Feelin' the MUD

Yesterday it rained. And rained. And rained. God knows California needs the rain but every drop washed out my mood even more. I was absolutely incapable of doing anything except drawing sappy pictures of cheerful chili peppers. I’m using a new technique – watercolor wash for basic colors & shapes, block in details with craypas on top of that, more details in watercolor on top of that. A bit tricky -- the craypas needs to be blotted carefully so chunks don’t coagulate in the wet.

The day before we’d packed up the-retail-space-formerly-known-as-the-Little-Store. This was actually much more fun than I expected it to be, mainly because Max was in a determinedly cheerful mood when he drove down to help, and I am ever easily diverted with clever banter. Several longtime customers wandered in while we were packing and labeling boxes, and that was fun too. They really cared that the Little Store was going away. I needed Max to see that – see, Max? Old Mommy DiLucchio may be crazy as a loon — actually, scratch that “may” – but people really dug the Little Store, it wasn’t all in my head –

We’d pulled out 200 or so bottles of hot sauce that I figured The Hot Sauce Liquidator wouldn’t want so I let the longtime customers have at them, gave away baskets for carrying the plunder.

“Better than Christmas,” said a twenty-something guy, rooting through the giveaways. “This was like the greatest store in the entire fucking universe. Utterly unique. It pisses me off you have to close.”

Doesn’t piss me off. Just makes me… sad…

Chileheads come in all shapes and sizes. Some are millionaires, some live out of their cars; some are PhD’s, some are high school drop outs; some wrote in Rush Limbaugh’s name on their ballots in the last presidential election, some think Obama is too conservative. What do they have in common? A spark, a sense of adventure, increasingly rare in our conveyor belt culture. In all we did 34, 347 sales over five and a half years. I’ve said it before – I feel extraordinarily privileged that I was able to touch the lives I touched in some small way. Yeah, yeah, yeah – how corny is that?

Final customer gave me a Helpful Hint for removing the linoleum chili pepper inlaid near the front door. “Bonding cement will melt if you use a hair dryer on it. Why leave it here for your bozo landlords? Get it framed.”

Not sure whether I want to go through all that trouble. I’m pretty well tapped out – it was an enormous amount of work, clearing out the store.

Afterwards I walked home. High winds heralding the incoming storm system, the lights of the harbor. One of those moments disconnected from context. You think to yourself, I’m lucky to be alive to see this…

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the
sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look
around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly
couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to
think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and
look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!

Was supposed to go back down to the space yesterday to sweep the floor one last time and deal with the hot sauce I couldn’t give away. (I was gonna take it up to the bike path with a sign: FREE HOT SAUCE. Except it’s raining again today. Seems like a shame to throw it away.) But I just couldn’t motivate myself…

After that I turn in the store keys, and after that, I file for bankruptcy. That’s what Harry Truman did after his Little Store failed. Filed for bankruptcy, embarked upon a new career in politics. I remember reading somewhere he had some success at it.

In other news… I am now an official statistic in Obama’s stimulus recovery package! I’ve been hired by the Census Bureau to ask you all sorts of embarrassing questions about your ethnic persuasion and the number of indigent non-family members living under your roof, none of which you want to answer except that you will answer because – ahem! – I am absolutely irresistible as an interviewer.

Job lasts for eight weeks. Drag in one way: pushes my departure from Monterey further into the future. I really, really, really want to get out of Monterey. Did I mention I want to get out of Monterey? Really, really. Good in all other ways though since revenue is a good thing plus it’s probably easier to write memoirs and do taxes when you’re stationary than when you’re roving with a circus caravan. I should get a shitload of green back from Uncle Sam.

The world remains a scary place, Wall Street continues to look like the Confederate Army in front of Sherman, Pakistan is ready to explode. And yet for the first time in God knows how long I feel the tiniest glimmer of hopefulness that my life may be good for something.