Day One... Of 365. Oh Dear.

Happy New Year!

Seeing as NaBloPoMo went so well - all eight of my posts - I thought I should expand my horizons. So I've joined the Blog 365 group. This is Day 1 and, hey, I'm posting! Clearly I'm off to a good start.

The holidays are finally over. I love seeing my parents and friends, but there just comes that point when you begin to comtemplate the padded walls of an institution with longing just because you'd get to be alone - and then you know it's time to go back to real life. Or get yourself committed, but that is expensive and I would have to quit my job. So, here I am back in my nice, quiet apartment.

I discovered this weekend that Margaret Atwood apparently wrote more books after The Handmaid's Tale. Why I didn't know this before, I have no excuse for, but I do now and Cat's Eye has become my obsession. There's something sweetly depressing about the book. Elaine is so vivid, so very real, and I'm not sure how my heart can sink any lower as I keep reading. Her story isn't a tragedy, it's a reality, which I think is what makes it sad - and also sweet. Like poison. You read what she sees, what she experiences through her perceptions, which gloss over the reality of what happens with the reality of what she feels at the time, then you are suddenly doused all at once with her realisations of the reality she obscured from herself. It happens over and again, as she ages and thinks that who she thought she was at a time is not who she was or is or can be, but it's a cold shock every time. I want it to be over, I want to piece all the fragments of her life together so that I know the totality of who she has become, what she has pieced together from her life, but I don't want it to end. Part of this is Elaine, but another is Atwood's language, her descriptors, the way she has of describing an object, a smell, a sound, in a way that sounds strange, but is perfectly right. There is verse in her prose.

And so I begin 2008 by describing a depressing novel. I certainly hope this is not some sort of prediction for the year. Just in case: fuzzy kittens! warm mugs of tea! soft robes and good books and smiles! There. That ought to brighten up my future just a bit.