Kris and I are engaged in a mad frenzy of cleaning and painting, preparing our house for market on Monday. We were up late last night, and suddenly I had a craving for chocolate chip cookies and milk.

"I'm going to the store," I said. "Do you want anything?"

"Yeah," said Kris. "Can you get some chocolate chip cookies?"

"Sure," I said, and smiled.

"Oh," she said. "And some milk — we're almost out."

When we're in crisis mode, we often think alike.

To make matters worse, I still haven't finished the book group book. Our discussion is in seven hours and I have 128 pages remaining. (Why, one might ask, am I writing a weblog entry then?)

I feel guilty about not having the book read, so I find myself sneaking twenty, thirty, fifty pages here and there. Then I find that I feel guilty for not having fertilized the lawn, or for not having windexed the windows, so I go outside and work. Then I feel guilty about not having read the book, so I come inside to read. Ad infinitum.

I don't particulary care for the book — Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran — and so the going is slow. Though it may sound sexist, I think Nafisi writes like a woman, and it bogs me down.

That's not to say that all women write the same way. Not at all. But certain writing styles are, in my opinion, uniquely female. (There are certain writing styles — see Hemingway — that are uniquely male, too.)

Most of the time when I'm reading, the gender of the author does not intrude upon the text. Sometimes, though, it does. Sometimes it's obvious. For example, in this week's Time Magazine, I was reading an article on Refuel, a modernized Bible for teens. The final sentence of the story is:

Now if Jesus could just help Clinique come up with the perfect shade of pink.

(The sentence makes sense in context.)

No man would ever write this sentence. This is an extreme example, of course, used to make my point. Most of the time, the "feminization" of a text is more subtle than this.

Nafisi's writing bothers me because she provides a physical description for every person she mentions. She describes the clothes they're wearing, the way they wear their hair or their beards. She describes their veils, describes their eyes. To me, this is inessential stuff. (In one passage, which I cannot locate now that I want it, she says something to the effect of, "This woman was a prominent author, but that's not important; what's important is how she looked.")

As I say, I generally don't consider the gender of the author. But I'd say that 90-95% of the time that I'm jarred from a story by something I consider "female", the author is, indeed, a woman.

(Please note that I'm not judging this type of writing, either. I don't like it — it's not for me — but that doesn't mean that it's bad. In fact, many people prefer it.)

Reading Lolita in Tehran is not all bad. I like parts of it, actually. Just now, for example, Nafisi quotes a poem from Bertolt Brecht. It's this poem, in fact, which prompted me to come to this computer to write a weblog entry. Here's the text of the verse:

To Posterity
by Bertolt Brecht

1.
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!

2.
I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

3.
You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.

For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.

translated by H. R. Hays

A lovely bit of poetry.

Now, however, I must return to my book. Er, to cleaning. No, my book! Cleaning! ARGH!

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Bad Poetry   As promised, today I'm sharing the angst-ridden, cloying poetry written by my adolescent self.

2003 — High   In which my surgery date is set, we are busy at work, I post my high scores at snood, and I wax rhapsodic about the nature of weblogs. Is anyone reading this via RSS?