"You know most writers are a**holes, right?"

The quote is courtesy of Shy. It is quite old but it is today's 1st entry because it makes me laugh.

One of my absolute favourite writers (apparently I am left over English from last night- but that is to be a later post) is the magical, mystical, mythically proportionate (get it? of mythic proportions... it was supposed to be clever. whatever) is Michael Ondaatje. Our affair began with Anil's Ghost... and it was the first time I saw something close to my experience put to page.

Later it was The English patient... which I've never finished because I lost it... but I did not want the replacement book with the movie poster as a cover. I think it trite and not a fitting representation of the beauty the book holds. To date I remember the shivers I got from Handwriting. Reading it made my own poetry grow in a way I could not have ever come to by myself. Poetry sounded different in his words beyond the classical Yeats and Byron... it seemed a more natural way of speaking... he writes in such a way that lulls you into following him blindly... and stuns you with his last words. You don't understand the point until it is made... and though you have had all of the pieces all along... you feel like a child that has been shown the most wonderful magic trick with your own toys.

Save the English Patient, I have (and hoard) everything that has his name attached to it... including the awful book that critiques his major writings and seeks to explain his themes. But I had to read that to.

The most recent acquisition of his is "Our Story"... the illustrated version that was done has an offering from which the proceeds support literacy in Canada. When the package came I guarded it like my first born. Mom was laughing at me over breakfast one Saturday... and I am reminded that she loves me like a mother does, as the words that came out of her mouth were... "If you like him so much, you know he taught or teaches at the University of Toronto... why don't we take a trip (we have family there) and you can meet him and tell him how much you admire him? or try a semester in Toronto, take stupid classes that interest you."

Ummm... no.

1. I will sound like a groupie (not completely opposed to)

2. I may not make the best impression and possibly sound like an idiot (not a completely foreign state of being for this girl)

3. He may not be so impressive in person... which he should have the freedom not to be.

The reason books are better than movies... and certainly more intense is that it is where the world is wrapped in some one's words but still of our own conceptions. Someone once told me that you don't know what your work is or has the potential to do until you hear it explained to you by someone else. I understand that.

I know the place I write from. I know what brings me to certain points. While I may not give you the same words verbatim... I can create the same concept. I know what I meant. But it is so selfish to expect to be taken at your own perception. The re-write from my end is the endless re-play of trying to figure out how I meant something to sound. I have written things that I didn't know how to deal with and I think I would be too devastated to know that Mr. Ondaatje's points of emphasis were not the bits that I carry with me. I would be to insulted to think that maybe I got it wrong. Like people who write of love so well... but only because they covet and watch it pressed against the glass... not because they know how to give of themselves with another person. In print we are all heros.

Further, how tragic to be seen as simpering... especially to one of the keepers of the most beautiful words... so today like other days, I wait at his feet for the next offerings he will give me.. and even that is too much.