Notes to Self
Let me try to use this blog as a diary. So here we go:
Finals are almost over; the semester ends on Thursday. Christmas next week! Next week Christmas!
Forget the diary thing....
Upcoming projects:
1. Finish reading the Uncertainty of Hope by Valerie Tagwira and write the essay on its use of language and post it on Mototi Litscape; try to contact Tagwira for an interview.
3. Read voraciously for no reason (so then I will be a fixture at Borders, like when I used go to Kingstons or the Book Center in Harare and just read, read, read...until someone would come and say, "Can I help you find something?",and I would end up actually wanting to be helped, would be helped all the way to the cash registers to pay for a Dangarembga, a Marechera, a Hove, or some such name.
Here is what PhiLlip Zhuwao once said about reading at Kingstons:
"The books I couldn't buy I read in the bookshops, Kingstons mostly. I had to risk the wrath of security guards and the police. I would enter a bookshop, pick up Don Quixote, check for guards, and start reading where I left off the last time ... I read many books this way till I was unwelcome at the bookshop." Read more here.
Well, in my case, I ended up just buying those books. If I wanted Dostoevsky or Tolstoy I would go to the Russian Library on that street where they also had the United States Information Center, where I watched the news presented by Peter Jennings and I would walk out of there toward the post office, buy a stamp or two and proceed to 78 Kaguvi Street where they still house the Budding Writers Association. The Budding Writers Association.
The Budding Writers. Meetings at hotel lobbies, cheap chardonay intoxicating budding zeal, until some established --they used a different word--writer would laugh at a vomiting budding chap unable anymore to showcase those two or three chapters of a novel that was failing to take off. Or did this happen? But there was always wine, there were always some finger foods and manuscripts, plus a sea of budding writers in ties and ironed trousers, often dreadlocked hair, like Marechera. Somehow we managed to make our presence noticed and the seasoned fellows were either the ones in the background or it was the budding writers that were in the background of what was really going on at those meetings and workshops in Harare gardens; make no mistake, seasoned and budding talent needed each other, were inseparable at these events like a nose and its holes...
At Borders or Barnes & Noble they don't ask if they can help you. So you can actually browse whole shelves at a time. I always find myself heading toward the cash registers after several hours to pay for those browsed books, or to use my discount coupons, which give birth to other coupons, which in turn dictate when I should enjoy them).
Finals are almost over; the semester ends on Thursday. Christmas next week! Next week Christmas!
Forget the diary thing....
Upcoming projects:
1. Finish reading the Uncertainty of Hope by Valerie Tagwira and write the essay on its use of language and post it on Mototi Litscape; try to contact Tagwira for an interview.
3. Read voraciously for no reason (so then I will be a fixture at Borders, like when I used go to Kingstons or the Book Center in Harare and just read, read, read...until someone would come and say, "Can I help you find something?",and I would end up actually wanting to be helped, would be helped all the way to the cash registers to pay for a Dangarembga, a Marechera, a Hove, or some such name.
Here is what PhiLlip Zhuwao once said about reading at Kingstons:
"The books I couldn't buy I read in the bookshops, Kingstons mostly. I had to risk the wrath of security guards and the police. I would enter a bookshop, pick up Don Quixote, check for guards, and start reading where I left off the last time ... I read many books this way till I was unwelcome at the bookshop." Read more here.
Well, in my case, I ended up just buying those books. If I wanted Dostoevsky or Tolstoy I would go to the Russian Library on that street where they also had the United States Information Center, where I watched the news presented by Peter Jennings and I would walk out of there toward the post office, buy a stamp or two and proceed to 78 Kaguvi Street where they still house the Budding Writers Association. The Budding Writers Association.
The Budding Writers. Meetings at hotel lobbies, cheap chardonay intoxicating budding zeal, until some established --they used a different word--writer would laugh at a vomiting budding chap unable anymore to showcase those two or three chapters of a novel that was failing to take off. Or did this happen? But there was always wine, there were always some finger foods and manuscripts, plus a sea of budding writers in ties and ironed trousers, often dreadlocked hair, like Marechera. Somehow we managed to make our presence noticed and the seasoned fellows were either the ones in the background or it was the budding writers that were in the background of what was really going on at those meetings and workshops in Harare gardens; make no mistake, seasoned and budding talent needed each other, were inseparable at these events like a nose and its holes...
At Borders or Barnes & Noble they don't ask if they can help you. So you can actually browse whole shelves at a time. I always find myself heading toward the cash registers after several hours to pay for those browsed books, or to use my discount coupons, which give birth to other coupons, which in turn dictate when I should enjoy them).
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