He is, of course, my former boss, who I agonized about seeing the last time I remembered I had a blog, who I was sure would break my heart. I moved away and in with him in february. Then it was much less than a year and I shocked myself when I agreed to it:  I have always been ponderously cautious when heartbreak is even a faint possibility, always slow to take risks. We had not publicly been dating for very long at all. But when I considered my options–leap or say goodbye forever–I felt it would be a horrible mistake not to go with him.

We live in Colorado now, which is much nicer than Wyoming but not as invigorating as big-city-California. We no longer work together, of course. I quit when he was promoted to manager and given his transfer. I found a job here at an independent used bookstore and it is the most perfect I’ve ever had–I never imagined that I could feel so content outside of academia, but now I’m not sure if I ever want to go back. I am paid very well to sell books to an array of the most interesting & dear people–it is my calling, I think. And when I come home I’ve got him.

Like everyone else, we muddle through this business of love and commitment. It’s not perfect. Yes, there is some of the heartbreak I’ve feared so much all of my life. We fight, I get hurt, I hurt him. But there’s a constancy, a surety, to our relationship that I thought myself too damaged to feel, much less live. It’s the most glorious thing in the world to see him in the morning, to hold and be held.

…

So, that’s the update. That’s my year past. Blog, consider yourself resurrected.

I think I am in love. With a guy whose job makes our relationship completely amoral and tragic. Really, I never thought I was the sort of girl who’d fuck her boss. But he’s not just my boss–more importantly he’s this funny smart sweet silly kind excellent human being and I’m fairly sure I’m in for a lot of heartbreak. But, you know, I don’t really care, and that’s part of why I’m bandying about a word like “love.”

In the meantime, have not had much time for internetting. I’m only here now because I am sick-abed and he’s at work. It’s that dull stage of total immersion, I’m afraid. I’ve got nothing to say except reflections on the sculptural perfection of his nose and there’s no way I’m deluded enough to think that such dreck should escape the pages of a paper journal, so I’ll stop. But I did want to say something. Even if I’m just talking to myself.

love,

c.

p.s. Sarah Haskins is hilarious and insightful enough that I feel I can give it up for life. Go watch her on Target:  Women!

What was the last book you bought?

A double-header:  The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn and The Flip Dictionary (a birthday present for a friend). It’s surprising; my book buying has actually decreased since I started working at one, but every once in a while I can’t resist. The last book that I got for free as a perk at said bookstore job was Pillars of the Earth because I find it advantageous to read Oprah’s picks–I can sell any book so long as I’ve read it.

Name a book you have read MORE than once.

Pnin by Nabokov! I just finished my fourth reading of it–and I rarely read books more than once. I never tire of Nabokov’s sentences, and Pnin is such a tragic–yet resilient and hopeful–character. I’d like to meet him.

Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?

Probably. Probably I could write a whole post about these books. Maybe I will someday.

How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews

Never by cover alone! I choose books by recommendations, canon, reviews, and sales. In that order. The last is for the job. Recommendations and reviews (by a trusted reviewer, which is almost the same thing as a friend) have the most weight.

Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?

Fiction! I like nonfic, I start a lot of nonfic, but I tend to get bored or distracted before I finish. Fiction is always more riveting. Perhaps it’s the stereotypical escape from reality.

What’s more important in a novel – beautiful writing or a gripping plot?

What, can’t I have both? Which I find more satisfying depends on my mood, but really, an ideal book has both. Which isn’t to say that I don’t love things like Proust, which is all lovely sentences and little plot… Yeah, it’s mood-dependent. On rainy dreamy days sentences are the way to go. During weeks of drudge and boredom plot thrills me most. (Though there is, of course, a certain standard of quality that must always be maintained.)

Most loved/memorable character (character/book)

I already talked about Pnin! Carson McCullers’ lonely teenage girls are also dear to me–Frankie from The Member of the Wedding and Mick from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. My fondness for them might be pure narcisism, though. Benji and Quentin Compton from Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury are haunting. I used to be in love with Daniel Deronda and spent a lot of time trying to manifest his doppelganger in my real life.

Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?

Life & Fate by Vasily Grossman, Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz, The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Macado de Assis, the best short stories of 2008, and How the Dead Live by Will Self. I didn’t notice until this moment that (excepting the anthology) they are all male authors. Don’t tell my women’s college, they’ll take away my diploma!

Visible World
by Richard Siken
Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
You raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through.

I would probably better be able to snap out of this strange academic hangover if I had a job, but I haven’t found one yet, and, antisocial, I know no way to fill time but by study. I find I am shockingly unqualified for most work considering that I got my degree from a swanky, mad expensive, generally well regarded private school where I was considered a top student and a teacher favourite. I know english literature isn’t exactly the most employable major, but I’m smart, personable enough, highly literate, a quick learner, and I write well — shouldn’t these qualities make it, if not easy, at least not difficult to find employment? Maybe the problem is that I’m not looking for a career of any sort, and that I shy away from secretary and office work, which is what my job history most qualifies me for. I’d be perfectly happy making coffee at this point (at least I’d get to talk to people all day long), but I don’t know how to work an espresso machine or a cash register, and who the hell is going to take the time to teach me? They all want at least a year of experience.

I’m seriously thinking of selling my body to science. Take my kidneys, urine, blood, lung tissue! Seems like a fair enough exchange for a few hundred and a place to go during the day.

(Does anyone know of any job opportunities in the bay area?)

If she called right now the interaction would be exactly the same. Not yet.

I stopped counting how many pages I produced last week after I finished my 23-page thesis and then immediately wrote a 17 page paper (that was only supposed to be 10). Still to do: minimum 14 pages? In 24 hours? No matter; I am a paper-writing machine. My confidence might just be delirium from sleeplessness and too much caffeine.

Here are some of my titles:

• The Interior Jungle: Articulation of Identity in Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding
• Of Parents and Portraits: The Moribund Identity of Aurora Leigh
• Deconstruction as Negative Theology: Mystical Undertones in Derrida (epigraph: “I pray God to rid me of God.” — Meister Eckhart)
• The Monologism of Madness (working title. clearly needs at least one colon & possibly an epigraph.)

In case you’re wondering, then yes, I did write almost solely about construction of identity this semester. Psychoanalysis, anyone?

I do not think the first is a very good poem, but I have always really liked certain lines in it, particularly the ending. The second I have just discovered and need to read outloud and write down before I can decide what I think. But the counterpart of them struck me.

“Words”
by Anne Sexton

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren’t good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair.

“One Star Fell and Another”
by Conrad Aiken

One star fell and another as we walked.
Lifting his hand towards the west, he said–
–How prodigal that sky is of its stars!
They fall and fall, and still the sky is sky.
Two more have gone, but heaven is heaven still.

Then let us not be precious of our thought,
Nor of our words, nor hoard them up as though
We thought our minds a heaven which might change
And lose its virtue, when the word had fallen.
Let us be prodigal, as heaven is:
Lose what we lose, and give what we may give,–
Ourselves are still the same. Lost you a planet–?
Is Saturn gone? Then let him take his rings
Into the Limbo of forgotten things.

O little foplings of the pride of mind,
Who wrap the phrase in lavender, and keep it
In order to display it: and you, who save our loves
As if we had not worlds of love enough–!

Let us be reckless of our words and worlds,
And spend them freely as the tree his leaves;
And give them where the giving is most blest.
What should we save them for,–a night of frost? . . .
All lost for nothing, and ourselves a ghost.

Stealing Sugar From the Castle – by Robert Bly

We are poor students who stay after school to study joy.
We are like those birds in the India mountains.
I am a widow whose child is her only joy.

The only thing I hold in my ant-like head
Is the builder’s plan of the castle of sugar.
just to steal one grain of sugar is a joy!

Like a bird, we fly out of darkness into the hall,
Which is lit with singing, then fly out again.
Being shut out of the warm hall is also a joy.

I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot. But I love
To read about those who caught one glimpse
Of the Face, and died twenty years later in joy.

I don’t mind your saying I will die soon.
Even in the sound of the word soon, I hear
The word you which begins every sentence of joy.

“You’re a thief!” the judge said. “Let’s see
Your hands!” I showed my callused hands in court.
My sentence was a thousand years of joy.

I don’t know, I can’t tell. Maybe it’s only good in his voice. If you want, you too can experience the poem in his voice, if you wish–not quite as good in terms of force and movement as the one I caught, as he digresses a lot, but his comments are really delightful–here. I’d love to see him read…

“Hence, perhaps, these October days are to me a little strained & surrounded with silence. What I mean by this last word I don’t quite know, since I have never stopped ‘seeing’ people … No; it is not physical silence; it is some inner loneliness–interesting to analyse if one could. To give an example–I was walking up Bedford Place is it–the straight street with all the boarding houses this afternoon, & I said to myself spontaneously, something like this. How I suffer, & no one knows how I suffer, walking up this street, engaged with my anguish, as I was after Thoby died–alone; fighting something alone. But then I had the devil to fight, & now nothing. And when I come indoors, it is all so silent–I am not carrying a great rush of wheels in my head–Yet I am writing–oh & we are very successful–& there is–what I most love–change ahead. … And it is autumn; & the lights are going up & Nessa is in Fitzroy Street–in a great misty room, with flaring gas & unsorted plates & glasses on the floor,–& the Press is booming–& this celebrity business is quite chronic–& I am richer than I have ever been–& bought a pair of earrings today–& for all this, there is vacancy & silence somewhere in the machine.

On the whole, I do not much mind; because, what I like is to flash & dash from side to side, goaded on by what I call reality. If I never felt these extraordinarily pervasive strains–of unrest, or rest, or happiness, or discomfort–I should float down into acquiescence. Here is something to fight: & when I wake early I say to myself, Fight, fight. If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness & silence from the habitable world; the sense that comes to me of being bound on an adventure; of being strangely free now, with money & so on, to do anything. … I daresay I shan’t. But anything is possible. And this curious steed, life; is genuine–Does any of this convey what I want to say?–But I have not really laid hands on the emptiness after all.”

A year before his death, Vladimir Nabokov responded to a Book Review survey which asked authors for comments on their three most enjoyed books of the year. The last book that he mentioned was his own, the controversial and never-published manuscript Laura. It seems as if the book will be published after all, a turn that has me torn between !!!! and regret. The scale has been tipped a bit towards !!!! by the last paragraph of the NYT blog linked to above, which quotes Nabokov’s comments on The Original of Laura:

“The third, as he wrote, is ‘The Original of Laura. The not quite finished manuscript of a novel which I had begun writing and reworking before my illness and which was completed in my mind: I must have gone through it some 50 times and in my diurnal delirium kept reading it aloud to a small dream audience in a walled garden. My audience consisted of peacocks, pigeons, my long dead parents, two cypresses, several young nurses crouching around, and a family doctor so old as to be almost invisible. Perhaps because of my stumblings and fits of coughing the story of my poor Laura had less success with my listeners than it will have, I hope, with intelligent reviewers when properly published.’”

Lovely, lovely Nabokov! I want that book despite myself.