More Retail Blues

I repeat myself. I tell folks who know the neighbourhood so well that our shop is sixteen years old this year. They obviously are embarrassed.
    The walking dead mewl into the store, unknowing what it is they see. The quickly alive respond, the curious delight, the engaged engage.
    When I was an art teacher in a dead end high school, I realized that I shouldn't spend my energy on the wastrels and the stoners who don't bother to move crayons around on a sheet of construction paper. they frustrated me, they poked my ego, I couldn't get through.
    Have I been making the same mistake in my retail endeavour ? Do I focus more on the dull and bored than I do on those who laugh and get it and actually shop ? Maybe I do. My pride again. Getting in the way. Helping me fog over the good and squeak to whoever will listen about those entitled few who traipse about, touching everything and buying nothing.
    Today a few people came in glowing and shopping. It actually happens everyday. And yet too often I see folks in the neighbourhood and I can't help but think, 'they've never been in my shop'.
   

Day 120 - The Angels Come

Yesterday the help I required appeared to me. It came in the form of reminders. One reminder manifested as a gentleman eating take-out chicken in his parked car outside the shop. I was leaning in the doorway when he asked me if the poster hanging in our window was an 'energy board'. I told him what the poster was actually and then asked what an energy board was. He told me he liked to drive around the country side until he got lost, he liked that, he said. He once stumbled upon an energy healing clinic that worked with kids, autistic kids, everybody. They have these energy boards you put your hands on and they align your chakras. I told him about my recent Reiki weekend, gave him a business card and asked him to return next time he was in the area getting chicken.
    The next reminder came in the form of a friendly repeat visitor to the store, a man who has made his living consolidating take-out menus. He asked how business was and I told him the truth. He asked if we do online sales and I sheepishly said, no, not yet. Well, c'mon ! he says, you have to. So I made the decision to give this a fair shot. My partner made it her project, the online shop, but got sidetracked by having a child. I'm done in the shop almost everyday and can easily get to it after a few small steps are taken. As the man left he reminded me about my slow wednesdays, 'mercredi web!' he called out while leaving.
    So two instances related somehow to take out food helped me. They helped me decide what to do. I will form the online shop allowing us to transition away from brick and mortar, supplement our income and deal with our collections. And I will integrate my interest in energy work with the rest of my life.
    Today I received a thoughtful and positive review of my latest book from a prestigious American magazine in my field. This sealed the triumvirate of interests shouting at me to continue and continue strongly. So far it breaks down like this:
    1) Draw, write and publish
    2) Collect and sell
    3) Energy work and health

Time Lies

I'm still amazed at the discrepancy between how long I thick something will take to do and how long it actually takes. My procrastination problem has always had as an adjunct some rationalization that the task postponed needs quite a bit of time to complete. With every passing day I am proving this an outdated attitude.
    There are still plenty of things on my to-do list that I am pushing away but no longer can I entertain the excuse surrounding time. There is enough time in any day to accomplish any number of things.
    My regular attitude has always been to reserve a particular day for a particular task. If I have to go downtown to buy some art supplies, for example, I would pencil that task in the calendar and reserve that day for that task. It takes an hour to go downtown, buy some paper and come back. I did that today, along with some grocery shopping, tile work, puttying cracks in the floor, visiting a potential client, vacuuming the house, doing some dishes, preparing my supper, goofing off plenty, visiting a friend.
    This new approach has emerged with fatherhood. I can't rightly postpone things that need to be down anymore. One can't change the kids diaper later. One does it now. I've been doing things now.
    So, I bought my art supplies. Soon I'll cut some of the bristol up and begging roughing in some panels, panels that will grow into my next full length graphic novel. It's doing to be a good one, I can feel it. I'm not writing it or drawing sketches or planning anything. I will start drawing and see where that takes me. I will trust the process.

Blood Testy

Up early for my blood test. My number was called as I plucked it from the machine. Out in no time.
    On the main for breakfast, two eggs, potatoes, beans and toast. And fruit. And coffee twice over, while reading a fantasy novel, book three of a trilogy that managed thirteen hundred pages without describing architecture or landscape. I'm glad one can write a book without having to get into the gory details that made Helm's Deep such a baffling chore to map out in my head.
    I recognized two parties from the clinic at the diner. The couple of man and woman, woman frail in wheelchair, man doting. And woman alone, middle-aged blonde hair piled in interesting brainwork, wardrobe colourful. This is the go-to place for after clinic chow-down. You fast for a blood test, you consider paying for a third egg or doing the lumberjack special, creton and all. I go hear at least once a year, their eggs are perfect. I always think I could use more toast but I get by. And I'm not ready to spring four bucks for a glass of Tropicana.
    On the way back I was hit up by two panhandlers to the tune of a dollar each. The first was a wiry older woman with blazing eyes. I felt I decked a curse with my dollar. The second was a haggard man come out of nowhere with a paper cup. I soon after, on my walk home, say a man tip head over his handlebars, I cried out 'oh shit!' as he was halfway through his move. The pedestrian in front of me ran to him, a moped driver stopped and helped him. I was free to carry on, only to pass an drifter with a guitar case on his back who made a stabby motion at me with his one free hand.
    All that made me stand on the corner and just slow down. The world was agitated this morning after my breakfast, the world was a tad hostile. These blood sacrifices aren't working any more.

Slow Walking Thanks

To walk streets slowly is a gift. Every step intentional, every sidewalk crack another line in a vast sprawling poem that each new walk reveals another stanza of. The houses, the homes, the buildings themselves creak with character. The hockey stick garden posts, the porch furniture sagging, the paint jobs and the rusting banisters, bicycles teamed up like herds, chained to each other. The chalk drawings on walls and in alleys, on sidewalks are all blessings. The children are safe and they can scribble, they can add to and better the ill thought out sprayings of their elders. They can write games, inviting slow walkers to take note, reminding fast walkers to slow down. Where are you rushing off to ? Yoga ? Coffee ? Don't rush to where you can slow down. Slow down all the way there.
    The trees are waking up. The blossoms cascade over lawns. There are book boxes, sharing spaces, places that reaffirm our humanity. There are so many things to give thanks for every step on the long way roundabout  towards home. Gratitude comes with breathe, with slow and careful steps. Thank you.

Good Night

It's late. I'm tired. I was at a workshop on energetic healing. My homework was to not go mental, do nothing strenuous, go home and absorb what unfolded during the evening. So I will.

Starting Right Now

Do I have the time to show up at the office and churn out a short paragraph about my thoughts and feelings ? Do I have the time to moisturize my face after working outside with sun beating down and pallets of earth moved across alleyways? Do I have the time to worry about Antarctica and the ice sheets and the people and Hydro Quebec and radical skepticism and ill informed rationalism and people who think way too much ? Do I have the time to consider and reconsider and reconsider still my contribution to what seems like a confused and collapsing civilization? Do I have the time to make a comic book and dream of a career in the arts instead of selling everything I have and moving to a small cabin in the countryside?

    Ask me what I would do if I had five years to live and I wouldn't answer 'what I'm doing now' so why am I doing what I'm doing now instead of what I'd do if I had only five years to live ?
    Tell me about it. Tell me about my choices and my decisions and my set backs and cop outs and excuses and fears and paralysis and devil you know. Devil you know will strangle every last breath out of you, five years or no. And by you I mean me.

    Here we are accumulating garbage for the big parade. Accumulating garbage to tuck into the loose corners of our coffins. And coffins ! What an extravagance. We'd be so lucky to get a nice lacquered wooden box to rot in. Some folks never get the option. They sink into the field where they are struck down, maybe thrown into the ravine with the others.

    Sure, go back to school to get a masters degree, join the post docs in line for food and clean water. Wait for the corporate overlords to have their ghost of Christmas past moment, wait for Dick Cheney to shudder at his reflection and take it all back, take it all back, restore the droned children to life, restore the forest to it's majesty, restore the women to their humanity.

    Let's work a tad harder, let's do a little spring cleaning all year round, let's whip it out and get it on, let's high five until the sun rises, let's sort the recycling, reuse the reusables, take out the trash, forgive our shitty neighbours, rejoice with our cousins and see where that takes us.

    This is a moment of missives, this is the time for all times, we've made so many children, let's scrub the sidewalks for them so we don't have to pick glass shards out of their kneecaps. Let's turn off the power so they can breathe. Let's stop with the filth so they can eat some decent food and make their teenage parties something not tinged with ragged desperation born of hopelessness.

    We'll turn around in circles until we straighten out this mess. We'll pull the plug and wear extra sweaters in the winter. We'll collect family members to live with us. We'll turn this boat around, I swear, and plant gardens in every cop car.

    Starting now, starting right exactly now.

Tiny Lessons In Magic

To make an easy sigil, write out the phrase you would like to focus upon. Strike out any letters that repeat, leaving one of each. You'll find that most letters fit easily into the shape of an H with it's top and bottom closed off, as if superimposed with an F and an L. This blocky figure eight can incorporate A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,L,O,P,S,U if you sacrifice curves. Add a few diagonals and you can accommodate K,M,N,R,V,W,Y,Z. T and Q can make an appearance with another straight line well placed.
    This, of course, is for an efficient no nonsense design, the zen of sigils. You are most welcome to stick letter to letter forming a more ornate sign. It all depends what you are after. After completing the design that pleases you or your client the most, discard the original phrase by removing any written trace of it and try to promptly put it from your mind. Now take this abstract design and sit with it, place it on your desk, put it somewhere you can see it. Meditate on it and and and.
    And what ? Well, magic can occur. The so-called essence of the original, now forgotten phrase should be firmly implanted in your less than conscious mind where it can get to work transforming your sorry life. Or not. That's the gamble. This stuff isn't science.
   
    Sit in a dim room and face a blank light coloured wall. Dress comfortably in loose fitting clothes and take a few deep breaths. Raise your hands a foot or so away from your face and look at them. Turn them about, examining your fingers well splayed, gently bent, slowly moving about. Note how the shadows fall about your hands in the semi-darkness. Bring the fingers of each hand in close proximity without letting them touch. Softly move your fingertips to and fro away from each other. Don't try to see anything in particular, simply keep breathing and looking at your hands. Look at the space between your fingers also.
    Eventually, if you are lucky or good at this game, you will see light around your finger tips that cannot be accounted for in that dim room. You'll also see strands of light from finger to finger, pooling as you near them and stretching apart as you distance them. You may also see cascades of shadows cross your palms that do not reflect what actual light may be illuminating the room. If you are particularly graced that fine evening you may be startled to see flames leap from the centres of your palms. Do not panic. Remain calm. Keep breathing. The flames may dance there for a while. Avert your eyes and you may risk letting these visions escape you. Just like a dream upon awakening they will recede into another world and you may chase these flighty apparitions for years to come, maybe reliving them maybe never being able to see them again.
    And what were they ? They were things you saw.
    Were they really there ? Well, where else were they ? Of course they were there. You saw them.
    Does this mean they represent something real ? Walk around the block and think about what 'real' means. When you get home and you are certain what is real and what is not, then you've answered your question.
    If that walk around the block was the only time you've asked yourself that question and the answer satisfied you, you really need to take more walks. Walk every so often, maybe once every year or so and take stock whether your answers are the same. If your answers are always the same, you're most probably wrong.

Plasticine

I was around five years of age when our mother, exhausted from having to tuck us in and soothe us at bedtime, rebelled. We would get into bed and yell for her to come in and dutifully soothe us to sleepiness by placing a hand on our backs to gently rock us. Well, one night she would have none of it. Who can blame her ? Two boys a year apart racing around the house and yard all day, making ludicrous demands, torturing each other, screaming and crying, climbing over mom. And when bedtime came around we would demand more, me first, you rocked him longer, rock me again. That night she just got up from the side of one of our beds and announced clearly, do it yourselves! and left the room.
    We did do it ourselves. That very night my brother and I devised a way to rock ourselves to sleep, a habit that lasted embarrassingly late into life. John had his technique and I had mine. I would sleep on my side, pillow case flap sandwiched by my hands in a slight prayer position against my cheek and I'd rock my shoulders back and forth. This rocking replaced the previous pre-sleep habit of lying on my stomach and with legs bent at the knee, kick repeatedly into the mattress. Anyway, we rocked.
    Very rarely a strange sensation overtook me. It was as if the palms of my hands, separated in reality by only a thin layer of fabric, started growing apart from each other. Very apart. It felt like the whole world was between my palms, as if they simply kept moving away from each other, with no end in sight. This rare sensation was accompanied by a distinct flavour or feeling in my mouth. I can't possibly describe it better than that. I grew up and these sensation were buried in my memory.
    As a teenager I dabbled in meditation an a similar sensation bounded back into my life. In a sitting position I would feel my body grow tall and my head would bob feet above where I knew it to be. Sometimes I felt my body rolled up, my head now sitting between my knees. On other occasions my hands felt like they were swelling up indefinitely. Imagine your hands the size of giant well rounded balloons, whose core is a thin nervy hand like structure. I experienced balloon hands a few times.
    Years later, I must have been in my mid thirties, I started casting circles as an exercise in performing private ritual. I'd trace the circle, moving clockwise and then call attention to each of the four directions by way of thanking the elements they represented. Air you're amazing, thanks for letting me breathe you, Water right on, oceans are great and you quench my thirst, Fire hot stuff, you keep me warm and you're also wicked cool, Earth where would I be without you ? Actually not like that at all. Way more purple poetics and medieval grandeur. All my fantasy reading paying off big time. Also, totally earnest. Ritual without earnestness is hollow and ineffective. I waxed poetic at each point of the compass, enthused and energized.
    This led me to experiment with prayer. I would sit myself down within the etheric bounds of the circle and roll out a fervent prayer to deities small and large, the majesty of nature from atom to galaxy cluster, thanking animals for their various attributes, thanking life itself for the privilege of being alive surrounded by great family and friends and on and on. As I did this I felt that familiar expansion set in. I was no longer the size I was when I commenced but inflating rapidly. It was all I could do to keep myself from getting so giddy that I'd snap out of it.
And then for the first time since childhood my mouth felt that familiar odd feeling. A word came to me, out from long unused parts of memory - plasticine.
    Of course I had this modelling compound as a kid. What I had clear forgotten was that I, to myself, called this expanding hand and funny mouth feeling 'plasticine' when I was small. This came back to me, head light, body expansive, mouth alive and childhood memory restored. Pliable energy body, from rocking myself to bed at night to deep vocalized prayer. We are the clay.