Arachne, Emends, and Tea

Like you do...

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!

I learned a new word today!  Emend.  Basically it means the same thing as amend, and has the same early French & Latin roots.  It was actually a typo in a coworker's presentation but when I looked it up, it was basically what they were trying to covey.  So.

New words! YAY!  We also ended up making up a lot of words.  Today was largely a day of meetings with a lot of words and by that point we were getting a little slaphappy with the word salad.  But it's always a good day if I learn a new word.  :)
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.

The first time I heard this story, I was talking with a professional coach about a fellow who was so busy telling me stories that we never got around to the meeting content itself because I couldn't get a word in edgewise.  In retrospect, that was his way of controlling the conversation by being the only one in control of the narrative. 

There are a couple ways one can let this play out. You can wait until the person has spilled all their tea and has an empty teacup and then have a conversation.  Or you can walk away and wait for them to come back (or not). 

Waiting and listening while they spill their tea works very well with my kiddos who are just doing brain dumps of everything on their minds to get to the point where they can hear advice again.  For people who are trying to control the narrative (among other things), it's just... those are minutes & hours of my life I don't get back.  And just No. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A business man trying to get to the next level in his business tried everything he knew of and was not making progress. He asked everyone he knew and no one could help. Finally he met someone who told him of a faraway master who could solve anyone's problem, be it love, health, business, or anything else. The man thought to himself, "I will go see this master, perhaps he can help me.

So he travelled across the sea, he travelled through the desert, he travelled through the mountains until finally he came to the master.

The master asked, "What have you come to me for?" The man explained why he had travelled so far. The master said, "You are not yet ready. Come back again when you are ready." Mystified, the man left.

He travelled back home, back through the mountains, back through the desert, back across the sea.

He went back to work, wondering what he was missing that would make him ready. He worked very hard for many months. After these months, he thought surely he was ready now.

So he gathered his travel plans, he travelled across the sea, he travelled across the desert, he travelled through the mountains, until he again came to the master.

"Master, I have returned, I believe I am ready now." The master looked into his eyes, paused, and said, "Go away. You are not yet ready." Perplexed and a little upset, the man left again.

He travelled back home, back through the mountains, back through the desert, back across the sea.

He went back to work, wondering what was missing that would make him ready. He worked very hard for many more months. After these many more months, he thought surely I am ready now.

So again, perhaps with more trepidation this time, he gathered his travel plans, he travelled across the sea, he travelled across the desert, he travelled through the mountains until he came to the master.

He said, "Master, I have returned. I believe I am ready now." The master looked into his eyes, paused, and again said, "Go away, you are not yet ready." The man said, "Master, with all due respect -- what do I need to do to be ready to even receive an understanding of the steps I must take? It is expensive and frustrating to come this far only to be told I am not ready!" The master said, "You are not ready, but let us take some tea together." The man thought, "Finally! We are getting somewhere!"

They sat down to tea. The master, as the host, bid the man, as his guest, pour himself a cup first. Then the master poured his own cup, and then reached over to pour more tea into the man's cup. The man's cup was already full though, and the tea started spilling on the table. Still the master kept pouring. The man said, "You are spilling the tea, what are you doing!?"

Still the master poured. The man jumped up and away from the table to keep the tea from spilling on his clothes, saying, "Why do you continue pouring, the teacup is full and the tea is spilling off the table!?"

The master finished emptying the teapot, sat it back on the table, leaned back and looked at the man. He looked deep into his eyes and said, "When you come to me, you cannot hear what I have to say because you come with a full mind. Until you empty your mind, you cannot hear what I have to say anymore than the teacup could accept any more tea. Anything I said would have been lost on you, like the tea on the table."

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.


I'm still working on the red and black Romney.  It's coarser that what I've been spinning for a while (which... merino/silk, silk/baby camel, alpaca/merino blends... what *isn't* more coarse?), but is really lovely to spin in a different way than the really soft yarns. 
 

And then there's this little beauty that lives in the lamp at our door. She's a beautiful garden orb weaver. Often around the time I get home, she's weaving a new web.

Some spiders eat and reweave their webs every day.  I have never seen her eating her web, but she does keep a very tidy house, well maintained, and in order.  

Which brings me to another story that I've been thinking about as I contemplate her.  Arachne.  There's always layers upon layers in mythology.  You scratch the surface and find a whole 'nother layer beneath.  

On the surface of the Arachne myth, we have a brash weaver claiming she can weave better than the weaving goddess Athena.  Athena takes offense, they have a weave off, and one or the other of them wins and one way or another Arachne ends up a spider due to her pride.  

The variation I'm really interested in right now is the one where Arachne actually wins the competition.  What lands her in a spider's body is that on her better than the best woven work is what she puts on the weaving.  She portrays all the terrible things the gods do, while Athena shows the good things they do.  When Athena inspects Arachne's weaving, she agrees that Arachne's weaving is better, but she's so infuriated by what she portrays that she strikes Arachne with a weaving shuttle and kills her. Then out of pity brings her back with an herbal concoction from Hekate as a spider.

The thing that strikes me about this telling is that yes, Arachne is kinda brash in daring to tell truth to power, but Arachne's downfall is actually the pride of Athena - Athena gets so infuriated at the challenge to her & the rest of the pantheon's pride that she kills Arachne. This is a bit of a flip on hubris - usually it's the human.

Anyway. We named the spider by the front door Eleanor. 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

Organizing things. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that defines relationships between entities.  Right now the relationship between all the things on my coffee table is... claustrophobic.  I tend to be a horizontal, proximity filer and it's sort of been piling up for a bit.

Right now the relationship between the things in my brain is... actually pretty clear. Unlike the state of my coffee table. :) 
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

New Mushroom!

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!

I saw a new mushroom this week that I'd never seen in the wild before!  It was so excite!  

I think it might be a Peziza repanda? It is, in any case, a bowl-shaped mushroom!  How it isn't entirely filled with water given that it's been pouring all week I'll never know!                                                                                                                             

Medusa's Garden

When you need every one and everything around you to just stop.

Some weeks are easier than other weeks.  Some weeks are harder. Self care requires discernment. It requires boundaries. It requires support. 

I learned some things this week that I'm trying to figure out how to integrate and how to act on. What does it mean to hold people compassionately accountable and mindfully engage? Can one mindfully engage or is it simply Faustian bargaining?   

Continual discernment is the path for one to maintain integrity. And integrity is one of the boundaries that maintains Medusa's Garden.
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

I started the red and black wool.  

It still has hints of lanolin in it, so it makes my fingers soft and shiny as I work with it.  Happily, unlike the black-dyed angora, neither the red nor the black are coming off on my fingers. We'll see what happens when I do the wash part of setting the twist.

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to make with this yarn when it's done, but I love the  bright vibrancy of these colors!  

In other news, I bought two spindles. The seller was doing a buy one - donate one for kids affected by Katrina, and they were just so beautiful! I can't wait to get them in my hands!  The truth of the matter is, I don't spin by spindle very often.  It's just so much easier to use the wheel and bobbins. I'm by no means a production spinner, but there's a... lazy efficiency to the wheel - I don't have to stop and wind on at all!  Where as with a spindle, it's continual. Still a beautiful spindle (or two) is nearly irresistible to me. :)
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

This week I've been coming to the realization that as I get older, my circadian rhythms seem to be solidifying again into the night owl.  I have always had this tendency, but there were a few years where I managed to sort of maintain an earlier night owl schedule rather than later.  Granted, it still came at the cost of significant sleep deprivation.  

These days, my hours tend towards what they've always been, but my mind and body are significantly less tolerant of sleep deprivation.  I'm feeling both fortunate and somewhat guilty about the time that I have been able to start my days. I have good intentions to start them earlier, but... I am richly rewarded with a much more pleasant commute if I sleep in a bit longer... It's hard to break a habit with a fabulous reward like that!  This is probably a topic for Medusa's Garden another time with regards to sleep and self care. :)
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

I Dance At the Edge of the World

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.” 
― Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin died this week.  She was one of the authors with the deepest influence on me. One of her books (Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places, if you must know) is so thoroughly underlined that when my husband went to read it, he opened it and was like, Why did you underline this entire book? Because it's amazing. It's all amazing. She was amazing. 

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!

What sparked my interest this week was my observation that the right answer is often not the first one, particularly for complex things.  So often we map an expectation to what we think the answer should be on the first idea that comes to us rather than taking the time to explore the edges, the soft squishy middle, and from that exploration map out several (or more) solutions and then... maybe sleep on it. Bounce the ideas off a few more people. Draw them on whiteboards.  And the right answer will start to emerge. 

Sometimes the first answer is a good enough fix to get you through, but often, going through the process of creating several solutions, and having a choice, really improves the result. 
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need everyone and everything around you to stop

“Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.

But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking....

What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?” 

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

I actually finished my wrap.  I always forget how fast it goes once the warp is actually on the loom.  It took me about a week.  While I was working on that piece, an idea for another piece started whispering in my ear, so as soon as I have time to math and warp and then get it all on the loom. 

In other news, I'm closing in on finishing the green merino and silk roving.  I have brought in the red & black Romney wool and a violet-y alpaca/merino.

There are not enough hours in the day/week for me to spend as much time working on this as I'd like. I am getting, with a couple of days of exceptions, the #spin15aday in though, so some progress.  And of course 15 seems to turn into more because that's how it goes. 

I did a dangerous thing.  I joined a facebook group that does wholesale fiber. Basically wool off the sheep.  I'd have to clean it and all the work. But.  The prices are amazing. Maybe in the summer when I don't have to dry wet wool in the house!  😬
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

Sometimes organizing things actually is not all that productive a use of time.  I look at all the beautiful bullet journals and organize-y workbook-y planning calendar-y day book-y sorts of things online and... the thing I notice is the implication of time availability.  Like - I can get the basics of the day down. I set up the next day's events the night before so I know what time I need to be out of the house, and if there are any specific tasks associated with that day. Although honestly, I just keep all the tasks for the week on one page and check them off as I go... But there are some works of daily art. On the one hand - time comes at a premium.  On the other - prioritizing the things that are important to you is a really important part of organization. What you prioritize, intentionally or otherwise, is where you end up spending time.  The thing to be aware of is the difference between prioritizing and avoidance.  ;) Are you really prioritizing the journal creation or is this something you're doing to avoid doing something else?  Things to consider.
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Math and Weaving

Our dreams recover what the world forgets.
― James Hillman

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!

What's sparking my interest this week has been that as I've been doing more spinning and weaving, I've been doing more math.  I had the thought that between women's roles in agriculture, fiber work, and needing a 28-ish day way to measure time, that I'm... I'm pretty sure women actually invented math and calendars. Calendars I'd sort of figured, but math.  I think women invented math.
 

Medusa's Garden

When you need everyone and everything around you to stop

Honestly, I've wanted time to just stop this week so I could spin and weave without the pressures of time.  The times I've sat down to do my #spin15aday have all ended up being more like 120 a day.  And weaving too, sort of similar.  Sometimes it's really important to create the space that lets your hands be busy, but lets your mind wander where it will.  

Too often I feel guilty sitting down and spinning or weaving because I feel like there are other things I should be working on... but... fibers aren't going to spin and weave and knit themselves in this house!  
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

So far so good this year! Tonight might be the first night that I miss 15 minutes of spinning, but if I get this done soon *maybe not*!  I did get the loom all warped.  I have some pictures of the process!

This is the warp - it's got an outside section and a middle section - the outside is ... blue faced leister? The bag said cotswold, but my cousin said her friend doesn't raise that kind of sheep so anyway. Good solid nice wool.  The inside yarn is merino.    It's all so soft!   It's going to be a nice wrap!

AND it turned into a nice warp after all the work I put in here...

Check it out! So far so good.  Once Imessed this part up and spent way too long trying to untangle a messed up warp.  That's no good, people.  No. Good. At. All.  

(Spoiler: This warp survives getting put on the loom, happily!  Hoorah!)

Here's the next step.  I usually work from back to front, though once I went in the other direction because... that was just how it went that time.  

You can see in the middle that there is a slight variance in color.  I'm not sure if the merino was actually run through some sort of bleaching process or not.  The outer edges were definitely left natural.  I like the faint contrast.  The weft will all be the same color as the outer edges, so it will be more subtle as an end result.

And here it is on the loom.  Yes.  My loom is a triclops.  You can't see the two googly eyes on the edges, but you can see the one in the middle! 

It's all rolling along now.  The part I like.  Getting the warp on the loom is time consuming and not my favorite part of the process.  There's a lot of bending over in awkward positions, hoping I'm keeping tension good enough, counting, recounting, counting again, and then? 

Row after row after row after row of lovely rhythmic weaving!  

I'll let you in on a little secret.  There's one strand in this warp that ended up not warped correctly, so I have to hold it down (or up) so that it's with the group of yarn it's supposed to be with.

Ah well. Sometimes that's just how things are, and it will turn out fine.  The thought of going all the way back to that point and everything that would need to be undone and redone, just really, I noped out on.

So that and spinning the green stuff from last week is what I've been working on lately.  
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

I keep a bullet journal.  Several of them, actually.  Some people call this a "dot journal" because... I guess bullets are too aggressive?  Copyrighted? I don't know. I do know this is the only consistent daily tracking I've ever managed to keep up on.  It goes through iterations, of course.  But that seems like a reasonable thing. 

When I started out, all sunshine and good intentions, I would write down the events for the upcoming day, and any tasks I had on my agenda.  At this point, I write down the events, and have the week's tasks on the next page because there's only so many times I can write something down and not actually get to it before I start getting all, why am I even doing this!? What am I doing  with my life!  It gives me some sense of at least having some idea of what's coming up the next day.  My journals aren't as pretty and arty as some people's - I don't use washi tape for each whatever's borders.  

It's possible I have a thing about calendars, day planners and journals.  I have really good intentions to sort of combine most of this into one, but... who wants to accidentally lose personal stuff at work so I have a work one, and I have a journal I like so I keep my written journalling in that one and then the bullet journal is separate, even though the whole idea is to keep everything in one... whatcha gonna do though?  So many options! 
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Epistemology, Ontology, and Spinning a Yarn

It’s all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.
― Madeleine L'Engle, Spinning a Yarn

New year, new experiments, ahoy! 
 

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!

We're onboarding some new folks at work.  In the course of discussions, some of the things that we got to discussing was how people scan content and the various ways people's brains process incoming information.  Why icons/colors/etc can lend meaning and when they contribute to information overload.  How do we convey meaning through words and help people more easily interpret what's important?  This is kind of endlessly fascinating to me. 

So we talked through how sometimes people usebolded texttodraw the eyeto theconcept wordslike I'll do in this paragraph.  We also talked about how part of the reasonicons work so wellis that youdon't spend time sounding out the wordas you're getting to theconceptual meaningbeing conveyed and so itbypasses the language centerof the brain and goes straight to the meaning center (wheeeee!semioticsin practice!). 

We also talked through what levels of detail people want - often execs just want the one line summary, while other people can be extremely detail oriented. How do you create content that helps the people who want the action item/takeaway and then they're done *and* the people who want all the gory detail of the content in the same document?  And further, how do you deal with subjective stylistic/editorial differences while enabling reuse of information across multiple documents? 

So, if you ever wondered what my day job was like... there's a tiny bit of it!  That's probably enough epistemology for now!
  

Medusa's Garden

When you need everyone and everything around you to stop

This one will be short this time - part of self care is knowing where and when to draw boundaries.  Here's the thing, and I've said this before, as have others - self care doesn't happen in isolation.  If there's no community that is available to you, that supports your absence, self care is significantly more complicated.  The ability to withdraw from regular life for rest and relaxation is a tremendous privilege.  How does your community support you in finding space to rest and recover?
 

Ariadne's Yarn: playing with threads

What I'm up to with fiber and possibly how mythology and stories all tie together.

I've been bitten by the spinning bug again.  Not that I'm not ever interested, but I definitely have years where I spin more than others.  This year, so far, feels like a year with lots of fiber potential.  And more spinning means more knitting and more weaving. I hope! :)  

To that end, I'm trying something new - I'm following along with the Instagram #spin15aday2018challenge - which is to say spin (at least) 15 minutes a day, every day in 2018.  So far so good!  From yoga and other things I know that often it's prioritizing the first 10 minutes that's the hardest part and once you have settled into a ten minute commitment, it's easy to keep going.  Getting over the inertia mountain is 95% of the battle!

So far this year, I've finished on the tahkli spindle the 0.8 ounce of neon green merino that was bought for one or the other of the girls many years ago & I was "being good because it was theirs to spin and not mine, even if they weren't getting to it." I was experimenting with the tahkli last summer to see if I could get a different and more consistent spin than I'd been able to figure out so far with it and that was the wool that was lying around and I looked at one of them preparing to head off to college, and the other preparing to head into high school and decided... whelp, they had their chance! I'm gong to take care of this and if they want more, we'll cross that bridge when we get there! 

I've also made a good dent in the 17 ounces of merino-silk blend having spun about half of the roving at this point. All the pretty green things! Where the girls' merino was a really bright solid green, this one ranges from really dark forest greens to mossy greens, to almost silvery white of undyed silk.  I like spinning this type of roving from the fold to get variegated colors, rather than trying make the color consistently blended - I feel like it doesn't show off the colors as well and they always feel sort of muddy when all of the colors just get muddled together. 

In other fiber news, I was looking at my stash of white, undyed wool and I think I'm going to throw it on the loom and make a wrap with it, so hopefully next newsletter, I'll have an update on that.  We'll see if I manage to get it warped tomorrow night and dress the loom on Saturday or Monday, I guess!  I have three different batches of white wool, so it will take some planning to do.  One batch of it is either a cotswold or blue-faced leicester or... something. My cousin bought it for me from a friend.  The bag said one thing, she said another because her friend doesn't raise cotswold and now I can't remember and... y'know - it's lovely wool, it'll be delightful.  One is entirely a mystery wool.  And then the third is white merino.  

All the fiber work I do is basically a gigantic experiment.  I do it for the joy in process and try not to focus overly much on outcome. Not that I don't frog knitting or unweave and reweave and whatnot, but "it's the journey not the destination."  So - we'll see how it goes!
 

Mythic Librarian: the art of arranging a life 

Thoughts on ontology and ways to organize a life.

Ontology - the branch of philosophy that looks at entities, if they exist, and what their relationship to other entities are.  Because apparently I am turning into the philosopher-king. 

JK - I've always been like this!

How do you arrange a life so that you are in right relation with the things around you?  Librarians spend a lot of time identifying and organizing things.  You wouldn't know it looking at my coffee table or my tea and spice drawers, BUT.  One must leave a little chaos in one's life. Moderation in all things including moderation and all.  

A really significant part of organization (and this is where I feel like there's a solid contingent of my profession who misses this point) is prioritization.  A record in the Library of Congress catalog has around 1000 fields worth of potential information about any given thing that could be documented.  Of these, only about 9 are used on most everything (title, author, subject, year of publication, publisher, and a few others), and then there is a very very long tail.  When people go to organize their lives in relation to the entities in their lives, it's sort of the same way - everyone has slightly different priorities but there is an endless set of ways in which to organize all the things and a really long tail. And tale. ;) 

My coffee table is my workspace, a document of what things are in action or need action.  From my bullet journal that sits perched overlooking it, to the papers I need to file, destroy, mail, or schedule, to books I'm reading, electronic devices, various office supplies, and candles for when I stop moving and just need to sit in silence and gaze while I listen to the sound of my own breath.

What is important to me is close to me - or at least a representative.  The loom is closer to me than the spinning wheel, but the spindle is right behind my head, representatively.  This is what is jokingly known in the library world as proximity filing (i.e., most important closest).  It is also a little bit horizontal filing (in that there are things stacked on top of other things, categorized, of course).  The books under my coffee table are vertically oriented, as Maude intended.  

Physical space is but one of many ways that one organizes a life.  The stories we tell are also a way that we organize a life.  What stories and meanings we assign to the entities also establishes them in relationship with us.  

How we organize our time is another.  And while you will be receiving this at 10am (unless I mess up again and send it out at 10pm!), it is currently a bit past 1am as I'm writing this. I must shift on to the next part of this day!
 
With love, and structure, and organization, and curiosity - may Ariadne's ball of yarn guide you through the labyrinth safely until next time!

--Susan

Happy New Year!

“The spider's web: She finds an innocuous corner in which to spin her web. The longer the web takes, the more fabulous its construction. She has no need to chase. She sits quietly, her patience a consummate force; she waits for her prey to come to her on their own, and then she ensnares them, injects them with venom, rendering them unable to escape. Spiders – so needed and yet so misunderstood.” 
― Donna Lynn Hope

It snowed over break!  Almost just the right amount... it was slippery getting up the hill, but we made it.  I'm delighted to say we're back to classic PNW drizzle & drips.  I worked through the break so didn't get as much time to do year-end wrap ups and reflection like I like to do, which left me trying to cram a bunch of stuff in the night before I went back to work.  I'm usually a night owl, but night owl + denial that there's work in the morning again already is... not a great way to get the most sleep... 

Year-end/year-ahead reflections are something I've done for about a decade.  It takes a bunch of different formats.  One of my year-end things is, honestly just getting into the holiday thing and taking joy in the various traditions I and my family have picked up along the way.  Another is a goofy list of around 48 questions that I answer every year.  The same questions, over and over.  Did anyone get married, die, have a baby... Did you travel somewhere new, did you travel internationally... Did you change jobs, change your hair, change your life... Some years I go back through all of them to see how the threads all weave together, and some years I just answer the questions.  It's interesting to see the evolution over time. 

Related to this is the year-ahead, but I don't always use the looking back as a springboard to look forward -- I don't actually think time always works that way. I don't believe what happened in the past predicates what happens in the future.  It provides some trend lines, but there are so many variables, that you never know and could end up with a surprise upend.  It's good to plan for the future, and control what you can control, but in the end, the future will unfold how it unfolds.  Not saying don't try - life is about trying.  Just - anticipate that there will be things that you simply could not have predicted or planned for.

I look-ahead in a couple of ways.  One is to just go through and list in my haphazard journal all the things that I think I'd like to do.  Where I'd like to prioritize and de-prioritize my time and attention.  Often this is my list of good intent.  An eight hour day plus one to two hours of commute time has a way of taking a big ol' bite out of my physical and emotional energy to deal with anything else.  I'm fortunate in that if I have to let someone else be my boss, at the moment, I'm doing something that suits me well. And I know that working for a big company that I'm entirely disposable. I'm never sure what's worse - to be disposable or trapped because "indispensable."  I aspire to other things though.  It's awkward territory to try to figure out something when you don't have a close model for 'how to'. Like - the life I saw modeled is sort of the life I have figured out how to have. And it's good. Aaaaand.  There is that part of me that feels the rat race, and... it makes me tired.  So, one of the things I want to do this year is continue to explore things that make me happy.  This is one of those things. Spinning is another of those things. Yoga is another of those things. Stories and mythologies, another. And so on.  There is so much that I want to do and time comes at a premium. 

Besides my list of good intentions, I do a card spread.  I have all sorts of decks that I've collected over the years. From traditional tarot to odd Jungian decks to oracle cards.  I know - that thing I said about the future up there, right? You can't predict it? It's true - and that's not how I use cards.  The way cards work for me, is they make me revisit my assumptions about the stories I'm telling myself about things.  Reality is subjective. It's like the story about the blind men who find an elephant and get into a major squabble with each other because each has only had a partial experience of a different part of the poor beast. Using cards is one way to use a different part of my brain to play with the story I'm telling myself about what's going on and seeing things from a different perspective. Often it works and I get some new insights "I hadn't thought of it that way, but this is worth considering." Sometimes, meh, not so much... because sometimes the new perspective is going to come from sitting and noodling in my head while I'm spinning, or walking, or hanging upside-down in down dog, or coloring, or out of the blue while I'm working.  

So, cards are part of my New Year's reflections. I have a Celtic Tree deck with a meditative and somewhat complex spread (which is why I only do the whole thing once a year). I've been doing this for the last 30 or so years around the New Year, looking at a matrix of storytelling perspectives about the past year, the current moment, and the upcoming year against the foundational story, the spotlight, what is being said/heard, what are the dreams (or ideals), and what are the connections that run through them. Different parts of the elephant. Different parts of the tree... And also sometimes, LOL this is so irrelevant that we're just going to move along because I'm out of evens I so can't.  If it triggers a useful insight, great. If not, that's fine too.  One of the first things my lovely therapist told me was that I didn't have to believe every story I told myself about myself. And I certainly didn't have to believe stories other people told me about me either. So I super don't have to believe the stories I find in cards unless I want to or find them useful.

All of which is quite a bit more about a thing I do than I meant to get into until it appeared. LOL!  Besides these things, there's also just taking time to feel the feels about the last year, staring at the tree, staring at candles, staring into the dying embers of a fire lit to make a room cozy while filled with all the people I love dearest in my life. Allowing the feelings of melancholy because connecting with friends & family is so often sucked away into the void of the schedule and routine of rat-raceness... that keeps a roof over my head, keeps my family fed, and helps create the elusive sense of stability that allows for the feelings of melancholy in the first place. Human brains are funny places when you start digging into them! 

I was going to write more about spinning.  There are not enough hours in the day.  A good intention is to try to spin along on instagram's #spin15challenge2018 -- spinning at least/just 15 minutes a day.  Ariel Gore says in her book Mother Trip - if something is worth doing, it's worth doing half-assed.  Ok, who can't do 15 minutes of something a day?  (Narrator: her. She was not going to spin 15 minutes that day. Mostly because that day was gone already & work was coming up and sleep is a thing, but like all things, the sun rises and it's a new day and she would try again anew... basically later today).  Like - doing something is better than nothing. 

Sometimes the thing that stops me from doing or saying something is the fear that someone will say, "who do you think you are doing THING!? There are others who do it faster/better/WAYYYbetter/knowmore/blahblahblah"  And who am I indeed?  Who cares?  I'm someone doing whatever I'm doing as only I can do it.  And maybe I'm not the bestest fastest most knowledgeable whatever whocares, I'm me. And I'm doing a thing which is, in my opinion, better than not doing a thing, even if I'm doing it however I'm doing it. Brene Brown said in a presentation, If you're not out here on the front lines with me, I don't care about your opinion. Totally on board with this.  

But back to spinning because while I've rambled enough, I'm going to say something about spinning and mythology before I stop rambling tonight.  Athena has fascinated me for a long time.  Ever since I was little and picked up a book on Greek mythology from one of those Reading is Fundamental programs.  The story of Athena and Arachne was included. Classic story warning against hubris.  Speaking of perspectives on stories and the stories we tell ourselves about reality, I have seen often enough that mythologies carry cultural values both explicit and implicit.  The explicit story in the Athena/Arachne story is that of hubris.  Turns out there was a neighboring port city near Athens, a center of significant weaving capabilities, who was a competitor to them.  The city weavers' motto was (do 🕷 you 🕸 know 🕷 where 🕸  this 🕷  is 🕸 headed 🕷 yet?) - the spider.  Which, that's a pretty straight-up explicit commercial threat too, and not so much implicit at all... I guess implicit and secret values are another story to dig into another time.  I'm going to do what I hate when others do and not provide a cite on this story tonight.  I'm sorry. It's late, I read it somewhere, and it is endless entertainment value to me to see how widely Athena & Arachne are used as internet tech names because of so many reasons (mostly the connection of tablet weaving to computers and thence to "the web"). 

So.  Happy New Year!  What do you do at the end of the year?

With love, reflection, refraction, hope for the coming year, and curiosity,
--Susan

Happy Solstice!

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

We have survived the longest night of the year!  And now the days will begin to lengthen again.  Although honestly, it never seems like the light comes back until it's a little closer to the equinox... but still and regardless -- it's the season of hibernation and the tiny seeds of light will grow, but first they need to nestle in the heart and incubate.  But  they will grow!  

What I've been thinking about a lot lately... fiber work and tradition.  Sometimes intertwined, sometimes not.  

It is the case for me that often spinning, knitting, and weaving are wonderful escapes for me.  There's something about them that anchors me to the women who came before me. It was not all that long ago that these skills were in demand because you couldn't just go somewhere and buy pre-made clothes.  And not only in demand, but matter of factly practiced because you had to get socks from *somewhere*.  I don't envy the grueling life of days gone by.  I often reflect on my fortune and privilege, and yet, there is a part of my bones, a muscle memory of working with fiber that feels right.  A connection through time to the spinners of thread, of warp and weft, of yarns fiber and tales, of labyryths, lives, and time itself.

I'm knitting the last of the fingerless gloves that go with the red and grey plaid scarf I wove, and a Santa-ish hat that I knit.  For a skill that was once so utterly necessary, it seems so... decadent now.  And  sometimes, not always, it makes me sad.  Sometimes I'm *really* glad that I don't have to knit unless I feel like it because what I really like to do is spin. Knitting (and now weaving) is what I do in order to justify buying more stuff to spin - although, I do find the process of weaving satisfying as well with the rhythm of the changing of the shed and the passing through of the shuttle. And I have the advantage that I can treat all my creations pretty much as experiments - 'what happens if I...'  I'm terrible at following patterns and recipes. Not that I don't try, but sometimes... sometimes the yarn tells me what to try just like sometimes the food tells me it needs more of something than the recipe calls for... I have patterns that I'm fond of none-the-less.  The red and grey Santa-ish hat is part of one pattern I like and part pretty much made up.  I had to frog it back once or twice when I figured out I needed to make adjustments so it would work, but work it does.  And thus it goes in my world.

When I think I wish there were a way to make a living at it, I am reminded of the weaver I saw at Folk Life every year we went for the last seven or so years.   He's retiring from weaving so much - the toll fiberwork takes on bodies is a very real thing.  More than once I've seen our local weaving and fiber supply store offer 'self care for [knitters, weavers, fiber workers] classes.  And again, I'm glad that I can do this as a joyful luxury. 

And yet and still - sometimes when I look, I can see the world knit and woven together, held together of strands of DNA, mycelium weaving the mat of the earth we walk on, trees appearing as more tightly woven together atoms than the air that swirls around them. For me, fiber work is an apt metaphor for the connectivity not only back to those who came before me, but the connectivity that connects us and the planet across the world, across the solar system, galaxy, universe.  Computers and their punchcards were born of weaving technology. Text - comes from the same roots as textiles. My (paying) job itself is interwoven with text and computers and so perhaps I am carrying on the connecting tradition of the decadent work that warms my heart, in a grand connective evolving tradition, and perhaps too, this is why fiber work resonates with me and vice versa.

That wasn't the tradition, entirely I've been thinking of, but often once you start picking at a thread, many things will come out in the unraveling of the tale... :)

The other tradition I was thinking of was that the ubiquitous "they" used to tell ghost stories and scary stories this time of year.  Andy Williams even sings of it, "There'll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for roasting, and caroling out in the snow.  There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago..."  It doesn't take long pondering why scary ghost stories might have been popular this time of year "long ago." Christmas as we know and celebrate it today is not a very old tradition.  One year we asked my Great-Aunt Bess what Christmas was like when she was little, "Ohhh, well... if it was a Very Good Year, I might get a very much treasured doll..."  Just the doll.  And thinking of how winters would be much darker then than now with our fancy incandescent lighting, and more dangerous with the cold, and medicine being in the states of learning we were at with it, it doesn't take long to get from that to more souls shedding this mortal coil in the winter, and thus more ghost stories, and the remembrances of those gone on.  After all, those who are remembered, live on...

And so, my solstice wish for you - may the returning light shed itself on ever increasing joys in your life and when tales are told around a dinner table long after you have joined what comes next, may you be remembered with fondness.

This is my last newsletter of this year - I'm taking next week off to weave in all my loose ends of this year and maybe, possibly, hopefully, plan some goodies for next year! 

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” 
― Neil Gaiman

With love, best wishes for a delightful New Year, Happy Holidays whatever you choose to celebrate, and always always always curiosity,
--Susan

In the Darkest Time of the Year

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. - Albert Camus

It is a dark and heavy time of year, the sun is so much further down on the horizon at these latitudes, darkness comes early and leaves later as well.  Where in your life do you need Isis to shine a light into the corners of your darkness?  The best way to clear out the darkness after all is to shine light into it.  As it is said, ‘tis better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.  

Now is the time to look at our own shadows, and allow our own intrinsic brightness not to overpower but to gently illuminate and guide us.  Allow us to recognize and adjust our shadow so that they too help move us in the right direction and not into despair but to face what needs facing with illumination, with courage, with truth, and with compassion.

Now is the time to find the tiny seeds of brightness, the scattered bits of joy, and start fresh -- release what once was for the new year comes! and with it comes a new call to adventure.  But before we can hear the call, we must release release release and renew and refresh and recreate - rebirth ourselves ready for whatever may come.  Re/vision ourselves for what has changed and what has to change to navigate whatever is to come next.  To care for ourselves, deeply and gently, to care for each other deeply and gently, to wrap up loose ends, and to ready ourselves for the rebirthing of the world. The recreation of the world is upon us and it will take us in all our aspects to build what needs to be built, create what needs to be created, to fight what needs to be fought, and to love what needs to be loved.

And so in this season of tiny lights in the darkness, rest and ready yourselves - the new world and the new year awaits, and it will be exactly what we make of it.

With love, many little tiny lights, and curiosity,
--Susan