Dear Diary,

Just finished the polish on my nails. Not so sure I’m happy with them. They started out as a nude and then with the top coat became a very subtle shade of pink. Now I can’t get Julia Roberts in a bathrobe and all that hair out of the camera of my mind.

And still I am an island. Oddly enough.

Heard stephen fry say something today that totally inspired me… “the eternal adventure of trying to discover moral truth in the world” and since then virginia woolf has had me in tears. She’d been sitting there rather quietly. A pretty picture on an unnoticed bookshelf. Why have I not read “A Room of One’s Own” before today? Because I have not listened before today.

Yes, I was a good girl, obeyed my own syballus and read Dawkins and no longer believe, I think, in god or God or… you know. (I don’t even sound convincing to myself yet.)

I was even better and finished the tome on sign language. Hard slog at times, that one. And truly fascinated as I was by Broca and Wernicke, it was still a lesson, one necessary for my life to set my fingers flying.

But what truly did I want to read… to make sense of me. For this I have come to an Englishwoman who ended her own life. Poor girl. why must genius walk so closely with despair?

Still, page after page, she calls and I follow. Lights are set off and long dark mysteries revealed. And since she is so fond of them, I will say it. You have been my mirror.

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”

And yet – how fond I am of conjuctions at the front of sentences! – with all the optimism in my heart, all the grandeur that I feel, knowing it from completely new springs, I want to shout out upon the rooftops. The wind and I shall have a contest of wills. It would be much easier to type klickty-klack on Facebook, in email or blog, but up-turned my stomach has been since I began detailing where I am. I am nervous. Will you know me? Will you still love me?

My life… my life up till now has in part been a sham. No, that is all wrong, a sham cannot be in part. For that would only been a prank or farce or some other noun of less catatrosphic conditions. A sham indeed. What am I to be? Who am I to be is someone totally unlike the person they once knew. And I find surprising my wish that they were no longer hanging on. For to disappoint breaks my heart. And it would be easier to become. I try to let go but they return. Friend requests bum me out.

What deep things do they think? Am I alone? While I’m at work or play, gaming or chopping, my mind is somewhere else. Never content to the menial. For so long I tried to be. No more.

Tonight is for quiet. There is nothing but her. Go away. Yes, even you, dear diary.

“Indeed my aunt’s legacy unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing figure of a gentleman, which Milton recommended for my perpetual adoration, a view of the open sky.”

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From the other side of the world, I heard her voice this morning on a podcast. It was like hearing my own.

She is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Here is the small excerpt that wove one more thread into my mind.

Interviewer: “In your most recent book Nomad, you write that its been the work of your lifetime in a sense to put your grandmother’s ghost to rest. What do you mean by that?”

Ayaan: “On the emotional level it’s of course very hard because the loneliness that my grandmother talked about is there and was there if in my case I opted to step out of the community. And she was completely right in saying that if you do that, you will find yourself in stranger waters, you will be a stranger wherever you come, you will never have that sense of belonging that you take for granted now. She’s completely right in that.

At my lowest and deepest moments of loneliness I did have moments that I thought “I wish I hadn’t left” and I wished they were around me… I started to wish for all kinds of things that were not possible and laying that ghost to rest was to accept that yes if you as an individual seek freedom from the clan, from the collection, you are embarking on a life of loneliness but you have to then shape your destiny and create new friendships, a new network and a new family for yourself. But that is life. And so that in a way, when I say laying the ghost to rest it is the feelings of guilt and feelings of nostalgia, those are the feelings that now I am at peace with.”

I’ve put Ayaan’s books on my to-read shelf over at Goodreads. She has done amazing work to advance the cause of women’s rights around the world. Feminist theory simply won’t leave me alone. Science, caring, woman. Such themes swirl around the days of my life, and each time I recognize their voice in the wind, I wonder more deeply what answer they’ll one day demand.

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Some reviewers say that the beginning of this book is the part hardest to read with its graphic – perhaps grotesque depending on if you can stomach them – descriptions of the burns from a car accident that nearly kill a man and the extensive medical procedures that save his life.

***beware spoilers follow***

For me, it was the opposite. The end ventures deeper and deeper, spiraling ever down, into the one of the main character’s unconfirmed but highly likely diagnosis of schizophrenia. It comes a little too close to home, having lost a family member.

As well, I may be one of the few people in the world who did not appreciate the revelation of physical evidence to support the delusions that ended in her suicide. Said evidence was meant as a romantic gesture, an element of mystery, were the stories real, and yet I felt all of those things and believed them before the two copies of Inferno were discovered. Immediately afterward, I was disappointed.

Nevertheless, the story is excellent. I loved it. Smart, romantic, true heroes and morality that understands shades of gray. Four stars out of five only because of the end for me and because of all my conflicted emotions regarding mental illness.

Actually demoting my review to just three stars. it deserves more for the story-telling, but the content after consideration romantices things that ought not be.

This book seemed to understand the disease – the author even cites a book (Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients, and Providers) I’ve read myself for his research into it – but romanticizes it. The end was only sad with no sweet.

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The slate is wiped clean. (I deleted every draft that was left unfinished.)

Emptiness sits before me, but the revelation in mirror upon mirror of worlds is true and does not fail.

It is mine. Own it. And so I do. It’s nice to be here again with you.

Today I read to the end of The Book Thief. Perhaps you know now why I am drawn. For Liesel, books were her literal physical salvation.  In my times, they are subtle, page turnings, chapters as phases rather than specific events.

And as I see more books flower onto shelves and a life come together around them, I realize that I am reading better books and the books are making a better woman out of me.

Welcome to 2011.

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Then list your family and friends birthdays on your chapters indigo profile and get a 25% off printable in-store coupon!

Really!

Here’s how for all my fellow Canadian book-lovers!

1. make an online account at www.chapters.indigo.ca/ if you don’t already have one
2. find the my account link in the upper right-hand side and click it. now you’re at your very own Account Centre
3. of the bubble boxes in the middle, find the lowest one on the left titled Preferences
4. in that box, you’ll see the link Birthday Reminders… Click there
5. you have to give them Recipient’s Name/Birthday/Relation to you/Age and Gender as the email with the coupon is tailored with suggestions to the appropriate age-group.

For a mid September birthday mine arrived at the beginning of the month was good until Sept 30.

Yeap, already used it!

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