The Aviary

Things:

- Today, I bought a little bag of pumpkin spice caramels from the seasonal bulk candy section of the grocery store. They are amazing. I may still be wearing stupid summer clothes but at least I have autumnal candy.

- In the bookdrop this morning, we received a damaged book with a note. The note said (paraphrased), "Sorry about the damages. I will pay for them if I have to. Please don't charge me late fees." Lady, the first three pages of the book are shredded. There is no way they can be repaired in such a way as to be circulatable. Of course you are going to have to pay for the book. (Spiteful!me wants to charge you late fees as well, but that's because I'm, well, spiteful.)

- This weekend is the Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland. I am excited. I am excited both about the festival itself and about the fact that it is basically four whole days during which, except for basic transactional conversation, I don't have to talk to anyone.

- It's not that I don't like conversation, mind, but it's tiring and sometimes one wants to be left alone with one's thoughts. On solo trips, I look forward as much to the traveling itself as the destination. There is very little more soothing than a long train ride that one has made several times before, when one can ride secure in the knowledge that one will reach one's destination, that there's nothing one has to do, and no one to look after or be responsible for but one's self.

- Just had a patron call and ask to be transferred to our reference desk. I was momentarily taken aback, as the Kingston library is, y'know, roughly twice the size of my bedroom. We don't have room for a whole other desk, guys.

For the last few years, I've had a quiet little Yuletide tradition, just for myself. I don't crochet during Yule, the whole twelve days. Traditionally, one was to be done with one's spinning before Yule, in order to get Mother Holda's blessing for the work in the year to come. I don't spin (well, I own a spindle but I really suck at it) but I do crochet quite a lot and so I extrapolate the ban on spinning to a ban on yarn crafts in general. For the twelve days of Yule, I don't do them and I make sure that I'm done with my projects before Mothernight. (The projects I'm actively working on, at least. I have a sweater that I haven't touched for months that still languishes unfinished, but I don't count that.)

I have a hard time sitting still, a lot of the time. I like to have my hands occupied when I'm meant to be concentrating on something. My crocheting is an outlet for that nervous energy, as anyone who has watched tv with me for an extended period of time will tell you. 8) Being without it, even for only a short period of time, means that I have to think about being still, about concentrating fully, about listening and watching in a different way. And that's a big part of why I do it - Yule is a lot of things, all wrapped up in one big holiday season, but one of the things it's about is reflection and waiting and stillness. We wait through the longest night as we will wait through the winter, and we hope that we will come out the other side with sunlight and rejoicing. We reflect on the year that's passed - on the things we lost and the things we gained. We are still in the dark and, if we try, we can hear the voices of the gods.

Sitting still is work. So I try to sit still at Yule, and I think about Mother Holda, a goddess who knows about work and winter and stillness. I hope that she will bless my industriously empty hands.