Bluebeard and Wolves

Thanks to the gift of this wonderful person I have found my long lost craving for words again and I started reading books and actually finish them instead of giving up when I only have 35 more pages to go... But I believe there is a difference in just reading a book for entertainment value or actually taking in each and every written word, consuming the deeper meaning and trying to read the message between the lines. Perhaps it's the kind of books that I like to read which make me look for the deeper meaning, I don't know. I don't read 'simple' books and I guess because I seem to be a complicated kind of woman I like my books complicated as well. The books that I read these days and that I used to read in the past, you would mostly find in the psychology section of a library, on the other hand, I also had a SF phase when I was 12 years old...

My love for reading came at an early age, I was eight years old when my level of reading was exceptionally good for a child my age. Twice a year we had to do a reading test where a government-sent stranger would come into school and call the pupils one by one to sit down in front of him or her at a small desk at the end of the long corridor. Where you had to start reading out loud long lists of words, as many as you could within three minutes. Words that were hard to pronounce, with more than three syllables, words that an eight year old didn't understand yet. One by one you would have to leave the classroom, walk towards the stranger waiting for you to deliver, which was threatening in a way. And because my results were good, the teacher wanted me to go to another classroom each Friday to sit and read with the nine/ten year old kids.

It was a frightening and exciting experience whenever Friday came around and I was asked to leave the classroom at a certain hour to read with the other kids two doors further down the corridor. It's scary at that age to walk into a room with kids that are one or two years older and staring at you, kids that you normally don't even talk to or play with. You see, my elder brother was in that class too so it all felt a bit weird to me. Each and every pupil had their own desk to keep their own books, pencils etc. it would be your desk assigned to you for a whole year. So I would be sitting at a desk that wasn't taken by one of the pupils, a spare desk close to the teacher. Children were asked to read a few pages out loud taking turns and from what I can remember reading class was about two hours so it was very likely that I had my turn as well...

In those days it wasn't unusual for me to go to the library twice a week and come home with the maximum amount of books that you were allowed to borrow, in my case that would be five and I would've finished them five days later, return them and get new ones. I guess when you get older you start to appreciate the amount of spare time that you had as a child, these days I would be extremely happy if I would be able to finish a book within a month. Especially the kind of books that I read which force you to put them down for a while and think about the content. The book I've started to read last Wednesday is called 'Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths & Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype' written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It has over 500 pages and I've finished reading another chapter last night which was called Bluebeard.

I basically had to force myself to stop reading, the book is very intriguing so I promised myself to read one chapter at a time. I read about the Bluebeard tale and how it's part of the dark psyche of women, the destructive side. All I've read so far has left a deep impression on me because I recognise so many things in the book, situations that I'm currently in or emotions that I've experienced, things that I can easily apply to my own life. It gives me insight and a way to deal with the past and improve and find spiritual growth. I strongly recommend this book to women out there who lost and/or neglected their own 'self'. This particular chapter about Bluebeard was a true eye-opener to me and I'm sure it might help others going through a similar phase in life.

I'm eager to finish this book but I wanted to share this in order to make others aware of its existence. It's been published in 1992 and I'm sure I'm 'late' in my discovery but I regard this as a timeless jewel. It's a second hand book and it wasn't the type of book that I thought it would be much better to be honest. The title caught my eye for some unknown reason, perhaps because of the word Wolves... It has been in my possession since 2006 but I think it has been waiting for the right time for me to discover its value. I also would like to thank Jim and Wen, their enthusiasm for books inspired me as well.