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This is the second summer in a row when we had to dump books, cloths and clothes, boxes, bed sheets, blankets, coats, sweaters and cardigans, shoes and boots, and old pictures. Tearing off the latter and throwing them away felt like killing the second time memories of people who, in most part, are already dead. Particularly, I will never forget the portrait of a young lady—she must have been in her early thirties, of Scandinavian origin —that was framed in a sort of blue-grayish carton, with a heart-shaped opening, her face almost breaking into a timid smile. As most of the pictures were mercilessly thrown into green plastic bags, it was that young woman’s picture’s turn; still, I could not bear the thought of dumping it into the bag, although I could not have possibly met her, still not being able to escape the remorse that I would have felt, had I carelessly thrown her photo into an abyss of filth and, ultimately, humiliation. The picture still carried the meaning of a human being that, for one reason or another, seemed so alive.
Then, just like some people considering euthanasia for their beloved ones (with their agreement, most of the time), I thought that she would be relieved if I tore her picture into small, unidentifiable pieces, and she’d die, once again, with the dignity she well deserves.
Under the stress of finding a temporary storage place for books, since the departure is now within sight, I am navigating back and forth to my computer to check my emails, as if I am corresponding with an army of librarians, or with my relatives. In fact, I don’t, because I pretend to keep myself busy all day long.
Young and educated abroad, coming from an Eastern land, she’s really one of a kind. Her bright black eyes, so full of life, were in fact deceiving, as my friend said a bit later. He argued that one does not sign a contract in faith and, thereafter, is told a fundamental detail that, if known, would have made a difference before signing. Yes, I’m still learning here. One could say that learning business skills would never be on my list of priorities, unless I have a wrong perception of how a business person should behave (more likely—but there is less and less time to learn that too).
I enjoyed a small talk with professors and colleagues who were present at the reception. Almost inexplicably, I had an outburst, especially when I was just about to converse with one instructor whom I owe the perception of becoming a self-learner. She was the one who helped me to cross that imaginary bridge—oh yes, an imperfect and cheap metaphor, but still a metaphor.
In a conversation with another teacher, I mentioned that I know of one of my colleagues who accepted to work as a library technician. The teacher said something predictable, but I still wanted to confirm it– unless you’re really desperate, you should avoid being sidetracked and accept having your professional status lowered. Actually, this is more complicated, considering that colleague’s particular situation (immigrant with less than near-native speaking skills).
I cannot believe how cool it is in Montreal these days: the maximum for today in my part of the island is 16C, although it is sunny.
And that time came, when I had to play a role, again, on a stage. The comforting part was that I did not do it for myself, but for the ones who contributed to my long-term success.
A rather cold, windy day in Montreal.
I will get back to my readings tomorrow, even if the time will not allow me the luxury that I had in the last few weeks, when I did almost nothing but reading. One of the things that I dread the most is to finally face the reality of how much packing I have to do, and making some order in my bedroom, since the day D is getting closer and closer.
I have to find a subject to write for the next quarterly newsletter of my SLA chapter—finally, they responded to my yesterday’s email. I shall see what I can come up with. This is a good reason for me to write something of some interest, and in a frame of time that reminds me of those days at the library school when we had to come up, as fast as we could, with a reasonably well-written essay. More than that, writing forces me to associate my thoughts with words, in creative sentence patterns. Otherwise, those thoughts will never change into conceptual thinking: they will simply die, without even having the chance to meaningfully relate to other valuable written thoughts. Fainting memories.
Again, I have not written for a few days.
Before I went to get my convocation gown, I had gone to the school office to ask a few questions, and I had run into one of the instructors. A small conversation was revealing of how cultural expectations and differences are so entrenched in our mindsets: a trip to Europe seems to mean mostly traveling rather that going to simply see one’s family, some members of whom I haven’t seen for four years. But there you have it.
It appears that this summer will be quite hot, and that adjective does not refer to the weather conditions, but to job hunting techniques and professional networking—the latter concept being a nagging keyword in our profession. But what can you do?
I have noticed that, since I have written less frequently in this diary, my vocabulary suffers enormously. To keep on functioning, my brain needs a continuous lexical input, preferably arranged in some form of thoughts. Otherwise, it runs idle, and when I need to articulate something, those thoughts come out in basic words. This state of mind reminds me of that one of the main character in “Flowers for Algernon,” who becomes smart at one point, but, after that, he slowly and painfully loses his IQ.
I have just finished reading a few articles on representing meaning through conceptual mapping. What that means is, for example, being able to summarize a text, or a book, using a conceptual mapping procedure (we learned something similar to brainstorning techniques in writing). The most difficult part is to find the main idea of the text and then represent it in concepts and propositions (categories of concepts), using relationships. I have thought of a text, which I just finished reading, which I will use to build that map. Apparently, conceptual mapping proved to be a useful tool in learning meaningfully rather than rote learning. It seems that there is a continuum between meaningful learning (learning purposefully by using a variety of scaffolds) and rote learning, rather than two completely separate approaches of learning.
For some reason, I avoid reading fiction, and that has nothing to do with using a dictionary, which I use anyway. It is as if either my reading tastes have changed or I fear something. But, if the latter is true, since the former seems a reckless momentary thought, then what do I fear? One example would be that I lack some cultural keys of the host culture, which do not allow me to use my present knowledge to open some doors. Oh yes, but that would be such a simple reason to get away with. Also, there is a hiatus of about nine years, just before I got back to university, during which I hardly read, and I know why. It was as if I was trying to become someone else in those years, but that did not work either.
Imagine struggling to clutch a timber float, as your sail is sinking—there is no way that you can think of art, or even ponder on philosophy of life. Even this picture is not totally true because it shows one bit of a long trail. After my ship sank, my timber float was sailing on a tranquil ocean, or, at least, it seemed that way, but my mind was playing, again and again, that image of my ship sinking. Yet, the float was drifting away without my knowing it… It was at that time when I uselessly attempted to take on a different persona: working and living like an automaton, wanting to forget about myself, mercilessly erasing my inner self. It just did not work—it never does, once you are aware of this, once you see that your boat is drifting away.
I will most likely go back to fiction, but need to discover an English-speaking writer, or perhaps just a few, whose writing style, choice of words, and theme, or themes, will get my attention on a track where it used to be in my native Romanian. My guess is that an anthology would be my first step.
Another hectic day in To, but quite fruitful. It seems that I will close a chapter here, in Mtl, in a matter of weeks. It could not have been otherwise, unfortunately. Or, it could have been, but what would have been the price?
On a different note…There is an article in RUSQ about the generation 1.5. They are children of refugees from various countries (e.g. Vietnam), who settled in US while ago. These children grew up as bilinguals and acculturated, that is, they understand American cultural clues and idioms, but need more years of academic instruction than their native counterparts. They are not really the second generation of immigrants, but cannot be considered as the first generation either. Somewhere in between. They learn the language by ear, while international students, by eye. The latter have good reading skills since they are highly educated in their home countries, but do not necessarily have good listening or speaking skills (I believe that I have been in the second category in my first academic years in Canada.)
The point of the matter is that I can understand, since I have experienced that myself, the specific hardships that these cultural minorities face to make a place for themselves in a society that seems to lack patience for their efforts.
Speaking of patience, though, while I was in To to look for a place to live, I checked out an apt owned by someone who barely spoke English. How can you communicate to conclude a transaction in that case? I had no patience for that, I must admit.
In the middle of so many events, some more imaginary and others barely real, I ran into a peculiar message sent through an ALAlistserv that I had subscribed to. It came from an MLIS graduate who has not found a job for six years—since he has graduated from a US library school. What seems to come out from this person’s sad story is a theme of passivity, of almost abandonment, framed by a strange occurrence of unfavorable circumstances.
Some of the subscribing members were rather unsympathetic, instead of offering some solutions. Others narrated some similar stories. It appears that possessing an MLIS degree is just a small step, really small, on the tortuous path of starting out as a librarian. Unless someone has solid connections (this is not equivalent to networking, though—well, OK, just a subset of it), which is the case only for a minority of students, MLIS graduates have to hone their networking skills and, as an example, to participate, even as volunteers, in different activities that are conducive to an interesting career in librarianship.
Tomorrow is another hectic day in To, but I hope the effort of searching for a place will pay off. I shall see. Actually, this info gathering is quite exciting.
I was away for a quite a few days, and, of course, I have not written a single word in my diary. Funny, though, the less I practice writing, the more my fear of jotting down my thoughts grows. I have even noticed that even my speech tends to be less fluent since I have discontinued writing in my diary –about five weeks, if I am not mistaken.
My aunt in Cleveland told me that I tend to stutter when I express my thoughts, but my friend, with whom I went to Cleveland, said that my apparent stuttering comes from my continual attempts to find a better word (which never seems to come, if it does, too easily).
I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised when my two cousins showed up on my birthday, although, a few hours before, they had told my aunt on the phone that they could not come.
It was the day after my birthday that I found out about a documentary—“Intelligent design” (I must admit that I did not get its author’s name). As far as I understood from M, although I had difficulties understanding his Southern accent, and even more so since my native language is not English, the author of this documentary attempted to spark off a debate about some loopholes of the Darwinist theory, loopholes that can be filled by this hypothesis of intelligent design. I could not grasp, in spite of my repeated calls, M’s definition of intelligent design. However, I asked M to explain his understanding of those loopholes in the Darwinist theory, and, again, there was no explanation. I, then, said that this intelligent design concept, as far as I could remember from reading some newspaper articles in the Canadian press, appears to clothe the old Creationist theory. M’s facial expression reflected disbelief, or sort of, and he said that it was not what he got from his readings and attending to that documentary. The discussion finished on a sour note, but I will not develop this here.
Have spent most of the day in To. The fellow that showed us different places also explained quite clearly what is the ethnic makeup in different areas of To, and, obviously, what to expect. That was amongst the most interesting subjects of our conversation, but cannot get into more details here.
Hadn’t I had some reading material, I would have found the trip boring, especially that it takes so many hours by train back and forth between Montreal and To. In addition to reading some library material, I also found that literary criticism appeals to me more than I would have expected at this point. I remember that I used to read quite a bit of that in Romanian, when I was a teenager and, later on, in my early twenties. But social changes that affected my native country and my departure to Canada, along with the long quest of finding my way in my adoptive country, seemed to have put a stop to my literary passion. Also, I had to work pretty hard, and sometimes that seemed close to impossible, to bring my knowledge of English, including Canadian cultural references, to comparable levels of (at least two) literacies of my native Romanian. Overall, I have perceived that the cultural adaptation was the most challenging. (I must have experienced the same emotions as an anthropologist doing field work). Right now, I feel that only after fifteen years of living here in Canada, and especially in the last two years (of graduate studies), I crossed that imaginary border, as I have realized that after long conversations with my mother and my sister, just recently, in Norway.
The question is if it took me so many years to adapt, as an educated person and having a reasonable command of English, –and speaking French acceptably well–, to the Canadian society, what about so many immigrants who simply do not have the time to learn well either language, or culture, because they have to work hellishly to support their families? How can they ever integrate? Or integrate in which way?
As this country becomes increasingly multicultural, how can libraries in big cities, To being a good example, can attract these immigrants, and their children, to read or even socialize in these cultural centres?
