The Court Jester Sings

Top O’ the Morning to you! We’re happy to report that we’ve just concluded a term’s worth of jewelry classes and even happier to mention that we attended every single one. Can’t say the same when we were enrolled at the University the first time around…

The other cool thing to tell you is that we finally finished the basement project! Ho boy, anybody who has clutter, whether it is locked away from sight in the attic, stuffed into a closet, or banished to the basement, knows how thrilling it is to get it all organized.

The problem for us is that we do our best to keep our house, where we also make jewelry for a living, relatively chaos-free (remember last week when my mom said my control issues “revolve around maintaining control of my personal space and not people?”). Well, not only do I come from a long line of Drama Queens, but part of my inheritance also includes pack-ratting.

I fight it tooth and nail. So while the main part of the house reflects that victory, the basement reveals the ugly truth. It has been a repository for all the minutiae we didn’t know what to with in the first place. I mean, how smart is that? By the time circumstances required us to dig ourselves out of the pile of overwhelming clutter, we must face the mountain of stuff all at once. If we didn’t know what to do with each item as an individual piece, how are we expected to excavate en masse?

Long story short, we pushed up our shirt sleeves and have been very motivated to set up our studio. So I guess the trick is to have a compelling enough reason to overcome the inertia and quit wasting valuable energy resisting the mess and just dive in. It didn’t take as long as we feared and the extraordinary thing was, even as we expended a ton of physical energy hefting and toting and sorting, with each thing we discarded or gave away, our energy returned to us many fold. My mother highly recommends a website called http://www.flylady.com/ for the clutter-whelmed.

On Monday, Brother-In-Law, who is a professional contractor, came over and helped Groom install a ventilation system, so we are now ready to rock and roll our new designs.

Eeek, and that’s where I’m having a little melt down. I have spent the last three months inspired and totally wired to get my hands into some different materials and practice my new metalsmithing skills. I’ve attended classes, researched and ordered new supplies and equipment, faced my mountain of mierde, lost many nights sleep to inspired ideas, and yet…

And yet, now that I have everything I need (I think, although there is always one more tool, one more required item) to get started, I am immobilized, paralyzed, staring at our new studio set up and not knowing what to do.

As the Art Fair results are starting to come in, we have stock to make! I would feel pressured if we were simply doing what we’ve always done, but to throw in the unknown, gulp, I’m feeling suddenly blank. There were endless ideas taunting me when I didn’t have the means to try them, and now that I do, they have disappeared and I’m feeling a little panicky.

Speaking of feeling a little panicky, I had an opportunity to channel a bit of that angst Friday night. Last week, I wrote about going to karaoke to support a friend doing a stretch goal. I love stretch goals. Of course, they are more fun for me when they are someone else’s, but I recognize their value and so I also do new things to keep my comfort zone pliable. It’s shockingly easy to become rigid in our beliefs. We hold mental images of ourselves as to the kind of people we are, what we are capable of. And for most of us, the images are far too small and limiting. “Being shy keeps you from your destiny.”

When our friend called us, asking for our support to sing, the first thing I said was, “Don’t expect me to get up there, I don’t sing, much less in public.” End of story. Or was it?

Watching all the other people grab the mike and underwhelm us, I began to consider, why were they more courageous than me? Many lacked stage presence, others could barely hold a tune, yet they managed their fears enough to get up and make an effort to entertain.

All last week I pondered. Could I ever do it? Could I get up in front of people and sing, knowing full well that I was not blessed with a pleasing voice? Could I stand up in front of a crowd and squeak out a tone-deaf rendition? The queer thing is, I am not tone-deaf, but my voice is and the worst insult the American Idol judges can bestow a contestant is to say, “That was like a karaoke performance.”

Okay, let me just tell you, that would be high praise indeed pour moi. Mine was like a very bad karaoke performance. I completely blew the first line, missing it entirely. So I jumped in on the second line and the crowd, who had been laughing and drinking seconds before, came to a screeching halt. Well, I might have been the one screeching, but they were definitely the ones doing the halt. It got silent.

No no no no no!! They were supposed to continue ignoring the singers, talking amongst themselves, laughing overmuch and creating a soothing din. They were NOT supposed to stop and listen. I was facing them and they were looking at me, well, there’s no other way to say it, rather shellshocked.

The people at the front table were actually giggling, okay, laughing. At me, not with me. Oh golly, I was so thankful I had worn my deodorant, because I was making man-sweat. When I’m by myself, say, in the shower, I might have fun belting out some tune or another, but even in my least self-conscious moment, my voice is not strong, kinda wobbly. Put me in front of a packed house, and here’s the kicker, SOBER, it comes out downright shaky. Eeeee gads.

When I finished, the room gave me a hearty round of applause, but me thinks that was because my performance was over, and not a reward for a job well done. One friend, said, “Ooooooh,” kind of in the same tone one might say upon seeing a badly scraped wound.

Groom just looked at me, smiled and shrugged, then gave me a hug. An enthusiastic friend did her best to point out all the things I did right. She told me that many people would have been permanently thrown if they’d missed the first line, but I recovered quickly and jumped right in. She said I smiled, gave the crowd eye-contact and moved my body in rhythm to the music. Her best compliment was that I did not look “D.D.” er, um “developmentally disabled.”

Really? That’s my best review? “She did not look developmentally disabled.” I’m sitting here by myself at the computer and I cannot type because I’m laughing so hard through the tears.

So to answer the question, can I get up in front of a crowd and make a fool out of myself? Why yes I can, and quite effortlessly, it would seem. I told you last week, part Queen, part court jester.

And as if that wasn’t enough, tonight I’m supposed to recite Irish-themed poetry in Cabbage Groove. In a green wig. And maybe a tiara?

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Karaoke Nights

Last week, in the continuing adventures of Z0L0 Queen, I shared a poem written in my honor. While I’m still floating on air from all the extended birthday love, I can’t help but laugh at myself. Apparently I’m part queen, part court jester.

Here is a two-line excerpt from Ken Lee’s poem, Press Release to illustrate my point.

She’s no rookie to royalty though

In her veins, Queenly blood doth flow.

While that flattery might expand another’s inflated sense of self, it makes me laugh. Oh, not at Ken, but at the truth he nailed. “In her veins, Queenly blood doth flow.” Yes, dear friends, I am no rookie to royalty, for I am kin to a long line of queens….drama queens.

While I have not been accused of being one myself… exactly, there have been references to it, such as, my sister once told me, “You’re not a drama queen, except in the way you dress.” What on earth does she mean by that?

When I asked my mother if she thought I was controlling (Ahem, there’s no way I can deny being accused of that!), she said, “Yes. But your type of control is not centered around people, you just really need to control your personal environment.” I can live with that.

When I asked my mother the other day if she thought I was a drama queen, she said, “No, I’d categorize your life more like a sit-com. You always seem to find the humor in whatever situation you find yourself in.” Again, I can live with that. Thanks mom.

Why did I ask my mom if she thought I was a drama queen? Because Simon Cowell told me I was. Relax, I’m not hearing voices, I just had a dream in which he appeared as a confident character, giving me the message to quit being so “emotional about my life, instead, save the emotion for my life.”

I pondered that one. And then I was handed an example on a silver platter.

Groom and I were invited out for an evening of karaoke as a friend of ours requested support while he sang in public for the first time, part of a stretch goal. As the event didn’t get underway until 9pm, I spent most of the day in angst about going. I don’t like going out much, especially to a lounge, especially late at night.

I caught myself in the act of being emotional about my life. I was expending far too much energy about going. I could not decide. On one hand, I wanted an entire day that was not pierced by appointments, a block of time smooth from outside influences. Yet, on the other, I wanted to be supportive and watch him do this thing.

Groom suggested we wait until later in the evening to decide. Tired, no really, tired (recovering from colds), I crawled into bed after consuming dinner and washing dishes. We watched an episode of Project Catwalk and by then it was 8:30pm. Aaaah, the luxury of getting to bed at a reasonable hour and NOT having to get up early on a Saturday. For those of you who understand the Art Fair lifestyle, a Saturday off is like Saffron, rare and expensive.

I wanted to relish in it, but in the spirit of Z0L0, of doing things differently, I flung back the covers (but not without sighing first), pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that had been carelessly tossed, did not bother to comb my hair or put on any camouflaging cosmetics, stepped into a pair of black boots, grabbed a jacket and hopped in the chariot. I went from a reclining recluse to a care-less-reveler in about 2.5 minutes.

When Groom pulled into the parking lot of the karaoke establishment, the first thing to capture my attention was a woman walking from her car fluffing, primping and priming her hair. She had her hands all up in it, last minute touches as she tossed her head from side to side, trying to get her mojo on before stepping through the electronic sliding glass doors.

I don’t know what I was expecting, as I haven’t been out to a lounge for about 20 years, and even then it was never my scene, but I was not quite prepared for Karaoke nights to be held in a sports bar. Groom and I walked in at the exact perfect time, able to secure the last available table. People had arrived early, eager to devour the song book and make their selections. On a scrap of paper, one jots down the corresponding song number along with their name and presents it to the karaoke hostess.

In this case, the karaoke hostess was a scrappy little thing. Barely 21, if a day, she reminded me of a sassy Katie Holmes. I think there were several men present who would jump up and down on a couch Oprah-Cruise style for this girl. She wore a short, no short skirt, and her youthful legs were on display for the entire room. She worked that microphone like a pro, entertaining the crowd between songs.

Hostess would then put the slips of paper in any order she chose, entering the data on a laptop so the person’s name, along with their song title would appear on the large, overhead screen when it was their turn.

The first song of the evening was sung by a large woman. Okay, in that crowd, that’s not narrowing it down at all. Most of the people there were large. Songs like Fat Bottomed Girls and Baby’s Got Back were the order of the night.

The first woman was so shy she had her big bottom facing the crowd. She was looking up at the screen for the words, chasing the yellow high-lighting, instead of using the prompter screen. The people who followed were also painfully shy and lacked any stage presence or charisma. As Kimmm said, it was like auditions for American Idol.

Groom and I, not wanting to consume alcohol for reasons, oh like not operating heavy machinery while under the influence, stuck to water. Yet my red cheeks, sans makeup, looked to all the world as though I was a champion elbow bender. It was fascinating to observe the crowd loosen up with pints of liquid courage, transforming awkwardness into social lubrication.

Historically, the lounge, pub or alehouse is recognized as the “third place.” It is neither work nor home, but a public place to meet, greet and relax. For some, it is the epicenter of social life, reflecting the “socio-economic ethos of its host community.”

Phew, that’s a mouthful. If true, the cross section of society represented in the small sports bar Friday night reflected quite accurately the “socio-economic ethos of its host community,” Eugene. A gentleman sitting at the table across from us had an enlarged, dangly earlobe. At one time, he wore ever-increasing large gauge earrings to purposely stretch his lobe, but on this particular night, there was no jewelry, just a limp, dangling piece of ear skin with a giant hole that I could see through.

The woman sitting directly in front had three dark tribal lines tattooed on her face, starting at her lip and scoring the length of her chin. Admittedly, I’m not familiar with the cultural significance of her facial tattoos, all I could see in the dim lighting was that it looked like she had attempted to drink something inky and filled her mouth overmuch and now the liquid was dribbling down her chin.

A girl holding up the bar was dressed like Raggedy Ann, complete with a tomato-red yarn wig and a shamrock patterned frock. When it was her turn to claim the stage, she explained she was celebrating the two most famous drinking holidays, St. Patrick’s and Cinco de Mayo, but as it was the 5th of March, she called it “Cinco de Marcho.”

One guy, who sat at our table, had a split, dichotomous hair-do. One half of his head was brunette, the other bleached blonde. Of course, I had to point to the shocking red raggedy Anne at the bar and ask, “Can you imagine what your kids would look like?” We all laughed, and I blamed my second glass of water for the comment. But he only had eyes for Hostess.

And then the biggest surprise of all. A very large man, so large in fact, he looked like a sheet cake tipped up on end, all the contents sliding down from the pull of gravity, worked his way to the stage. Judging by appearances and the performances before him, I assumed it would be the opposite of ear candy. Then he opened his mouth and sang the beautiful Leonard Cohen song, “Hallelujah.” Gave me chills. Present in the moment, right then, the emotions about my life dissipated and I stepped into the emotions for my life. The cake man’s power notes brought tears to me eyes, sniff, it was haunting.

While Hostess was summoning one singer after the other to the stage, the woman at the beginning of this tale, the one trying to make her coiffed hair look finger-tugging good, was sitting alone at the bar of this “third place,” ready to meet and socialize.

A man, sitting by himself at a table, probably the least emotionally available male in the house, was the beacon to which this woman was instantly drawn. It was a painful scene to watch, the karaoke singers fading into the background, despite the sound level, morphing into the soundtrack for this sad attempt at validation and hookup.

The woman was physically attractive, but beneath the shroud of beauty, I caught a glimpse of her addiction: the fuel of rejection to feed the endless loop of self-loathing. There were any number of men who would have been flattered by the attention of a beautiful woman, but she was blind to them.

Now keep in mind, I was not drinking, yet I saw her energetic loose threads, like those from a poorly sewn garment, and I found myself terribly distracted. I wanted to focus on the singer wanna-be’s up front, but I was getting pulled into the drama unfolding behind me. I was disturbed by the woman’s behavior and even more distressed by the man’s flagrant dismissal of her.

The image of a vampire came to mind, but instead of the requirement to extract blood or siphon energy, I saw her need to intake more emptiness. Other men would have been happy to give her attention, but that was not her fuel. She needed to ingest more rejection. When she asked, “Are you sitting with anyone?” he said, “No.”

Failing to offer her a seat, she took it to the next level and asked, “Do you mind if I sit down?” He did not answer audibly, but simply shrugged. He did not look at her and continued to nurse his drink. She leaned in and whispered something in his ear. Again he shrugged. Then she got up.

I made the mistake of sighing with relief, believing for a moment she had come to her senses and was gracefully trying to remove herself from the failed connection. Nope. She bought him a drink. He was willing to accept a refill, but did not appear the least bit obligated to thank her, much less talk to her. He proceeded to look around at the other women in the room but treated the one at his table with a palpable lack of interest.

Apparently this only made her want him more. She shimmied her way to the dance floor and proceeded to, well, shake her fanny in a way I’ve not seen before. Suddenly she disappeared from sight. From my vantage point, I thought she’d slipped and fallen. But the crowd started whoopin’ and hollerin’ because she had dropped to her knees and was now, on all fours, like a dog, arching her back and wagging tail.

Huffing and puffing from the exertion, she made her way back to the table, high-fiving people along the way. Her table companion was staring at his phone, busy texting. She leaned into him again, her prowess on display. “Did you see me dance?” she asked, her seduction getting into third gear.

He didn’t even look at her, just kept texting. “Nope,” he finally said. The look of incredulity upon her face spoke volumes, as it was obvious she had just pulled out her big guns on the dance floor. “No?” she asked again?

“No,” he repeated. Well, what was she gonna do but buy him another round?

In the meantime, the friend we had come to support had spent the better part of an hour looking through the song list book. When his name was finally called, he approached the stage with a mix of excited reluctance. The first bars of the song began to play and immediately it was obvious that it was a crowd pleaser. People jumped up to dance and even though the pacing was too quick for our friend and he had a minor technical difficulty keeping up with the words, the audience was clapping and very supportive.

It was at this point we left. The clock struck midnight and this Cinderella wanted to get back home before her coach turned into a pumpkin. I don’t know what happened to the vampire woman. When last I looked, she had her arm hooked into his. Oh, and I forgot to mention the weirdest part. He kept trying to get my attention and at one point suggested we get up and dance.

Are you kidding me? Sloppily dressed, no make up, red cheeks blazing in the low lighting, I was in fact, the least available woman in the place for him. I was sitting there holding hands with Groom! Why is it human nature to want what we cannot have?

While there is no tidy ending to this three-hour slice of life, I feel the need to comment on the photographs. To see them enlarged, simply click on the image and then hit the back arrow to return to the blog. I'm especially thrilled to have captured the bee hovering around Groom's camera.

And so this Z0L0 Queen/Sitcom-y court jester bids you a lovely week.

The 45th Parallel

Salem. The name alone packs a powerful punch. Immediately my mind conjures up the Salem witch trials of Puritan Massachusetts. Ironic, as the birth of the word Salem comes from its Hebrew mother, Shalom, meaning peace. Salem in the late 1600’s was anything but peaceful. Suspicion, hysteria, betrayal and fear gripped the day.

But the name has an even earlier history than the 17th century. On a hill in the heart of Zion stands a city. jeruSALEM. As the “new Jerusalem” symbolizes any idealized city, Utopia, it means heaven to many. It is a sacred place to more than a few Jewish people, Muslims and Christians, and even though the pulse of the word means peace, this holy city in the Middle East is again, anything but.

The sister to Shalom is Shalem, meaning perfect, whole, full. I wonder if the Kalapuyans, the Native Americans who inhabited Oregon before the invention of the white man, knew that definition because they named the area Chemeketa, meaning “meeting or resting place.”

I had none of this in mind when Groom and I traveled an hour north to Oregon’s capital on Saturday. Neither did I feel anything unusual as we crossed the 45th parallel that runs through the city limits, that legendary halfway point between the North Pole and the Equator. But that’s really what this week’s entry is about, the location between my equator (umm, let’s call it my belt buckle) and my North Pole (my head) which is…my heart.

The 45th parallel, the 4th chakra, the heart.

I’ve just experienced an amazing realization and then manifestation, which has left me speechless. Well, not that you can tell, since one sentence follows another. But as I sit here clacking away at the computer keys, there is a whole lot of silence. Much space in between. I’m trying to find the words. Oh, here they come.

I ran across a great definition of progress in a jewelry magazine. The gist is that progress is a moving target, it cannot be measured standing still. It involves travel. In order to make progress, there has to be movement from one point to another. For example, a person cannot be judged by only one piece of jewelry (oh, but wait, they will be…stay tuned!), but by the progress made from one piece to the next and then the one after that.

Progress is dynamic, in other words, it is not static. Too many of us judge ourselves by only one coordinate, a lone word, a single action.

But Saturday, after a mere 13 months of planning, Groom and I finally made it to Salem right on the appointed dot of 10am. We met up with the In-laws for a day of Thrifting. The weather cooperated brilliantly, offering a sky of antique blue, and we did exactly what the tourism signs told us to do, “Explore downtown, eat & shop downtown.”

If you’ll be patient, this quilt of paragraphs will all come together by the end. Many of you are familiar with the Z0L0 vignette. Briefly, a lovely man, a 64-year old friend and pen pal of mine misread my handwriting and thought the date of 2010 said “Z0l0.” He quizzed and questioned me, wondering what on earth Z0L0 was. I had no idea. He said I had to know because I was the one who had written it. Story short, we’ve all been laughing ever since he realized the mistake and I’ve nicknamed him Z0L0 and he’s been calling me the Z0L0 Queen.

My New Year’s resolution for 2010, Z0l0, is to step out of my comfort zone and try new things. I was wearing this frame of mind when I received a lovely invitation from the Salem Art Association to create a piece of jewelry for the silent auction during their annual benefit, Clay Ball.

Creating something to donate is not the new part, for many organizations make that request. It was accepting their invitation to attend the event that rattled my cage of comfort. You would think dressing up and attending a fancy shmancy ball would be right up my alley, but er, um, hobbing and nobbing with the moneyed crowd, well?

It was a benefit, after all, and who do they want as guests in their well appointed ballroom but people who can afford the “per plate fee” and bid thousands of dollars against each other in the name of fun and philanthropy?

I knew it would be a stretch, but I decided I wanted to do it anyway. The theme for this year’s Clay Ball was Traveling by Starlight. Always one for a theme, I selected a stamp with, can you guess, a globe shaped like a heart and proceeded to embellish it with appropriate beads and charms.

The date finally arrived. Having to traverse the 66.2 miles of asphalt anyway, we made plans to thrift with the in-laws and then transform like Cinderella to attend the Ball. As we stepped into the Salem Conference center that evening, the atmosphere was at once charming and lively. The “fun and festive cocktail attire” made for great people watching, and by the time we climbed the stairs and perused the items up for bid, we were in a great mood.

And then we saw our piece. The little itty bitty “Traveling by Starlight” postage stamp pin. Yes, we were invited to donate what we do, but we had a bit of a shock seeing one of our jewelry pieces out of context instead of in a full booth like we’re used to. It was very sobering.

Why? Because while we were included in the realm of the donating, participating artists, we became aware of just how small our energy is. Our pin was the littlest object up for bid as well as the lowest opening bid.

Debbie Leahy, the Director of the Salem Art Fair & Festival, has been an amazing influence upon us, encouraging us to return to school and learn metalsmithing skills to expand what we do. Heeding her sage advice, we rearranged our whole lives, including our home, to make room for the classes and a different kind of studio.

At that moment, standing in the middle of the swirl of Saturday night, I set an intention. An intention to create a piece of jewelry (with the new skill set) that I can donate to next year’s Clay Ball that will knock my own socks off.

It was a good idea to have a smaller, less expensive piece available for people to bid on, to create something for those without access to huge funds, but I also realized I was at the very shallow end of the pool and I want to go deeper.

If the micro mirrors the macro, I looked into that mirror and saw how tiny my impact and energy was. While it kinda bummed me out, it was also a terrific marker, another coordinate in measuring my progress. Gosh darn nit, I am progressing, moving, growing and evolving. Instead of feeling like the smallest amoeba, the lowest on the totem pole, I decided to interpret the experience as inspiring.

That was the amazing realization. And now comes the manifestation. Deciding I did not need to feel puny, tempting as it was, I chose to plant a seed. Like Jack and the Beanstalk, I had no idea how quickly it could grow. Within 24 hours of planting the intention of allowing my energy to expand, I received a mysterious phone call. I was instructed to drive down to the corner of 6th Avenue and Fillmore Street where the Tire Factory is located.

Oh what a delightful surprise! On the marquee was the message, “Z0L0 Queen exists in Eugene.” My friend had gone to the effort of persuading the owner to display his message. I am so touched. Who goes to that kind of trouble? Who thinks like that?

It slowly occurred to me, that while I was thinking my energy was so small and ineffective it might need life support, somebody was going to the effort to announce my presence to the entire town. He also wrote a poem:

PRESS RELEASE by Ken Lee

You are all aware of the Eugene Slug Queen

At most openings and events she can be seen
Real Royalty has arrived in Eugene
She has emerged this year as the Z0L0 Queen!

When did the Royal Woman really appear?
Queen Z0L0 accepted her crown just this year
She’s no rookie to royalty though
In her veins, Queenly blood doth flow.

No princesses are needed, she goes solo
Remember the name dear folks –She’s Queen Z0L0
The Slug Queen is jealous of her, you see
Because by the next parade, she’ll be in the lead.

Queen Z0L0 is honored to lead the parade
The Slime Queen was invented, Queen Z0L0 was made.
When the REAL Queen goes by, just tip your beer
This is 2010 and its Z0L0 year!


Wow, as I said, this has rendered me speechless. Sort of. I am more gobsmacked, humbled, honored, delighted, and I realized, by him presenting me with a crown (my North Pole, my head, my 7th chakra) I encountered the halfway point, my own 45th parallel, intersecting at the city limits of my heart, and I report to you, at this moment, it is filled with peace.

Shalom.