Did I ever tell you how much I loved The Book of Dahlia?

I was reminded of it last night while talking to a friend of mine about how much I wish I were Jewish (and how I'm secretly - or not so secretly - convinced that I actually am, somehow*). I connect so strongly to Jewish culture. Last spring I put my bibliographic search skills to work poring over the public library catalogue to find novels with Jewish protagonists. I found The Book of Dahlia (among others, rest assured. I'm a fantastic librarian.).

Dahlia is a chronic underachiever. The 29-year-old spends her time smoking a lot of pot and occasionally, vaguely considering grad school while watching old movies on TV. Then she has a grand mal seizure and is diagnosed with brain cancer. Yup. The novel is hilarious and smart and dark and sad and awesome. Love. LOVE.

*Seriously. Just after Dahlia gets out of the hospital after being diagnosed, she and her parents head to Barnes & Noble: "This is what Jews do when the shit hits the fan. Go find books." How am I not Jewish?

(This post in English brought to you by a rainy day where I really felt like expressing myself with some semblance of clarity and intelligence.)

On figs

 photo by flickr user suttonhoo

I  came across a quote from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar while reading an article in Vanity Fair about the Barbizon Hotel for Women (where all the brightest young ladies stayed while trying to make their mark on Manhattan, including Ms. Plath when she interned at Mademoiselle in 1953):

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.  From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.  I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.  I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Now, I swear I'm not depressed, but this passage so perfectly sums up that feeling of overwhelming possibility that comes with being young and jobless (or rather, job-free as I like to call it). I could do anything - but which anything should I try? And what will I be missing out on if I do?

I am such a teenage girl sometimes.

Really, I know what I want. To be a film librarian/screenwriter/novelist/blogger/TV host/epicure/kind person.

English

I want to see (and hear) English as a second language once in a while - hear the things I never do because they are just part of the way I talk - the intricacies - the oddities. I want to think in the kind of poems I love - the ones that work words like the most delicate thread, looping around their meanings to create new ones, building words on words to create so many levels of understanding.

Hear-here-hero-heroin-harrowing-narrowing down.

It's hard work, actually listening to what people say.



(It is raining. I feel grey - in the best possible way.)

Things I love: Card catalogs; Libraries; Words.

!?

I have recently become disenchanted with the exclamation mark. I'm not sure where this feeling has come from, but every time I use one I feel a little bit cheap.

I came across a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald recently that perhaps sums up my feelings: "An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke."

I think it has to do with my minimalist self - always paring down to the essentials.

That said, if you are one of my favourite people who happens to use a great number of exclamation marks (of which there are a few), I find them charming when used by you. I mean it.

Punctuation marks I do like: ; & ?