While we're all sweating in this heat, the official end of summer sounds kind of nice. It hangs suspended by some fuzzy number in a vague proximity. But suddenly today, it clearly looms: September 21 means Fall means socks and shoes means the air inside us will change means explosive moments of golden leaves, quick sunsets and high altitude skies. Moments dazzle and vanish, click quick. Time passes. Now. Not now.
The marketplace likewise passes at warp speed. I bought a box of compostable biobags and was so charmed by their green-ness I wondered briefly if distributing their line would be something I could pick up on the side. So I googled them and found....of course...there are 12 online sites to see their entire line of the-new-plastic products. I'm not five or even ten years out of date, I'm at least one generation, maybe two. Yet I sit on the sidelines and observe rather than jumping in with both feet. So here I go.
Another simplification purge has settled in. There are clean surfaces and fewer objects everywhere but my studio which continues to provide a safe zone for all the someday projects. The utility room also houses a few rough-edged or heavy someday toys and I will admit there are a few outside unprotected in the 3-sided shed as well. Screen door art. Barn door hinge sculpture. I'm not afraid I'm a hoarded but clearly I have more work to do.
This morning at Nordstrom's was empty so I could have a leisurely look at Fall fashions mostly Eileen Fisher and Ralph Lauren. Almost everything is made in China with a reasonable price point compared to, say, ten years ago. Production has improved enormously with shapes and construction of higher quality than the ugly, Chinese-made garments we've come to expect in big box stores. Once again I wonder where I have been while this industry has boomed under the global economy's flag. What is the American textile industry doing, where is it, who is it and why has the word 'industry' connote underpaid, over-worked, under age labor? We don't escape our generational prejudices without effort but where is the publicity machine for what we ARE doing in America?
I guess we are the land of new ideas and we believe we can always turn a good idea into a money maker. We think we are able, capable and we are just waiting for the right opportunity. We earn enough by working a day job that we are content enough, doing well enough, that it isn't hard to be confident that opportunity is still around the corner. But we're tired, we have to live our lives, right? So we don't work on our great idea tonight or tomorrow night, we go to a movie or paint the house or move for the job and pretty soon the idea is like the opportunity; it has merged and dimmed in the imagined past.
So writing has always been one of my someday projects and here it is. Textiles occupy a different dimension. Perhaps the two worlds will collide. Boom.
