April 15, 2011

• Fitting

   

   

  I've been working at a very tiny library. It's part of the Catholic college affiliated with the university, and because it's relatively unknown, it's often very quiet. My shifts consist mostly of doing my own schoolwork in the office behind the circulation desk. 

  The library is two stories tall, but its first floor is in the basement of the building, and the second floor is almost like a loft - it takes up only half of the area of the upper level, and three of the four walls of the upper perimeter are lined with windows. And there are real plants--long, green vines that hang down from the second story ledge. The walls are brick and the tables are wooden and the light is always lovely. I love it most because its old and sturdy. Every other library on campus is either so new it looks like a spacecraft or has machines to do just about everything except collect your overdue fines. My job is not complicated but it's necessary, and mostly I like that I get to keep this wheezing brick box company, even if all I do is sit behind the desk and study. 

  On the second story of the library, there is a small table--big enough only for one person--tucked away in a windowless back corner. In the fall, I was sitting up there studying for a History exam and found that its tiny drawer was full of notes left by other people. It looked like the sort of thing that had been going on for ages--this written collective of conversation happening on scraps of notebook paper and the backs of old assignments. I check the drawer every time I close the library. It was pretty stagnant for a few months, but starting around January, the notes have picked up. Somebody left a handmade, cardboard-covered notebook in there, and its pages are slowly filling up. Somebody else keeps leaving tiny chapbooks of poetry and collage art. There's a typewritten card attached to one of those plastic canisters of goop that makes fart noises when you squish it. 

  I like the drawer. I'll miss the drawer. I'll miss the job, too--because I don't know where else I'll get paid $16 an hour to get my homework done and occasionally sign out a book or two. This library has always felt almost like a secret--it isn't nearly as well-known as any of the other campus libraries, and has always felt sort of special as a result, visited by the same handful of people every day and full of philosophy and C.S. Lewis and the lives of the Saints. I like that it has secrets of its own, too. The day I found the drawer, I scribbled this (attributed to Derrick Jensen, who I don't actually know very much about at all, except that he writes things) on a scrap of paper and slipped it inside: "Some of the ancient Greek philosophers called the point of life: eudaimonia. It's commonly translated as happiness, but I believe a more accurate translation would be fittingness: how well your actions match your gifts, match who you are." 
  

  There's a coffee shop I go to sometimes. It isn't my favourite place to go--or, rather, it's a place I have to visit under the right conditions. It isn't very good for studying or reading. It's okay for a coffee and a chat, but mid-afternoon is better than the evening. At night the place is ten kinds of overstimulating, with lineups at the counter that snake all the way to the front door and an assortment of smells that are nothing short of confusing when inhaled in combination, all with Beirut playing loudly enough that people at the crosswalk outside bop along to the music as they wait for the light to change. Most of the time, it's chaos.

  But I like its soft armchairs and leather couches, its fairy lights around the bar, the coffee served in giant, mismatched ceramic mugs. I like that when I sit there at the right moment on the right day, I can see that the girl at the table in front of me is marking up a block of text that's been written on a typewriter. I like that, once, I sat down  in a misguided attempt to study and the person at the next table over asked me to explain the Ukrainian folk rituals about which I was reading. And I love the bathroom. 

  I'm sure this place is not the only eating establishment in the entire world that lets its patrons and their sharpie markers have free reign of the walls of the loo--but it's the only one I know of. The walls of the Remedy bathroom are covered in scrawled black text of all sizes--a lot of it bears some sort of peace-and-love-and-self-acceptance message, but sometimes people quoted poetry or drew portraits of their best friends or asked a question beneath which would follow row upon row of responses. It makes me happy, this place with nice thoughts scattered about like confetti. Not often can I go to the bathroom and read Charles Bukowski at the same time. I like that these strange nets of kind conversation happen sometimes. I like that even though we're all too scared to sign our names, we try.  

  The last time I went there, it was February and I was meeting the poet I had been paired with as a mentor as part of this writing contest. The day sort of turned my world upside down. This contest, in general, has unexpectedly altered my priorities, drawn my attention to things I had been too scared to think about before and given me permission to be a little braver in the way that I go about doing the things that I love. It's been good. But the meeting itself was especially interesting. I don't know what to say about it that won't make me squirm with weird discomfort at repeating praise that I'm still not always sure that I deserve--but I want to say something, because it was the kind of experience where you start as a certain person and finish feeling like it's possible to be another. I was apprehensive about the whole thing. I was afraid that I'd leave feeling somehow exposed.  I have so little experience with this kind of thing--with talking about my writing as if it's more than just me kind of fooling around. I am rarely in the position to explain myself. Nobody ever even sees these things, really--and I was about to discuss them with not just a total stranger, but a total stranger who really knows what he's doing.  I was afraid I'd leave feeling stupid for even showing up. 

  This guy is the writer in residence at my university right now--which means that people show up to his office with manuscripts and ask him to read them and give feedback and so on. He told me that the poems I'd sent him were better than anything anybody had shown him all year, that even though I sounded kind of ambivalent (which I did, because I was really, really nervous and determined not to let on just how much this whole thing was freaking me out), if I wanted to pursue this, I absolutely should, and "I'm not just saying that. I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it. You are more of a poet than half of the poets I know."

  I always say that I started all of this--writing poetry,taking classes--out of curiosity, and while that's partly true, what is more true is that I started it because I felt some sort of need I couldn't quiet: a need to learn, to be taught, to practice, to produce. I couldn't not do it. And I have grown to really love it but have never felt like it was okay to take it too seriously because who on earth goes to university and pays all kinds of crazy tuition to write poems? It's the kind of thing that always gets all kinds of raised eyebrows and so I just don't talk about it. I've said this before, but although I know I shouldn't need permission, I needed permission. 

  I've been trying to make this leap in my head where I go from years of being all shy about poetry to at the very least being able to claim, confidently, that I write it. It's hard (for me, anyway) not to sandwich that kind of statement in between apologies. But I am trying. And although I can't always (or ever, really) judge the quality of the things that I write, this bit of external perspective has helped. I am good at this. I don't know what this will amount to but it will amount to something. 
  

   

   

  I have always had so much respect for the people who do what they love fearlessly and without apology, and for a while I thought that the fact that I was writing--even if I was self-conscious about it, and even if none of it ever saw the light of day--was enough. But it isn't. I've been trying, but I can try harder. My actions do not match my gifts. 

   

  h. 

  
  

  • 3:51 pm
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