I love to blog. I love to write. I love words and the play of words on the lips, on paper and spoken.
So, when I find that I’m not writing, in some form or another, there’s generally one reason. And that reason, generally speaking of course, is that my thoughts have become a tangled ball and I’m searching for the one magic strand that I can pull, releasing the jumble so that it flows effortlessly through my hands, my head and my life in a smooth, straight and easy pull. This time is just like the others. Sometimes I can’t even find the tangled ball of yarn, it’s hiding beneath the couch, or in the car, or somewhere in a forgotten satchel, and the satchel is in Indiana, forgotten beneath the crumbling statues left behind. Often, I don’t even know I’m looking for the tangle until I find it.
Tonight I found the tangled mess of thoughts and I saw how it had wound its way around the whole of my life. I might not quite unravel it all in one post – I know you all don’t like to read that long! But I’d like to begin.
Some of you have actually followed the progression of my posts – and only a very few have been astute enough to follow the path, and a few have been kind enough to notice and email. On the surface, my blog has no cohesion. Okay, I can live with that. I am a librarian, I knit, I craft, I sew. I am a mother and I have a wild variety of English garden interests. Those are many, but not all of the things that I am. I am passionate about many more things; even more than those mentioned here. And that is where some of the trouble begins.
For the past few months I have made for myself a quiet commitment. That commitment has been to be more the librarian that I dream that I would be if I were working in another magical library someplace in the ethers. That library would be filled with other librarians, with students asking “hard” questions, I would be creating magnificent displays and tutorials. If only….
So, I’ve begun really doing that.
When I have students ask more one more time! to fix a printer jam, I’m taking the time to then ask them about the project that’s jammed our printer (that I even said OUR printer is really a strong indicator of the change in my attitude.) Once I find out about their projects, I’m able to ask questions, to show interest and suggest resources. I’m working on tutorials and doing all that paperwork that sometimes seems so simple and routine that I let it pile up to gargantuan proportions. I can see the results of my efforts. I can actually count the results each morning as I record the door numbers. I no longer leave that silly task for Friday knowing that the average will be the same whether I record the number daily or weekly. By recording daily, I am able to see, or at least assume with some certainty, the results of what I did the day before. Ah, yesterday I was very proactive and walked around, chatting a bit and smiling at students. I willingly worked on the printer rather than doing so in a way that no matter how I thought I protected my secret resentment, surely must have energetically jumped into my students’ being. And, the numbers were UP! My circulation has increased because I’ve been making suggestions and asking questions. I have been present.
And, I come home more tired each evening. The enthusiasm seems to have stopped at 5 PM. Why? Because when I get home, I can no longer turn off the effort it takes to not look for that ball of tangled yarn. It has been as though, somehow, if I am to be a real librarian, I cannot knit, I cannot give any energy to those other parts of myself.
It would be easy to say that the circumstances of my life are the root of the silence. Indeed, my current circumstance is quite difficult and challenging. It would probably more true to unearth some deep and engrained pattern in my thinking and my way of being. But for now, here’s just one of the small threads that I can pull.
As I become more and more enthusiastic about my work and focus more on practicing the real skills of my profession, there is less and less time for other pursuits. No. Let’s say it correctly…there is less and less time for the expression of my other pursuits here on my blog. Here’s the real truth. I received an email from a reader who indicated that she could no longer read because I am blogging about the ummm, I’ll just use my own words, about that evil, occult stuff. Now, on the surface my thought in response was, “okay, don’t read.” I am not here, or at least I have not been here, to attract some gaggle of readers or make myself a name. Right? Really? Well. Maybe not.
At the same time I am reading all “that stuff” about your individual, personal online brand. Oh no! I’ve no brand! I am all over the place and writing about the wrong things for the wrong audience!
And so, I did not write that blog post about the Fool card as I committed myself to do. Honest. I worried myself that it didn’t look very “librariany.” The phrase that comes to mind, as I finally claim the tangled ball of my own yarn is, “that sucks!” Really. That sucks. What if all my (there are hoards you know) new librarian friends stop reading that crazy, occult lady? What if my new librarian friends think my silly, not often perfect craft projects are less than professional? OR! What if I offend with my political views? What if I stumble in my expression of my social and cultural beliefs? What if I photograph the garden that I intend to grow this summer and it dies? I hope someone can see where I’m going. Cuz we’re almost there.
Yes. We’re here: The Fool card. The post I didn’t write. Look at that happy fellow! Look at how his feet land just inches away from disaster. Why isn’t he disturbed? Why isn’t he looking around and behind and below? The Fool travels light. He’s not carrying around all that concern about what others think, about whether or not he’s done the right thing or spoken the proper words. In utter and primitive innocence he goes where he must. Yes, there is more meaning, deeper and more profound meaning. But what is seen in the card changes to meet perfectly what we need to see in the moment. And for now, for me, that’s enough. And to make it all perfect I have a song stuck in my heart tonight, I haven’t heard it played. I only hear my own voice singing it in my body, “We are all innocent….”
I recall once, when I first experienced the profound reality of Confession. I said to my Confessor, “But God sees all that really ugly stuff inside of me!” I was truly humbled by the reality of my failings. “Oh yes, but God doesn’t have much time to waste on what’s ugly because the Universe is too much in love with all that’s pure, and Holy and RIGHT.” Over years I have come to see that I can only be the whole being that I am. And, most of the times that I have attempted to be crafty, to conceal what I thought should be concealed and reveal what *I* thought should be revealed when I thought I should reveal it – that I have done damage. And, the pole of that is that I have also come to realize that on at least a few occasions, when I expressed the wholeness of who I am, without doubt, without contrivance, that in innocence some thing, or some one, heard something RIGHT.
I am willing to be the Fool for now, to try on his garb, and dance in those innocent footsteps, sometimes courting disaster. And don’t you find it quite interesting that the fool card is followed immediately, not ten or twelve cards from now, by the Magus? The one I think of as the Master, the one focused with purity and singularity of purpose. Is it possible to dance between the two? It must be or one would have to leave the Fool long behind to experience the Magicaan. Instead, they are friends, traveling parallel paths, one on the footfalls of the other.
Surely there must be some occult librarian to whom I can point for justification?
I hope that made you smile.
~Lee
The librarian who knits, who sews, who tries to grow gardens, who argues with her children, makes not so wise decisions (sometimes when she knows she’s doing it too!), reads less than she likes to confess and is looking to travel light.
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