:SHIPPING INTENSIFIES:
Today’s workshop notes are just the most exciting thing I could be providing an update on: shipping. Woah there Bucko, settle down. I know it’s exciting, but you just need to slow your roll. Yes, I left my basement, took juniper to gymnastics, and, afterward, we shipped out a custom weaving I completed for Wapato Island Farm. You can’t imagine how long it took me to ship this weaving out. I am lucky that Jennifer was patient with me. I just have this incredible mental block with shipping stuff out. Without fail, I will dutifully finish a weaving and find myself up shizza creek as it relates to the final blessing and sending it out.
With the shipping, it makes sense to me to feel a bit blocked. You can’t really fool yourself mentally into getting jazzed about going to your local strip mall to drop off a package. I have even tried by starting a new photography series with my bikes called “beautiful bikes in slimy strip malls.” It has sorta stuck, but I still let simple logistics stuff like this get in my way of moving on with my work. Over and over again, I will just dwell on doing the shipping and push it off to the next day. I will have to create a better system to get myself moving, because my silly weaving stickers are done at the printer and I will have approximately 10-20 stickers to send out!
See, I told you that you would be excited. You look like you breaking up from anticipation on this shipping discussion. And yet, this is the whole nature of commerce. It’s full of all this tiny little tasks that are tangential to the artistic process but share your art with the world. I think I am just tired from trying to do, what seems like, a never-ending list of new logistics related to my job, being an adult, and a parent. Like I order the diapers, make sure juju has her favorite breakfast foods, accomplish my work to do list, get Winston out on his daily walks, try to stay informed politically, advocate for genocides to end. Then, with whatever time I have left on the weekend, I’m expected to tackle shipping stuff for my “business.” Yeah, it’s too much. I’m lucky if I have my pants on the right way each day, let alone get to the logistics of my business.
The magic side is always a bit more surprising to be overwhelmed by. Yet, it’s not surprising that if you are too tired to do logistics you are also too tired to do magic. To tackle this issue, I pared back my ritual complexity significantly. I didn’t need to do some humongous ritual that was in alignment with the appropriate moon cycle and planetary convergences. I think I feel pressure to do that each time. Where that pressure comes from, I have no idea. It’s likely some weird switch that gets flipped on somewhere deep in the soft matter of my brain when I know I will be paid for doing something. I leaned into my everyday magic to compensate. I have been doing a lot of daily lesser rites magic with the cloth, spraying it with its specially-made death and rebirth spritz of rose, lemon balm, and myrrh (Thanks to Hannah from Mourning Light Divination for the assist) and uttering spells over it. However, I still needed to complete one simple ritual for its blessing.
That ritual was completed one night when my spirits were high. I don’t even remember the circumstances around why I was feeling so inspired. However, I have learned that you have to strike when the iron is hot to complete magic work that you have delayed too long. I stayed up after Lily went to sleep to complete the ritual in front of the black candle light on my deathwork altar. I descended to my own personal underworld, presented the weaving to sacred death, and asked for their blessing on the rug. Specifically, I asked that the rug safely hold the folx receiving Jennifer’s medicine as they passed through their death and rebirth processes with her. With the simple blessing complete, I could rest assured that the weaving will be a safe container for all the death work it will aid.
I suppose it shouldn’t be that shocking that anything you are making for a fee could change your relationship with it. I just have always equated my own magic with anticapitalism, so I have this weird baggage that I bring over to this custom weaving work when I get surprised by capitalist values popping up. However, this isn’t necessarily something that I need to carry. Me creating a custom weaving where I am painstakingly crafting all the material, magic, and resulting fiber spell is still incredibly anticapitalist, even if I am using the market. I have just taken control of my own means of production and entered into a fair exchange with someone for the art. That, to me, is an idealized market in a future society where we are no longer reliant on large multinational corporations for everything we buy. No, we will just rely on each other and being fair with one another in much smaller markets where we have done away with corporations who require the oppression of people in far off places to make money producing more useless things.
I suppose that’s why I prefer barter when I can. Barter is always the most fair way to exchange my goods, given that a systematic change to our economic system does not seem likely anytime soon. Lucky for me, I want a lot of tattoos and many tattoo artists like my work. The current piece I am working on is a trade with Destiny Humrich, one of my favorite local tattoo artists for my warrior pika on the inside of my right shin. While this exchange isn’t going to alter the fundamental way that we run our economy, it does offer a way to operate outside of capitalism, which is a nice small respite from its pervasive impact on so many aspects of our lives. Right now, I am at about 3/4 of the way done with the piece and I am pretty in love with how it looks.
That’s all for this week. I have been only listening to American Drug Band music, like Umphrey’s Mcgee and Squeaky Feet, so I am not gonna force you to listen to my compilation of best crunchy jams from 2024 thus far. If you want that, comment below, and I will make something happen.
Until next time, dear reader,
James
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It’s so interesting how we all have our own different blocks and digging into the roots of it. I absolutely loved shipping my orders! Haha! But Etsy made it super easy - the one thing that didn’t cause me agony on that site. I had the most difficulty creating my listings once my rosary or herbal product was complete. It took me forever with much lamenting.