An Attack of Pronoia

A car that is even older than mine.

Just because you're pronoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to help you.

Sometimes the randomness of the universe works in my favor, and if I decide to pounce on the opportunity, I can make more things happen in my favor. Take today, for instance. My dentist's assistant called me yesterday to tell me that they needed to reschedule this morning's appointment, which left me with a good deal of "found time". My car was due for an emissions inspection, and my driver's license was set to expire next month, so I decided to use the morning to take care of those two things. And maybe some of the afternoon -- you hear all these horror stories about people waiting in line for hours.

Today is Thursday, a nondescript kind of middle-of-the-week-ish day in the next-to-the-last week of the month. All the government offices closed down on Tuesday because of a snowstorm, but that was two days ago, so maybe any backlog would be at least partly cleared. It was bitterly cold out today, so maybe less hardy souls would not be venturing out. Besides, it wasn't going to get any warmer before the deadline for my car inspection, so today was as good as any.

My friend Lauren had told me to go in the middle of the morning to avoid all the people taking care of their inspections before they headed off to work and all the people taking care of this on their lunch breaks. I headed out from home about 9:45. My side street was covered with a thin layer of hard-packed snow, left behind by the snow plow. Once I got to the main street, though, it was clear sailing. I made it to the emissions inspection station just after 10:00. There were no lines, but each of the inspection bays had a car in it -- except one. In I went. My car passed the test, I paid my fee, and off I went. It was now about 10:15. Unheard of! I've never gotten in and out that fast.

I drove a few yards down the street and turned into the next driveway -- the Motor Vehicles office. The parking lot was filled with parked cars and cars cruising around looking for a parking spot. I chose a row with no cruising or waiting cars, and headed toward the far end. An open space beckoned to me. Handicapped only? No. Reserved for staff? No. In fact, no signs or special markings at all, just an ordinary empty parking space. In the front row. Just a few yards from the door.

I went inside, got a ticket with a number on it, and found an empty seat in the waiting area. Near the front. With a good view of the "now serving" screen. I pulled a magazine out of my bag and began to read. A woman's voice announced over the PA system that the credit card system was down -- all payments must be by cash or check. I peeked into my wallet -- yes! I had visited the ATM not too long ago, and I had enough cash to pay my fee. A little after 11:00, my number was called, and I went to the service desk. Passed my vision check, verified my information, had my photo taken. The first printout of my new license had a scratch on it from the printer, so the woman behind the desk had to print a new one.

While she was doing that, another announcement came over the PA system: all staff members using the driver's license system had to log off immediately. Oh no! But just after the announcement, my new license popped out of the printer and it was un-scratched. The woman behind the desk was none too pleased about having to log off and wait for an indefinite time, since it meant that everyone after me was going to be frustrated and impatient. "It's my lunch break anyway. I think I'm going to take off," she said.

New license in hand, I got back into my car and headed home, arriving less than two hours after I had left, with my new emissions certificate AND my new driver's license. The only downside is that my license photo shows a much less perky, unlined face than I had 10 years ago (the last time I was required to have a new photo). But it's the face I have now, and I'm good with that.

Life as a Needlepoint Project

Last night, I was chatting with a friend on Twitter, and we started talking about how to know what you really want out of life. It's an ongoing process for me. Every so often, I have to spend some serious time taking stock of where I am, getting my bearings, and figuring out what's next. I'm now in the process of transcribing my journal notes into a digital document, with the intention of combining them with my blog postings and making the whole thing into a book. I'm working on my mid-December notes right now, and I came across an extended metaphor that I thought was worth posting here. This explains my process much better than a series of tweets ever could. Or at least it explains me to myself. I hope it's helpful to someone else, but really, it's enough just to remind myself of where I've been and how I tend to navigate long ambiguous processes.

Life as Needlepoint
If I work on kits, they turn out looking really nice. Someone with a real talent for perspective, shading, and composition has produced a canvas painted in great detail, picked out just enough yarn in all the right colors. All I have to do is fill it in. I get a little impatient toward the end, filling in background and putting in the finishing details, but I stick with it until it's done. But it's still a kit.

When I design my own stuff, I get an idea in my head. Then I go online and look for someone else's images that I can combine and adapt in my own way. Drawing is not one of my more developed skills, but I can do collages. If I work from photographs, I have to simplify them down to work with the stitch-pixels of a needlepoint tapestry. I try to work with the yarn I already have, but I always wind up buying more because I need some other colors, or I run out of background yarn.

It always takes more yarn for the background than I think it will. If I have to buy more yarn mid-project, the color never quite matches. I have to be very clever to work that in in a way that doesn't just announce "I ran out of yarn." Complex backgrounds help with that, but you don't want to clutter up the design. Better to get enough yarn in the first place. Learn from experience how much you need.

PhotoShop lets me play around with the designs and colors -- much better than crayons on paper. I only have a black and white printer, though. And I just sketch my design onto the canvas in black sharpie. I suppose I should paint the colors onto the canvas in acrylic, but I'm too impatient. I just sketch the broad outlines and keep a picture handy to refer to for the details. That lets me experiment and change things on the fly, but it also means my designs are much less refined than the kits. Experience is making me a little better about putting in shading and details. I don't know if I will ever have the artistry of the kit designs. I don't know if I want that.

I look at some of my past projects, and the best ones are the simple designs. Not too jam-packed with detail. The Alphonse Mucha design was fun, but it's cluttered. The moon behind the clouds and its partner sun in a red sky over water are very appealing. Maybe my style is Art Deco or Craftsman?

I have a pencil sketch ready for a 25" x 25" canvas. A female crescent moon embracing a male sun. Two shooting stars in the corners and a starry-night background. The night sky will have to be aubergine instead of navy if I want it to go in my bedroom. Do I dare try to do realistic faces? Will it ruin the design if I try to make the colors harmonize with my green-and-brown decorating scheme? If I'm going to invest the effort, I want to know.

It seems as if all the pieces fit in better when I'm working on a kit. Everything works, it's smooth. But it's a kit. Finding kits that I haven't already done and that I want to work on is getting harder and harder. Not that many people do needlepoint. I don't want to do pictures of cute kittens or country scenes or religious platitudes.

If I want to have a design that really means something to me, I'm going to have to make it myself. I can use bits and pieces of what's already out there. I can use my experience to plan and anticipate. I can be diligent about my preparations. I can know what I'm strongest at and learn from my failed experiments. I can push the envelope a little.

The results might not be as detailed as my grand imagination. I might have to compromise to get the pieces to fit, or to have a design that integrates with my decor. I have to balance living with my constraints against having something grand enough to make me happy.

I have to try new things, supported by the old standbys. I have to have the diligence to rip out the parts that don't work, redo them, and keep moving ahead. Some of my projects wind up in a box. They didn't work, for one reason or another. Some are just abandoned sketches, some are small completed squares. One is a large canvas, eventually completed just to say that I completed it, but it no longer goes with anything. I should give that to a craft sale or something. Let it be useful for someone else. Some of my designs are good, but they don't go with my stuff. I should let those go. Maybe take photographs to remember them by.

I want to know as much as possible before I invest the money and effort in a large project, but I can't know everything in advance. I take my best guess on what is worth moving forward on, and I plunge in. I take stock at various points -- move ahead or drop it? Change the plan? Once I'm in it, sometimes it's worth it just to finish up for the sake of finishing up.

That kit I did of the butterfly on the parchment scroll was beautiful and complex. Lots of work, but worth finishing. Even all the detail-work. And then it sat in a box for years because I didn't know what to do with it. Finally, I said what the heck, bought a simple frame, blocked and mounted it myself, and hung it in my bedroom. And it's perfect. (OK, maybe mounted a little crooked, but that's wabi-sabi.)

My best efforts involve learning and borrowing from what others have already done or what others are better at than I am, and then customizing and re-assembling the pieces to suit the image that I have in my mind. I can play around with ideas and attempt small trial efforts that are intended only to help me think things through. Eventually, though, I have to just plunge in and begin. I have to simplify the grand mental images to fit my talents and limitations without losing the delight in making something really wonderful. The simple designs usually look the best, anyhow, and "simple" is not the same as "amateurish".

I have to make a design that fits in with the parts of my life that are already in place (the parts that I want to keep, anyhow). Inevitably, some aspects of my project don't look like I wanted them to. If it's bad enough, I have to rip that part out and do it over again. If it's good enough, I keep it and enjoy the serendipity. As much as I would like to complete my project using only the resources that I already have, it never really works out that way. I have to go out and get what I need to move ahead.

Sometimes it's worth it to persevere and just finish for the sake of finishing. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes, by the time I finish something, circumstances have changed and the finished piece no longer has a place. Sometimes, a finished project is just what I need at the time, but circumstances change and it no longer fits in. Every now and then, a finished piece that I didn't have a place for at the time re-emerges from the storage closet after many years, and it's exactly what I need right here, right now. I don't really know in advance how things will turn out. All I can do is make the best preparations I can, and then begin.

Serendipity and Intention

Last night, my Deepening Circle celebrated our tenth anniversary with cake and sparkling wine. Twice a month, since October 23, 2002, we have gathered in a living room or a restaurant to discuss prearranged topics, enjoy free-form discussions, and share our music, histories, and dreams with each other. Members have come and gone, but the group goes on.

We were all a little hazy on our starting date. The original agreement was to meet for six months, then disband or continue as we saw fit. Our beginning had none of the trappings of a ten-year journey, just an experiment that we had agreed to carry out for a few months. The historical record surfaced when Callie, one of the two women responsible for launching the group, found an old e-mail printout as she was decluttering her house. The e-mail had a list of the original members of our group, our contact information, and the time and date of our first scheduled meeting. Callie found this just a couple of days before last night's scheduled meeting, just in time to get the cake and wine (one of her dad's favorite brands, which happened to be on sale) so that she could surprise us with her discovery.

October 23, 2002 was a Wednesday, and we've been meeting on Tuesdays. I don't remember if we changed our meeting day after that first meeting, but it doesn't matter. Callie's serendipitous finding of that e-mail added a touch of magic that honored our ten years of intentional community.

I like to think that we discover things that have been there all along by focusing our attention toward finding them. Like tuning in to a particular radio station -- the radio waves are there all the time, but you have to tune your receiver to a specific frequency in order to hear the music. That presupposes, however, that you have the right kind of receiver already and that you either know what kind of music that station plays, or you scan all the frequencies available to you until you find what you want.

But what about things that come to you unbidden -- things that you didn't even know how to ask for (consciously, anyway)? What is it that goes on outside of our consciousness that brings just what we need when we need it, even if we didn't know we needed it? Things have come to me that I didn't know how to ask for, or that I have asked for but that came in a form that I couldn't have imagined. Job offers, a cherished pet cat, lovers, a 35-mm camera, my current home, an artist whose work moves me in ways that I still don't understand.

So we do this curious dance, acting intentionally and purposefully, while keeping a space open for the unexpected. Too much open space, and you lose all focus. You drift aimlessly through the fog. Too little space, and your possibilities become limited to what you already know, what your mind is willing to admit. The world sees you as being self-sufficient, so it offers you no help. Other people need to see some open space so that they can gain access to your life.

But even there, we have to maintain a balance. You don't just leave your front door open to let strangers wander through your home and take what they please. You don't invite the neighbors in to watch your most intimate moments with someone you love. (Or maybe you do! I don't.) There has to be a safe space where you can guard the tenderest and most precious things. A place where you can retreat to safety when the world gets to be too much. But if you spend too much time in your sanctuary, the world goes on without you. People forget that you exist, and it's hard to come back out and find a friend when you need one.

Serendipity and intentions. Engagement and retreat. It's all a big balancing act, a big ebb and flow. An acknowledgement that we have the power to love things into existence, and a willingness to receive what we did not create.

The image at the top of this blog posting is something that I've been using as an icon for a some of my social media accounts for the last few years. I found it on the Internet, unexpectedly, while I was looking for something else. It really captures the concept of the balancing act for me. If you know the original source of this image, please leave a comment below.