Lost in Folsom

Ignorance did not prove blissful this week. Groom and I just returned from a seven day trip participating in the Sacramento Arts Festival. Our best two shows this year were in Boise, Idaho’s capital city, and Salem, the governmental seat of Oregon. Our logic was that Sacramento, home to California’s beautiful capitol building, would round out the trifecta, making our last out-of-town show end with a big bang.

How about a less than impressive fizzle?

Fraught with tension just a few blocks away, Governor Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders were locked in a five-hour meeting spilling into Friday evening, October 1, 2010, attempting to end California’s record-long budget stalemate that has been continuing for more than 93 days.

Rumors of a hand-shake deal spread throughout the Sacramento Convention Center by 7:30pm. The show went until 9pm. In other words, a loooooooooong day.

Unbeknownst to us, government workers have been made to take Fridays off without pay, called “Furlough Fridays.” The trickle-down effect has been fast and furious.

In its 13th year, the Sacramento Arts Festival was unfortunately in the line of “friendly fire.” Without enough money to pay their bills, most people stayed home, choosing not to fork out the $15 per day parking lot charges and $7.50 entrance fees (and I thought parking in Eugene was an issue). As we were downtown four days in a row, we did not budget $60 to park our van so that stung a little. Blissless.

In its defense, the Sacramento Arts Festival is a beautiful show, one of the most diverse collections of artists and artworks under one roof that we’ve seen. With plenty of time to walk the show, it didn’t matter how many times we wandered about, there was always something new to see. The layout was great, the colors bright and the art complementary; but hardly a customer to be found.

The promoter, Warren Cook, is beloved. More artists told me that they do his shows simply because he’s Warren. He was a joy to work with and I can see why he’s so well liked and respected.

As happens at a slow show, there’s not much to do but visit with each other, so on a fonder note, we met some fun vendors. One couple from California boasted quite emphatically that Stanford was going to kick the University of Oregon’s, and therefore, our behinds during Saturday night’s big game. While he said it with humor and swagger, we kept checking the score. By 7 o’clock when the show closed for the evening, the game had not finished but Stanford was up 31-24, so the butt-kicking would have to wait until Sunday morning.

My cousin, who lives near Fresno, took a vacation day off from work and drove up to meet us. She booked a room next door in the same hotel, so we turned the weekend into a fun slumber party of sorts, staying up late, visiting and eating yummy food in our pajamas.

Perusing the Sacramento magazine in our hotel room, I noticed an ad for “the largest collection of antique shops in California.” So Cousin and I decided to play hooky from the show Sunday morning and go on the hunt for jewelry-making parts while Groom opened the booth.

What started out as a simple plan…

In spite of using her GPS, we still ended up lost, because the address given in the ad did not match the photo or the description. It was an empty building up for lease. I Googled the place on my handy dandy new Internet phone and we called the number listed. The message went to voicemail, a young girl wishing us a nice day.

While lost, we ended up in Historic Folsom, the city made famous by Johnny Cash and his 1956 trademark song, Folsom City Blues.

Early on Sunday morning, most shops were closed, but we did notice three different signs about karma, the Eastern philosophical concept of action and deed, cause and effect. Hmmmm….curious.

Walking back into the show, we encountered Mr. Stanford. As soon as he saw us, he covered his face with his hands. As the UO beat Stanford 52-31, he apologized for his arrogance and offered me a fabulous glass of wine to go with his humble pie. For you wine-bibbers out there, do I have a tip for you: Heringer Estates 2006 Petite Sirah. I finally understand descriptions like ambrosia or nectar of the gods. Aah, Bliss.

While the profits from the show were not what we were hoping for, we did get to visit with my cousin, see my parents and hang out with friends on the way home, so all was not lost.

Driving down I-5, we pulled into a rest area for a quick stop. Three nuns in full habit emerged from the vehicle next to us and proceed to amble toward the women’s room. Respectfully, I was not going to rush so that I could push ahead in line of three nuns, nope, wasn’t gonna do it. Turns out, there were four stalls, three of which had doors and the fourth one did not.

I giggled to myself, that here I was, the only other person in a room with nuns and my stall did not have a door on it. Whatever your belief, nun’s are a pretty significant symbol of religion and in the ongoing conversation with the Universe, it was not lost on me that I had an “open door.”

Hmmm, let’s quickly retrace. Getting lost in Folsom which is represented by a prison song, three signs of karma, a trinity of nuns and me with an open door. These things might make you nod off, but they certainly had the power to catch my attention, so while you’re looking at these photos, I’ll be a pondering.

The Telephone Pole

A Nun, a Pastor and a teacher from Denmark walked into our booth. Yes, I know, it sounds like the opening line of a joke, but it really happened this weekend during an Art Festival. The full force of what came out my mouth did not strike me until the late drive home. Punchy and tired, the conversation replayed in my mind and I started laughing.

Les très femmes were amusing and there was something about their demeanor that sparked my curiosity. I asked what they did in their professional lives. They said to guess and in fact, suggested that I’d never get it right.

After rising to the challenge and selecting ideas from left field, they were correct, I did not manage to guess they were women of the cloth. However, it hit me later that I asked a Nun if she was a stripper, a sniper or a pro-wrestler. Wow, another taste of my size 10 shoes.

What does this have to do with today’s theme? As I clack at the keys, I’m not sure yet, but hopefully by the time I wrap it up, something will have tickled my inspiration.

I’m currently in the car. The first thing I notice is a sign proclaiming the “Enchanted Way.” If you haven’t noticed, I’m a firm believer in signs, symbols and shiny reflective surfaces. My faith includes the notion that God, through the language of the Universe, communicates with us every day, 24/7.

Don’t worry; whether a person communicates via Klingon, text message-shorthand, or ig-Pay atin-Lay, the Universe understands all native tongues. What’s important is if we’re fluent in speaking Universe.

Messages are everywhere if we pay attention. Some are subtle and others are hard to miss. I offer a recent example. Groom and I were out for a walk this week and we were in the midst of a lively conversation about self-love when a newspaper littering the ground caught my eye. The print was small and the only word large enough to read from that distance was “PATH.”

This is my gauge of a subtle communiqué. It would have been easy enough to miss. At first blush, the newspaper appeared to be trash, but I looked anyway and saw the “PATH” ahead of me.

This well-timed word reinforced the understanding that self-love is the gateway to our path. A warm feeling came over us and our conversation sparked even more ideas. We were animatedly discussing the moment self-love gives permission to our darker, squirrelier parts and they finally feel safe enough to come out of the shadows and into the light to be healed.

Although this sounds good in theory, in practice, deformed aspects hiding in the dark tend to get blinded by the love-light when emerging. The emotions they provoke range from skittery to belligerent. Anything coming to life hurts and things that need to be healed aren’t always pretty. In other words, it can be darmn uncomfortable (Yes, darn feels too weak and damn too strong).

There is a time period when the pain is no longer hiding in the dark but it has not yet acclimated to the light. This is a freaky, shaky moment. It helps to have support and be around people who recognize what is taking place. This is exactly where we were in our conversation, so imagine our delight when we walked past a telephone pole with a white plastic window-blind hanging from it.

This is my gauge of a message that’s hard to miss. Especially when it’s hanging from a pole that was wearing a red bra last season. I’ll skip interpreting the lingerie and concentrate on the “blind.”

Whoa, hold the phone. This began with a true story about me asking a Nun if she was a stripper and a few paragraphs later I’m talking about a pole wearing nothing but a red bra. Is there a connection? My inspiration is being tickled…

Red is the color of the root chakra: The beginning, the family, the tribe, and the origin of all the stuff that needs to emerge for healing in the first place. Stripping is the peeling away of layers to get to the fleshy good stuff.

A bra holds the girls up. It is supportive. Sometimes functional, sometimes sensual. Breasts represent nurturing, mothering, nourishment and pleasure.

A pole? Well, let’s just gloss right over that and go straight for the telephone part. Fifth chakra: The throat. It’s our avenue of expression, a channel of creativity, the ability to speak up for one’s self. And full circle, we’re back to self-love.

When we don’t speak up for ourselves, we swallow anger, stifle our creativity, get sore throats and worse.

A white blind was suspended from a symbol for communication and self-care. We were talking (using our voices to communicate) about feeling blinded while healing. Um, do you suppose the Universe was communicating with us??

In stopping to look at the art installation God set in our path, we understood it was multi-layered. One of them was about moderation and control. Again, we were thinking either/or. Either hurt stays in the dark or hurt comes out into the bright light, which we already described as darmn painful.

White is the color of purity, of perfection and holiness. The white blind was showing us that we could have more control of how much we let in. We can adjust the window blind to allow our disabled subconscious critters room to adapt to the light.

We could see how we were treating the unhealed parts of ourselves like criminals, bringing them up from the holding tank and shoving bright lights into their eyes during the interrogation phase.

Like the color white, a Nun and a Pastor also represent holiness. A teacher stands for the dynamic of teaching and learning. Yes, I know, kinda obvious, but I still had to say it.

The fact that I was joking around with a trinity without self-consciousness tells me God has a sense of humor and loves it when we are simply ourselves.

Can we have a sense of humor about it all and simply love being ourselves?