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Day Three Hundred and Thirty-One:  Atwood, Margaret.

I wrote this title this morning thinking I would write after I saw Ms. Atwood this evening, and I was skeptical if I was going to have anything to write about. 

I was right about being skeptical, because now I have so many thoughts that I don’t know which to write.

So I’ll choose only a few of my favourites, because something that I love about my own thoughts is that I am privy to the entirety of them, and I can choose to share what I want, and otherwise they are for me.  Thoughts are fascinating, alright on to my other fascinating moment of the evening:

She opened her mouth, and I was captivated from that moment on.  It’s something about grace, that a few lecturers that I have seen can master, to remain intelligent but also courageous and fun, and still have their finger on the pulse of the room.  Margaret Atwood knew her audience, she knew her own thoughts, and didn’t give two FUCKS about what everyone thought about what was coming out of her mouth she just said it and demanded attention and respect.  Demanded is the perfect word for Ms. Atwood, as she did just that, but in the most graceful way possible.

I can’t explain it any better than that right now.

I bought her book and she signed it, and I told her that Alias Grace was the last book that I read with my own two eyes before going blind.  She gasped, and looked up at me, and smiled and told me that the first book to the series that I was carrying had an audiobook.  I haven’t told many people about Atwood’s book being the last before I lost my eyesight, because it’s a sticky subject for me, and my final exam I wrote literally while I was losing my sight was written on foolscap in the back of the library with a pen that I could not see the lines on which I was writing a full-on analysis of something about class status and the perfectionist woman in the late nineties novel.  It’s a sticky subject, because I loved that novel, and it has clung to me as the one novel that I remember clearly because it was my last.

Interesting that Atwood is so involved with writing dystopias at the moment, how fascinating, how important, how poignant, I’m having trouble forming different words. How incredible it is to hear someone so inspiring speak.  If I don’t write an entire 20-paged play tonight I will be surprised, because that woman has knocked the inspiration right into me.

She’s spread her vinegrette onto my greek salad, graciously.

Only AJ and Cleo will understand that, but if you think about it….nah, you wouldn’t get it, sorry about that.

But seriously, I urge you all to read some of Atwood’s work, or maybe like read anything, get in touch with yourself, and read.  It’s important, and being an English major it’s all I do but also I do it over the summers, holidays, in any spare time.  I love poetry, novels, blogs, nonfiction essays, these things are interesting just do it guys, okay?

Okay.

I am on such a high right now.

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