The library approached me a couple of weeks ago to ask if I would like to read my little zine for seniors month. This library is trying really hard to kept the energy going in a building which is hidden away, unable to provide free access to the internet due to council policy (trying to protect small cafes incomes) so I said yes. Feeling slightly chuffed but scared.
This entailed constantly reading aloud for a couple of weeks prior to the event once a day and then twice a day towards the end.
Driving to the event I started getting anxiety and was coaching myself "find my centre" over and over. That wasn't working so I switched the radio on and the first words were "be still and know that I am Godde" Bless! The traffic got a bit frisky in the main drag so I was concentrating on that and when I parked I thought I don't know how to start the reading. So I just went to a dark part of the library and sat there and nothing came but the anxiety left me.
So when the people arrived they sat all scattered and far away as possible to my chair table and water. Then it just came to me I saw a quote yesterday by Tom E Lewis (Indigenous Artist) who said "its time to get close to the campfire and have a yarn". I asked everyone to gather closer and gave a brief introduction about why I wrote this zine. It went something like this. I wanted to write a little zine about ironing as its a dying art and in the future fabrics will be designed to be natural fibre and crease free and I wanted to capture the process and all the effort that women have been putting into caring for fabrics over the centuries.
It went well.
When I was walking out of the event Pastor Jerry was walking towards me and I said I have something to tell you and recounted the story and he took me in his arms and gave me a big hug which is what I need right them. So moral of this story is have time to processes the signs and trust. It worked out to be a very enjoyable interlude and the feedback about including laughing in telling was good advice.
