Trying to find myself back to literature

So, almost five years on, I´m back. The blog that was supposed to be (One Sketch A Day on Wordpress) is totally gone from the internet, and I have been completely buried in studies, going for a degree in nursing, which I accomplished. I am now a certified nurse working at an old folk´s home.  During this period of going back to school I also had to go through treatment for breast cancer, which went well, considering. On top of that, my mum-in-law and my best friend Marie passed away, from old age and cancer, respectively. Oh, and two summers ago I broke both my arms. And the husband broke his leg, and had some trouble with high blood pressure. In the end, I had to take 4 months off (doctor´s orders) to just process all my stress before I could finish my final practice round. But, I reached my goal in the end.

They say that you can completely change your life in five years, and that is certainly true. Five years ago I wouldn´t even have been able to imagine the life I´m having today. The work is endlessly satisfying, but also endlessly demanding. One could easily be present and useful 24/7.

My problem right now is to find a healthy work-life balance. For so long I poured all my energy into studies and surviving, that now I find my spare time empty of meaning and connection. This leads to me thinking too much about work when I´m supposed to be resting from it. What to do?

I do miss writing. I let go of my ambition to write a novel when I decided to go into nursing, but I now find that the novel is still calling me. However, I can´t seem to even be able to read any more. Studying so hard and all the stress has somehow damaged my ability to read for pleasure, and I feel frustrated about that, since literature has always been my deepest love.

So, bottom line: I´m back blogging about reading because I need to find my way back to my love of literature. I need to get reading again.

Addicted to Reading

It has occured to me lately that I read too much and too indiscriminately. Is it possible to read too much, you ask? Well, everything can be done to excess, can´t it? But having a cocaine habit is more frowned upon than having a reading habit. Admittedly, cocain will destroy your body and possibly your soul, but injudicious reading will only waste your time. Or let´s pretend that it´s so.

Here is a prime example. This is Philip Hoare´s biography on Noël Coward, a big fat book (I had to put my hand in the picture just so you´d really see how big this thing is, totally a blunt object) I ordered from the library on a whim, after reading that Coward had been a spy during the war, trained at Bletchley Park (which is one of our favourite places to have visited). Ok, so I was in a bit of a feverish haze at the time, from the influenza. This is the danger with the internet. Have an idea, and immediately send a request to the library, buy something you want, start any process that will be difficult to reverse. Do it all from the comfort of your recliner. As we all have learned by now, twittering is best not done under the influence, and Boney M was also onto something when they sang "don´t change lovers in the middle of the night". Restraint is sometimes a good thing. Consideration, and re-consideration, is recommended.

Anyway. That bookmark doesn´t say how much I have read, it says how much I have skimmed to try and find the Bletchley Park bit. And really, what do I care about Noel Coward? Sure, I know who he was, his show "Cavalcade" was the favourite of the Mitford sisters, Pip Torrens (excellent actor) has played him on a couple of occasions, and my husbands sometimes plays his songs when he is goofing around on Spotify. But certainly my smallish interest in Coward does not justify the time it would take to read all that. Also, for a relatively new book (what, 1995?) it has aged terribly. The paper is yellow and the book smells, not a good thing for my cough, not good at all. That I still can´t just close the darn thing and send it back is probably a fair measure of my addiction.

No, I need to be more selective. I have decided to limit myself to one book a week, preferably an e-book, and spend whatever spare time I have on other things. Good things, like meditation, going to the art gallery, taking a walk in the sun. Writing [hysterious laughter]. I probably need a separate twelve-week program for this, though...

The Spiritual Bookshelf

I have been in a spiritual mood lately. My knee started hurting and I had to stay home for a week, resting it. This felt really weird, not going to work and not having a fever, severe coughing and the rest that goes with a really bad cold/flu, which is the only kind of sick leave I have experienced in my whole life. The knee turned out to be fine, through my boss I got an orthopedist to look at it and he said it was just an overexertion, gave me a shot of cortison and a few more days of rest.

I could have kissed him. And I realized how much my identity rests on the foundation of physical strength. Ok, it´s not all that I´m about, but it sure is a larger chunk of me than I had realized. Like being a practical, hands-on kind of person. Someone who has clever hands, if you know what I mean. It wasn´t always like that. As a child, I was considered the clumsy one, the one with two left hands or the-thumb-in-the-middle-of-the-hand. It didn´t take me many years of adulthood, though, to realize that this was completely not true. I also realized that growing up in a large family with lots of siblings, it´s easily done to "brand" one another and for parents to allot their children a certain stereotype.

I think it´s natural that some kind of division takes place within a group dynamic. It makes sense that different members of a group takes on different roles and divides "the labour", as it were. I have certainly, both instinctively and consciously, used different kinds of energy and behaviour in different kinds of work places and projects during my private and work life. We all do, I´m sure of it. I think we are wired to sense what is lacking in a group, and then we try to supply that, to create a balance that makes a group more viable. The important thing, though, is to realize that your role is not all you are.

I think that exploring just that, all that we are, rather than trying to "find" ourselves, as if we have some "real" core that needs discovering, is what spiritual work is about. If there is anything that needs finding, it is the courage to expand, rather than limit ourselves and make do with the role and position that was once given to us. Which too many people do. For me, spiritual work is to learn new things, whatever they may be, particularly things that are outside my comfort zone, that are perhaps not what others would expect of me. It is also to ask questions about what I´m doing, why I´m doing it, what I´m thinking, and again: why. Why, why, why. Being spiritual is to never let go of that inquisitive child you once were. That´s the part of you that you need to nurture.

In the spiritual part of my shelves, you will find some of what you might expect to find on such a shelf. A few different versions of the Bible, for sure, as I am a practicing Christian. The Koran. The Bhagavad gita. Jung. Thomas Merton. C S Lewis. All of these, and more, are friends that help me ask those questions. And a few years ago, a particularly bad year, I found that there is a whole spiritual movement connected to knitting. Which totally makes sense, if you have ever done any crafting at all.

When I´m in a spiritual mood, I will make a selection of books that feel relevant to me, that have some kind of "pull", park them on my bedside table and leave them there for a month, or until I feel finished with them. Sometimes I will deep-read one of them, sometimes I will leaf through them all. Sometimes I find something new, either at the library or at the bookstore. It´s all about finding a relevant question, one that will bring me that next step forward. It doesn´t have to be an obviously spiritual book, either. Anything will do that speaks to me.

This time, I think I have realized something about how much that which is seemingly going on around me, actually mirrors what is also going on inside me. Probably, it´s a two-way dynamic, but it has reminded me, and stressed, how important it is that I make conscious choices about what I expose myself to. Both in the sense of protecting myself against repetitive, negative stuff, and exposing myself to novel ideas and even looking at the familiar from a new and different perspective. Which takes some real consideration. And what might at one point be positive, can turn sour if it keeps you from moving on. It´s all too easy to identify with a process that´s supposed to help you on, and get stuck in it forever. (Yes, come to think of it, our ability to identify is just another thing that make us work so well in groups...)

Twelve years ago, I travelled to Gothenburg to visit the Swedish Bookfair, and one of the seminars that I remember best was about holy texts (owing to the fact that a new Swedish translation of the Bible had just been released) and how they are percieved in the three large, monoteistic religions. I will never forget the representative for the Jewish faith, he said that for the Jews, there are no holy texts. For them, studying and disputing the religious texts was a holy act. This made a great impression on me, it rang true in every way, and since then, I consider intellectual sloth to be my greatest sin. One that I sometimes need to be shaken out of, rather violently. Like with the pain of a hurting knee.

Bookmarks

I found this fun article in the Guardian, and it made me think about bookmarks. I have loads of them. Somewhere. These few on your right, I found within arm´s reach. Three are from the University bookstore at Cambridge, an example of those free paper marks that also carry information about opening hours, etc. You can get them at our local library as well. And the metal mark is also an advertising trinket from a publisher of school books.

For a while, I used a fringed leather bookmark, a souvenir someone gave me from somewhere. You know which type I mean, they sell them everywhere. It was actually rather functional, it created enough friction against the paper to stay put and not slide out of the book. But I suppose it must have eventually, because I have no idea where it is now.

Remember those bookmarks that we collected as children? Did anyone actually ever use them as bookmarks? I can´t remember doing that, or seing anyone else doing it. My mother still collects them, I think, in albums. We used to fold the pages of comic papers, like Donald Duck & Co, and fill each fold with marks. Then another collector would "dip" one of her marks in the book, and whichever mark was under that particular page would be traded for hers. I say her, because boys didn´t collect bookmarks, it was strictly a girl thing.

This is what it looks like on my bedside table most of the time. I know some book lovers think it´s bloody murder to do this to books, but I don´t really care. Most books get read once. Perhaps twice. Library books are sturdily bound. They are not that fragile.

What I am a bit sensitive about, though, is when other readers make permanent marks in the books themselves, like notes scribbled in the margins, underlinings, and such. I really puts me off my reading rhythm, and I suspect that it forces me into someone else´s perspective, when I´d rather have my own. And if I re-read a book from my own shelf, underlinings and notes from a previous reading will, I think, prevent me from discovering that book anew. People who read with pens in their hands should be banned from public libraries. I do know, however, that not everyone agrees with me on this. Perhaps they are less impressionable. I think the need to scribble while reading might be why some people are so negative towards e-books.

If I´m studying, I will read with a mico cassette recorder in my hand. I have a dication machine from the 80´s that I still use, as I learned to when I worked as a secretary. In the Dark Ages. My mother-in-law´s book hadn´t been written without it.

And what about dog´s ears? Are they abominations, or what? I´m actually not that bothered, though I don´t do them myself. Bottom line, I think it´s the words that matters, the story, the text.