Phix's Curiosity: what sparks my interest
Watch this space to see what's sparked my interest this week. A random grab bag of delights!
Heh. Honestly a big chunk of what I've been curious about this week is stashed a little later in the missive for reasons that will become apparent. :)
For now, a quote from Carl Sagan on libraries:
The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.
Medusa's Garden
When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.
This week. This week is going so fast. This month is going so fast. This year is going so fast... That's how it goes though... In the midst of it all, 'self care' is coming to mind. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, self care is a benefit of having community to pick up the slack while takes the space to do the care. Self care is a privilege. This week one of the things I've been trying to do is create space for others to do some self care - going to lunch with them, simply listening, commiserating/empathizing. It's a form of self care to create this space as well - by creating it for others, I also create it for myself via reciprocity.
Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads
What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.
Knitting, knitting, knitting. A little spinning, knitting... When I have time. I'm at the point in the wrap that I'm working on that a row is a very long time indeed and progress seems eternally slow despite the fact that I've knit quite a lot ( a hazard when one is up to ~149 stitches & adding on 12+ more each row). When rows get long, progress feels invisible. So besides that, I've also ratholed a few times in the Carmina Gadelica - a couple of volumes of old prayers, chants, stories, and whatnot pulled together at the turn of the 1900s from Ireland, Scotland (and maybe Wales?). In any case, I've been scouring it for the weaving, spinning, and like topics. For a lot of reasons, often mythologies focus on agriculture (gotta eat!), but tucked in there almost as important despite the second billing is the clothes production, which is how we end up with little bits and bites like this (translated from Scots Gaelic):
THURSDAY of beneficence,
For warping and waulking,
An hundred and fifty strands there shall be
To number.
Blue thread, very fine,
Two of white by its side,
And scarlet by the side
Of the madder.
There's a-whole-'nother chant that breaks down the pattern by which length-wise striping is laid out:
THRUMS nor odds of thread
My hand never kept, nor shall keep,
Every colour in the bow of the shower
Has gone through my fingers beneath the cross,White and black, red and madder,
Green, dark grey, and scarlet,Blue, and roan, and colour of the sheep,
And never a particle of cloth was wanting.I beseech calm Bride the generous,
I beseech mild Mary the loving,
I beseech Christ Jesu the humane,
That I may not die without them,
That I may not die without them.
And this being the turn of the last century, interspersed with the chants, etc, there are more details and explanations and whatnot that is all very interesting to the likes of me. Down the rabbit hole!
Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life
Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.
I was pondering this earlier this week. My brain automatically jumped from, l have something later on today" to "ok, what can I do to be productive between now and then?" Which translates for me into "how can I make myself useful, be of value...." And honestly, I resent tying value to productivity/usefulness. It implies the moments of stillness, of quiet observation and reflection, of going inward and thinking, of joy in doing that is not necessarily focused on outcome, daydreaming... that these things, and other things like them, are without value and I disagree. As I get older, more and more I think about what it means not to not tie value to what one can (or is allowed to) produce.
Yes yes yes, we all have to get stuff done, but assigning value and comparison of apples and oranges and... sometimes it's ok to watch the dang squirrels in the maple jumping from limb to limb, trying to remember where their nut stash is.
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!
--Susan