Deborah Rodriguez-Kabul Beauty School

As  and avid reader of fiction set in the Middle and Far East,  this memoir by American Debbie Rodriguez has been on my list of “must reads” since it’s publication in 2007. Somehow, it managed to slip behind the bookshelf so to speak, and I haven’t  actually read it until two years later. But despite my ability to constantly but this off and other things to read (life as a college English major tends to present this minor issue) or rather other things to do(life as a college English major makes a person hate to read sometimes) I enjoyed it immensely.

Rodriguez’s and the stories of the women students at the Kabul Beauty school is heart wrenching. She describes the tedious customs the women are required to adhere to during the Taliban reign over the country of Afghanistan and even afterward. At times, to the western reader the county seems backward, especially when in comes to women’s rights. The feminist in me wanted to scream. From women being forced into abusive arranged marriages to having to fake their virginity on their wedding night to fifteen year old girls being sexually abused by forty year old men. . . and not wanting out, I was caught into the whirlwind of emotions that is this book. The writing is simple, straight forward, and to the point. That’s what really makes this book special. Debbie doesn’t embellish. The emotions are what they are.

There’s been some controversy since the book’s publication in 2007 over the accuracy of the details and whether or not Rodriguez exaggerated her role in creating the school. Some say she’s depicted herself inaccurately as a “Mother Teresa” figure. There is also a movie slate for release in 2010 rumored to feature Sandra Bullock in the lead role.

Further Reads:

NPR-Subjects of “Kabul Beauty School” Face New Risks

Readers Read- Interview for Deborah Rodriguez

Kabul Beauty School-Afghanistan Interesting 25 minute video about the Beauty Without Borders Organization

e.e. Cummings: “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond”

I’m currently taking an American Literature class, which spans the very late 19th century into the 1980′s. It’s probably the most boring English class I have had the pleasure of taking.. It’s not necessarily the subject matter(I’ll admit I tend to enjoy Brit Lit much more) but the professor is a horrid lecturer.

Nevertheless, on occasion, I do find something that I connect deeply to in this class. Yesterday’s reading invoked a ridiculously emotional response from me. Reading a selection of E.E. Cummings’ poetry, I came across “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” and found myself tearing up in the middle of class after reading it a second time after the aforementioned professor continued to drone on for ten minutes about Cummings’ horrendous love life.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond By e.e. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

I absolutely adored this. However, rather than interpreting it as a love poem in which the narrator is speaking of someone’s effect upon him, I saw it on  more spiritual terms, and am considering using this poem as a prayer/meditation. E.E. Cummings modernist tendencies in his poetry made his poetry “more for the eye than the ear” so much of Cumming’s work isn’t anything that is easy to orate.

In fact, I found much of his poetry like a puzzle, and the editor in me had to put in punctuation and fix capitialization because I just couldn’t understand what I was reading unless the mentally “fixed” the “errors.” I wonder how Cummings would feel about that. However, “somewhere I have travelled” is much more straight forward than say his “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” poem. I spent about ten minutes in class yesterday circling hidden words to find some sort of meaning, which of course was in vain. As the words on the page are supposed to repressesnt the movement of a grasshopper jumping around. This became a little too Modernist to me. As much as I love some forms of the movement, I’m more of a taditionalist. I love T.S Eliot, but things like “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” are just too silly for me. And while I appreciate Cummings want for poetry to be literal imagery, I think that’s why we had the Dadists and the Surrealist art movements going on the the Modernist literary movement. Of course, being a bit of an accomplished painter himself, I can see where his tendencies for movement of the pages comes from. But I still have a problem appreciating it as poetry. So I’ll stick with his more “traditional Modernism” for now.

Further Reading:

Biography and Selected Poems @ American Poems

The Paintings of e.e. Cummings

Catch the Deluge in a Papercup

The eloquence is only a suspension of the reality; the pretension, and effort to glamorize the soul-crushing knowledge of not being able to do better, or perhaps more simply; it’s just the glorification of the existential crisis.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I generally like it that way, except on the days that I don’t, which occur more often than not.

But did I mention that I generally like it that way?

The problem does not lie in the unknown, but instead the known. Obviously, the things I am unaware of, have no relevance on my present, but the things I know, plow me down with an unnatural force. Yet, for some reason, instead of using the power of self-perseverance, I continue to ignore the known and continue on seeking the unknown as though the known was unknown. At the end of the day, I ignore the simplest answer to find a more complicated one.

At the end of the day, I just need to accept that I’m not going to be happy living my life as others would have me live it. I seek the unknown; this much I am aware of. But rather than seeking it vicariously, I would much rather experience it; no matter the pain and hardship I might face. Experience is the ultimate understanding.

I’m not the girl who wants to tour museums. I’m the girl who wants to sleep on a park bench.

Or maybe I’m the girl who wants to do both. But the fear is keeping me from doing it.