Mud & Graveyards

I took my camera to Muddy Roots, and I fully intended to take enough pictures to properly document the weekend.  The sad truth, though, is that I should not be the person in charge of that job, because I just suck at remembering to do it!  This is the only picture I actually took, of my dear husband setting up the Hellfire Revival merch table behind the stage before they went on...

The reason that we went to Muddy Roots was that Hellfire was playing, and I was working their merch table.  But last year, we just showed up right when they were about to play, they did the set and I did the merch, and then we pretty much left.  This year, we took it as an opportunity to do something that we hardly ever do anymore...get away, spend time together, and just have fun!  

We showed up on Saturday, not quite in time to see Don Maddox, which Matt was hoping for, so that kind of sucked.  We did get to see the hulo hoop performers, which was interesting, because I've never seen a live hoop performance, but disappointing because it was kind of sloppy, really short, and not that great.  They were cute, though, and maybe they'll get better with time.

The highlight, of course, was the music.  Hellfire Revival had a really fun set, and perhaps the rowdiest crowd they've ever played to.  They had the first "pit" of the festival!  We also got to see some of my favorite bands.  Viva Le Vox closed out Saturday night, and they were awesome.  Then on Sunday, one of my favorite moments was when our dear friends  in Hans Condor caused more havoc in their cut-short 20 minute set than would seem humanly possible.  They arrived around the time that the rain did, so sets were being cut short, bands were being rearranged, and a gradually growing madness was washing over the attendees.  Before long, I was standing ankle deep in mud watching Th' Legendary Shack Shakers for the first time in ages.  They're playing in Nashville for my birthday, so I think I know what my birthday plans are.  Sunday night was closed out by The Goddamn Gallows, and while we couldn't miss it, we chose to stand out in the rain, outside of the tent for that set.  The rain, the mud, the frenzy of the music, and the madness of the crowd at that point were all coming together in a way that almost tore the tent down!  You've got to give it to Baby Genius and Fishgutz for still coming out into the crowd in all of that mud and chaos

It was the perfect way to end out the night, and the weekend.  We went back to a tent that was doing all it could to stay dry, slept through the night to the sound of rain beating down on us, woke up and packed up in the rain bright and early the next morning, and hit up Cracker Barrel on the way home.  After the heat and sunburn of Saturday, followed by the rain and cooler weather of Sunday, I came home with a cold.  I don't really get properly sick that often, but I already had swollen lymph nodes going into it, so I think my immune system was probably already compromised.  I tried to ignore it on Monday, but by Tuesday I had to have one good day of rest, which I hate.  I don't do well with being idle, and just laying around doing nothing makes me incredibly anxious.  But it was necessary to I could get back up and running by the next weekend.

A few days of normalcy, and then it was off to the Ink4Pink Benefit in Atlanta.  It was an awesome show held at a place called The Basement, which is literally the basement of a place called The Graveyard Tavern.  Throughout the show, tattoo vouchers were raffled off, art was sold, and all of that, along with the cover charge, was going to benefit breast cancer research and treatment.  The night was full of burlesque and sideshow performers, Farmageddon bands, and of course Hellfire Revival.  And once again, I served as the merch girl.  

I actually did take pictures at this show, but because of my position and the lighting, they pretty much sucked.  But here are a few...

James Hunnicutt

Sweet Christina

Jayke Orvis

D'Lilah D'Lite

Hellfire Revival

Kittie Katrina

The Goddamn Gallows

So much for trying to take pictures while anchored to the merch table.  But at least it's documented.

James Hunnicutt, Jayke Orvis, and the Goddamn Gallows are all Farmageddon bands.  They're actually all pretty different from each other, even though they all just kind of play together.  But in this line up, Hellfire Revival stood out.  It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and they played a good set.  This was only their 2nd time in Atlanta, so they don't have a built-in fan base there yet, and the crowd was kind of weird.  Attentive, but not always that responsive.  So when it was all said and done, I think they did a good job, but I don't know how happy they were with the reception.  It doesn't matter, though.  I always love to see Matt play drums, no matter who he's playing with.  We also got to see The Goddamn Gallows again, which was a huge plus.  Hellfire always loves to play with them, and they're fast becoming some of our favorite people.

Plus, this show gave us an excuse to go to Atlanta.  Matt has family there, and his aunt has been struggling with cancer.  With his job, it isn't always easy for him to get away, so this was our first time to get to try and go see her.  We planned to spend Friday more or less with her, but as it turned out, she was having chemo and wasn't really up for visitors.  We did get to see Matt's cousin and her kids, and she filled us in a bit more on what has been going on wit her mom.  They weren't able to meet up with us until the evening, though, so we actually had a lot of time to kill hanging out in Little Five Points, which we haven't had the chance to do in quite a while.  It was inspirational visiting some of those shops.  It was a reminder about some of the goals we have for Dead Man's, and hopefully we'll find the right place to put it, so that it will thrive like some of those awesome shops.

After two weekends in a row out of town, the house was quite a wreck.  You would think that with us around less to mess it up, it wouldn't be so bad, but not so.  It just meant that I wasn't around to stay on top of keeping it in order.  So getting caught up on the house and getting caught up with a couple of my students has been the focus of the last couple of days.  This weekend will be yet another Hellfire weekend at the Redneck Rumble.  After that, they should have a bit of a break, which will work out well.  It will give Matt time to focus on his upcoming art show, and both of us time to get ready for the annual bonfire.  

So now it's back to house work, student check ins, and hopefully a little more progress on the new Dead Man's website!  Busy, busy, busy!

 

Searching for Joy

Usually, I'm not someone who does New Year's Resolutions, per se.  To me, the idea of setting a New Year's Resolution calls to mind something very specific and big that you try to accomplish, therefore setting yourself up for disappointment if life in the coming year takes you in a direction that doesn't make that goal attainable.

What I do sometimes do is choose general themes for the coming year at the start of a new calendar year (which, because of my religion's focus on seasonal cycles, is different to me than the start of a new yearly cycle).  These themes are just that...general themes of things that I want to focus on doing or bringing into my life.  For 2011, the theme I chose was finding "Joy."  As we go deeper into the waning time of the year, I am compelled to check in with this theme and see how I think I'm doing.

It may seem odd that I have to go around looking for Joy, but the fact is that there is a lot of sadness that I carry with me.  I have lost a lot of the most beloved people in my life, and I have accepted that I will never stop grieving for them.  Sometimes I feel that grief very strongly, but I don't want to wallow in it, drown in it, and become defined by it.  So what that means is that I'm just a person who sometimes needs to actively seek out the opposite side of the coin.  In ways, the contrast is beautiful.  When you feel that great sadness, and then look around you and open up to Joy as a way of keeping it in check, it helps you realize all the ways in which life truly is beautiful.

 

One of the things I thought I would do as a way of bringing more Joy into my life this year was making Hooping more of a part of my day-to-day activities.

It may sound a bit silly, and perhaps it is...and perhaps that's the point.  Nonetheless, when I'm inside a hula hoop, it's hard for me to be unhappy!  For at least that moment in time, I'm actually able to recapture that feeling of childhood joy and enthusiasm, remembering what it feels like to just play, and be thrilled about it.  It's a feeling that I don't tap into often, not only because of grief, but just because of the nature of my personality.  I believe a coven-mate once referred to it as "stoic."  I'm by nature an introverted and fairly reserved person.  It takes a lot to get me to just cut loose.

Part of my plan for bringing more Hooping into my life as a tool for bringing more Joy into my life was to teach Hoop Dance classes in Watertown.  That didn't exactly work out as I had hoped.  Sharing Hooping with others is fun, but while there did seem to be a pretty good amount of interest in the beginning, the interest definitely dwindled over time.  The business I had in Watertown closed, and I was no longer there every day, which made going in for classes without being sure anyone was going to show up make less and less sense.  And now I'm looking for a job (which I'm sure will warrant a whole separate blog post), so I couldn't do it anymore anyway.  That's why I usually don't do resolutions.  If I had a resolution of, for instance, becoming a full time Hoop Dance instructor...I would have already failed.

But that wasn't the point.  The point was to find Joy, and Hooping was only supposed to be a forum for that.  I think I feel like I have to check in on this because I wasn't able to maintain the classes, and in some ways that's disappointing.  But if I'm honest and not so hard on myself, I know that Hooping is in fact still a tool for finding Joy.  I still do it just about every day, and in fact, it's more fun in a way to be able to just do it for the sake of it, and not have to structure it all into classes that can be taught to others.  And while I chose to make Hooping one of my focal points, because it's something active that I can make myself do and I know it will work (as opposed to more abstract ideas that are harder to pin down and make happen), it's not like it's the only thing I'm doing to bring more Joy into my life.

Because I'm just weird, when I'm thinking about abstract concepts, such as Joy, I sometimes like to do Google image searches for them just to see what comes up.  Here is what Google search has taught me about Joy...

Joy is shared...

Joy is love...

Joy is a giddy thrill...

Joy is puppies and kitties...

Joy is TOTALLY a cupcake...

Joy is bubbles...

Or, alternatively, water...

"Jumping for Joy" really is a thing...

And yes, Joy can even be a hula hoop...

I swear it really did come up!
 

Other things I learned...based on photos, Joy is most often found outside, with the chances of success increasing greatly at the beach.  Apparently, Joy may also be random people named Joy, and The Joy Luck Club...book or movie.  Still though...I'd say Google image search can be surprisingly insightful!

Here's to looking forward, continuing the search for Joy...

Vanilla

It's a word that Matt and I sometimes use to describe something that is bland...generic...boring...safe...non-threatening...

And it is the perfect word for this color...

 

It's official!  We have completed our move and have closed the Watertown location, and I have had enough of a breather to be getting around to talking about it.  The final stage of the process was transforming the building from our lively, rich color scheme of purple, black, and touches of gold, to the neutral shade you see above.  Though you'd almost never be able to tell it without new-fallen snow right beside it for comparison, we actually couldn't bring ourselves to go with a stark white.  This shade is actually called "country white," but both because of the shade and because of the personal connotation of the word, I can't help but think of vanilla when I look at it.

These walls, where we painted the plaster that remained over the brick, were particularly beautiful to me...

 

Which made this pretty difficult to watch...

And now they look like this...

The whole process felt very much like going behind ourselves with an eraser, removing every trace of our existence in the place.  The building looks very neutral, as if just anyone was there or could be there, and there really isn't any evidence left that we ever had a store in Watertown.

 

 

As hard as it was do undo all of that work, though, we actually didn't mind much.  We were in such a desperate place when we finally decided that we needed to close that store, and we are extremely grateful that our landlord was so willing to work with us and let us out of our lease.  This was really his only request, so that the building would be primed and ready to be bought or leased by the next person.  We were sort of taken back in time to when we did all of the work in the first place, making the place our own, with a certain amount of optimism about how it would go.  And it was frustrating to feel a bit like we had to go back before we could move forward.  But ultimately, we were happy to oblige.

And so ends Phase One of the "future of Dead Man's" plan.  It's time to work on Phase Two, and I have actually already begun.  More details about Phase Two will be forthcoming at a later date.

I think the following images are an appropriate way to close the door on this chapter.  Here's hoping the next one goes well!

   

How Many Witches Does it Take to Change a Tire?

The past week has been action-packed.  Aside from the "great migration" out of the Dead Man's Watertown store, it brought with it three Tangled Pines/Tangled Woods events...and there is yet another one to come tomorrow.  On Thursday, Coven of the Tangled Pines had our regular full moon meeting.  We did a silent water ritual in the pool at the home of one of my coven sisters, and it was amazing!  It was a very trance-heavy ritual, and there was definitely a moment at the height of my altered state of consciousness and the peak of the energy when I felt like a mermaid (or some other not-quite-human being) gliding through the swirling waters, and gazing up at the swirling clouds above to see them part and allow the silvery light of the full moon pour down over us.  It was beautiful.

On Friday, I had my second class with my new student, which was also great.  Since we're only 2 classes in, it's still a little early to fully know how it will go, but so far she seems very enthusiastic, and that type of student is always a joy to teach.  I can tell that she's really looking at the material to see what she can get out of it, rather than just going through the motions, and she comes to class having really read and prepared, ready to discuss the material.  So I'm looking forward to continuing on with her and seeing how things evolve over time. 

Saturday was this month's Tangled Woods Community Circle, which was where the trouble came into paradise.  I left the house in enough time to make a couple of stops and still get there early, but as I hopped on the interstate, I had a blow out.  It was actually my first time to have a blow out, and as it turns out, while you're still in the car, they sound and feel like something much more serious than what they really are.  But they're still a pain in the ass, especially if you don't have everything you need to remedy the situation.

In answer to the question, "How many witches does it take to change a tire," my answer is one, and I'm sticking to it.  I would say any one of us could have done it under the right circumstances.  However, apparently it takes 3 to round up all of the needed equipment.  Fortunately, the community circle was being held in my neck of the woods, so there were a handful of people around to help.  While the spouse is the natural first choice for who to call in a situation like this, Matt had played a show in Louisville the night before, and still hadn't made it back into town.  So I had to call in some witchy reinforcements!

I had a spare tire stowed under the van, and even an air compressor to make sure it was as full as it should be.  What I didn't have was a jack and a tire iron, which rendered the spare completely useless.  So I called one of my coven sisters who lives out my way, who was happy to stop by with a jack and a tire iron on her way to the park.  Still relatively confident that this wasn't going to be that big of a deal, I waited patiently for her arrival.  I didn't even go to the trouble to get the spare out from under the van, not wanting to be dealing with that in such heavy traffic without the added shielding of another vehicle behind me.  Little did I know that this was going to turn out to be the perfect storm of problems.

She showed up with the jack and tire iron after about 30 minutes, and I proceeded to get the tire out while she started to set up the jack.  I had been told, at some point, that the way to get the tire out was to unscrew the thing holding it up from the bottom, so I laid on the ground and weaseled my way up under the van.  Wrong.  I had never needed to do anything with the spare before, and after trying and trying to unscrew this oddly shaped retainer holding on the tire, only to feel it loosen but never come off, I began to get very frustrated and really feel like there was no way this was right.  So we consulted the owner's manual, which fortunately was still with the vehicle, which is over 20 years old.  

Just a quick aside about vehicle owner's manuals...especially those for older vehicles...they are completely idiodic.  I had to fish through about 4 or 5 sections about tires and safety tips that said something along the lines of "Safety Tip: check your tire tread and pressure" before actually finding practical information about how to remove the spare.  It turns out there is a hidden bolt on the inside of the vehicle, under the carpet, that you have to turn with the tire iron in order to release the tire.  OK, at this point, I was a bit annoyed.  If only I had known that head of time, it would have saved us a good deal of time and worry, but I still thought that we'd be out of there in just a few more minutes.

We loosened the lug nuts on the tire, and some of those really put up a fight.  But we got it done and proceeded to jack up the van.  And it didn't go up far enough.  Her jack was made for her car, which is much smaller and closer to the ground, so it just didn't quite give us enough clearance.  Try as we might, we couldn't quite get the tire off, so there was no chance of getting the other tire on.  Defeated, we called yet another coven sister, who was driving a truck and had a jack for the truck.  We felt sure it would be big enough, so she packed up her things at the park and headed to our rescue.

About another 30 minute wait ahead of us, we decided to sit in her car in the air conditioning.  As I got into her car, I got stung by a bee.  Seriously?  Where the hell did that come from?  Was that really necessary?

After an otherwise uneventful wait, coven sister #2 showed up, and proceeded to get the jack out of the truck.  But it wouldn't come out.  It was stowed in a spot under the seat in the extended cab, and though it looked like it should be pretty straightforward, it just didn't want to come out.  Having been foiled by a similar situation once already, coven sister #1 and I thought to consult the owner's manual much sooner on this one, and it turned out that yes, there was a trick to it...and out it came.

We got the van jacked up, with plenty of clearance, and I slid the busted tire off.  As I turned to retrieve the spare, I heard "Whoa, whoa whoa!"  I turned back around to see that the van had rolled off of the jack.  We were on an incline that was slight enough that I didn't notice it before hand, in order to think of putting the emergency brake on, but could see it after the fact.  Fortunately, nothing was broken or anything, and we just had to start back at square one with jacking up the van.

It was about this time that a state trooper appeared, no doubt laughing to himself about 3 girls trying and failing miserably to do a simple tire change.  I guess we probably looked pretty incompetent, and I guess that I can admit that at least I was.  It wasn't because I didn't know how to change a tire.  Under other circumstances, I would have been able to do it completely on my own.  But I wasn't prepared, wasn't equipped, and wasn't familiar enough with my own vehicle.  So we ended up with things getting messed up every step of the way, and a few frazzled Witches.  But the state trooper kept the teasing to a minimum and provided some decent moral support.  

Once we got the van jacked back up (emergency brake engaged), we got the tire changed in short order, headed on to the park, and showed up closing in on 2 hours late to a handful of very patient tradition-mates and students.  We had sent word that they should start without us, but they chose not to, and it turned out to be a nice circle.  Community circles never really have the same intensity as a circle with your own coven that you meet with all the time and have developed a closer bond with.  They do, however, do their intended job and foster a sense of community amongst our local tradition members.  We had members of a couple of different covens, a solitary member, and our current crop of students in attendance, and though I entered the situation completely fried, I really enjoyed the company.

I also learned a few lessons that day...

• Be prepared for emergencies.  We have things like jacks and tire irons, but they often get moved around, and sometimes find their way out of the vehicle.  That needs to change.
• Know your own car!  I really can't believe how much easier it was to remove the spare than I thought it was, and how much time and frustration simply knowing that could have saved me.
• Even if it doesn't look like you need to, always put on the emergency brake, just for good measure.

So yeah, even though it isn't usually my style, I totally had a "bumbling girl with an automobile" moment, and sucked a couple of coven mates into it.  It's a good thing to have friends who love you enough to help out in such a sucky situation!  If not for them, I would have been completely screwed!

Point A to Point B

Slowly but surely, things are moving from point A...

To point B...

And sometimes point C...point C being our house, which I am in no way wiling to show photos of!  In spite of the fact that we're really trying not to bring much store stuff home, a little bit of it is unavoidable, and I guess because the house was already packed to the brim, just that little bit provides plenty of clutter and chaos.  But all things in due time.  We're not working with a deadline at the house.

Speaking of being packed to the brim, that store unit is just about as full as it can get.  Luckily, we have already put just about everything that's going in there in it.  It doesn't leave much wiggle room for accumulating new stuff, but I suppose if we need to we could get more creative with stacking.

With most of the stuff out of the store, and the July 15th deadline drawing closer, we are now in the process of building transformation...return everything to neutral colors, and making it suitable for the next tenant or buyer.  Although it isn't complete, the change is already pretty stark.  The difference might be worth a few photos in another post.

One the transformation is complete, leaving 118 East Main Street clean, pristine, and thoroughly bland, phase one of a multi-phase plan for the fate of Dead Man's General Store will be complete, and I'll be moving onto phase two.  A couple of months ago I was pretty prepared to skip phase two (more on phase two once it begins), but I am actually starting to develop some ideas and look forward to it. 

And for now, this is what's going on for me.  Matt and I both have been working at the store, clearing out and preparing to move on.  I've been doing the usual Tangled Woods stuff, and with the typical ups and downs, things a moving along.  We have a couple of new students, and at the end of the month I'll help a new coven get off the ground.  Things around "the land" are completely out of control, and growing faster than it can be tamed, which is typical of the summer.  And then there is the aforementioned state of the indoors.  And we are just trying to keep it all balanced.  After July 15th, it will be on to the next thing.

Sweet & Sour

Sometimes when  you do a great number of things, it leaves relatively little time for things like blogging.  Right now is a particularly weird time, because I'm in such a time of transition.  Some things are ending while others begin, and making all of those things happen smoothly requires a lot of time and a lot of work.

Since I last wrote, I've been up to the usual stuff.  I've been teaching hoop classes, working with my Tangled Woods students, working on making things for Dead Man's, and trying to keep my house in some semblance of order as things are removed from the store and have to find some place to go.  I have also started to do some work for a neighbor to bring in a little extra money, and am doing all I can to keep up with my responsibilities for the Watertown Chamber, even though my attention is really elsewhere at the moment.  I also celebrated Litha with the coven, which was fun but weird.  Litha is the summer solstice, which marks the first day of summer and the longest "day" (in terms of daylight hours) of the year.  This year, however, it was stormy and overcast.  It's always a bit odd celebrating a sun festival on a cloudy day, but the gods definitely have a sense of humor, so we try to take it all in stride!

Probably the biggest thing that has happened since my last entry is that Matt and I have begun the daunting task of packing up the store in preparation for the move.  We have been putting it off for a while, probably because it is an overwhelming task, but maybe even more so because it's a bittersweet thing to have to do.  I think we have both gone through a period of feeling a sense of defeat, and I think we both needed time to step away and process that before we could muster the motivation to jump in.  However, now that we have started, things are moving along super-quickly, and I think we are both feeling a sense of relief.  Surprisingly, having taken the plunge, there seems to be no more lingering doubt, and everything just feels positive.  There is still a lot of uncertainty about the re-opening in Nashville part of things, but this part, at least, feels absolutely right.  We had reached a point with the store where our options, basically, were to try it somewhere else or give it up entirely.  We are nowhere ready to give up on it yet, and while we have no way of knowing what giving it a shot in Nashville will ultimately mean for us, we just couldn't stick it out in Watertown anymore.  It was beginning to drain us dry...not just in terms of finances and resources, but also in terms of energy and enthusiasm.  We got a fair amount of criticism there towards the end, but whether or not it was apparent to the outside world, we know that it wasn't because we weren't working or trying hard enough.  It was like managing a 3-ring circus trying to keep a store going that not only had nothing, but that consistently lost more and more money.  And there were no more hoops to jump through...at least not that would make any difference.  We still believe that what we want to do will be powerful and well-received somewhere, and I think we'd be doing ourselves a disservice not to at least try it somewhere else, sink or swim.  We can tell that there are some people in Watertown who think we're doing the wrong thing, and that's tough.  It's always hard to stick to your guns when people are telling you you're making a mistake.  We would never be so bold as to say that we don't think Watertown will ever improve in terms of business and prosperity.  I don't even really believe that.  We just don't have the faith anymore that that change is right around the corner, and can't really wait any longer.  This isn't a hobby for us.  We are throwing literally everything we have into it, and it was starting to feel like if we didn't do something to make a change we would just be throwing it all away.

And so, ever onward we move!  I think that's why it actually feels surprisingly good to be bringing this chapter to a close.  Even though we will have a period of down time and recovery before we'll be able to re-open, it feels good to be taking some action.  It does suck to feel disenchanted with Watertown, but hopefully we have taken this step soon enough that we won't feel bitter about Watertown.  Since we don't live directly in Watertown, we won't necessarily just be there all the time, so I'm sure it will appear that we have disappeared.  And for a while, that might be the case.  Our focus really is elsewhere right now.  But one thing we'll never regret about starting Dead Man's there is the people we have met and the friends we've made, and hopefully once it's all said and done, we'll be able to stay in touch with them.

And now it's on with the rest of the day!  I have to get some work done for the neighbor, and I really need to catch up on some housework.  I also have a Chamber officer's meeting today, and a Tangled Woods coffee night at Cafe Coco this evening.  I'm looking forward to that, because I'll get to see some tradition-mates I haven't seen in a while, spend time getting to know some of our students a little better, and meet some new seekers.  After that, Matt and I are going to see Nick 13 at Mercy Lounge.  So it will be a full day!

Happy Birthday Sweet Sister...

Jacklyn Elizabeth Morris

June 22, 1982 - May 30, 2010

 

 

I think of you every day.

Love and miss you.