the sting of reading, Pamela Paul + another pitch for Natalie Diaz

Babes and bots and bees, 

In case you were curious (you weren't), I'm STILL reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. My relationship with this book has gone on so long that I don't know why I started reading it. My relationship with this book has gone on so long that I might as well start over. My relationship with this book has gone on so long that I don't wish to read it anymore and instead mumble "not you again" each night before bed. Together, Dillard and I have reached that pivotal point in a marriage when you decide whether or not to file for divorce. If we were people, she would have most certainly left me months ago. I, an ungrateful swine, have no idea what she's really getting at. 

To temper this existential disappointment and self-dissatisfaction, I started reading My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul. Buzzfeed calls it "the ultimate book about reading books" and if that doesn't spark your fancy I don't know what will. In all seriousness, it is quite good. One of those books my glorious friend's glorious mom sent me. I'm so sure I'll love it, I've dedicated it to my Relaxing Book Box as opposed to the Sad Book Box. 

Now, you might be asking yourself, who needs a sad book when you can just have a sad life? If you don't know why my mind went there then I implore you to read the news. That should clear things up. Just none of that positive shit. We don't want that when we want the news. We want to know what's truly awful in the world because that's the only thing that seems real and newsworthy, right? Well, fuck your chicken strips, I'm vacationing in (on?) the Relaxing Book Box. Don't worry, the planet will still be on fire when I return. Come with? 

in the meantime...

Pamela Paul is awesome. Chapter one is titled Brave New World: You Shouldn't Be Reading That. This makes me exponentially happy. I will admit I've never read it and, despite the urgings of my mother, have no desire to. Paul found the book too dark. Reading it was an attempt to explore adulthood through books as she curated an attraction to the dark side appropriate for her age. And such attractions continued as such...

...the more downtrodden characters, I positively adored. Anyone who was a heroin addict or knew a heroin addict or wrote about another heroin addict was good enough for me. Accounts of dead drug-addicted celebrities constituted their own lush genre...I felt sorry for them, and this emotional largesse made me feel better about me. 

I find myself a little enthused that she chose to reveal such a thing about herself, for I would be less inclined to do so. I suppose being a writer requires a great deal of "I don't care what you think of me," balanced, of course, with "what harm does this cause." The latter question is perhaps not so significant here because, statistically, I do not believe the percentage of people struggling with heroin addiction and people not struggling with heroin addiction is surprising. Even still, the chance that someone would be so irked by the statement about downtrodden characters that they abandon the book entirely, write a seething Goodreads review, and also work for the New York Times is too big a risk for me. Perhaps this is why I remain unpublished and sad. 

And because I require yet another distraction from the distraction from Annie Dillard, a friend kindly placed Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz in my lap, knowing that poetry is so often an easier read for me. And because I am reading Natalie Diaz I was already in love. And even if I wasn't, I certainly would be after the first poem, titled after the book (or perhaps the other way around?). 

I was built by wage. So I wage love and worse— 

always another campaign to march across 

a desert night for the cannon flash of your pale skin

settling in a silver lagoon of smoke at your breast. 

I dismount my dark horse, bend to you there, deliver you 

the hard pull of all my thirsts—

I learned Drink in a country of drought.

And if she can't convince you with the sheer force of her genius (literally, it has been declared, she is a genius), I do not believe we are compatible and you should simply stop reading now. There are many moments here that I can point to and say, "this is it. This is poetry." But I'll choose "I dismount my dark horse, bend to you there, deliver you" for here lies at least three moments, should I dare to count them. 

Diaz delivers a fatal gift. She does not offer, she does not pose, she delivers, feeds it to you, and because she is thirsty she cups her hand for you. That which Diaz delivers is not a choice and she holds every power there. What I find so fascinating about this collection is the tight and broad focus, constantly bumping against eachother in a harmonic way, unlike the fighting ways of siblings or bears. Everything has a balance, which evolves around imbalance. Take for instance her lover and partner, a white woman, a relationship with whom she does not struggle but stands to define or blossom. Her lover is the colonizer and she is not the colonizer, she is the point and she is not the point. It's like when you translate something and part of the original is lost, leaving a third party, or a triangle, of translation. So, of course, when one might try to translate a phrase in Mojave it warrants an entire poem in English. 

We must go to the place before these two points—we must go to the third place that is the river.

...

One of it's possibilities was to hold a river within it.  

Perhaps the same is true with love. There is so much more here but I implore you to read Diaz herself as you will surely get more out of it than you could here. I also encourage you, as I encourage myself, to consider where words come from. Maybe you will find many of them come from the body. 

Eat your breakfast, or don't. Enjoy the sandwich, or don't. Read Natalie Diaz. 

xo

BLT