Hello from Sunday. I am calling this week’s blog entry Fear because I have a couple of pieces in a show downtown at AVA that is called Courage. It’s called Courage because that is the theme of this year’s Rain Magazine, which is the literary / art magazine at the college where I work. I used to think it was only for students but then I realized that actually, staff and faculty and community members also contribute, so this year I pulled up all my courage and submitted two pieces. Whooo. They are below.

So the one on the left is called The Swing and it’s part of a roll of double exposed Lomo Turquoise that ran through first the Praktica and then the Chaika, my two manual Soviet era cameras. I am over the moon about this roll of film. The swing is something somebody built over near the beach at Ilwaco and you would have to be completely insane to even sit on it since it’s made of driftwood, beach flotsam and air – I love looking at it but yeah, art not playground equipment dear god – and the other one is a cyanotype (toned in coffee and black tea) of a smaller Four in a puffy jacket heading intrepidly into the low tide river. I am quite proud of these two pieces. I am mostly proud of most of the stuff I make – even this faboo print that Four and I made last weekend after Harvey and I found a lovely little fish dead on the sand, as pictured.

Anyway! Artwalk! It happens once a month on the second Saturday and for seven years now I have been trying so hard to sort of break in to the arts here and to make artsy friends. When I first arrived I tried to join Lightbox, the photo gallery downtown, but their darkroom access was so limited and so expensive, I couldn’t do it. At that point the owner lost all interest in me forever. Then I joined AVA, and I have mostly been a member since 2018, managing to submit one or two pieces a year to the members show and being mostly completely ignored by everyone associated. I have tried to volunteer a couple times and been soundly rebuffed. The AVA people I have told this to look shocked and they murmur something about how that can’t be right and they will absolutely find a spot for me and then. . crickets. I hear nothing. By the third time this happened I got the message and stopped trying. Astoria is tough as fucking nails and that legendary Seattle Freeze extends to the Oregon coast.

There is a piece in the Courage show that is made of mirrors. There are markers hanging by the mirrors and you are supposed to write your fear on the mirrors with them. This, if you dabble in witchcraft or horror novels at all, is clearly a supremely bad idea. I mean, might as well call it How to Summon. So because I am small and petty at heart, I drew a small cartoon rat and wrote RATS above it in shaky lettering. I am, in fact, terrified of rats and mice and, I guess, rodents in general although I reserve judgment about capybaras until I encounter one. They seem nice. There are other things I am afraid of, though, which I am less willing to write on a mirror. And one of them is being trapped and alone and unseen and unheard. Which, funnily enough, is how I always feel at Artwalk.

Granted, I looked at my own Fear selfie and I thought, oh my god, I would not approach me either, not in that hat.That hat is supposed to flop over but, like all my hats, even the store bought ones, they stand straight up, turning me into an even more bizarre figure than I already am. Still, can’t they see that I am wearing my Crappie Commie Camera Party t-shirt that says Resist Late Stage Capitalism on it? Doesn’t that along with the lens diagram make you want to be friends with the weird lady? Huh. Go figure. One does try.

So I was there, and I talked briefly to the two or three people I do sort of know and went on, as one does, to the other galleries in town who were participating. Nobody spoke to me at any of the other galleries. I wafted in – I’m too solid to waft, really, but you get the idea – and wafted out. If it was on offer, a plastic cup of cheap cabernet wafted with me.

There are several really good photographers in town right now who are doing the kind of work I wish I was doing. Actually, it’s the kind of work I am doing, but (this is going to sound whiny and horrible and I am sorry, but my bootstraps fucking broke) I don’t have the money or the time that I suspect they do.

In other words, my utter failure as an artist and at life isn’t all my fault. I get depressed easily at ArtWalk and I think it is entirely my fault and I should just go crawl into a cave and never come out. I feel like that a lot. But – and this is important – it really isn’t. I don’t have a good printer. I don’t have darkroom access. I don’t have much extra money. I do have a demanding full time job. I am taking care of my 77 year old brother with dementia. On weekends I take care of my four year old granddaughter for at least one night and often more. I have a dog reactive dog who needs to be walked, but only in places where there aren’t other dogs, which narrows the field. I have a crippling Minecraft addiction and a Libby app that allows me to drift off into fictional worlds that are vastly better than this one.

The important part – it comes back to politics, hon. It always and forever comes back to politics. – is that in this country we are conditioned and trained to blame ourselves for everything that is wrong with our lives. Not the state, not the world, not the economy, it’s all on our own heads. But it isn’t, you know. There are so many other things at play, here. Some of it is my own fault – I don’t work enough, I had children, I didn’t marry the right man, I drink too much wine and I am bone lazy. Some of it is not – I’m either the last baby boomer or the first Gen Xer, depending on what you read – and for my age cohort, options have narrowed fast and scarily. I don’t have a huge retirement account. That’s not entirely my fault. I’ve had to jump jobs to advance. I moved to Asheville for 20 years, which was a career disaster. Social security keeps getting pulled further away and Republican tax cuts for the rich somehow equal tax increases for me, even though we don’t get anything for our taxes but war.

So I’m trying to remember that. I’m trying not to be sad about going to artwalk and feeling smaller and sadder with every step. I’m trying to find some artsy friends who want to go to artwalk with me. and in the meantime, have Harvey in the daffodils to cheer you up.