Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Mending

Her hair was grey with red streaks, pulled back into a short messy ponytail, the shorter front hair framing her face and flopping forward occasionally.  She was bending over boxes, piling things on the too-narrow conference room table, digging into satchels, and generally presenting a frazzled, disorganized front.  But her smile was puckish, and I liked her scattered style.  I was there for free because I volunteer for NMLA, so I stepped in to help pass out materials, photocopy handouts, and generally make myself useful.  This meant I missed some of the introductory material, but it was mainly stuff I already knew:  her name and credentials, the way a book is put together, the terminology.  I have been working in libraries since 1981, and along the way you pick up some things.  Text block, check; gutter, check; leaf, check.  However, there were a lot of terms that I found very bizarre.  I would never think to call paste and tape adhesives, for example, and she had a tendency to refer to the complete book as an artifact (as in: "this artifact is poorly constructed.")  Terms like "fail" and "loss," fluttered from her like so many moths (which could be the source of the said "fail.")

To me a loss is not a hole in a page (er, "leaf"). 

But, there is a certain pleasure in the technical vocabulary.  I want to talk like that.  It's almost poetic:  find your adhesives, your cutting tools, your internally plasticized protective pouches.  Conserve those artifacts.  Hinge in those pages or tip them in, using the brush that has just the right amount of adhesive.  You swirl the brush in the glue, (er, adhesive), and you lightly strike against the edge of the page, (er, leaf), leaving beads of adhesive all down the edge.  Bop, bop, bop, I write in my notes, watching her demo this process.  It's a miniscule amount of glue, but after break she picks up the book and dangles it by the tipped-in page.  I am gobsmacked.

Each job is both unique and the same.  You look at your book and you decide:  is it worth the time and precision of the task to repair it?  CAN it be repaired?  What should I do first?  We learn that ten is the magic number for tipping in:  any more and you risk a total fail.  A TOTAL FAIL!  Complete and utter failure! You step the pages, 3 or 4 at a time, a millimeter of edge showing for each leaf, and you cover that edge in a thin layer of adhesive.  After that, you line the leaves up and pinch them together, sheathing them in wax paper and weighting them down.  In twenty minutes, you pick up the set of leaves and prepare to tip them in:  bop, bop, bop with the adhesive-filled brush, leaving a thin line of glue beads.

Before you tip in a leaf, you need to prepare its edge.  It should be a little "toothy" (aka, feathered), so you don't use the scalpel or scissors for your cutting tool.  You figure out how much paper you need to remove, because the tipped in page will stick out if you don't trim at the gutter but you don't want to trim too much.  You set a straight edge at the edge of the table.  You line the leaf along the straight edge, with the millimeter of excess hanging over the straight edge.  You pick up your abrasive (aka, sand paper file) and, in a brisk sweeping motion down and across the straight edge, you file off the edge of the leaf.  It's magic.

As I played with my new dangerous poetic tools, I thought about what I was doing.  I was mending, I was evaluating, I was repairing.  I was not curing anything though.  The goal was to be good enough, to give a little more life to the damaged artifact, let it circulate a little more.  In the end, there would be more failures, which I would be unable to repair.  And the book would be weeded, its life at an end.

So, it's a stop-gap, as so many activities are.  You decide it's worth doing, and you do it to the best of your ability, with the best of your focus.  Our conservator/teacher says she repairs the library books that she checks out, and she wonders if anyone notices.  But, that's not really the point.  She sees suffering, and she heals where she can.  It's a choice, and in the end, the choosing and the doing are what are important.

After 30 years
Of working with abused books,
I've learned how to heal.

Monday, October 19, 2015

"I pronounce you healed"

A few weeks ago, I was attending the 4th Annual Spider Reunion.  I missed the first one, the 30th Homecoming Reunion for Class of 1981, but several of us had agreed to meet annually after that.  The 2nd one was at my home in Albuquerque, the 3rd at G's family riverside home in Kentucky. This year was based in C's South Forks, Colorado, family cabin. 

It was another excellent visit, from both a vacation and a reunion point of view.  The aspen were at their peak, and the rocks at La Garita's Penitente Canyon and Creede's Bachelor Loop were awesome.  B drove her 4 wheel drive truck rental, so we were fairly intrepid until we reached the sign halfway to Wheeler Geologic region:  "Boggy road: 4 wheel drive not recommended."  That would be another way of saying, "Don't even bother."  At any rate, that was our interpretation.  Our other option was an 8-mile hike, which the literature claimed to be quicker than the road, anyway.  Not being in shape for a 16-mile slog at altitude, we turned back.

Anyway, this is not going to be a travelogue.  The road to Slumgullion Pass, with the bark beetle devastation and golden hillsides, Summitville ghost town with the tumbling grey houses and SuperFund sludge ponds, and the sandy beaches of Great Sand Dunes National Park: all are sufficiently documented elsewhere.  So is the Bloody Moon eclipse that C and I watched, along with the brilliant Milky Way, as we talked quietly of past, present, and future.  (B and her husband were still making their way down from Denver:  that night they were in Ouray, where the clouds obscured the event for them.)

For me, the main point of the trip was the farewell hug with B, who looked at me and said, "I pronounce you healed." 

It's good to hear, good to know that my friends have stopped worrying about me. But I still wonder.  Last week I was walking back from Cid's Supermarket with G.  We had been buying the fixings for salsa:  a man at the farmer's market had given me a small bag, full of overripe tomatoes, but I still needed cilantro and jalapenos. As we walked and talked, enjoying the crisp autumn weather, I found myself slipping on the gravel in a driveway that slanted across the sidewalk, landing on my left knee, hip, and elbow. 

It's at least 3 months
Since I last publicly fell down.
'Twas a graceful slide.

I tend to fall in G's company, but not exclusively.  I fell down the spiral stairs at G's during the last Spider reunion, when he was nowhere to be seen.  And the month before that I had fallen on the ferry deck, riding from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and thence to Sequim, WA.  Most recently, I had tripped on the sidewalk during the late June trip to Portland.

There is nothing physically causing these accidents, if accidents they be. I'm not dizzy;  there is no inner ear problem, no diabetes, no stroke, no broken hip.  I'm just not paying attention, distracted by anything and everything.  In each case, I've been talking to someone, excited and happy to be where I am, doing what I'm doing.  So, while I've been living in one moment, I've been ignoring other moments:  my body has been going on automatic pilot while my brain and attention have been focused on people, scenery, weather.  And apparently my body's pilot needs some watching.

But it's not just klutziness that ails me.  I find myself regularly closing down. Last month, I got queasy twice:  cold sweats, dizziness, and nausea.  Today I have flu-like symptoms.  I seem to need an inordinate amount of sleep.  I wake up grumpy.  What is going on? 

As I sit in my house robe, I ponder. Am I really healed?  Is anyone ever truly healed from the blows that life deals, from the viruses and attacks and bacteria and sorrows?  Does emotional healing lead to physical healing, or vice versa?  If I have healed emotionally, why am I still a grumpy, sleepy, queasy klutz?

Perhaps that's my basic personality, and I just have to get over myself.  Or perhaps I just need to stop berating myself for having a whiny mind in an imperfect body, because that's not all that I am. A few weeks ago I was struck dumb by the beauty of aspen on a Colorado mountain side.  I was joyful to be sharing that beauty with old friends.  And that's the flip side of my coin: a joyful mind in a sensory body.

I look out my window and watch the cottonwood, with its ancient, creased grey trunk and falling golden leaves.  I don't even have to drive up to Colorado to see beauty.  It's right in my backyard, and I don't need the ruby slippers to take me there.