Hope A 7/12/15 Hope A 7/12/15

In My Backyard

So I won't even post what my front yard looks like. We have a large picture window, which offers a view from my studio space onto an exciting stage of drama. If I lay on the rug and look up at the sky I can see the tops of the three eucalyptus trees that survive the concrete plaza's offerings. But if I look right outside there is a park, a plaza really, where a bunch of folks hang out all day and a few regulars make it interesting. It is mostly harmless, folks tending to keep to them selves, with loud laughter and talking and sometimes yelling. Most people don't recognize my street name but if I name the intersection of the nearest 2 streets, most know the spot. I have a lot of complicated feelings about living here, but there are some bright spots.

This month's postcard asks you to write about your favorite spot in your neighborhood. Most Saturdays, Andy and I walk four blocks to another rowdy park, walk through a small handmade gate into an oasis. City Slicker Farms have been bringing produce, garden starts and eggs to West Oakland since 2001. The urban garden and farmstand in our neighborhood is only a part of what they do. They have a nursery a few blocks away, a backyard gardening program helping to build raised bed gardens in residential and small businesses in the community. They recently purchases a lot of land not too far away that will include a playground, and an outdoor classroom and so much more. They just completed a fundraising event for construction costs, surpassing their goal by 10%.

Our Saturday walks lead us past abandoned empty houses, families outside, newish condos, artist lofts converted from a school and to the shady corner where the farmstand is set up every Saturday. Recently, they moved the stand inside, allowing for a glimpse into the garden. Prices are sliding scale, allowing anyone to get fresh vegetables. I usually pick up some flowers too, and on the way out we stop to see the chickens. I've seen a mix of people shopping at the stand but Joseph and the volunteers will chat for a minute if you want. Two weeks ago, I gave them a copy of this month's card. If you live in West Oakland, stop in!

City Slicker Farms farm stand is open every Saturday at 10 am until they run out. Prices are on a scale and if you are able, give them a little extra. It is an amazing asset to the community.

Hope A 6/24/15 Hope A 6/24/15

Good/Better/Best

Joan Rivers appeared in an episode of Louie, as herself and offered this advice after he quit a job:

I wish I could tell you it get's better but I can't because it doesn't. But you get better.

A few weeks ago I was riding home at night, tired from a long night at work, crossing though a quiet park. I noticed two people parting ways under the light from an apartment build (that a friend's family built! I always look at it). A minute later, I saw a flash as a man ran back towards the woman he had just left and I thought that's nice, that he misses her already . But as soon as I thought that, I realized he was wrapping her in a bear hug from behind and he was shouting at her, calling her names. I stopped, shouted, asked her if she was alright. He assured me that she was, which is a surefire sign something is wrong. I rode a little closer, u-lock near my hand though not sure if I could do anything with it, shouted, "no really," and he let her go. She walked away quickly, thanked me and I offered to walk her home. Somehow my voice stayed steady, even as I kept one eye behind us. She lived close by, with roommates, and he didn't return. I rode home.

Most of the time I don't think I am brave enough to do the right thing. I want to. But too often I am quiet when I need to speak up. Part of this is because I cry easily, when I get angry or sad or when I feel very strongly about something. I have a hard time telling stories about things I care about. I am afraid that if I speak up I will just cry and not sound strong but scared. And I am scared.

I rode home, knowing that I hadn't done much but I had done something, That sometimes just being a witness, a vocal witness is enough. Sometimes you are told to mind your business. But sometimes it is enough to break the spell and do something good. I talked to her on the way home, making sure she had a place to go, asking questions and actually reeling as if I sounded reassuring, not afraid. As if the adrenaline was doing all the good things it does.

The city where I live is not safer than where I lived ten or 15 years ago. There is not less injustice or violence. Shit is still hard, harder for many folks than for me. Some things have changed these past 10 years since I moved out of my hometown and into cities and into the world of seeing what is possible, good and bad. Slowly, slowly I am finding my voice.

Hope A 6/4/15 Hope A 6/4/15

Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin

I have been listing to a lot of audiobooks the past six months. Partly because I am too tired to read at night and because I don't sit down often. Partly it replaces the television I sometimes play while binding books or folding hundreds of cards. But also it is a form unto itself, hearing the author speak the words they wrote, a rehearsed story in their own voice. I mostly listen to books ready by the author. When I realized I could borrow them for free from my library and listen to them on my phone, I found I preferred it to music while running the printing presses.

I like to browse sometimes when I am procrastinating, making a list of books I will someday listen to, so that it is easier to find something when I have hours of printing ahead, I had chosen Andre Dubus III's Townie because I read short stories by his father when I was in high school and they were one of a few books that carried me through my last months in New Hampshire, to Boston and away. I still have the collection I bought at a Barnes and Noble in 1994 with a Christmas gift card.

I guess I forgot their family ties to New Hampshire and Massachusetts, probably because at the time I had not lived anywhere else and did not long for its familiarity. But from the opening minute of Townie, I am reminded in voice and tone and words about kids I grew up with. The curse words, the this accents turning "fuck" into "fahhhck". How it is different than my dad's Boston speech, how I could hear the difference in my cousins' voices but could never articulate it. This book is dark, stories of hard times, of growing up poor and tough, in run down mill towns. These are places I knew a little as an adult, though by the time I got to Newburyport, 20 years after it appears in the book, the downtown has been spruced up, a cute movie theater played art films, the bus stopping on its way from Boston to UNH.

It is not my story or my background but I can see the similarities in some of my middle school friends. I grew up more middle class but our town was obviously divided, our middle school on the rougher side of town. My parents divorced when I was 12 or so, leaving my mom to work more, leaving us home alone. My sister's friends got drunk in the woods on school holidays but mostly we stayed out of trouble. But the trouble was there. This book is familiar as a distant possibility, as a life that would not have been mine but was just on the periphery. Even the sexism and misogyny, the testosterone driven revenge and impotent anger that wells up in response to threat to his sister or girlfriend, is part of what I grew up with.

As a story, as a piece of literature, the violence is endless and the story intertwined. But it is hard for me to separate this from my own stories, even now as I have friends in Haverhill, Massachusetts (say HAYvril) or Lowell. When the author begins a chapter about moving to an apartment in Lynn, my brain automatically repeated the rhyme my family would chant Lynn Lynn City of Sin, you never go out the way you came in... (my great Aunt lived in Lynn for a bit) and the moments later the author was repeating it. Apparently it was known outside my family.

I can't tell you if you would like this if you didn't grow up there. So here, listen to this, the accent I never got, the secret side of my hometown, one of the soundtracks to my adolescence.

I am working on a few zine, Where You From number 4, which will be stories from my hometown. Maybe this will be part of it. Maybe this is just more to think about.

Hope A 5/24/15 Hope A 5/24/15

I AM A __________

Keep Writing number 74, gold and black on grey paper

For four months this past winter and spring, I spent every weekend at a yoga studio, with 13 other people, learning about asana, anatomy and the spiritual philosophy of yoga. Now I have an entire shelf of texts to refer to, rediscover, and further explore; a binder of hand outs and class notes; and a daily practice informed by those 4 months. (oh, I also have a reason to get up at 5:30 am twice a week). Throughout my notes, I also have a scattered collection of bits of things teachers said in class that struck me--some are insightful, some are hilarious ("fart noises are funny"). Included in this was the inspiration for this month's Keep Writing postcard.

Tara Sullivan shared these words from her teachers: you are a spiritual being having a human experience. not the other way around. As someone who grew up in culture of lapsed Catholicism (we went to mass on weekend, holidays and following my parents' divorce, I have some heavy skepticism to deal with concerning religion, But it is very difficult to explore deeper meaning and history and approaches in yoga without discussion spirituality. In the way that Jesus may be studied as a historical figure, one can look at the yogic texts and culturally informative. But something in Tara's words resonated with me. They were not about a God or a religion but the idea that we are more than the sum of our skin and bones. That the light and electricity and love and magic inside of us are important and relevant. Our bodies carry us to each experience, and even in my most narrow anti-catholic views, I still was open to the idea that we are more than cells.

Am I finding god? I am not finding a religion, more that I am finding the words that make sense of things I have felt. It is fascinating to me, the ways we view our physical existence and all its possibilities.

Now that I have graduated my training and am a teacher, I want to bring some of my ideas to my practice. Which might mean more yoga-inspired postcards for you. And maybe I will start talking about it in class. It turns out that I am not the only one who wants to contemplate this idea a little longer, it is the focus for the month of May for Jivimukti teachers such as Tara. This is the teaching that inspired Tara who inspired me. I guess it is all coming around now.

Take care, y'all.

the original collage from materials provided by rani goel

Hope A 4/27/15 Hope A 4/27/15

Collaboration Station

screen print created for california independent bookstore day

Green Apple Books in San Francicso, contacted me about printing a broadside to be given away for California's Independent Bookstore Day on May 2nd. Even before I knew I would be printing something approved by John Waters I was in! Bookstores! Broadsides! and cursing!

I sent three designs, one of them featuring hand-drawn type because I like to take the most time possible before I get paid. I love this trick though, drawing type from a sample book. My lack of perfectionism means that even traced type scanned into the computer still has a rough homemade feeling. The bookstore and John Waters agreed. We settled on a pale blue paper, and black ink and I was off to The Grease Diner in Oakland, to reconnect with my screen printing skills.

If you want one of these posters, you will have to show up to Green Apple Books this Saturday, take a photo of yourself and post it to twitter, facebook or instagram with the hashtag #bookstoreday and claim one of these. And you can still get tickets to see John Waters speak on May 20th.

Also filed under "where have you been, Hope?" are these cassette covers I printed for crimewave music. Small Doses released two collections, available together or as Collection II only. Dreamy droney sometimes anxiety rattling stuff. I worked with Andy of crimewave to design these covers, based on photographs I took, and then created black and white images to print, using silver ink on black paper. They came out nicer than we could've imagined.

double cassette release from crimewave via small doses

Lastly, when my friend Emily asked me to add the outline of a grand piano for the business card for her father, neither of us could find a suitable image. So with a ruler, a decent free hand outline and some photoshop editing, we found something just right. I love printing business cards!

Hope A 4/25/15 Hope A 4/25/15

Collapse of Industrialized Society

Once a week or so, especially after a long day printing or washing dishes, I like to fill the tub with hot hot soapy bubbly water and read the fiction selection in the latest New Yorker. I might also make myself a beverage, maybe grapefruit soda and gin with a little rosewater, perhaps even drink it out of tall glass with a fat straw. When I am warm and pink and sleepy, I might get out of the tub and eat a few spoonfuls of ice cream for dinner.

Don't mistake my occasional treat as a symbol of a decadent lifestyle. I know how to enjoy myself but the realities are also crystal clear. I live in a state in the middle of a severe drought. (I skip showers and generally use an "efficient" amount of water so I can sometimes take a bath). Sometimes I look forward to the collapse of industrialized society. I am not sure how long I will last, but I am an efficient cook, with a lot of practice at one pot meal (post-Katrina Plan B kitchen, anyone? I was cooking with one burner in a bicycle shop). I can make do. I will certainly miss the warm tub of soapy water, and silly silly straws, but I will be ok with letting a lot of other things go.

Every month I print a folded card and mail it to a list of subscribers and call it the Keep Writing Project. One part of the card is for you to keep, a letterpress memento. The other half has a little story about the image, and some instructions. For April, I sent these, asking people what they will bring to the collapse of society. I post the responses here but you can also see them if you follow me on instagram, @gutwrenchhope. Oh, and if you want to subscribe, you can do on my website here or in my etsy shop .

And, if you live in the Bay Area you can come look through baskets of responses when i share them at a show at EM Wolfman's Bookstore for the month of July. There will be more special treat but you will have to wait and see.

Keep Writing number 73, mailed April 2015

Hope A 3/31/15 Hope A 3/31/15

April Desktop Calendar

Happy day, fools!

Click and download away.

Hope A 3/17/15 Hope A 3/17/15

Huckleberry Preserve

Occasionally, we get a friend's car for a few days or a few months. The transportation system is better in the Bay than residents make it sound--you can reach many places though it might take some time. It is nice sometimes though to pick a spot on the map and explore. A few weeks ago, when I think it was still snowing in Boston, we drove a little bit to explore a park near my favorite park. Huckleberry Preserve is a spot in a volcanic valley, a botanical park with a self-guided tour of unique intermingling of California species. It is only a 20 minute drive from downtown Oakland and quiet and full of wonder. Also it is an easy hike, more like a walk with incline. Nevertheless, we treated ourselves to vegan burgers afterwards.

Then, as if the day couldn't get better, we returned to my favorite cemetery in Oakland. It is large, reaching up a long hill, and there is always something new to see. We drove to the top, found a way around a fence and kept heading up, all the way to the top f the hill. Since we moved here I have been looking up at the top of this hill, thinking that's where I want to be. We made it to a concrete slab and the finest view.