What is Your Job?

I am here to help you leave your old life behind. 

That is my job. My important job. The other one, the institution where I work, is just to earn enough to pay the bills. My real job is sometimes risky, and it can make enemies for me. I have to keep that in mind. Still, I do the work because it matters. We all need to figure out what matters in life. That’s my belief, anyway.

***

My name is Pilar, Pilar Landín. You may know me as Lavinia Rivers’ friend if you’ve read any of the other stories that are set in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. It’s true, Lavinia and I are friends, but our relationship goes beyond the usual. That is because I also know it is my obligation to help her find a new way of living. The term obligation is used deliberately, because in my line of work, if you detect that someone you know could do better in life by changing his or her path, it is a moral responsibility to help that happen.

Before I go any further, please note that I am not a spiritual advisor nor a member of the medical profession. I am also not a counselor or therapist of any sort. Another aspect of my work is the fact that I never use any sort of pressure or coercion to force a person to leave the old life behind. The change needs to be voluntary. My job is to put all the cards on the table, as it were, and let the person make the big decisions. My skill lies in knowing how to get all those cards onto the table and to get the person to think about alternatives.

You may be skeptical about this process, but it is quite effective. It is not something I do every day, because each person requires a tremendous amount of planning and research in order to gather the items needed - the thoughts, the memories, the desires, fears, all the elements that leads someone in a certain direction, often making it hard to change.

First, after I explain how I acquired this position, you ought to have a couple of examples of how I accomplished this life-changing for people in the past. After that I will begin to consider how best to help my friend. 

I inherited this job from my great-great-great-grandmother, Pilar, who was from Lugo. Pilar wasn’t very educated as far as formal schooling or training, but she had the right characteristics: she was strong-willed, never fearful, quick-thinking, sensitive to others, committed to improving what she could during her lifetime. She always found ways to be heard, and the fact that she was inevitably right meant that she could accomplish some things others couldn’t.

My ancestor Pilar refused to sit back and let women in Lugo be treated with violence. What she saw and heard would shake her to her very core. She had to act in those cases. Maybe it was something in her blood - actually, I am convinced it was - that made her do what she did. It is that same blood that runs through my veins, I am proud to say. On another occasion we might be able to look more closely at Lugo and all that it holds, but I cannot do that right now.

To be able to execute this job properly, you have to pay very close attention and keep a good focus on the person you want to help. Otherwise, you merely end up practicing a lot of mumbo-jumbo. I want to make it clear that I am not a witch. There is nothing bad about witches, don’t get me wrong, but the connotations are not always the best and I prefer not to cloud the issues.

In order to gather all the material needed in each case, careful conversation is needed. No playing private investigator, no digging up unnecessary facts. Simply observe, listen, exchange ideas. While this admittedly sounds very ho-hum, it is what is required. I have to read the person well, like we do with a book. Then I offer new ideas, or turn the old ones upside down, reposition them. Sometimes I paint pictures, scenes, in the air. Words are effective, but visuals also work.

In the first example, the person was a very angry man who was prone to losing his temper. When he did that, somebody could get hurt. My ancestor Pilar taught me that. My intention here was to help the man see what was happening, rather than watch him get hauled off to jail for his aggressiveness. We’ll call this man Brais. It wasn’t hard to encourage him to leave his old life behind. All I had to do was talk with Brais, quite a few times.

Just talk? You probably don’t believe me, but it’s true. Our discussions were broad and full of cases where somebody lost his temper. (I say his because Brais needed to see a man doing those things.) Case after case of lashing out were mentioned in our conversations, mixed in among other topics like the best bar for pintxos de lacón (cured ham hors d’oeuvres) and the best one for late-night Celtic music. Then a photo of a woman who was not Brais’ sister was brought out (by me, in a newspaper clipping I had created). The photo looked exactly like María and he was appalled by her battered body. We both agreed it was horrible.

Another time a man came who belittled, badgered, and blew up at Brais, who cringed in fear. That felt cruel, but the violence was verbal and quick. He had no time to react. We continued talking, on other occasions, and gradually the battering ram behavior Brais had always shown began to melt away. He simply hadn’t realized. You may think this couldn’t happen, but it can. Knowledge, when given the right focus, can have a profound effect on a person. Seeing and hearing are not automatic, you know. Some parents simply don’t raise their male children to be gentle. Brais eventually figured things out.

My second example is a woman who gossiped a lot, and her stories were unkind. It was easy to turn her around. One of the things that helped was to use stories about her so she could see how much words can destroy an individual. Alicia, that was her name, wanted to know why people would go to the trouble of making untrue, harsh comments. When she stopped talking, I knew she was thinking about her own gossiping habit. She stopped, immediately.

Now I think a third example would help, since you shouldn’t be thinking the life-altering capacity I have is only for correcting faults, bad traits, evil thoughts. Not so. Sometimes people are trapped in a pattern that has become a labyrinth, a muddled approach to the world. There was a mature woman who had no family and limited income. She felt sorry for herself and was basically waiting to die. She was helping herself along by not going out much and not doing much of anything.

I knew enough about this woman’s past to know she liked painting, but hadn’t picked up a brush in years, not since her husband left her. We went to the contemporary art museum and had long discussions about the works in the current exhibit. We spoke of colors and media, of sources for inspiration, and favorite artists. The woman, whose name was Marga, had a lot to say, but she kept going home and just sitting alone, waiting. For nothing.

One day I stopped by with a sketchbook and oil pastels. There were a few scribbles on a couple of pages and I asked Marga for her advice. She gave me some, but with little enthusiasm. When I left, pretending to be in a rush for a doctor’s appointment, my art materials ‘accidentally’ got left behind. Two days later, Marga contacted me, saying I was welcome to stop by and pick them up. When I arrived, the sketchbook was open to a drawing she had done. She apologized, more or less. I noticed there was another sketchbook on the table and inquired about it. Marga showed me and you can imagine the rest.

Now we come to Lavinia. She is a friend, and the other cases did not involve persons I considered to be friends, so the circumstances are different. I already know more about her. I know she is an academic, a professor, with a brilliant career ahead of her. It is also obvious that a big part of her is just going through the motions. How do I know this?

Easy. She looks concerned a lot of the time. Lavinia isn’t really outgoing, but she likes a good conversation. I see her being silent too much. She has a nice smile, but I don’t see that a lot lately, either. She places one hand inside the other, usually her right hand grips her left. Her shoulders are tight. She looks off in the distance more than she should. It’s as if she’s calculating molecules or measuring the sun’s rays, you might say.

Don’t get me wrong. Nobody else notices these details. They are not obvious. I just happen to pay closer attention because that’s what I’m good at and that’s also my job.

Maybe it’s worthwhile noting that lately Lavinia also checks her notebook or her iPad a lot. Everybody checks their phone way too much, but she rarely does. Did. Now she seems to be expecting bad news or maybe she’s worried about her research. Actually, she seems to have been getting a lot done on her project, which is studying the Galicians’ attitudes toward the American photographer who so brilliantly captured our culture a century ago.

Besides the photographer, Ruth Matilda Anderson, Lavinia has been trying to help solve a minor mystery about a box of artifacts that were unearthed in the renovations of A Tertulia, a little bar on Pombal Street here in Santiago. She has been spending more and more time on that and maybe it is interfering with her sabbatical research.

The thing is to figure out why this distraction and if it’s creating problems for Lavinia. I really don’t want that to happen.

If you ask me (and I am well aware that you have not), I think Lavinia is between a rock and a hard place. She may have two loves. She may be trying to decide which is better, more rational, more in love with her. I’m not talking about human loves, but about things or places or animals we love with all our hearts, yet we don’t know how to fit them into the spaces we’ve managed to call our lives. We find ourselves at those crossroads and the future blurs. 

That poem somebody wrote about the road less taken? It’s kind of a cliché now, but it’s serious stuff. No, I’m not going to wax poetic or philosophical, but I do think Lavinia is feeling unsure of herself. My job description - which I cannot fully reveal other than what you already know - does not include making decisions for people. They must make up their own minds. All I can do is put the old cards out on the table and let the response come from the person who may want or need to leave the old life behind.

Now remember that both the cards and the table are metaphorical, and that having a serious discussion is not always the best manner to make up one’s mind. Sometimes weaving one’s steps and threads of thoughts while moving like a shuttle moves among the fibers - sometimes that progressive, continuous, back-and-forth motion is what is the most effective. Sitting still anchors you to a spot and is essential. At the same time, spaces are meant to be entered, and the air imbibed in a single location must be renewed to avoid a lack of oxygen.

Sit still. Be quiet. Listen, watch, weep. These are required by everyone and carried out by far too few. The rock used for sitting must become soft, like wax, forming itself in the shape of its human. The being inside the rock, perhaps a moura, needs silence in order to be detected. However, even a rock, comfortable as it might be, needs contact with other things. The human, the sitter, must go out and gather things in order to return to the rock that will always be there. 

Lavinia has located a rock and it has molded itself to her in part. That process takes time. She needs more time. Rocks are very slow. My friend is also working very hard with these old streets, trying to extract what runs through crystalline veins, not red at all, just glinting and pale. She is having some success at this, but is not yet convinced that she’s doing it properly. Her mind sucks on the rain-soaked stones, swallows their minerals, understands that something is afoot (or underfoot) yet doesn’t know the full extent of what it is.

All Lavinia knows is that home is very far away, and that she doesn’t know where home actually is. Home means work or, if you wish, her profession. She is uncertain about that, too, I can tell. The photographer is one side of the rock vs. hard place situation, and solving the mystery of artifacts made by women and sent across the ocean, to be found decades later - that is the other side of the situation. She cannot understand why, but fears she will have to make a choice.

I know all this, not because Lavinia has told me. It is in the back of her eyes and in her breathing, which is moving in a direction that feels like a pilgrimage. This can happen to people from away. Not often, but it does. This is when Ariadne comes in handy. I expect I shall have to ask her to come by and lend a hand, or a thread, preferably red. That will make it easier to follow if the day happens to be all squishy and gray, as can easily happen around here.

Even a very soggy thread, if it is red, can ensure the person finds the right path, away from the monster lurking in the center of the maze, saying “Oh, you’re fine. Keep on doing exactly like you’ve always done.” The monster that resembles an enraged beast and turns us to stone because we are so afraid of it.

I will help Lavinia see that, while she might be between a rock and a hard place, some rocks are gentle and generous, offering something akin to immortality. Other rocks wall you in, acting like prisons, but they offer security in exchange for freedom. I have my own opinion on what Lavinia should do, but that is beyond the purview of my job. I cannot influence her, but I can help her shed light on what she already knows.

Knowledge, as everybody knows, as women know, is powerful. And all this discussion of light, dark, hard, gentle, knowing, saying, seeing, wanting - all this has brought to mind a few lines by Emily Dickinson. The poet is relevant because an artifact from her hand was discovered in the box from A Tertulia. There must be a reason for this coincidence and Lavinia is the one to find it.

Power

You cannot put a fire out;

A thing that can ignite

Can go, itself, without a fan

Upon the slowest night.

You cannot fold a flood

And put it in a drawer, —

Because the winds would find it out,

And tell your cedar floor.