Living Large in La Veta

Wherein Ruthie Grace Lahti finds herself in the house of a shaman surrounded by teachings of just precisely how precarious and *let's just say dangerous* all that teetering on the edge can be. The pace if fierce. It's the kind of pace so fierce you got to put your shoulder into it.

Naturally I have no job no friends no lodging when I return to the little town of La Veta. Why would I plan ahead. Jackson's tires are bald and I suffer the first headache in decades adjusting to the altitude. I've gone from sea level to 9000 feet then back down then back up in two weeks. I'm told it's real and to drink water and rest but them's always fighting words. Besides, my initial accommodations include a concentrated amount of physical labor so there's no rest for the weary as they say. I soldier up.

It's still lovely and warm and the mountain air starts filling up my pores and I look around and recognize home. It's the wildest thing. My feet walk remembered routes; everything is completely familiar. How hard could this be.

And then it snows.

The first thing I did was unload the Jeep and set up my room. Two plus weeks on the road Lord. Just like everything fit in the Jeep, everything fit perfectly in my new room. Totes of inventory neatly stacked in the closet, clothes hung, quilts re-rolled and stacked, ready to take out into the Colorado art world. Books, little totems, my portfolios, CDs ... all tidy and organized on a shelf. 

Wasn't but say three months ago I sat on the back steps at Wolfsnare and surrendered. Dusk. Another long day, the show nearly behind me, Jeep loaded and re-loaded, attending to as many details as I could - fluids, air pressure, gas money - sales coming in dollars at a time, donations, jobs, gigs ... organizing was constant, everything kept changing. The bottlenecks astounded me, audacious with impossible odds, the days I lost working because of rain right at 85%. Which is outrageous, yes?

With odds like that the distance to surrender shortens. It's more like a fuse burning. You can sit there and watch the wick getting eaten alive by the flame. Fuck me man. What the holy fuck. Push prod plan strategize all you want. The only way I was finally able to succumb was to look at the days of the past two years, every single day of the past two years I'd spent every single minute creating, flowing through fatigue, learning to rest if even for a few minutes, learning that rest was vital to creativity, learning that resting was a gift from the gods for me to accept and appreciate.

So all those shows I didn't work because of rain. Sure it was probably 5 thousand dollars worth of work. All canceled just days or hours before of course, the nature of the work. And through it all I'd stayed focused on the LOSS, all that money I could have had! My god now what, what will I do without that money?? 

And the answer landed in my lap. What money. For what purpose. Have you ever ever run out. What would you have spent the money on. What time did you have to spend money. Where would all the crap you bought fit in the Jeep? Hunh? For fifteen months straight I worked fifteen hours a day, mostly standing, stitching and glueing and cobbing that show together. There wasn't a second to spare. No time was wasted. So how exactly again could I have fit two hundred more hours in, three hundred? Bend time a bit more?

My room in Deltaville, Virginia

My brain is on full stun mode, this picture taken days before I bolted from Deltaville, ran full steam and hard away from my brother's sad house. Just about exactly a year later he'll be dead, just boom! like that, he's gone. 

Like a trail of tears the road behind me, so many gone so fast. Bit by bit I put the pieces together, connect the dots and in doing so - in drawing the map on paper where I can see it - ah! so that's it!

This book for this part of my journey. Leaving Washington state it was "When Things Fall Apart", living wild in Phoebus it was "Eat Pray Love". It's just the way things happen to me.

Once There Was A Summer

Navigating the terrain. The drawn map helps. Pinpoint. Process Learn Let Go Move On. Forget who's wrong and right. No one cares. It doesn't matter. A lesson learned is priceless. Count your blessings.

Nights spent in the back of the art studio in Phoebus. Now that was something. The air mattress lost its air by midnight. Yes, I fell on it by 9pm. The mattress took up every inch on the floor except for a few inches for the door to open. It was a concrete box, freezing on that floor but I had a thick Gees Bend (!) quilt to sleep under. Outside my door a narrow hallway to a door that opened outward - with some effort, like a shoulder into it, because of the crap piled behind it. Sleeping in a ball of fury and genius, my host Everna Lee Taylor, a painter. Above him cigarettes burned to their quicks, the ashes drifting, the wood desk scarred with dozens of deep burns.

It never crossed my mind how I could die in there from any numerous of ways. The day after I left I returned for a few forgotten things, and the whole wall of stacked boxes - probably ten, twelve feet of heavy and precariously stacked boxes maybe 48 in all, had tumbled and crushed the air mattress completely, piled especially thick and menacingly where my head had laid all those five weeks of nights.

It was there I learned to go without showering for five weeks, how to wash up with hot soapy water from a little sink, towel under my feet against the freezing floor. It was also there that the curator from the gallery came in and told me two things: Art is your day job. Never take an art class. It was then I discovered my self-worth, realized the depth and magnitude of it. Accepted the endorsement and told everyone, instantly solidifying those who were genuine and those who were going to intently rip me apart over it.

What's the difference now? The difference is the bullies and realizing the extent of their presence and the enormity of their intent. I've got them in my sights now, can see them coming from miles away. Ha ha you fuckers. Come on and make my day.

Missy and me on her stoop. February 2017.

To be continued ...