To my unknown, yet faithful, few readers I will say, “I will be back and more invigorated.”
Quite a few months have passed since I have not written anything in this diary, or in any diary. These months have been quite interesting, and they, or rather my experience during them, would have been worth uttered, even vaguely, in this journal. But where does self-censorship begin, and, equally important, where does it end? Not that this so-called censorship would have been an impediment for me to write. At times, I asked myself whether I would have the will–and, perhaps, the strength–to resume writing, any kind of writing, after the MLIS graduation, or during the wearing job hunt. One could find any self-justification to give up.
Obviously, one does not have to write every day, but there has to be a commitment–the commitment to continue jotting thoughts here, on this electronic page. In one of my readings, I encountered an interesting position, which, in the meanwhile, it became mine since I have most likely unconsciously changed it into a series of questions: is blogging a fashion– and, for some, it is– or some sort of exhibited drivelling with an intellectual pretence or, more popularly acceptable, an expressed need to discover oneself in one environment or another? In my case, I have started to blog because some of my colleagues at the library school were doing it, so I gave in to fashion. Not unusual, here. As for the second question, I do not know: I hope not, or not as far as I am concerned. Yes, I will go with the third one, which I can think of, metaphorically, as a mental seed that grew somewhere in some corners of my mind, and I found some answers while I was writing my previous entries. But I feel that I need to write again, and, I hope, not after significant gaps. Oh yes, I could always find a reason to avoid writing: in fact, finding reasons not to write is one of the easiest tasks, a sweet self-deception. Understandably, though, as writing is truly difficult.
And, although I can keep these entries to myself, I have decided to write in the open, as if an exhibition of this sort will almost force me to write. How else can I explain this?
For the sake of being relatively cyber-protective, and for many other reasons, I will have to navigate smoothly between words describing recent experiences—having already written an account for my relatives and friends, I have been running out of creativity.
One of someone’s thoughts, perhaps written in a moment of fatigue, but later corroborated by others’ expressed feelings, confirmed what I’ve been guessing all along, since I could write little stories, out of thin air, to friends and relatives, or anybody who’s patient to listen—that I love telling stories. But this so-called self-discovery has some implications; for one, I will have to spend time, as soon as I settle down, on doing research, so I can write about what seems to pique my imagination, or goad my present or past obsessions—more about culture, or cultures, it seems.
It’s interesting that John Ralston Saul, our former governor general’s husband, whose some thoughts were quite recently written somewhere (”A fair country: telling truths about Canada“), mentioned something about Canada’s two competing underlying cultural values: one that is coming from its distant, indigenous past; the other, post-1867, colonial and imperial, seems to have prevailed, or won, and created our present institutions. Now, someone from the Canadian elites is saying something that needs to be elaborated in our future history books. What does that mean? What can we do to reconnect with the spirit of the pre-1867 institutions that were more accommodating to cultural and ethnic diversity than the present institutions? We need to distance ourselves from the myth of so-called two founding European cultures…But how can that be done?
The more I read scholarly papers, especially those written by professors of humanities, the more I realize that people such as myself, that is, people coming from another linguistic and cultural background, will never be able to catch up, no matter what, with well-educated native English writers. It is an insurmountable handicap, no matter how hard some psychologists would try to find some sort of feel-good theoretical frame.
It looks like it paid off to spend a whole term on sweating a cultural essay about the Romanian alphabet; but the news only reopened a window through which I could see some hard work ahead: rephrasing ideas, smithing words, giving birth to more elaborate sentences (what other metaphor can one think of when writing is such a painstaking effort?) and rechecking bibliographic references (mostly, citations). I’ll see.
What I found scary was when a word, or group of words, was used to comprise the notion of “one year;” whoever will have read this message, and is in the business of librarianship, will understand quite well what I mean.
I was scanning a few articles from several issues of Canadian Social Trends, when my eyes fell upon an intriguing title of an article, triggering a thought from an almost forgotten past, ; late as it was, I had the energy to be patient (yes, yes, because I’m taking time to save paper and ink) to print the article, and read it feverishly, as its outlined ideas seemed to bring forth, or phrase well, my thoughts about variable literacy. My understanding is that we acquire this literacy in our earlier years, and we’ll likely loose it later on if we do not work on it; forever we must tend it, as though we tend a plant, or we raise a child. What about those with multiple reading and writing literacies? What do we loose, what do we gain? Or is it tertium datur (as opposed to the conventional Latin expression)? Or are we doomed?
As I finished Bayard’s book, “How to talk about books…, ” I must admit that I could not avoid that guilt feeling, as if he knew what my problem was, being intensified by his final words–its’ not the book itself that we read that counts, but our idea of it, as that idea, or string of ideas, defines who we are, deep inside. And what can shape our ideas better than our writing them, as simply reading a book, any book, is evanescent, at best, one proof being that I never remember precisely the books, but barely my reactions to them.
It appears as if I’ve given up on writing: I haven’t. It’s been quite hectic here, especially in the last two months, but I’d rather say no more. I wish I could master describing the trivia, but I don’t and, likely, I won’t.
Though not an event, or series of events, doing some reading was quite enjoyable, particularly when I got somewhat tired of job hunting—which, usually, happens in the evening. A few days ago—or what is yesterday?— I realized that I have not done any search with Dialog for quite a while, and that worries me because when I don’t practice a skill, I tend to believe that almost forget it. It might have been this concern that almost pushed me to buy a book about online searching for librarians—not bad at all, the book, I mean, considering that I still need to hone my searching skills.
For some reason, I have the feeling that I may end up working in US, although I prefer to stay here, where I am. Will try to rationalize– or attempt a sensible explanation of — this thought, but I believe that’s too early now (for reasons that I prefer to keep to myself).
Will finish this book, “How to talk about book you haven’t read,” by Pierre Bayard, in a couple of days. It appears that, when talking about books without reading them, we can get away with some astucity. The author thinks that the so-called non-reading is even better, because we all have our “inner” books, whether they are individual or collective. My understanding is that, if this is the case, our cultural being can be so rigid that we impose our own cultural grids on any book. Well, what if we just glorify the power of incommunicability? Meaning that a clash of cultures is almost inevitable, or, to put it nicely, a dialogue of the deaf. In this case, it is a dialogue of non-readers– will they be ever understanding what is the Other’s marked identity? That is the Other’s writing, speech, and rhetoric…
Librarians would be saviours since they don’t need to know the content of books, but only their relationships, or how books are positioned within a cultural chain–according to Bayard. Yet, a book may have its own personality, so distinct in fact, that putting it in a relation with other books, or in a subject category, would make us play, unknowingly, Procustes’ role.
Almost a month after the famous move, I feel that I am slowly settling down and also have a better idea about my new environment. Now, as I am facing a new reality, I am ready for the real challenge in a city in which I know well a couple of people( at the most): that is, the job hunt (haunt).
Will describe, along the way, how that goes.
I’ve done a lot of reading and, to be able to skim faster through so many sites, I discovered the wonders of RSS. Now, that I have played a bit with Zotero, I regret that I have not used it in the library school, as it would have saved a lot of time when I was fervently writing bibliographies.
Anyway, I’ll be back soon with more details about the job hunt. (To say that this effort is challenging is a preposterous understatement.)
It’s been quite a break since I have written an entry in my diary: for various reasons, one more—or, perhaps, less— compelling than another. First of all, one should have seen me answering interview questions by phone while I was surrounded by boxes of books and personal items: at that time, I was in the process of packing. Understandably, I had to postpone any packing as it was imperative to prepare for those interviews. Even if I may not get a job with those employers, I can still say that the lessons learned are invaluable. It seems to me that my expertise is fine, but there is an obvious (to me) issue with how I present the final product. The effort that must be put into a sort of presentation feels so close to an ordeal: well, so be it–it’s worth it.
Update on 20 July 2008. I finally moved to To, facing some situations that some people might characterize as extreme. One major lesson is that I need to do a thorough background checkup of movers, especially when a recent acquaintance suggests their services.
Overall, I like the new apartment and its location. Now, it remains to be seen whether I will finally stay here or move somewhere else.
Pretending that I’m busy, I haven’t written an entry for quite a few days.
I would have liked to be a little bit more open here, but, understandably, various reasons prevent me from jotting down some of my thoughts (another attempt to get away from writing).
As if I have never moved, it felt overwhelming to race against time to fill boxes—filling with vengeance, as someone put it. Not surprisingly, the boxes with books are the heaviest of all. Having the librarian streak, I’ve attempted to group the books by categories, not necessarily connected to an easily definable category, or perhaps to the ones that my own mind invented on the spot, as I almost desperately rushed to impose some sort of categorial order to finish off a daunting job. At the end, I simply gave in to our eternal, invisible master—the Time. In other words, categories that would have, or had, existed at the beginning of my packing simply merged into a huge, bookish Babylon. Up to me to figure out how I will re-place them on the shelves.
Simply put, it’s madness: packing, preparing for interviews (and they just keep coming), then having to answer questions either face to face or by phone, and dealing with other, more personal affairs—unquestionably, the latter one is not a subject to depict in this blog.
In the rest of the time, in addition to reading articles of philosophy, psychology, education, and—of course—writing, I continue to look at lib lit. As for the last one, there is a plethora of research that– as my chance to discuss with several kinds of librarians that I would like to meet on a regular basis is currently slim– substitutes for an understandably, more desirable professional contact. And all of a sudden I realize that the time seems to have compressed to the point that I live now with the perception that there is no time for anything else: one task continues with another, without my having any restful intermezzo.
It’s funny how some people undermine themselves by displaying behaviours of greed when they see that you could give them some business somewhat regularly. Specifically, I used the services of a print shop for some personal business (I will leave other details aside), the last time charging me $0.06 per copy, although it was clearly specified in their ad that for more than a thousand copies one is charged $0.04 per copy. When I made this observation in my second to the last use of their services, they have changed the figures, and I gladly gave them the benefit of the doubt. This time, though, I didn’t– justifiably so, and, since I do not believe that being too assertive is always the best approach to solve problems, I paid the full amount, promising myself that I really do not have a reason to go to that printshop anymore (as I’m leaving the city sooner rather than later).
I found Charles Taylor’s article, “The dynamics of democratic exclusion,” interesting in the sense that he sees that people (whether majorities or minorities) in simultaneously democratic and multicultural societies operate politically on two not-so-mutually-exclusive models: the procedural one (we look at each other from the most basic perspective, as humans, but we ignore what really makes us individuals) and the Herderian model (we are complementary to each other precisely because our differences). First, he describes patterns of exclusion of minorities in different Western societies (Germany, Canada), before he proposes his two-prong model. He goes on to say that the two models share linguistically some elements with the “postmodernist” discourse (namely, some of its terms seem to be semantically close to those used by procedural liberals—seemingly ideological enemies of the “postmodernists,” but it would have been interesting if Taylor had come up with some examples to better support his assertion. What Charles Taylor actually does is to clearly define terms, propose an ideological model of how a Western democracy should work, admit that the matters can get worse before they might get better, but he ends up with some gracious generalities (e.g. “we must fight free of some of the powerful philosophical illusions of our age,” pag. 156).
