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Burn Your Sage Stick to a Stub! the culture of not-getting-too-excited, has me, either editing the urge to contribute, or talking myself out of it. i say; these messages from the past are heard decades later; “not now, clam down, let’s call it a day, it’s time to go to bed, you can do that tomorrow.” the differences between me and someone easier to get along with are many, i bother people. i always have. I should behave better. when i was eight i stuck my fingers in birthday cakes to see what color they were. at grown-up houses i was taught good manners meant never asking about contradictions, i’ve been an observer for a long time, attempting to see what is under everything… when told not to be that way, it only made it worse… curious comments annoys people. since starting quilting, i made one hundred thirty three quilts. i love to plan designs. i love putting designs together. i enjoy handling the soft cottons seeing a big picture come together. i don’t have a lot of time. i enroll other people to help me quilt… i quilt when i can. people constantly ask, “how do you do all that?” as if there was something wrong with making more than one quilt each year… two hundred get produced each year if you’ve ever burnt a sage stick, you know, how the tip of a stick, when lit, burns as long, as you let it. i really get into it… i cover the place in smoke… walk in it… breathe it… wave it around… up and down, over and through. when done, it’s burnt to a stub! “why bother to light it, if you are not going to use it?” most people burn the stick down about a half inch. then pour water on it to save it for some other day. i never paid attention to how much stick was getting saved. i was burning mine.
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people told me things from years ago, stories i don’t remember. “remember we came over, you were smoking cigarettes, drinking wine and spitting, you told us we couldbreak icons of how holy we thought we were?” you said, “symbols were not holiness”
oh yes, i vaguely remember that February. “you took us to the mall. you asked vegetarians to eat meat, you asked AA people to drink booze, you asked sugar phobics to eat chocolate.” yes, i remembered that, slinking down in my chair.
one woman in that group was so insulted she stayed away ten years. yes, i remember. “you are rare”, they told me.“what’s wrong with me?”, i thought. i heard my mother’s voice from the past yelling, “what is wrong with you, why don’t you learn to mind your own business?”
i notice i annoy people… it is usually into a more artistic or productive expression of who they are… many have been aggravated into success. others have been bothered into making dreams come true. perhaps this is really the way everyone is? except, they took the advice and they shut up? i think so. we all want to contribute!
we all want to live fully but voices from the past, lament: “not now, calm down, let’s go to bed early, you can do that tomorrow, don’t get too excited, slow down, enough is enough.”
someone from San Francisco called. she said, “i met you fifteen years ago. i took your class on the west coast, i had never met anyone like you before, but i have since, you are extremely passionate. we need more people like you.”
passionate people are not rare, they are just walking around everywhere… being good “boys” and “girls”. all zippered up tight, like clams, hoping not to get caught.
i yell from the top of my hill, FIND SOMETHING YOU LOVE TO MAKE AND MAKE ONE HUNDRED OF THEM. turn your house into a quilt factory. put the pieces together. be who you are. stop editing the urges. stop going to bed early.
no one is going to give you a gold star
for behaving yourself, no one.
annoy people. stop being nice. stay up all night. stop shutting up when you have something to say. ask your stupid questions. invite neighbors to dinner. invite the post office to your barbecue even if they don’t come. call friends at 3 a.m. if you feel like it. pay a price for being alive.
burn your sage stick to a stub! what are you waiting for? permission? you are the only one who will give it to you!
