year or two ago. It is wise people like him being vulnerable with listeners like me that provide much-needed support to my growing realization that my voice is also needed. As our dear president reiterated again recently, everyone needs to step up in the global effort to shift our paradigm once and for all, from the crazed and broken cycle that has brought our country and by export, the world, to our current state of affairs. You have extended an invitation to listeners to share our stories of how the recession has effected our lives- I have other ideas of how to engage in rebuilding my country, but perhaps I should start with this particular moment... and thanks for the invitation!

The real trouble is that I'm not exactly sure how to start effectively leading because my work seems so marginalized by now. I'm a potter. I live to make dishes. I love touching the porcelain, easing it into shape, softening its symmetry, burnishing it to feel like a tumbled stone, the camaraderie and intensity of the firing, and then sitting down to dinner with friends. Beautifully presented food made with love, from local farms tended with care, around the table where conversations zing and query, ideas grown, plans are hatched.... to me this feels like revolution. People respond with their hearts to good craftsmanship because it is a human connection that is materialized in the object. The object is communicating: I gave it energy but what it awakens in the user is their own memory, their own value structure, their own synapses are helped to fire in new ways. So I think my work is extremely important in the world today.
It seems like a huge part of the problem is the lack of connection between humans- the system of cause and effect is so huge, global, that unless we take the time to really find out, we would have no way of knowing the consequences of our nation's actions on the people of other countries. If mainstream media were to actively draw the picture for the average American of where, say, bottled water comes from and where the plastic goes when we toss it and the political and social consequences of this seemingly trifle issue, I believe in my heart that the good conscience of people would never allow them to consume this particular commodity. Now put a heavyweight on the table: consumption of petroleum. We are not given the tools to make the connections. How does my action effect the big picture? The big picture is overwhelming, and as we all know, the recent administration actively lied to confuse the issue to their own gain. Ok, so thank god we are crawling slowly out of that hole, and how? Because it became clear over the course of Obama's bid for the presidency that people looked around and saw that they weren't alone in wanting change. Not alone. The collective depression of solitude and fear has in part been lifted and we look at each other just as the other shoe drops. The law of cause and effect is still in place, and we're all going down together. At least we know we're together. Maybe most of us still have no idea how the effect happened but what is clear is that some fundamental thing is very wrong.

Again, I think it is the human connection. There is nothing wrong with consumerism per se, but who made the product, what materials were used, where did they come from, what are the hidden costs and are they reasonable, is there integrity to the chain? I firmly believe that cottage industry is uniquely poised to dig its roots into the crumbling walls of bloated big business. Not just for the economies of scale (the hidden cost of long transportation, for example) but arguably of paramount importance, for the economies of energy transfer. Good juju. Everybody loves massage. Everybody should enjoy it. Massage should not be a luxury for the wealthy. Massage is the direct transfer of energy from one body to the other (and back). Farming is a step removed into the transfer of nutrients. What I do is a step further removed, the literal container for the transfer of the nutrients. The transfer of physical energy carries with it a transfer of juju energy. CSA farmers tend to really care about what they're doing. Good juju, good nutrients. Monsanto does not tend to care. So they give us hydrogenated corn oil on which America grown fat, and pesticide runoff, etc. Bad juju! And worse when they force sterile seeds down the throats of Indian farmers! War in Iraq to secure petroleum resources breeds more war, torture, and terrorism that has ethical ripple effects all over the planet. Industry as a phenomenon isn't at fault, it's when the scale of industry grows to a point where we can't see the effects. When the human connection is lost.
If we could see how our consumption of energy can be shifted away from the global into the national, the regional, the neighborhood, we can regain the human connection from which stems accountability. Nobody messes in their own nest, and there will be a natural self-righting system in which material resources or supply will inform demand. Big industry can no longer pillage other countries for their resources. Of course that means that consumers have to adjust their demands. And we will inevitably get clever in our innovation. If I haven't lost you by now, that's great because I feel like this is where I come in.
My life work has been marginalized by big business. Not only is it impossible for me to compete with the mass-production economics of a factory in China, but the consumer culture ( as a phenomenon created by industry to feed it's greed) has valued the cheap, shiny, trendy and replaceable over the high-quality, sustaining, substantial, and yes, more expensive work of artisans. But increasingly over the past few years, there is a growing trend away from walmart's nonsense and towards a much higher quality of life. This trend is coupled with the increasingly relevant fact that we are rapidly running out of resources. We will run out of oil and it will no longer be cost effective to ship iron scrap to china so that they can ship us sheets of steel. The collapse of our market only illustrates this more conclusively- this is the death blow. I'm excited!
I saw this coming, and I have settled myself into situation where I live simply, in my studio in a quiet neighborhood in one of the most progressive cities in the world: Portland, Oregon. I lucked out with a fabulous landlady who let me build a kiln in her garden. My kiln is fairly big for a potter working alone, but I worked with materials available to me, and most importantly, I walked my talk about my energy values: my kiln runs primarily on waste vegetable oil. My fuel, until demand effects supply, is free from my local recycling company. My kiln is innovative and efficient in design. It's emissions are nontoxic and it has a battery of permits from the city. All my neighbors know about me and many of them are enthusiastic about what I'm doing. So I am poised to provide the kind of product that speaks to a new paradigm of ethical consumption. Great! Now what?
Nobody has any money. I'm not advertising because I'm still learning the vicissitudes of this kiln and I've had quite a few mishaps in the first two firings (none of them directly related to the kiln itself). So it's all right that I'm not quite collected because neither is the rest of America at the moment. With no product, I don't have much money either. But I don't need to spend much to keep going at this point, so I will continue to plod along, firm in the faith that my work is valuable. Perhaps my work rings higher on the juju meter than the greenback but I'm banking on the assumption that trust in all its manifestations is rebuilt one brick, one smile, one conversation, one meal, one loan at a time. It is built by one brave soul after another going out on a limb because really, if we don't pull together, we are going to hell really fast. The state of the world is so precarious right now, even a dirty rebel potter like me has a lot to contribute to get it back on track.
How? Ok, I can plod along in my quiet neighborhood, spend the next year tuning a body of work and approaching a seamless firing. I can enter into a barter economy in which my work has the most direct transfer to others. But how can I lead? I can conduct workshops once I have more knowledge, teach at community colleges, direct the cooperative studio of my dreams. I can ally myself with new organizations that may form or grow with the green fractions so essentially preserved in the stimulus package. Perhaps my kiln can be a testing ground for biofuels.
I can write more. To whom? On my blog, to my newspaper, I suppose, to the good people at Speaking of Faith.... but what I have to say to you all specifically is really more than all these extended paragraphs about business. I'm constantly referred to as 'that crazy artist', like I'm a little girl being patted on the head. American culture has a love-hate relationship with artists. We're everything so many people wish they were, and we're also portrayed as leaches, sucking valuable money from the system that should better go towards science and math, business school and sports. Rarely are we taken seriously, and as I have hammered already, the value of our work is largely intangible. I live small and responsibly but after ten years of hard work and higher education, my studio still doesn't pay my rent.
As an incidental note to further explain the integration of my life in this moment, I have suffered under a variety of abuses and extended depression, and have only just recently been able to see and name it. Name it, unearth it and understand the cause and effect relationship it has had in my life. I was trapped in the cycle of abuse for large parts of my twenties and only when I came to Portland did I find the resources and information to help me understand the pattern and change my paradigms. There have been many many factors that have contributed to my healing and one of them is that I spent months moving bricks and listening to podcasts of SOF. I'm still getting rid of the last few twitches- my epiphany did not occur as suddenly and thoroughly as Toelle's, but let me be very clear about something: I know Obama does not wield a magic wand, but I feel immensely empowered by his presence at the helm and the fabulous opportunity that such a collapse of the economy provides to us, to ME. I know I am not alone in my capacity to combine my talents for making, writing, teaching, and leading in a moment of historical re-valuation. For me to do so as an “artist”, legitimized and respected, is exciting. For me to do it as a person, in this specific moment, is a deeply emotional and spiritual experience."