Dear reader, 

While me and Katy were in the car the other day listening to NTS Radio this song came on and it was like we had never heard music before. I think it was the final piece of the puzzle to my whole life. Since hearing this song I have gone deep in the Letta Mbulu discography and am happy to report every song is a hot track. As I write this on Sunday evening it is her birthday.

Without the container of Personal Practice, my decade long dance documentation project, I don’t keep an eye out for music as much as I used to. I don’t save songs and I don’t remember to dance to them. So I spent the morning dancing to this one and dancing is so important to me. The best way to release the demons.

This weekend I taught a class about journaling and ways to use our journals for creative clarity. It was so beautiful to see all the ways we stop ourselves from what we really want, and together create conditions for what it is we do want to see in the world. The thing about teaching is I get to learn just as much in the experience.

I am also happy to report healing my PMDD continues slowly but surely. This week four has been a little rockier than the last but I taught on day 23 and 24 and wasn’t mean to myself once! I held my inner landscape with confidence and trust and that is a miracle.

What mostly came up for me was a desire to be outside more. In the forest, on the shore, in the elements. And yet, my next project container will keep me inside on some of my most cherished outside days.

What is this project you might ask? A new public space! Have Company closed almost exactly a decade ago before I moved to California where I briefly ran my public studio Center. And now a new space is emerging here in the North.

I won’t spoil too much as it unfolds, but I’m working on it with some of my oldest friends and deepest beloveds and feel energized in business in a way I haven’t in a long time. If you want to help me shape it I made a quick little survey. I love to know what the people want to see.

I continue to be surprised by the hidden costs. Thinking about building a second website, or do I hire someone else to do it, or do I just weave the online shop into my personal website to pay less a month? How separate will this space be from my current business and how much will it weave together? And damn, the cost of plywood in a post 2020 world is a hell of a lot more than it was in 2018 when we were building out Center.

I am sure my memory doesn’t serve me exactly right but I started Have Company at 24 years old with $500 of tip money in my pocket and a lot of generous artists on consignment and just went for it. I had so little debt, so little fear, no mortgage, and had no idea how to do my taxes or bookeeping or be a solvent business owner.

Today I have built and learned the skills to do business differently. To ask for help, to see where I can’t do everything by myself and at the same time surprise myself at how much I can accomplish.

In my personal life I’ve had a few instances in the last few weeks where I wasn’t invited to something and felt little kid Cody feeling really left out. I want this to be a space that the rejects can gather in. Where open hours mean open open open. Where no one is left behind. I know that takes a lot of thoughtful curation and facilitation, and something with my own set of privileges won’t be done perfectly. Buy my gay ass is gonna try!

Can I be open four days a week and make enough money or do I need to be open seven days a week? Is this mostly a quilting studio with a shop or a shop with a studio? How much to freak the tourists out and how much to lure them in and say yes, this way of living could be for you too!

I have so many questions, and just under two months to keep answering them. And then after that time I have forever to pivot, to shape shift, and to evolve into what it wants to be.

My roadside stand idea was a good one but really got squashed by the township, even after seemingly getting closer by being invited to write a letter to the planning commission. Alas, a public facing space on a high traffic side walk tucked in feels more in alignment with where I am ready to go.

Stay tuned for more! And if you’re into lightly penciling things in pencil in Saturday October 24 for a soft opening in Traverse City, MI. And don’t forget about the little survey.

Meanwhile I don’t have a formal Paying Attention To section this week but I will tell you I watched Maddie’s Secret which was one of the best and strangest films I’ve ever seen. Everything John Early touches I love. I also enjoyed the movie Leviticus and we started watching the show Furious.

I haven’t been reading much since I … drumroll please … FINISHED MY MFA LAST WEEK. That’s right : I officially have an MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. What a wild and beautiful two years. 2.5 years if you count the half semester I went to Goddard before they abruptly closed. Or the month I spent in University of Nebraska’s Quilt Studies certification program. Lets just say, it took me a minute.

How will the MFA weave into the shop? Perhaps a small press? More self publishing? I am sure I will sit there and write and talk to other people about writing and I will sell many books because I love books and it’s been so fun picking out what books and zines I want to carry.

So much on the horizon, the beautiful August horizon where the lake and the sky become one. What good fortune to be alive, what a gift.

CLASSIFIEDS : 

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