Carol Larson - textile artist

I have begun my rain dance, today. Rain here produces snow there. For the past several years, my husband has been in charge of the December ski week at the lodge, for his ski club. I have always groused about him being gone for my birthday, but this year he returns the dawn of my 59th year, and will be here to take me to dinner. Except that…

There is no snow. Well, there is snow, but there is so little snow that even the rock skiers are staying home. Last year he had 23 for ski week, and this year the grand total was 4 and now 3 have cancelled. At first he said he would go anyway, but now he is saying, he may bail also.

I NEED him to go skiing. I look forward every December to 4 days of peace and quiet, doing my own thing, eating dinner late or not at all, buying pre-cooked food, going to the movies, sleeping in, whatever. The incredibly odd thing about this is I could do any of this when he is home, but I don’t often. He doesn’t care if I sleep in, he doesn;t care if I don’t cook, he doesn’t care if we eat dinner at 9 pm, he doesn’t care if I go to the movies alone. He just doesn’t care. He is a man of few needs.

I, on the other hand am a woman of many more needs. I need him to leave the house at least 3-4 times a year for more than two hours! We are both retired and do pretty well at not smothering each other. But everyone needs their space, or at least I do.

Of course, as soon as I say this I hear from people who tell me how blessed I am to have this stable man at home. I already know that! We celebrated 35 years of marriage this spring. I am aware that I got a good thing going. I am also aware that to continue a good thing, I need more snow at Tahoe. We all do! You can bet he is pretty tired of me, by now,also.

Since I have been able to only knit and not make art, this afternoon I decided to look into some upcoming art competitions. On the recommendation of a mentor, I subscribed recently to an arts publication.

There are all kinds of interesting exhibitions listed within the publication. Nearly every one has a website and yet very few have the exhibition info on the website. How difficult is it to attach a .pdf entry form or prospectus? Apparently, quite so! If I can figure this out, I would think the average web designer should be able.

Many require a letter and SASE requesting the prospectus by snail mail. So I spent most of the afternoon writing letters, writing my name and address on return envelopes, affixing stamps and sending out letters. Sheesh, this is like looking for a job!

It is incredibly easy to just shine it on and not do it, but if I want to be taken seriously as an artist, I must make the effort. I am pretty darn sick of the you have so much creativity and you make such beautiful quilts comments. How can I be taken seriously as an artist, if I don’t make the effort? So today, I re-started the effort.

And I also did something I should have done MONTHS ago. I went back to my former volunteer gig with hospice. I no more than walked in the door than a nurse had a project for me. In the three years I previously volunteered, I quickly earned a reputation as a competent worker bee and used to have work up the whazoo. There is no better food for my soul than giving to others. My art-related volunteerism does not feed me the way human interaction does.

Hospice gets a lot of well-meaning women who volunteer to work in the office, but have neither (a) had a job in an office nor (b) answered a multi-line phone. So they get people who want to give back, but won’t pick up the phone!

As a former medical office “professional” my comfort zone was phones ringing off the hook. My challenge is to get my left brain cells functioning again, so I can remember who is on 42 and on 47 and not confuse them.

This is just what I need to get out of my head and back into my body. Perhaps this soul food will get me making art again. I have had fabric on the design wall, for weeks, with a partial idea in my head. I just need this push.

Today I walked out of my grief, in my red tennies! The only thing I will miss is the “grief diet!” I have had no appetite for over a week…a great start to the holidays, indeed.

Yesterday, I succumbed to my feelings of despair over the lost friendship. Last night I began to re-assess as I prepared to go back to therapy. And what came up for me was how incredibly unhappy and tortured I was throughout this very short friendship.

I learned today that those in the trade call narcissists “tar babies.” I love it. Everyone who comes in contact with them gets stuck in their stuff. The insinuation that I was off my rocker was his projection, of his own issues.

I have re-discovered that I am just fine, thank you very much. Had I not been fine, I would still be mired in tar. This feeling that I was unworthy, unacceptable, imperfect, in need of change and improvement…all of it was his way of controlling me.

And I just would not settle for it. I fought him every step of the way. And as I challenged him, the more intense the mind games got. When I wouldn’t play his way, he tried to throw me out of the game. In the end, I grabbed my ball and went home, with him tearing me down, even as I left the game.

I still feel sad that I had to fire a friend. I have never done that before. But I feel more joy and freedom than I do regret. I am so proud of myself that I recognized this was toxic for me and got myself out of it.

What a wild year this has been, working through the Tall Girl stuff, writing the story, the art, letting go of the 40 years of pain I was carrying in my muscles and bones, and falling under the spell of a narcissist, just as I was learning to let go of the hold of my own narcissist parent.

Make room, as I am g-r-o-w-i-n-g here! Perhaps, now I can get back to what is really important…my art!

I just deleted my last post, because it made me feel so sad when I read it. And I am struggling mightily already.

Many have told me to dust myself off and start all over again, and I do hope to do that soon. I have been arranging and re-arranging some fabric on the design wall. My idea now is much different from the original when I put the fabric up three weeks ago and then set out to make 90 fabric art postcards (from the year’s fusing scraps) for holiday greetings.

I have finished the cards, which were such good therapy, and mindless work while I struggled with ending an addictive relationship. And they saved me from having to make nice on our greetings this year!

But all the same I am grieving. I hurt someone who did not deserve to be hurt, or actually two people…both of us. I felt so trapped in old patterns and emotions and helpless to find my way out. It is upsetting to me to be nearly 59 and still have this old shit re-surface. I truly thought I had my ducks in a row ,by now.

It does not do my heart good to know I intentionally hurt someone. I try to live a somewhat Buddhist philosophy: not taking more space than I need, not using up more than I need, being impeccable with my word, being kind, humble, etc.

I have much healing to do.I am also incredibly aware that there are people much worse off than I in the world. That feels like my father speaking. Right now, all I can do is work towards healing myself. The last thing the world needs is another messed up person.

This weekend I discovered yet another use for friends with creative minds…the elusive naming of the work! As I have posted before, I often find the naming of the work more challenging than the designing. For I like names that are a bit elusive or a play on words. I really don’t want to use “ON A SUNNY DAY IN MAY, I SAW THIS ROCK” when I could actually say “ROCK ON!”

So as I was ready to make quilt labels and bag labels, I was stuck on this one piece. I was thinking composition, excavation, subterranean. My husband suggested castings (as in worms), or golden castings . So I e-mailed friends with creative minds and they came back with onion fields, onion farm, farming at 5000 feet, cellulose city and byzantine wall.

Then I knew we were on to something. I really liked farming at 5000 feet but thought the wording a bit cumbersome. This piece definitely looks like an aerial of agricultural land. In the end, I chose FARMLANDS, which I think is much better than something about worms and decomposition.

It is comforting to know there are others I can turn to when the titles are too elusive.

Yesterday I brought home a new PC that I had custom-built. My former PC, a DELL was only 2.5 years old and had been limping along for over a year. I had hoped to stretch it until January when my ship comes in, but alas I had to swim to shore, sooner.

I thought my old PC was actually 3.5 years old. I bought it when my daughter was living at home temporarily, and in grad school. However, I miscalculated exactly when that was! I was stunned that it lasted only 2.5 years. I know they are built for planned obsolescence, but really is that not just absurd?

Then I went through the whole who should I buy from routine, figuring out what I needed and how much to be able to design my website, as well as other multi-tasking functions. I shopped around, and strangely kept going back to the DELL site. I was of the false impression that I was still a DELL stockholder. After I found the original date of purchase paperwork I told DH sell the DELL and he said…we already have! So much for paying attention…

Yesterday, I maxed out my stress hormones, hooking it up, putting all the cords in the right slots, without DELL’s (for dummies) color coding. I duked it out with the broadband company as they continued to tell me to go back to the PC builder to correct my internet connection (huh?).

The ISP guy gave me 12 different things to try and nothing worked. Finally, I re-tried the first thing and hit refresh and voila! internet connection. With that came the first exhale. It was now safe to leave the house and go to the gym and try to work out some of this stress.

I spent the rest of the evening installing software and importing data. Another exhale. I shut it all down about 9:30 and went to bed to read a book, but just zoned out. When I booted this morning, it took less than 3 minutes to come to life. I couldn’t believe it. The old DELL took about 20 minutes. I often turned it on and then went out to the kitchen and had breakfast and came back to it.

I am ready to exhale fully, as I zip around the internet and files. I still cannot believe that this new system is here to make life so much easier…at least for now. And it was SO easy!

Today, we go to the city to see CHICAGO: The Musical with Huey Lewis. That ought to take care of my stress hormones!