Long Time Gone, Good Time to be Back

Why have I been gone, why am I back? It's a story of STUFF, moving, and artistic paralysis and rebirth. Mainly, it's about restoring order from chaos, and getting back in the groove. I have new comissions to fulfill, and finally, ten months after my most recent move, I have a workspace almost ready for their fulfillment.

This is my story of STUFF. I've been engaged, with varying degrees of intensity, in the process of dealing with STUFF since I moved from San Francisco to here in Ventura in 2004. I moved here literally with the shirt on my back and nothing else. My first order of business the next day was to buy a few low-cost changes of t-shirts and undies at Target. Through the kindness of friends, my cat and car arrived before the week was out. I should have known when I was well off. Within a month, virtually everything contained in a three-bed, two-bath house complete with huge and full basement and garage arrived in a giant Bekins truck and took up temporary residence in a storage locker. I had packed some myself, the rest was done by my ex, and although he did an excellent job, I didn't know, for example, if the box marked "XMAS" meant wrapping paper, ornament, holiday dishes, lights or that giant wicker reindeer. And so on, through "Kitchen", "Books" and "Clothes." Not his fault, but the sheer volume of STUFF prevented a careful catalog or editing.

A few months later, I moved the whole mess into a medium-size condo, and once I had placed the furniture, and opened the boxes obviously containing the necessities of life, I stacked the mystery boxes to the sides of the garage and explored them only to the extent that internal storage and deep depression permitted. Once I had enough clearance for my VW Beetle, a certain paralysis took hold. My former manic enthusiasms were painfully demonstrated by the sheer number of boxes labeled "Fragile: Cakestands" or "Eggbeaters" or whatever other collection frenzy I had embarked upon during my years in San Francisco. Just reading the notations brought on blue fugue states Instead, I indulged in a new buying spree for art supplies, and since I make, among other things, assemblage from "found objects" (translation: anything and everything, dirty, tattered and rusty preferred) I had free reign to collect STUFF that defied easy categorization. I kept up with most of it in the craft room/studio, with shelves, a closet and a huge wardrobe crammed with boxes labeled "Doll Heads, Medium" and "Game Pieces" and, in desperation, "All Kinds of Metal Shit." Still, eventually, inevitably, it got away from me over the next two years, despite occasional efforts to organize. Piles of STUFF nearly prevented any movement at all in the room. Still, my creativity thrived, and I established my website (PLUG: http://www.fragileindustries.com/) this blog, and produced objects that pleased me and my clients.

When I knew I was moving into two rooms and a bath in my mother's immaculate house which she had organized with a Virgo's OCD intensity, I made a herculean push and succeeded fairly well in sorting all non-art/craft possessions into "Keep & Move In" "Sell" "Donate," a carefully disciplined "Store" category and an amazing tottering pile of "Toss". I packed up new boxes, neatly labeled, or simply opened and closed the existing ones and moved them into the appropriate class. I placed ads in the paper, called any charity that made pick ups, and bagged the "Toss" and made midnight runs to the dumpster behind Ralph's. It was grueling and took the entire month Then came the day before the move and I realized I had 24 hours to tackle the art/craft STUFF. I swallowed my secret emergency stash of three hits of speed (overlooked in my sobriety housecleaning, found during the bathroom clearance and hoarded for just this contingency). Starting at the door of the craft room, I filled a box with what came to hand, scribbled "ARTS" on the side, slapped on tape, toted it downstairs and repeated the process. By that time the next day, with no sleep, two pizza deliveries, and a run to Target for a car full of more big-ass plastic tubs, I had reached the back wall and the movers were ringing the doorbell. The "ARTS" stack dwarfed all others. Mom had promised me the use of her small but immaculate office for a studio, so now I had three empty rooms and half a garage to fill at my destination. Practicing the familial talent for denial that has served me so well, I said, "I'll think about that tomorrow," and spent six months sorting, shelving and dealing with everything BUT the "ARTS," which ended up filling, floor to ceiling, the half of Mom's immaculate garage not taken up with her big ass Mafia car.

It has now been eight months since I've done my arts except for educational excursions with supplied materials. I have made half-hearted stabs at unpacking, with the unhappy result that the living room AND the garage AND the craft room were filled with boxes, opened and abandoned in despair. There was no easy starting point. There was no starting point at all.
After my trip to Minnesota for my book art tutorials, I was newly energized. In late May, I began. The pace was glacial, and some days I only had ten minutes before my back was screaming, or panic, hyperventilation and nausea set in. Some days were better, and slowly, generic "CRAFTS" became piles of categories, reorganization of which were required sometimes as new sub-categories emerged, or a newly decanted mystery box revealed a fundamental flaw in the system.

In the meantime, the office-studio-to-be was remodeled: the very '80's padded brocade came off the walls, requiring resurfacing before the repainting could be done; existing shelving and cabinetry was cleaned and reinforced; new book shelving installed, twelve (12) tall plastic drawer units purchased, file cabinet refurbished and filled with folders; and computer desk delivered and "EASY NO-TOOL ASSEMBLY" accomplished with a great deal of profanity and perspiration. All of this awaited the "two-weeks-promised-but-two-months-in-practice" purchase and installation of the Pergo floor (Thanks, Lowe's, grrrrrrr...) to replace the carpet, destroyed by my mother's late cat.

Several of the category piles have been sorted to a fine anality and are in place: paper (oh, yeah, it sounds easy, but if you Google "paper storage" or "paper organization" for crafters, you'll see how obsessive an enterprise this is); jewelry and beading supplies, ribbon and fibers and lace oh my, "fasteners" (I know what it means, never mind), some books, some scrapbooks, some of the "All Kinds of Metal Shit," all stamps and ink and stamping accouterments, and my entire collection of collage images equaled only by the Library of Congress. Still to go: general office supplies, adhesives, computer-related miscellany, cloth, knitting, "All Kinds of Wood Shit", game pieces and decks of cards (tarot, playing, Beatle and Diana Rigg Avenger Cards, among others), and the remainder of the unfinished categories mentioned above.

All of this has been slowly driving my poor mother around the bend. She grew up with clutter and in reaction makes Felix Unger look like a piker in the neat department, and although she has one or two beloved collections (jewelry, lamps, vases), she would be happy in a single well-lit room with one spoon and one bowl. Her mother's clutter gene skipped to my generation, so we are each other's karmic punishment for our respective schools of OCD. I cannot harness her abilities to conquer this insanity, however, because a) she takes one look at it and runs shrieking from the room, erupting in hives, b) her preferred solution is to grab kerosene and light a match, and c) she's on an oxygen tank, for god's sake. I may be certifiable, but I'm not a monster.

Now I have gotten my ass in high organizational gear, and I'm actually having fun. The garage is empty but for the Mafia Car and a new "donate" pile which will disappear on Thursday to benefit the battered women's shelter. My labeling machine is my new best friend, and better descriptions appear on the drawers than "Miscellaneous Smelly Crap" (that referred to some mildewy yardage purchased at a garage sale for a song, now washed, ironed, folded and Febreezed into submission). I still have my idiosyncratic poetic bent in description, but I know the drawer next to "Beads" (color sorted!) which I have marked "Sparkletown!" holds sequins and rhinestones. By size and color.

I am now at the stage I call "sorting pepper from fly shit." For example, I have far too many buttons to simply have a "Button" drawer. No, they must be sorted into those with holes and those with shanks, by color, source material (cloth? wood? plastic? metal? shell?) and "interesting" from "plain." I sit in front of HGTV by the hour surrounded by those wonderfully useful plastic hardware/fish hook/etc bins making decision after decision, feeling hugely competent and accomplished. This flush of success has its drawbacks. Last night I had a single endless dream of sorting, what I don't know. It was very boring. This morning, diving back into the button process, I was nearing the end when a button of wood and leather with both silver and gold accents came up. I screamed "FUCK YOU!" at the defenseless thing, startling my mother from her paper and coffee across the table. We giggled, my giggles began to verge into hysteria, and I knew it was time for a calm, restorative walk on the beach.

Which did the trick of taking my mind off of things. Mostly because I discovered a dead and rotting body half-buried in the sand. Really, no lie. But that's another story. I'll get to that later. First, back to the buttons.