"Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous." ~Anais Nin

25 June 2017

Incommunicado

By Biblioteca de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias del Trabajo Universidad de Sevilla [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia
My phone is broken.  Like, broken broken.  I'm not even able to turn it on.  I have a new phone on order, but I likely be without phone service for about a week.  This wouldn't be such a big deal, except I have something like a dozen active resumés and job applications out there.  Not that I think I'll get a call from one of the offices or libraries to which I've applied—history has shown otherwise—but it could happen!  So:

ACK!  ACK ACK ACK!!!!!

It's no big deal.  It's a very big deal.  Well, it's highly inconvenient at any rate.  And I didn't need the added expense.  Seriously, I just got my credit card down to a manageable amount, and have been fantasizing about paying it off entirely within the coming month.  AND I have taxes on my car due shortly.  AND insurance.

Oh, how I wish that my phone could have held out a little longer!

It's fine.  I'm fine.  I'm annoyed, but I'm fine.

I was a late adopter of cell phones—let alone smart phones—I can go without for a bit.  It's still surprising how much I rely on the damn thing for everyday life.  It keeps my schedule, my contacts, my passwords, my life!  Now I have to go back to the way things were before I broke down and got the damn thing in the first place—relying on my memory!  Or my paper planner and address book.  Whichever.

Maybe this is a good thing.  Maybe I can use this time to break at least part of my addiction to technology.  I've actually been thinking about getting rid of my phone for a while now.  Not seriously, of course.  Just in that way we think of the mythological simpler past, you know.  I don't particularly like my life being dictated by technological connectivity after all, but must needs and all that.

So for the next week I'll be living life like it's the year 2010.  I've got my eReader, my car, and my computer to meet my tech needs, and my parents landline if anyone needs to get a hold of me.  Yikes!  Wish me luck.

09 June 2017

Time Running, Running Time

by Sandstein [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Time is a funny thing.  It ties us up, swirls around us, and moves constantly on, on, ever on and back. We can't escape it—to do so we would cease to be as we are.  We would cease to be.  Keeps us spinning, time does.  Spinning round and round and round.  Constantly moving, trying to escape the past, the future, our inevitable deaths.  Perhaps just trying to escape.  Time also finds us trying desperately to hold on to the past even when it would be healthier to let it go.  And trying desperately to grasp a future that may never be.  It pushes and pull us.  It tears us apart and brings us together.  It both heals and causes wounds.  Yeah, it's funny alright.  Funny and tragic and oh, so human.

Sometimes it feels like I've always been trying to escape.  What?  I couldn't say.  I don't really know.  There are a lot of things about myself I don't know.  A lot of things I'm not sure I ever knew, and maybe more that I've lost over the years.  Of course, there's also things that I know but I just can't access any longer.  And things that I know, but I can't admit.

How much of my life is time-locked?  How much of myself will I discover or rediscover in time?

Discovering and rediscovering myself is part of what I'm trying to do this year.  Figure out where I want to be and how to get there.  Figure out who I am and who I want to be and how to reconcile the two.  How much time will this take me?  How much of me will time take?  My whole life, is the likely answer to both those questions.

I suppose it's time to start working.

05 June 2017

Wonder and Possibilities

The Meeting of Oberon and Titania by Arthur Rackham [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
I realized today that I one of the things that I've lost through the years—whether from depression or the cynicism that comes with age, I'll never know—is my sense of wonder.  That I used to be able to look out upon the world with both wonder and expectation is something of a surprise to me, as I feel as though I've always been the way I am now, you know?  But I remember, sometimes, the wonder and the awe that I once found.  I remember the feeling that anything was possible, everything was possible.  And then something happened and I lost it.

How did I let that happen?  How did I let my life dull?  How did I let my future become something that I wasn't looking forward to seeing?  I just don't understand how I got so lost . . .

It's time to reclaim that sense that I once had.  I'm not entirely certain how to do it, but I'm going to try.  I have to try, because, for me, with wonder comes both joy and possibilities, and I so desperately need both in my life right now.

So how do you find wonder?  I'm starting–as is appropriate for a librarian–with books.  This summer I'm going to reread my favorite books from my youth.  Books I haven't read in years.  Books that made me look at the world a little differently, and made me notice things that maybe I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.  Books that changed my way of thinking about things.  Books that are filled with hope and joy and magic, at least for me.

Of course reading is not enough.  I'm going to have to do as well.  So, I'm going to explore things I haven't explored since before I wandered off to university and learned to dissect the things I loved and write about the process.  That means writing, drawing, Shakespeare, faery tales, dancing, hiking, people-watching, yoga, and music.  I was a fair hand with a violin until my last year of high school when I quit because I couldn't fit orchestra into my schedule.  I also used to draw and doodle.  And make up stories about people I saw on the street.  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  And while I have no violin and no way to afford it or the lessons I surely need now, I do have a penny whistle I bought on a lark about 10 years ago, and have been meaning to learn how to play.  Also expect more poetry to show up here, though probably not on so regular a basis as my Poetry Wednesdays from a while back.

I'm going to work on things like storytelling (that is: the telling of tales aloud), and languages (Irish and Mandarin), and make a concerted effort to be positive.  Maybe I'll take my queue from the Queen in Alice in Wonderland and try to believe in six impossible things before breakfast.  Mostly, though, I think I'll focus on what makes me happy, letting my sorrows wither from lack of attention.

I have to believe that life will work out for the best, and things happen for a reason.  I have to believe that my luck will change for the better.  I have to rediscover my dreams and find the path I abandoned for whatever reason so long ago.  To do otherwise would have me withering, and that I cannot tolerate.  I refuse to be crushed by mundanities.  I will find my wonder, my path, and I will live.  No more of this surviving crap, it's just not cutting it.

This is going to take a really long time, isn't it?  Crap.