In September 2023, Rob gifted me a Little Library for my birthday and it's been a source of joy and entertainment ever since.
I'm inspired by this post on the Marginalia about Little Free Library Divinations.
One day during a challenging season of being, longing for something that would turn my spiraling mind outward, knowing that a daily creative practice has always been my best medicine and that constraint is the mightiest catalyst of creativity, I decided to try applying my bird divination process to the Little Free Library, trusting the lovely way our imagination has of surprising us and, in doing so, reminding us that even in the bleakest moments it is worth turning the page of experience because the imagination of life is always greater than that of the living.
Every day for thirty days, I took a random book from the Little Free Library, opened to a random page, and worked with the text on it, making no aesthetic judgments about the literary value of the books — self-help, airport romance novels, finance textbooks, breastfeeding guides, Lemony Snicket, Tolstoy, Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and the Bible were all raw material on equal par.
As every creative person knows, and as Lewis Carroll so perfectly articulated in his advice on working through difficulty in math and in life, our most original and unexpected ideas arrive not when we strain the mind at the problem, but when we relax it and shift the beam of attention to something else entirely; it is then that the unconscious shines its sidewise gleam on an unexpected solution no deliberate effort could have produced.
After reading over the page, I would take a long walk to let the words float in my mind as I knelt to look at small things — pebbles, petals, leaves, feathers, and a whole lot of that great teacher in resilience, lichen — picking one thing up to take home. The words invariably arranged themselves unconsciously into the day’s… divination? koan? poem?… that always surprised me, always revealed what I myself needed to hear that some part of me already knew.
Upon returning home, I would place the found object under my microscope and take a photograph — cellular and planetary at the same time, itself an invitation to a shift in perspective — then begin laying out the text over the image.
"To reach the infinite in you / awaken from your dreams of perfection"
Song lyrics from the track "Awaken from Your Dreams" by the Canadian band Slocan Ramblers. The lyrics appear in the chorus of the song, which can be found on their 2019 album Ups and Downs. You can listen to the song or find official lyrics through music streaming services or explore their music on the Slocan Ramblers website. Turns out this is a Toronto-based bluegrass band. I love that!!
Also lines from a song titled "Wake Up" by Coeur De Pirate (Béatrice Martin), which was released in 2021 as part of the album "Perséides" [1, 2, 3]. Found the song, but the lyric phrase was not contained within when played.
When I dive deeper and try to find the songs on Spotify, can't do it! But I do like the artists this trail send me.
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