I've been having some trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep this week. I was getting so good at it then all of a sudden, BAM! There's me laying in bed counting from 10-1 then from 100-1 just to focus my brain on something monotonous to quiet down my thoughts. Last night I discovered that I can count down from 100 and stray my thoughts into make believe conversations and scenarios all at the same time. I have had times in my life where sleeping was hard and I didn't even look forward to going to bed knowing of what a struggle it could be but it hasn't been much of a problem for awhile. Many times I play soft music and I find myself falling asleep before the cd is up. In fact I have a whole spindle of "sleepy" cds that I mixed and put together myself. So I ask myself, what is different this week? One major change is that I watched TV this week for the first time in many many months. I catch up on TV shows I like via the internet but I haven't been able to stand TV for longer than 20 minutes lately. I hate the commercials, the frequent commercials, the celebrity talk on almost every station, the news reporting on what it chooses and looping it over and over again... I do not have the patience anymore for it. This week however, it has been raining and gloomy and I have been feeling the weather as usual. I had finished my herb work for the day both Monday and Tuesday and instead of showering as I would usually do, I went straight to the couch and clicked the switch. Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives is what I watched both days, a couple episodes each. I like that show because all the restaurants are independently owned. Family run. Maybe the food is a bit on the heart attack side, but at least it's always home made. It is a dream of mine to own a little restaurant and sell good homemade food. The world around me, this North American Processed Crap, is over run with chain restaurants. American chain restaurants. I've been doing a great job at avoiding them and taking a stand in my life against what is destroying our bodies and our world; Destroying Nature.
"We are mass producing and torturing animals just to be slaughtered, to put meat on our plates and to keep up with high demands and cheap prices for the fast food restaurants. This is entirely unnecessary....
How does this make you feel about our current state as a whole on the planet?"
My thoughts are a never ending circle bringing everything all back to the same thing. The reason that I can't sleep this week. What it is I have really wanted to get off my chest for a while now but have not been ready. I've been touching on things here and there but never fully and completely. The reason is because there is just so many realms, so many levels, so many thoughts and feelings I can't get into all at once. I feel like a teenager again who just realized how shitty life is. Like the day I watched a video showing how chickens were shoved into tiny cages where they could not even so much as move an inch side to side, and they spent their whole lives that way. Even worse, the genetically modified ones where they became full grown in days just so that they could be consumed quicker. Oh it gets worse still, the ones grown on a line of tubing without heads. Yes that's right, we eat chickens that don't have heads because they figured out how to take out the part that was not eaten by us. That is where science led our civilization, producing chickens without heads. Forget frolicking through green pastures that's a mother fucking joke. Humans don't even frolic anymore, why should a chicken? I was a vegetarian for 4 years when I learned the brutality of the food industry (which I could go on about but there is no point anymore). I'm beginning to look at chicken again the same way I did at 14. Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe I gave in the last 10 years; gave up on trying to avoid or explain to people why I wasn't taking part in the meal. It is easier to just go along with everyone else now isn't it...
I can't sit idly by anymore. I can't see the 9-5 rush hour herd of traffic without questioning why is it that everyone works the same schedule? What makes sense to everyone else makes absolutely no sense to me. Working 9-5 everyday at a job that you hate, with people you call lazier than thou, spending another few hours commuting back and forth JUST to put a roof over your head and food in your belly. And the best part is you don't even own that roof over your head. In fact you are working your life away to pay for it, and if you can't make that last payment, the bank can just take it away from you. Therefore, you are working everyday towards a debt to the richest people who have more than you will ever have, more than your whole community will ever have, more than a whole country will ever have. Slaves were given a roof over their head and food in their belly, but at least they didn't owe any money at the end of it all. North American society is one big mind fuck.
I started making my own clothing because I watched a MuchMusic special where Sam Roberts explored the conditions of clothing sweatshops in other countries. While in college, my teacher told us how Roots (a Canadian clothing company that was made on Canadian soil by Canadians therefore employing Canadians) shut down and moved across sees. They apparently could no longer compete with other companies because everyone at that point was moving across sees for cheaper labour. She told us that we would never be able to compete in the industry unless we take the manufacturing outside our communities. Bullshit. It's not that they couldn't compete with making an earnest living against the others, it's that they couldn't compete with their profits! Profit is a disease. You make a profit and that's not good enough, you need more. You make more and that's not good enough, you need to take down and overcome anyone in your way. You have a monopoly on the entire industry and that's not enough, you buy another industry until you own Star Wars. How did it get this way? How did it become socially acceptable to exploit fellow humans? Where did it become human nature to cease and destroy? Here's another brain buster for you: Tim Horton's was bought out in 1995 by an American burger giant, yet I see Canadians loyally buy from them everyday as if they think they are helping our economy. The prices and sizes of these coffees have steadily been increasing ever since I can remember. So you have a company that is already a multi-billion dollar franchise raising prices to make even more money, why don't they lower the prices? They will still make a profit if they steadily lower the prices every year. You know why they raise the prices? Because they can get away with it. Because you will still line up every morning for a fucking coffee. Why don't Canadians see that they are being taken advantage of and take a stance? It is pathetic, I am ashamed.
I've been soul searching lately and finding answers. One theory is this: We have a balance of yin and yang, male and female, light and dark. We need both sides of the spectrum to have harmony. Consider the two poles male and female. Let me state shortly, I believe in a spectrum of male and femaleness, some males being more feminine, some females being more masculine, when I use "male and female" I am speaking in a broad term. I by no means am saying all men are like this: "me tarzan" *beating of the chest*; all woman: "I'm weak and feeble" *cowers in corner*. I am speaking of the connotations and attributes to male and female, dark and light if you please. The world has been in a very male state for a long time. Conquering lands and killing, raping and pillaging, governing and controlling, these are the fundamentals of society and are male. We so desperately need compassion in this world and that is female. We need to switch to a female consciousness to restore humanity. This idea is hard to explain, most people will have too much trouble understanding and I am not the best person to walk anyone through it.
I tried starting my own business. To not work for the man and to fight against the wrong doers. To make Canadian made clothing and offer the choice to be a conscious shopper to anyone I could reach. Maybe the clothes I made during that time just weren't good enough. Maybe I was still coming into where I should be as a creator. The problem though, is that I have never been able to make the money back that I have put into the business. Majority of people have no clue about what goes into making clothing; all the skill behind the machinery. We are all so used to being able to pay 5$ at an outlet store for a pair of pants that I could not even purchase the material for, forget about the time that goes into making it. It's not even close to being fair. It's like they (I don't know who "they" are, but if I ever find out where they live I am opening up some cans of words) made it absolutely impossible to make a living making clothing without having you send away your designs to be sewn up in a sweatshop in a country where the labour laws don't even exist. I thought maybe I could find a clientele who cared about how things are being produced, and maybe I still can, but I am out of funds to keep going on. I can't afford the booth at the trade show where less and less people are attending due to the declining economy. Do people even realize that the economy is going to shit because of manufacturing jobs being moved across seas? All that's left are jobs in retail selling the shit we don't actually need. My spirit is breaking in the process; the energy to take part in such shows is draining me bit by bit. I'm getting angry. I didn't just snap my fingers and suddenly I was able to sew. I didn't merely wiggle my nose and suddenly I could pattern draft. I worked damn hard for the last 10 years learning how to be skilled at this and now I feel my skill is not appreciated. In the short time that I had the privilege to make costumes for an exciting theater production, I became more broken than ever before. I saw a woman with the title of Head of Wardrobe drive back in forth to the mall to shop for the lead outfits, and in the end chose a $30 H&M dress. I saw another woman hired as Designer for that play tell the Head of Wardrobe to shop for said dress. I sat in the back making costumes for a children`s production of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, costumes I made the patterns for, cut out myself, and sewed it all up based on my pattern pieces. I had drafted a hood for Father Christmas and shortly after, the so called "designer" comes in freaking out about how she needs to sew up a cloak for behind the stage and it must have a hood. She was shouting about how she could not find a pattern for the hood and how would she be able to sew up this cloak without a pattern? I looked at her in disbelief and stated with all confidence "I have just drafted a hood, with my measurements, onto tissue paper, would you like to use it?" She took it hurriedly. I explained that I put in darts but if she's making an unfitting cape there is no need to sew them in which just makes things nice and simple. She goes over to the serger and tries to close the seams. Starts huffing and puffing, about to mess around with the tension, I go over and see that she forgot to put down the foot. I click it down along with her ego. It annoys me to no end that someone who merely buys clothing from a store could be called a designer. In this case, someone who sends someone else to a store to buy a dress from H&M is called a designer. And there's me, coming up with something in my head, figuring out the measurements, creating all the puzzle pieces and figuring out how to connect them all with my own brain and hands, and I am treated in that industry like mother fucking chopped liver. Who's dick did they suck? Seriously. Even when the so called "designer" does actually sew a garment, she uses a fucking store bought pattern. A pattern is already designed, and there's sewing instructions inside. All you have to do is connect the dots. I could do that before I went to school. You Are Not A Designer. McCall's or Vogue designed that jacket and H & fucking M designed that goddamn lead actress's dress in the play. How dare you call yourself a designer when for years I just called myself a seamstress. After working at the theater I suddenly had the audacity to say I Am A Designer without any doubt. I haven't been able to obtain a design job since.
I had an interview in September to create the costumes for the Santa Clause Parade. I was, am, perfect for the job. All the requirements, I have them. I have the energy, the desire, the need, the want, I have it. I didn't get the job. I cried. Again. I want to know who got the job and break knees with a bat Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan style. (I am making a bad joke here, I would never nor have I ever been violent to another living being ever in my life other than fighting with my older brother when I was a child.) It breaks a piece of my heart off every time. When the dream job is in arms reach and someone else gets it. My hopes get raised just so that they can fall; after all, what goes up must come down. I am not numb. This stuff hurts. More so as time goes on. So now I am at a point where I am looking within. I am asking myself if this is the right path for me? I wanted to design and create to enjoy my career, and it is causing me pain. I don't want to feel like a failure. I don't want others to look at me like a failure. I put all those "failure" and "giving up" notions aside, they are thoughts of the Ego. I look within. I apply the lessons I have learned. What must I learn to make it go away? I come to the gentle realization, tears rolling down my face, I am heading towards another path. I am not giving up on a dream, I am realizing a new one. It's like I've been in a relationship the last 10 years and the spark is gone. I know I still love it but there is no joy left. I have tried taking space to find the joy again and I have taken different approaches with it, all helpful but who am I kidding? The spark is gone. It is time to find a new relationship. I know the path that I am naturally heading towards, I have been being drawn towards it my whole life. It is taunting me and coaxing me and waving to me to come forth, it is time.
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.” | P3C7
-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
No comments:
Post a Comment